Click here to beginThe quinine stung Bryan’s tongue as he sipped his vodka and tonic. He and Cynthia had just come from Heathrow and their last good-bye to Ellen.
They had taken her away from the mansion in a bag; that was three days ago. Autopsy, inquest, official verdict; death by misadventure. Then bag into box and packed with dry ice, to be flown back to New York and her bastard ex-husband for burial. Bryan and Cynthia would not catch their own flight to LaGuardia until the next day, but they saw Ellen to her plane just the same. First Class over, cargo hold back, he thought, and felt slightly sick.
Cynthia had settled into a dry-eyed, disconnected stare, drinking ice water and studying the menu. He felt her aching; she radiated it.
“How are we going to face Ted at the funeral?” she said.
He shrugged. “Just do it, I guess,” he said. “We’re not to blame, Cyn.”
“Somebody is. Somebody must be.”
He had no answer. Her head dropped back to the menu, and he sighed. A trio of severe, impeccably dressed girls walked by the window, each deep in conversation on her own cell-phone. Fake jazz murmured from the pub’s hidden speakers, somewhere behind the brass and the potted plants. This had been a mistake, coming here after the airport.
His V&T was gone, and their waitress was nowhere in sight. “I’m going to get another,” he said to Cynthia. She scarcely nodded. He wandered up to the bar and placed his order.
As he stood waiting, a woman at the other end of the bar caught his eye. He turned to get a better look at her, but he couldn’t, not really—the crowd at the bar shifted around her, and he caught only glimpses; a shimmer of hair over someone’s shoulder, a flash of creamy skin, eyes reflected and refracted a dozen times over in the tumblers on a waitress’ tray.
The barman brought his drink; he turned away for a moment to pay. When he turned back, the woman was still there, looking at him over the top of her glass. Bar patrons passed between her and Bryan, causing her to flicker in and out of sight like an old movie. He felt uncomfortably warm.
The woman brought down her drink, and ran a perfect pink tongue over her lips. Unbidden, the thought came to Bryan of that tongue running up the length of his cock. Or licking his blood from a straight-edged razor.
He blinked rapidly, then turned to walk to the table where Cynthia waited. He looked over his shoulder several times; the woman was still there, still watching.
“Bryan,” Cynthia said, “I don’t think I want to go shopping today. I think we should just go home.”
Bryan said nothing, hardly heard. He was watching the woman.
Suddenly, the woman at the bar put down her glass, tossed a coin on the bar (a flash of gold, Bryan saw), and turned towards the door. She weaved through the crowd like a mirage, to go out the door and be gone forever.
Without thinking, he rose from the table and walked out of the pub ten steps behind her. He stood on the sidewalk, blinking in the sun, and looked up and down the street until he saw her. Her image came to him in waves—there and gone, there and gone—as the river of people in the street ebbed and flowed.
Bryan watched the woman’s retreating back and felt a clutching sensation in his loins. Spittle, unbiden, flooded his mouth, spilling from his lips and down his chin. He could not let her go. He had to catch her, to speak to her, to throw himself at her feet. He knew that he would not know peace or rest until he had been humiliated, until he had abased himself before her lovely cruelty. He could not rest until he bled beneath the tender whip, until her piss burned his eyes, until he had been starved and beaten and blinded and shamed, so great was his need. He was vaguely aware that Cynthia had appeared at his side, was saying something, but he didn’t hear; he was lost to the woman. Please, don’t let her go. Oh God, he thought, oh God let me die beneath her heels.
He started walking toward her, and found Cynthia’s hand on his arm, holding him back. He balled his fist and struck her, backhanded, without thinking. Cynthia fell to the pavement, her mouth bleeding, and her hand dropped away. Bryan didn’t notice. He moved into the crowd, following the woman’s diminishing figure, Cynthia forgotten already, his mind filling with the smells of leather and smoke and rust, with trickling blood, with the terrible ecstasy of the love that kills.
The Angel was about its work again.
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