CATHEDRAL, Patrick Sean Lee [most popular ebook readers .txt] 📗

moved by the sheer number of works the man wrote—but more so by his images of lovers. Atlases of bodies marked by crosses of fire. Lyrical passion. How I am drawn like a sun into a black hole by the glory of his words! The gravity of God.

I feel a drop of rain. Just one, so I must do what I came to do, then leave quickly. The book of poems—I can’t part with it. I can’t. It has become a friend, another lover in a way, one that is true. Books are sacred and ask nothing of us. I open it to the beginning and read out loud from Twenty Love Poems And A Song Of Despair—1923-1924:

 

         Body of woman, white hills, white thighs,

     you look like the world in your posture of surrender.

     My savage peasant body digs through you

     And makes the sun leap from the depth of the earth.

 

I think back at how Brad lay me down with gentle hands on the sofa in my living room that night, knelt and read the twenty love poems in his low, whispering, musical voice. When he had finished he stripped my clothes away ritually and then made love to me—marked the atlas of my body with crosses, with tongues of fire.

And today?

Oh God, I’m thinking I don’t love Brad. I don’t think I really forgave him, but I can’t bring myself to leave him. What is happening to me? Why can’t I remain where I was any longer, even though he proved he was sorry? He has done nothing but love me without reserve since then, without demands, totally. But I begin to realize that his affair was merely the ending battle. I’d already begun to drift away. What perversion of goodness, what unkindness, is in me? Am I so small? I loved him once. He walked away from her…

He cheated on me.

Still, I think I love him, but…my mind is turning somersaults.

I gaze up. It’s sprinkling intermittently now.

Soon I’ll be finished, and having done my penance, having attended to the dead, I’ll leave. Go back down the path hurriedly. I have no doubt I’ll be soaked by the time I reach the lodge. Perhaps Mr. Davenport will start a fire in the great stone fireplace in the sitting room for me after I shower and dress. He is old, but he remembers me from so many years ago, and he smiled when I reintroduced myself two weeks back. Yes, I know he’ll start a fire for his little Isabella. I’ll read from his collection of National Geographic Magazines stacked on round, lacquered end tables beside the twin sofas that stare into the blackened fireplace. Anything but the letters or poetry again today. I tear large pieces from those two hand-written pages now as I look up at the threatening black sky.

 

The Lady of the Lake

 Matthew

 

You’re only as good as your next best seller. I’m stuck in writer’s block, dead in the water, and as in the past when the malady hit me, I’m convinced that I’ve come to the end of my rope. I chide myself for those mental clichés, but for sure I’m finished this time. How many books can a hack writer crank out before his number is up? Number seven will sink me, I know it. I have become the cliché.

I needed a peaceful cave to retire to in the throes of my latest state of uncreative misery, so I reserved a room for a month in this out of the way, scenic lodge at the suggestion of Marian, my agent and sometimes-confessor. Marian is a jewel. She grew up in Denver, where she lived the life of a pampered, only child; daughter of a retired Naval captain of all things. After graduating from an elite, private high school there, she headed off to Columbia University in New York to study the craft of writing, but by the time she began her post-graduate studies, she realized reading the works of potential Hemingways was absolutely closer to her heart—her real passion. She hired on at a heavy-hitter agency during the post-grad work, and quickly discovered the glitz and glamour of pouring over a hundred query letters a day sent by every soul in possession of a computer—about half of whom, she once noted to me, must have thought verbs were nouns, and ‘concise paragraphs’ might easily run two pages in length, without punctuation.

Though she hated the single page query I submitted for my first book, “Saving Isabelle”, something about the idea of a Benedictine monk on sabbatical from Monte Cassino saving the soul of a fallen-from-grace niece of the Duke of Windsor struck a chord in her, she admitted at dinner one evening. She requested the entire manuscript—my first—and the rest is history. I hit the best-seller lists, except in England, where I was branded a “neo-Fascist scoundrel with the sensibilities of Goering, and the morals of Pope Alexander VI” for muddying the royal crown’s sterling name. Despite the Brits’ near-unanimous denunciation of “Saving Isabelle” I sold a freight train load of copies of the book anyway, and received awards and adulation, as well as gushing letters of invitation from thousands of love-struck housewives.

Marian swore that the serenity and isolation of Roosevelt Lodge would be just the ticket for me now that the luster of my early career had begun to fade. A friend of a friend of a friend told her that another friend, who happened to be a writer, too, came here for lengthy, rehabilitating stays herself whenever the onset of that horrible disease common to all novelists struck. That friend, ten times or so removed from anybody I knew, and whom I’ve never had the displeasure to have met, thank God, was Natalie Pearce. A self-possessed, bitchy, but very successful writer—unlike myself. I’m merely very successful, or at least I use to be.

So, I checked into the idyllic lodge yesterday, and true to Marian’s predictions, the spell began to break. The moment I sat down and placed my fingers on the keys of my laptop, the words “It was a dark and stormy night” rolled off my fingertips as easily as sneezing in a dust storm.

I’m disgusted with trying to write books. Disgusted at being only forty-five and washed up. I love to run, though, and the pristine atmosphere at this ungodly altitude might just assuage the pain of knowing I’m an author who has lost it. If nothing else, breathing the air here will. I’m hoping, anyway. Cleanse my lungs of the cloud of its chic, but slightly toxic, Venice, California cousin.

 

It’s eight o’clock. I’m up, I’m rested, but I’m starting to go nuts already.

I called the desk at seven this morning, asking that a plate of bacon, scrambled eggs, eggs-over-easy, sausage, pancakes, and whatever else the cook could think of that might fit onto the largest plate in the house, be delivered to my suite. And a gallon of black coffee. Mrs. Davenport, wife of the quiet old guy who owns the lodge, raps on my door twenty minutes later. When I finally finish deleting “stormy night” and wisely replace it with ”stormy day” and mope across to gather up my breakfast, I find her standing on the far side of the serving cart outside, staring at me. Kindly put, she’s a large woman. Seventy-ish, dressed in a…well, a dress that might once have been a sheet from one of these beds. If that is true—and I think it could be—someone—I guess her—has cut a hole in the center, gathered and ruffled it, then stitched up the loose ends at the arms, and thrown some more ruffles on those. The black belt with the dainty buckle of polished brass completes her, at least from the waist up. I don’t know, I might need to be afraid of someone like this. But I thank her just the same and hope she’s just waiting for a gratuity. She evidently is not, as she gazes up and down at my five-ten, slight frame, shakes her head and finally squeaks, “Goodness gracious, where do you plan on puttin’ all this?” Then she turns on her heel and waddles back down the hall before I can answer or turn to fetch a five-dollar bill.

I intend to put the mountain of stuff right into my mouth, and then into my stomach. Since I’m sick in my head, I figure I might as well be sick in my belly. Self-pity and self-flagellation are both parts of the disease. I eat one link of sausage and one forkful of flapjacks, but then begin to wonder what stuffing even half of that platter-full into me might do to my system by, say, mile number one and a half. I don’t particularly like looking at my own vomit while I hold my spinning head, and so the choices become simple. Eat, run, and throw up, or run first, then eat and maybe throw up. I lay the fork down and unpack my running gear.

In two shakes I’m into my Nike, one hundred percent cotton pants and matching top. I look great. I feel better, too, because that guy winking back at me from the mirror on the bathroom door is the picture of health, if not genius, and so off I go.

I bounce down the stairs and spot the voluminous-bosomed Mrs. Davenport in her sheet-dress dusting the guestbook cover at the reception desk. I thank her for the breakfast, and ask her what trail she might recommend for a good, hard run. A look of surprise mixed with something like pity descends onto her cheeky face. She hesitates for a moment before answering me, looking down at my midsection, scratching her head.  

“Well…it’s marked, Mr. Ash. Roosevelt Lake. Lordy…” She’s talking at my stomach. “You can’t miss it. Probably…the most spectacular trail…” she halts, sucks in a breath. “My goodness! Where did you put all that food? Gracious me!”

I understand, and I laugh as I pat my stomach.

“Right here. Us runners have bellies like locomotive boilers. We need lots of fuel. Seriously. Size makes no difference, either; we burn it up by the pound, not the ounce.”

I’m not sure if she believes me, but her eyes are suddenly the size of two Harvest moons. I leave her in a state of wonderment, turn, and walk toward the entrance. Halfway across the old, polished fir floor, I must stop and ask Mrs. Davenport in which direction the trail’s entrance lies. I turn, but at the same instant out of the corner of my eye I think I see the shoulders and sparkling black hair of a woman whisking by toward the north end of the building, and I wheel back around.

To the right of the door a long bank of windows allows me to see down the run of the X-railed porch almost to the steps at the corner, but by the time I reach the windows and look out, she has disappeared. I turn back to Mrs. Davenport, who is busy with her feather duster, and ask in which direction the trail lies. I also casually inquire how many guests are staying at the lodge.

“Turn to the right, outside the door, Mr. Ash. And guests?