A Lady Under Siege(45)

“Apparently she’s having dreams about me.” Derek said.

“Sounds promising.”

“Yeah. Some dude that looks just like me, some ancient prince in a castle.”

“Doesn’t matter. Nice ass trumps craziness any day,” Ken remarked.

“She truly believes there’s someone listening in my head, and she needs to talk to him. Thomas, his name is, and she’ll be like, ‘I’m talking to Thomas, not you.’ I’ve told her there’s no one else in there, it’s all private property, but she doesn’t care, says it doesn’t matter whether I’m aware or not, he’s there, all right. He’s in there.”

“Don’t let her see the real you,” Ken advised.

“Too late for that! Don’t you remember me yelling at her the other night? Up at her window right there? In spite of that I’ve landed in her good books. Christopher Hitchens to the contrary, there is a God. I’d do her in a minute. She’s gorgeous, don’t you think?”

“Like I said, nice ass trumps craziness.”

“Everything’s nice about her.”

Meghan, now fully focussed on her eavesdropping, waited for more, but instead there came a prolonged silence. She pictured the two of them lost in thought, hiding in a cloud of cigarette smoke. Then Ken said, “Someone like her might be good for you.”

“What do you mean?” she heard Derek say.

“Well. It’s just. Well you know. She’d have been about the same age, now.”

“Don’t even go there,” Derek said quietly. “Although I know you care. And I’m glad you care.” Then there was another prolonged silence. Then Derek broke the sombre mood with a sudden loud, elongated yowl—Meghan pictured him rising from the picnic table and stretching like a noisy cat. “You’re my best friend, old Ken,” he sighed affectionately. “It’s been a long strange journey and back through all of that, and here we are, still the best of buds.”

“Smoking the best of buds,” added Ken.

“Gimme a hug,” said Derek.

“Fuck that.”

“No, come on, do it. No one’s hugging me these days. Every human needs a hug.”

“All right then, for charity’s sake. Lonely old Derek.”

Meghan heard the beavertail claps of the manly backslaps that are inevitable when drunken men hug each other. She’d begun to worry about how she was going to sneak into her house without them realizing she’d been listening to them, and seized this moment to scurry up onto the deck unnoticed. She lingered by the door for a moment, taking in the sight of two middle-aged fools clenched together in that dishevelled yard.

“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” Ken said.

“It feels great. A human being, is only really being, when he is being, looooved,” Derek brayed.

“That song sucked. You can let go now.”

“No f*cking way. I’m loving it.”

“Small doses, man. Everything in small doses.”

“But not love. Never say that about love.”





22





Sylvanne sat on her bed while Thomas paced her room. He’d been speaking for some time about his wife, most especially the history of her illness. “She suffered no convulsions, or twitching or spasms to serve as signposts of what was to come. No, it was just a gradual malaise, a sickly cough such as anyone might have in the winter season, only this one lingering into spring, and growing more bold with the lengthening days. Her pulse weakened till she could scarcely rise from her bed in the morning, and lay there much of the day. Some days, by sheer strength of will, she would pull herself to her feet, unsteady as a newborn foal, and make her way to the chapel for prayers.”

Sylvanne tried to distract herself from his words, for she feared that such a sad story might arouse sympathy within her, and weaken her resolve. She encouraged her own mind to wander back to her former life, well before the siege, when she and Gerald had been newlyweds, when he had loved her keenly. He had written poetry for her, not only before they were married, but afterward as well, in fact the later poems became even more ardent and explicit in describing her charms, because by then he’d gained intimate and detailed knowledge of them. How she wished she had committed some of his poems to memory, for she knew not what had become of them in the siege. She hated herself for being able to recall only a handful of random lines in full, for it made it all seem so wasted, as if Gerald, the poems, her former life, none of it had ever really existed. She was lost in such thoughts when Thomas, in his pacing, stopped and stood directly before her, mouthing words she barely heard.