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Authors: Peter Cameron

BOOK: The City of Your Final Destination
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“I don't know. I just knew.”
“Where was he?”
“A place in the woods. Not far from the lake.”
“Near the gondola?”
“The gondola is in the boathouse,” said Pete.
“Was this place in the woods near the boathouse?”
“No,” said Pete. “It was the other side of the lake.”
“Did you know he would be dead?”
“Yes,” said Pete.
“How?”
“He had taken the gun,” said Pete. He touched the top of Omar's head, palmed it. “This had come off,” he said. “Like an egg.”
They walked the rest of the way in silence, and reached the gate of Ochos Rios. It was only yesterday that I arrived here, thought Omar. It seemed days ago.
“Where are the rivers?” he asked Pete.
“What rivers?”
“The eight rivers. Isn't that what Ochos Rios means: eight rivers?”
“Yes,” said Pete. “But there are no rivers. It is just a name.”
From a window in the tower, Caroline watched Pete and Omar walk up the drive. She felt in Omar's presence a threat—not merely, or perhaps not even fundamentally, because of the book. It struck more deeply and vaguely than that. In some instinctual way, before she had even intuited the threat, she had thought she could rise up and meet or deflect it—that explained her behavior with Omar last night and this morning. But now she wasn't sure. They seemed to be chattering gaily, Omar and Pete, like two old friends. Omar glanced up then and saw her in the window. He raised his hand in a combined wave and salute. The familiarity of the gesture shocked her. She stepped away from the window. She stood there, feeling and thinking nothing. Lately she felt this often: this stasis, this vacancy, this sitting or standing still and feeling emptied out, hollow. It was not unpleasant. It did not scare her: it was a sort of contentment, a hiatus, a satisfaction of nothing.
Caroline found Arden in the kitchen, where she appeared to be making bread. Caroline secretly felt that the point of much of Arden's
domestic activity was to irritate her: they could easily buy their own bread.
She stood in the doorway for a moment, and then said, “I just wanted to let you know that I won't be joining you for dinner this evening.”
“Why?” asked Arden. She did not look up. “Aren't you feeling well?”
“I'm feeling fine,” said Caroline. She thought: She pretends it is such hard work, making bread.
“Then why won't you come to dinner?”
“I see no point in it. I will not change my mind about this. It is a waste of my time, and his.”
“He just wants to talk to us,” said Arden. She stopped fussing with the dough. “To all three of us. To make his case. He's offered to take us out to dinner. He's come all this way to do that. It will seem rude not to go. It is rude, I think.”
“His coming here is rude, I think. We should not indulge him. I shall not,” said Caroline.
“Well, it makes no sense for us to go out to dinner, then,” said Arden. “The whole point was for him to be able to talk with all three of us. If you don't come, it is pointless.”
“Why especially me?”
“Because it is you he must convince.”
“I have just told you I will not be convinced.”
“Well, if you are so sure of it, there can be no harm in coming to dinner and listening to him.”
“He must convince you as well,” said Caroline. “Or have you changed your mind?”
Arden kneaded the dough. “I think I have,” she said.
“Ah,” said Caroline. “He has charmed you. He has—”
“He hasn't charmed me!” Arden exclaimed. “I have changed my mind.”
“Call it what you will,” said Caroline.
Arden said nothing.
“Why have you changed your mind?” asked Caroline.
“Why do you ask me? So you can make fun of me?”
“No,” said Caroline. “I'm sorry. I'm not making fun of you. Truly, Arden, I'm not. Why have you changed your mind? I sincerely want to know.”
“I don't really know,” said Arden. “My reasons for objecting were muddled, as you know—it was an instinctual response to say no, to agree with you. And now I feel differently. I don't know precisely why. I think Jules would like him. I think he will understand Jules. I feel it should happen, now, the book.”
“You don't honestly think it is because he has charmed you?”
“Do you think he is charming?”
“No,” said Caroline. “I do not. But I would not be surprised if you did. I think you are more susceptible to charm than I.”
“Why?” asked Arden. “You think I have no mind of my own?”
“No,” said Caroline. She paused. “I think you are lonely.” She said it kindly: it was a statement, not an accusation.
Arden glanced down, deflecting her face, but then raised it. Her cheeks and throat were red. “Perhaps I am lonely,” she said. “Perhaps his coming here has made me feel that I am lonely. Yes—perhaps that. But changing my mind is separate from that; it is not about that.”
“Perhaps I should not tell you this—”
“What?” Arden demanded. “Tell me what?”
Caroline considered. And then she said, “Did you know that he is in love with someone?”
“No,” said Arden. “I did not know that.”
“He told me this morning. He has a fiancée. Well, perhaps they are not engaged. He did not say that. She is a fellow academic.”
“Why do you tell me that?”
“I don't know. I thought you should know.”
“Why?”
Caroline turned toward the door. “Forgive me if I have upset you.”
“You have not upset me,” said Arden. “Although I'm sure that was your intention.”
“You are mistaken, Arden.”
“It seems a shame,” said Arden.
“What?”
“To do what you're doing, withholding authorization, out of spite.”
“I don't follow you,” said Caroline. “I do nothing, as far as I know, out of spite.”
“I see it differently,” said Arden.
“No doubt you do,” said Caroline. She turned around and walked down the dark corridor, into the front hall, but paused at the bottom of the stairs, her hand on the banister. It cannot be left in this way, she thought. She retraced her steps to the kitchen door. Arden was rolling out the dough, flushed and intent, and did not look up.
“Arden,” Caroline said.
Arden looked up then, and said, “Yes?”
“I am sorry if I have offended you. I don't really understand what we just said to one another.”
Arden said nothing. She pressed her fingers into the dough.
“I don't want this to cause trouble between us.” She noticed that Arden was crying and stopped talking.
“What's wrong?” she asked.
Arden shook her head and sat down in a chair. She put her elbows on the table and hid her face in her hands, awkwardly: palms out, fingers splayed, for they were covered with flour. Caroline crossed the room and stood beside her. She laid her hand, tentatively, on Arden's back. “What's wrong?” she repeated.
Arden revealed her face; her cheeks were wet. She shook her head again. “Nothing,” she said. “I don't know—I'm just emotional.”
Caroline removed her hand. She could not remember touching Arden before. Surely she must have, but she could not remember it.
She dampened a cloth at the sink and handed it to Arden. “Here,” she said.
Arden took the cloth and pressed it against her eyes, her cheeks. “Thank you,” she said.
Caroline stood there for a moment. “You're welcome,” she said. She touched Arden again, quickly and lightly, on her shoulder and then she turned and left the room, not pausing this time, and not returning.
Arden sat in the kitchen while the bread baked. She drank a glass of water and then made rings with the wet glass on the stone table. The rings faded. She thought if she sat there quietly, long enough, the shaken mess of her mind would comprehensibly settle, like glittery snow in a glass dome.
Had she made a mistake? Had Omar simply charmed her? Was she betraying Jules? Jules had never said to her he did not want a biography. Perhaps he had said something to that effect in a letter to Caroline twenty or thirty years ago. It did not signify anything now. If we were held to everything we wrote in letters thirty years ago—No, if that was the only reason, it was not enough. She had been right to err on the side of caution initially, but the very fact of Omar coming this far changed everything. He was not a charlatan or a monster. It would be simply mean, perverse, to withhold authorization from him at this point. Perhaps it was not spite—she should not have said spite—but there was something twisted and perverse in Caroline's response. Yet it made sense: Caroline had so little to hold on to, so of course she was fierce with it. I must allow her that, thought Arden: it is how she reminds herself that she was loved.
Adam awoke to hear someone calling his name. He lay on the bed for a moment, slightly disoriented. Then he heard his name again,
shouted up from below. It sounded like Arden. Of course it was Arden. She was the only one who would stand in the hall and bellow his name. He roused himself and stepped out onto the landing. Arden was standing inside the door, head thrown back, gazing up at him.
“I'm sorry,” she called. “Did I wake you? Were you napping?”
“Yes,” he said. “I'm afraid I was.”
“Well, I'm sorry,” she said. “But it's important. Something's happened.”
“What's happened?” he asked. “Wait. I'll be right down. There is no need for us to scream at one another. Perhaps you could make some coffee, if you can find the coffee. It has lately gone missing.”
“Of course,” said Arden. She disappeared into the living room. Adam returned to his bedroom. He stood in front of the mirror and yawned. There was nothing worse than being roused untimely from a nap. These awful, interfering women, he thought. Running about like headless chickens shouting something's happened! The sky is falling! He combed his hair and straightened his clothes, which had suffered from both his lunch and his nap, and went downstairs.
After a moment Arden emerged from the kitchen with two cups of coffee. “Your milk's gone horribly bad,” she said, “so we'll have to drink it black.”
“I prefer it black,” said Adam.
She handed him his cup and sat on the sofa.
“Where did you find the coffee?” he asked.
“In the bread tin,” she said.
“Ah,” he said.
“There are all sorts of things in the bread tin,” she said, “except bread.”
“It would be rather depressing to keep one's bread in the bread tin,” Adam said. “So something has happened?”
“Yes,” said Arden. “And I thought we should talk before this dinner.”
“What has happened?”
“Well,” said Arden. “I have changed my mind.”
“How has this happened? The effect of Mr. Razaghi is potent! He has hardly been in our midst twenty-four hours. This coffee is very good. When I make coffee, it never tastes this good.”
“You must measure it correctly,” said Arden. “How was your lunch with him?”
“Nice enough. I found him charming in a slightly stupid, dewy-eyed, bushy-tailed way.”
“He is not stupid,” said Arden.
“I've no doubt he seems quite wise to you,” said Adam.
“I have never claimed to be smart,” said Arden.
“It is the wisest thing about you,” said Adam.
“I like him very much,” said Arden.
“So do I,” said Adam. “He is very pettable.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean it would be nice to put him in a cage and feed him nuts. And pet him.”
“I don't know what you're talking about. He's not gay, if that's what you mean. He has a fiancée. Or girlfriend. Or something like that.”
“Oh, I'm sure he has something like that. We all have something like that. So he has changed your mind?”
“I have changed my mind,” said Arden. “But there is a problem. Caroline refuses to go out to dinner with us.”
“Why?”
“She says there is no point in her going. She will not change her mind. She seems very certain.”
“Of course she seems very certain. Caroline is always certain. It is what I most admire about her. She is just certain about different things at different times. Often diametrically opposed things. There
will come a time when she will find it is more fun to cooperate. And she will change her mind, just as you have sensibly done.”
“It is the right thing, isn't it?” asked Arden. “I mean the biography, and letting him do it. You don't really think he's stupid, do you?”
“Oh, you don't need to be smart to write a decent biography. Only dogged. And he is dogged, we know that. He has proved that by coming here.”
“I'm quite excited about it, now,” said Arden. “How long do you suppose it will take?”
“Years and years, I'm sure,” said Adam. “It will take him as long as he can find grants to support the writing of it. It's the writing of it that will support him, not the publishing.”
“Well, I hope he won't take too long,” said Arden. “I want to read it. But now listen—what should we do about tonight? The whole point of going to Federico's was to give him an opportunity to make his case to all three of us. Should we cancel it?”

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