Beast (49 page)

"Louise." he said.

She turned away. "Oh." Unable to look. Louise yanked open the nearest drawer in her bureau. She began to throw things out onto the bed. Underdrawers, handkerchiefs.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"I'm leaving. I can't do this, Charles."

All he said in return though was, "You knew. You knew since before tonight."

She turned on him, defensive. "Yes, and that wasn't the point. I knew two nights ago when you made love to me. What I wanted was for you to tell me. I wanted you to
choose
to tell me—"

"I tried—"

"You didn't. You were always waiting for the perfect moment. I wanted you to come at me headlong, like you talked about. I liked that idea. I wanted to try it."

He groaned slightly, then murmured, "I'm sorry."

But it was to her back. Louise yanked a bag from the floor of her wardrobe, stuffed it full of undergarments, then buckled the bag tight. Tucking it up under her arm, dressed in her nightgown, she carried it and herself out of the room.

"Where are you going?" he asked, following, sailing behind her in his Arab dress. "Montreal?"

She walked faster, down the hallway. "No. I'm going to my parents, then back home."

Charles thought, perhaps, if he tried now. He switched to French, and apparently the sound of his voice in this language was enough to give her pause. She hesitated at the top of the stairs.

He said, "I didn't mean to hurt you. I often thought that what I was doing was going to spare you."'

Honestly, he added. "I mean, once my original idiocy was a fait accompli and there was no turning back.

To keep it up, Louise, cost me, oh—" There weren't words. Just the memory of so much frustration, he couldn't express it.

She looked at him for a long moment, then simply pointed out, "Twice, Charles? You felt so bad you did it
twice
?" She began down the staircase.

"Now. Let me tell you now, Louise. Stop. I'll say whatever you want me to say."

"It's too late."

Charles said, "No." He tried to keep up, but his knee hurt from the climb up onto her balcony. He couldn't do it. He called to her, "I am committed in a way even I don't understand fully. I just know I won't leave, and you shouldn't either: no sneaking off the gangplank of this ship. We should sail through together. You
can
trust me, Louise. Just forgive me and let it go. And I'll forgive you."

She turned on the landing midway down to glance at him, clutching her insane bag of packed lingerie.

"Forgive me? For what?"

"You made me do it," he tried.

"
I
made you do all these stupid things?" she demanded. "That is the most childish, irresponsible nonsense I have ever heard in my life. I'm leaving." She all but ran down the last steps.

To the floor below, there were two runs of them with a landing between. With his leg hurt, there was no way he could get down them fast enough to catch her. He realized she was outrunning him. heading toward the front door.

She was about to escape. With her cleverness intact. No, goddamn it. Charles hesitated. He had no clear idea how far it was down. A lot of steps if he did the two turns of stairs. Three or four meters, the drop of one story. It seemed possible. He put his hands on the railing, leaning up onto them, then leaped, drawing his legs up, swinging them out to the side, and over.

He fell. And fell and fell. No clear idea where he was for a few seconds. Up in the air. Down on the floor. He landed, in the process twisting his good knee. He sprawled out onto his back, cracking his head, seeing stars, though he stayed conscious enough to think,
Oh, this was smart
.

But not that stupid, either, perhaps. Louise halted, the doorknob in her hand. "What have you done?"

she said tightly. She pursed her mouth, scowled. Then came over to him. She repeated, "What have you done?"

From the floor he looked up at her, her face bent over him. "I've been a little headlong. I think."

Her eyebrows went up, her tone slightly reprimanding. "Headlong?" she said.

"It seemed possible." He looked down at himself, perplexed, miffed. "I just didn't think the floor was coming up so quickly. A little miscalculation."

"Are you hurt?" She squatted down, still angry but not leaving.

Not that big a miscalculation either, he thought. He grinned, then groaned for the first time. "No-o-o. I am destroyed. Overwrought. Ruined." He made a face.

"My leg is probably broken. You have to be nice, Louise. You have to say everything is all right, forgive me, then move on."

"You are despicable."

"You are as guilty as I."

"I am not! I didn't start a mean, complicated charade on you before we had even been introduced—"

"No, you decided to have someone else. If you hadn't been fooling around on that ship—"

They both talked at once.

"I was fooling with you—"

"—with that bloody lieutenant—"

"I didn't know you. I was looking for you—"

"I was angry with you for standing with him in the dark. I wanted you to wait—"

"I didn't know to wait for you—"

"—to respect me and what I was offering you—"

"Respect is something you earn. I didn't know you deserved it."

"You insulted me—"

"I thought you were ugly." She took a breath. "And that I was—"

"I am." He stopped. "You? You think you're ugly?"

"Well, yes. Sometimes. In the way I behave—"

Louise stopped. She blinked then said, "My parents do this."

"Do what?"

"Talk at the same time, while no one else can make heads or tails of their conversation." She laughed. "I always thought it was—sweet. I was jealous." Louise fell over onto her bottom, then let herself fall straight back, sprawled out beside him. "It's awful!" Awful or not, she laughed.

Charles caught her humor, laughing at whatever she was laughing at; he wasn't sure. They both lay there, inexplicably cheerful on the entry room floor. Then she shrieked, "Sweet!" Her laughter became deep, a drum roll of mirth. Hardly able to contain it, she turned her face toward him. "My God, I've been
sweet
."

Still laughing, "In a kind of backward way. What do you think of that?"

He caught her hand. "I think this is the moment. Run at me, Louise. I want to take a run at you." After a pause he added very, very quietly, "You see, I love you."

Silence.

Then he pulled her onto him. dug his fingers into her hair against her skull and kissed her.

Louise kissed him back, catching and halting her breath in a kind of leapfrog of pant-and-gasp down her nose. He remembered. He smelled her—ah, the coup de grace: her smell up close in the dark beyond any perfume, beneath it, over it: wholesome, fresh, sweet, green, like morning milk, fresh from the meadow, warm in the bucket, rich, the cream so dense you could scoop it off the top with a finger.

He caught her mouth in his, then followed her mouth each time she turned, kissing and re-kissing her. So eager. So genuinely happy to hold her. It became difficult to get a word out. Though she still seemed to be trying to say something. Something about wanting the privacy of upstairs. With the lights on.

Yes, indeed. With every light in the bedroom blazing: That's how he closed the door, in a kind of haze of backward staggers, a dance against it as he pushed on their modern lighting. Then a drop—he pushed her straight back, off-balance onto the bed—she was flat on her back. She groaned when he slid up beside her.

She rolled toward him and touched his face with spread fingers and curved palm, fitting these against his cheek. Then both her hands, sliding over his eyes, his nose, feeling him like she had wanted to on the ship.

"Are you sure you are in one piece?" she asked.

"No." He rolled over on top of her, then rolled again, taking her with him till she was on top. He said.

"How to you feel about this position?"

"Position for what?"

He said, "And the wall. I am really good at walls, did I ever mention? And chairs. You really ought to get to know me on chairs."

"Chairs?" Louise looked down narrowly into his face. "Oh," she said, then blushed. Deep, deep red, even as she pulled her mouth taut. "Walls I think I knew about. Now, listen to me, Charles—don't think, just because I didn't leave you downstairs on the floor, that everything is all right."

"Everything will never be all right, Louise." He mugged a face. "Like they say, it's always something. But, dear one, precious, sweetness, may I tell you: All my roads lead to you, no matter how crooked. And all your roads lead to me. Stay. Stop your traveling, Louise." He blew gently into her face, making her close her eyes, turn, arch slightly. He said, "Let me blow cool air on all the stings inside you." Then he pressed her head down, turning it to him, and blew into her mouth.

And there in her husband's feather bed, deep inside a nest of down, Louise took some initiative. She peeled off Charles's suspenders, then shirt. She rubbed her closed eyes then her cheek, her lips on the hair, the skin of his chest. She and Charles exchanged services. He undid the back of her dress and folded it off her shoulders. He looked at her, touching what he saw. Silly man, at one point he pressed his nose to her bare belly and sniffed her loudly in circles that tickled.

"Mmm." he said. He stood beside the bed to take off the last of his own clothes, then when his underdrawers dropped, he rose naked. A spectacle before her eves.

"Oh," she murmured. "Oh, Charles, you are so fine. So divinely well-made and male." He was Hercules unchained. Priapus. She said what she told him once before: "You're beautiful."

He didn't seem to know what to say for a moment, but he knew what to do.

He climbed back into bed. finished the work of her clothes. Louise was faintly embarrassed at first, used to silks and feathers and fancy accessories to her appearance. He encouraged, "I've seen you already, remember? On the ship. Though you were blindfolded."

Yes, oh, yes. She put herself in his power. And ran at him headlong.

Author's Note

For years now, trade in ambergris has been banned worldwide by treaty and various national marine mammal protection acts. In the United States, it falls under the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972

and is illegal to import. The closest available scent today conies from the bee balm plant, which contains a large amount of the same chemical scent-substance, ambries. The fragrance of ambergris is now more a matter of nostalgia which, for the sake of the sperm whale, certainly is best left to imagination and fiction.