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

“No, no, if I like it I’ll be happy to pay whatever difference in rate there is. Can I see it?”

  “‘Course,” he said. “Follow me.”

  So he led the way upstairs to the fantastic room. It occupied a good portion of the attic area, accessible from the narrow stair adjacent to the outside wall of my bathroom. The “Franklin Suite” was at least three times the size of the one I was in, rented most often, he said, to newlyweds who desired an unparalleled romantic view, quiet, and above all, privacy.

 “You’ll have a little more room to stretch your legs, Matthew. Here we are.”

 A massive door hung with the most massive strap hinges I’d ever seen creaked when he unlocked it and pushed inward.

 Inside the lay a sprawling living room that extended in a butterscotch forest of timber and polished planking from the front of the building to the rear. The sight of it took my breath away.

 It ran a good twenty feet to the bedroom entrance in the opposite direction across the room from where we stood. The open truss ceiling vaulting upward reminded me in miniature of the Museo Sefardi in Madrid that I’d visited eight years ago, bathed in more butterscotch highlighting, and linear, chocolate shadows. A few feet below the rafter ridgeline, the horizontal cross-lattice field stretched, and added the distinctive feeling of centuries-old Sephardic architecture.

 “Damn, Bernie, this is…monumental!”

 “I figured you’d prob'ly like it,” he replied, smiling.

My eyes fell from the remarkable ceiling to the plain-by-comparison sofa and end tables and lamps, a dust covered, glass-topped coffee table arranged with dusty books and magazines, upholstered sitting chairs covered with white sheets, waiting. But the best feature of all might have been the majestic fireplace. Rough granite stone, blackened at the mouth, it graced the wall facing the sofa, promising to brighten up the coming cold mountain evenings with warmth and dancing flames.

As I surveyed all of this I pondered whether or not I’d ever want to return to the coast. A magic flowed through the air of this place high in the clouds, yet something was missing. Someone. Angeline suddenly seemed hollow without the heart of Isabella beating in her breast.                                                      

“I’ll take it,” I beamed after we’d finished the tour. “The fireplace sold me! An extra couple hundred per week?”

“An extra nothing!” he insisted with his fatherly chuckle. “You’ve kinda’ gotten to be family to Gertie and me. It’s just like you been living here for years and years. Like you was one of our kids. You like the room, you take it.”

That was that. Charlie and I hauled my things up within the hour. New digs; a fresh environment, and a blazing fire to lend heightened forward motion to my inspiration—and, of course, hard work.

 

                                 *

 

 “Do you think you’d like Spain,” I ask Isabella as we enter the room. She has let go of my hand now that I’ve pushed the door inward, and she takes two tentative steps in. To the right, through the windows framed in the darkness, a glow of the emerging moonlight clings like silver velvet to the shadows inside. She senses the volume of our retreat and sighs.

 “Spain?” And then she stops and I see her head turn upward toward the ceiling. “Oh my God. I had no idea…” Isabella puts her hand on my chest, and then glances back into the dark room. “When my family and I were here years ago, Sammy and I snuck up here and peeked in. It was just a great, unfinished attic loaded with old furniture, boxes and boxes and boxes. Dusty and scary. Now…”

 “Should I turn on the lights?” I ease myself to her side and close the door softly. She slides her arm around my waist and tips her head upward toward my face. I can see that her mouth is slightly open in wonderment. She remembers the room from her youth, and now she is trying to visualize its new contents as they lay sleeping in the deep shadows.

 “No, not for a moment or two. I want to remember this. Just the way it is now. Oh Matthew, what is it that’s happening here? Do you feel it? Can your eyes see it?”

 “I think so. But maybe it’s just the beauty of the moonlight, its reflection off the whiteness of the snow. The fact that finally we’re together.”

 “No, more than that. Something special. Something almost spiritual.”

 “The cathedral.”

 She hugs my waist and presses herself against me, and then she replies. “Older.”

 Our vision adjusts to the darkness, and I walk her to the windows to our right. Against the blanket of ink sky and the full moon which has scattered the remnants of clouds, the white of the snow becomes sparkling, a river of diamonds, and it covers every blade of hibernating grass, every weathered stone, the outstretched palms of every pine. Far away I see the ghostly outlines of peaks that a month ago were a hundred muted shades of azure, gold and crimson in the afternoon sunshine, dotted and pointed helmets spearing passing clouds. Tonight they are the spikes of an ancient, sleeping creature lying across a frozen land floating on a glacier.

 She stands in front of me enthralled by the vista. I wrap my arms around her and move my cheek to the side of her satiny hair; my mouth close to her cheek. The slightest, sweet odor of her skin melts me, heats me, excites me.

“There’s an enchantment out there. In here, too.”

 Isabella is silent for a moment, unmoving as I press my lips to her cheek. At last she says, “What fate brought us together here do you think, Matthew?”

 “The fate of grace. I believe it’s what you sensed a moment ago. I sensed it, too. I don’t know much about those kinds of things I have to admit. About God and all that, but...”

 “Oh, I do. I know that he’s out there; in here as well.” She turns her head, brushing my lips with her face, and our mouths are now only a breath apart. Her eyes sparkle like the light on the snow. “You do believe in Him, don’t you?”

 “I believe in something. A river of energy that binds everything, perhaps. I don’t know—the power of cosmos. We are only a part of it.”

 “Oh, no. I know there is some One. A father or a mother or both, but a conscious being driving all of this, taking care of us. Planning for us.” She smiles and kisses me.

 I want to be patient, I want to continue in the power of this instant of eternity twisting and turning around us, but I want to feel every line of her skin in the bed I’ve occupied alone, with only my thoughts of this woman who has flown in like the gentle light of the moon. She reads my thoughts as though I’d shouted them from the top of a steeple.

 “We can’t. Not yet.” Isabella curls her mouth, touches the tip of my nose with a finger, and laughs. “We have all of our years for lovemaking. Later, after dinner…they’re expecting us.”

I am pleased with her wry candor, but I am forced to take an awkward step backward and let the great ocean liner slip back into the sandy bottom. Still, I am not entirely bereft of hope. “We’d better shower.”

 “Yes,” she says maintaining her amusement with my condition. “I’d be happy to join you there. How are you at backs?”

 The Titanic looks up at me. Raise me.

 “The best. Shall we?”

 “I think we should. It’s been a long day, and I desperately want to get cleaned up and into some fresh clothes.”

 I quickly return to the door and gather her suitcases from the landing, and then take them into the bedroom. She follows in the dimness, fingers searching for guidance at my lower back, and at the touch of them electricity streaks across every nerve in my body.

 I take hold of her hand and lead her through the most exciting doorway of Roosevelt Lodge into the bedroom where we undress clumsily in each other’s arms, and then we enter the bath. I don’t need to switch on the glaring lights. Her skin is pure white in the reflection of the moonlight; her hands are soft and warm on my shoulders. The water is soon steaming and will last forever...or at least until the annoyance of dinner is at hand.

 Inside the wet warmth of the shower enclosure I take my place behind her once more and softly kiss the back of her neck. The washcloth and soap I let fall to the floor.

Dinner

 Isabella

 

I’ve put on the sweater dress and daubed Calyx just below my throat and behind my ears. Those are two of the things, at least, that Matthew wanted this evening. He is such an incurable romantic, saying that it all would remind him of that night a month ago, but that this time everything would turn out the way it was meant to. I was happy to oblige him. The rest must take its place in line behind necessary courtesies and different hungers. I come out of the bedroom into the living room, ablaze, now, with light, where he waits for me, and I think I see traces of moisture forming in his eyes. He seems unable to speak, standing with his back to the fireplace. He holds one of the roses that he bought for me, and he is extravagantly sexy in the beige blazer, maroon cashmere sweater, and levis. Levis! Preppy, but he looks darling.

Matthew glances quickly down at his clothing when he sees me running my eyes up and down his body. “I went shopping with Edward down in the city before your plane arrived. Some new stuff. I’d gotten kind of sloppy sitting in the old room at the keyboard…”

“You look wonderful.”

He hesitates and his eyes lock on mine. “And you are indescribable. Thank you.”

He raises the hand holding the rose, and I shamefully calculate that my dear quixotic Matthew must have spent several hundred dollars on the flowers alone. I walk past the chair standing between us, arrive at his side and accept the blossom.

“Thoughtful of you. You are like this rose, you know.” I raise the bloom to my nose and draw in a breath.

It’s so fragrant. Devoid of thorns—and the stem will remain strong out of its vase of water for untold hours tonight. There is an unavoidable comparison here that makes me stifle a chuckle. I wonder…

“I love this room. I think we’ll be very happy in it, don’t you?” I offer at length.

“Yes, I do. After dinner, anyway. I’ll start a fire,” he motions to me that we should be on our way down to the dining room. “You can fill me in then on everything that happened this past month back in Santa Monica. I’m very curious. The sofa isn't particularly comfortable, but under a warm blanket with our feet on the coffee table, and a bottle of wine…well, it’ll be nice.”

I wonder what happened to that other insatiable appetite? That Matthew would want to waste time cuddled on the couch hearing the depressing list of events in my dreary existence away from him?

We leave the suite and descend the two