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

I take more than I usually would. Reds, greens, yellows, and a few purples to round it all out. Italian dressing isn’t too poisonous or fattening, so I splurge and pour some on. Mr. Ash fills his plate high and saturates the hill with Italian, too. He’s mimicking me, though not once do I catch his eyes glancing across the table to see how a real vegetarian eats. How hard can it be to fake it, though? He most likely has excellent peripheral vision even though, I’m guessing now that I see him all dried out, he’s pushing fifty.

“What do you do, Mr. Ash?” I finally ask. It surprises me that we’ve been eating for five minutes and no one has bothered to ask him. I see him as a CPA, or CFO for some large firm back on the coast, maybe. Yes, he’s a Californian. You can spot them a mile away.

His answer surprises me, and I wonder again about the truth of it, until the name clicks in my head. Ash. The author. Yes, of course, “Saving Isabelle”. Matthew Ash, winner of the 1996 something or other—Pen and Faulkner award—yes, I remember. I was twenty-four and so was his Isabelle in that book—a feckless sex fiend, the way I read it! The near-exactness of the names always made me want to puke, and her hair was black! Now I’m certain I don’t like him, famous or not.

He looks kindly over at me. I stare him down while I chew on a piece of cabbage.

“I don’t think you told me your name,” he says, disregarding the black widow look in my eyes.

“Mine ends with an ‘a’, not an ‘e’.”

He doesn’t have a clue what I’m talking about. Why I’m curt and have decided I will not like him no matter if he has sold a trillion books. His Isabelle—a prostitute, for gosh sakes! And he’s probably a pervert! Staring at me from across the lake.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I knew you wouldn’t make the connection. Isabell-ah. Not Isa-belle, like in ding-dong! Isabella…like in Queen! And I could never understand why anyone would give you an award for that…that…thing you claim is literature,” I rip him.

“I agree,” he answers. “Honestly, I could never understand it myself.”

I’m shocked. This guy is pretty good, in an ancient sort of way. So almost-humble. He’s trying to sneak in the back door after that disaster a couple of hours ago. He’s telling me he’s an Aries, and he wants to know my sign. I’m on to him. I stumble, though.

“Really?”

“Yes. I was blown away, of course. That’s a pretty prestigious award—it’s the Pen/Faulkner, by the way—and you’re right. I don’t think Saving Isabelle was nearly as good as everyone screamed it was. But what do we know, huh?” Mr. Ash looks straight into my eyes, and the funniest feeling overwhelms me. He’s handsome, okay, and his voice is pleasantly even, low, velvety, but…I shake my head a little and wonder if perhaps I should begin a new diet. One containing animal. I’m a little dizzy. The message begins to echo all over again.

“Believe this. Believe this, my heart…”

The words in my head are mine, and yet they are not. And then it hits me. The haunting voice I keep hearing could be this guy’s. It’s soft, anyway, like his.

Jesus. I’m going crazy.

I might be crazy. Okay, I am. I’m all upset over Brad. Yes, that’s it. A little post-love wacky. Hey, I think, why am I bringing love into this? This disco-daddy sitting across from me has probably sweet-talked a hundred young women into his bed. That’s what he’s up to. The voice in my head be damned. If I have to stay with him in this lodge, I resolve to beat him at his own game somehow.

Believe this, believe this…           

No way can he be connected to these haunting words I keep hearing.

After Dinner

 

 Matthew

 

Calyx. I smell her perfume, the same fragrance I bought for Allison two months ago for her twenty-sixth birthday. The salesgirl at Nordstrom swore by it. I placed a little golden chain with a diamond dangling from it inside the carrying case, and then wrapped it all up in green paper and a velvet bow. Her favorite colors, green and gold. Allison reacted the way I knew she would, which was a sexual romp that lasted into the wee hours of the next morning. It was a good choice of perfumes. I saw her admiring the diamond necklace often enough in the following days and weeks, but I’ll be damned if I ever smelled the perfume again—until a few moments ago on Isabella, the queen, not the ding-dong.

Not that I thought she’d follow me into the sitting room, out of earshot and sight of Frank and his lovely wife, but within minutes of my sitting down in front of the fireplace, in she comes. Isabella is freshly scented and stunning in her simple white shift and burgundy patent loafers.

When she walks past me, she says nothing beyond a cursory, “Hi.” She is elegant in white, with wisps of her black hair touching her cheekbones. I secretly wish she’d strike up a conciliatory, friendly conversation. Something a bit less abusive than the sparring match we endured during dinner a bit ago. I pretend not to see her, pay any attention to how she picks up the magazine and crosses one shapely leg over the other, but I find myself flashing my eyes over the top of my own magazine, an old edition of National Geographic. I know she doesn’t see me looking, I’m sure of it, as I study her with fractured glances. A second here, two or three seconds there. She is intriguing. Her jaw line is almost square, and her mouth is small, thin, with some hue of red placed on it perfectly, practiced. Her nose is delicate, like her lips, and I begin to compare Allison to her with her close-cropped blonde pixie cut. And then I stop. That’s exactly what I did with Allison and my ex-wife five years ago. Allie won.

I glance across the room at Isabella one more time, I swear to myself the last, unable to resist her in the snowfall of white. She looks up at the same instant and catches my eyes.

“What?” she asks.

Is it menacingly, or merely a question laced with disdain? Whatever it is, it isn’t particularly friendly, that I’m sure of. I endeavor to rescue myself, caught, as I have been with my hand in the cookie jar—for the second time today. I decide to be blunt. What do I have to lose? Look how I am suffering here with my battered leg propped up on an ottoman, throbbing, all on account of trying to catch a glimpse of her unnoticed. If I could, I’d rise and stride toward her. Confront her like a lawyer in a courtroom, motion at her with my magazine waving like a purloined document discovered in her boudoir. I am writing in my head again; living in a land of imagination, creating campy scenes. I can’t comfortably rise, and so I simply lower the magazine and address her.

“I don’t know what you think of me, but honestly I was just trying to get down to the lake’s edge. You just happened to be there when I slipped.”

She answers, “Yes, I believe that.”

“Good. It’s the truth.”

“The whole truth, and nothing but the truth?”

I hesitate. Why is something so simple as falling into the water turning into a courtroom drama I wonder?

“Yes.”

No. Okay, it’s tough because I have to omit the real ending, the precise reason. “Can we start all over again? My name is Matt. I write books, sorry.”

Isabella closes the magazine she’s holding in her lap, and then leans forward, bringing her elbows to rest gently on her knees. She studies me for a second.

I’m unsure. I’m nervous.

She’s taking her sweet time. Fuck, I hate this. I smell the sweet pine of the fire and I smell her perfume and I want to stand up and go to her. Put my hand on her cheek, or her hand—or better yet, her small breast. I think she knows, too. Maybe she’s a clairvoyant. Maybe I’m screwed.

At last she decides to break the uncomfortable silence.

“You didn’t even bother to thank me.”

It takes a second or two for the statement to sink in, but then I flash back to the shore of the lake. “Ah…yes. Well, you see, I was in agony, and…I was very embarrassed, I guess. Thank you. I wish I’d taken you up on the offer to help me down the mountain. I slid most of the way in the mud on my rear. Not pleasant.”

“I wondered when I saw you in the dining room how you’d managed to get back. Congratulations. How does your knee feel?”

“Terrible, thank you.” That’s two thank you’s, now. Maybe that will suffice. I find her stunning.

“Do you play chess?” she asks unexpectedly after lifting the magazine, pretending to read it.

I look over at her as if she just asked me a question about quantum physics. But I answer, “Umm…yes, I suppose so…but it’s been a while.” I remember seeing the chessboard on the table behind me and I think hard. Pawns can sometimes move two spaces; most times one. They’re not worth much. Queens get to go all over the place. That’s women for you, I laugh inwardly. Horses jump two/one, or one/two. Yes, yes, I remember, sort of. But I rarely ever won—I guess because I tend to think on the right side of my brain, which limits me to planning only what I’m going to do at the moment. Then again, maybe it’s the left side? I can’t remember. What the hell, I’ll play her.

“I haven’t played in a very long time. Probably pretty rusty, but if you like…”

“Good! I mean, that’s okay. I’ll go easy until you warm up. I was champion of the Young Women’s Chess Club in Santa Monica a few years back. I’m probably rustier than you, though.” Isabella lays the magazine aside and rises from the sofa. She moves elegantly, smoothly, like a dancer or a floor gymnast. Her white skirt follows the movement of her body, almost in slow motion, and my eyes follow it. For a second I don’t think about the fact that within minutes I’m probably going to tumble into another lake—one with kings and bishops and the horse pieces, overseen by an altogether different kind of queen. Shit, I’m in trouble here. I don’t mind losing at chess, but I’m finding myself spinning.

She strides around the sofa I’m sitting on and gathers two chairs from another table. I take a deep breath, ease my leg off the cushiony surface of the ottoman, then join her as casually as a man with only one working leg can. She doesn’t bother to pull my chair out for me, in fact seems to take no notice of my delicate condition at all. I think Isabella is already contemplating her tenth and final move. She has taken her seat on the side of the table where the white pieces stand like Napoleon’s army at Austerlitz. My black guys look good, but I believe they won’t know