The Spirit Wood (25 page)

Thirty-four

T
HERE IT IS
again,” Mrs. Constantine said, swiveling on the stool and looking around. “That little pinging sound—what
is
that?”

Meg laughed and brushed the hair away from her forehead with the back of her hand. “You're not hearing things. It's the pieces I just took out of the kiln, cooling. That's the sound they make when they're exposed to the air.”

“It's just like someone clicking a nail against a wineglass—I thought I
was
hearing things.”

Meg tightened the grip of the vise holding the pedestal, then, with both hands, twisted the stiff black wire up and outward. When she had it in the position she wanted, she held it there and squeezed as hard as she could.

“My goodness—that looks like it hurts.”

Meg let out her breath and released the wire. “It does, a little. The armature's always the worst part.”

“What will this one be?”

Meg paused; she hadn't yet told anyone what she was planning to do. “Well . . . Anita Simon had asked if I could do something for the auction that was related to wildlife somehow. I've never done anything like that before. But this will be my first, and possibly last, attempt.”

“But what of? Is it going to be a bird of some sort?”

“No,” Meg said, studying the stark black skeleton of bent wires and wood, trying to imagine the clay, the shape, that would enclose it. “With any luck, it's going to be a model of Diogenes, the way I'll always remember him—bounding up, with two paws off the ground, to give you one of his wet hellos.”

“And you're not going to send it to Byron when it's done?”

“I don't think so,” said Meg, “though I have considered it. But if it turns out badly I'll be too embarrassed, and if it turns out well, it'll only depress him to have it around. All in all, I think I might as well just do it, get it out of my system, and hope that somebody makes a bid for it at the auction.”

“Have you heard anything from Byron?” Mrs. Constantine asked. “That was so awful, what happened.”

“Yes, a phone call,” Meg said softly. “He says his apartment out there is twice the size of his old one in Mercer.” He'd actually said it was big enough for two, and that Cumberland University listed a ceramics course in its fall catalogue. On the way to the train station, he had even told her what Peter had said to him in town.

“I think he
wanted
me to tell you,” he'd added as they waited for the train to New York. “He wanted you to know what he can't confess to you himself—that you might be in danger, that he can't answer for what he does anymore. That you have permission—
his
permission—to act in your own best interest now.”

Which is why she had to stay on, Meg had tried to explain. She had to see this thing through; if she didn't, she'd never forgive herself or let herself forget it. And she couldn't be sure that some of that anger and regret wouldn't get directed at Byron before too long. It wasn't something she liked about herself, but it wasn't something she could absolutely control . . . any more than Peter could control some of his own bizarre behavior of late.

“Do you think he and Peter will ever be friends again?” Mrs. Constantine asked.

“I think they're friends now. But I doubt their paths are likely to cross much anymore. The chances of Peter landing a job at Cumberland University too are pretty remote.”

“As I understand it, his prospects of landing a job anywhere won't be very good until he finishes his dissertation. I don't know much about these things, but it
does
seem to be taking him an awfully long time. I'd hoped that if coming to this place could accomplish one thing—
any
thing—it would be that—that he'd find all the time and peace and quiet he needed to finish it up at last.”

Meg, without looking up from her work, said that he
did
spend a fair amount of time locked in his study. Mrs. Constantine agreed, but said that he also seemed to spend a fair amount of time at Jack Caswell's, or the Simons’, or wherever else it was he disappeared to. “It can't all be about this auction business,” Mrs. Constantine observed. “D-day didn't require this much planning.”

Meg smiled, snipped a length of wire from the spool. “Right now I'm just counting down the days till it's over. Once it's done, I can make a concerted push to move back to Mercer a few weeks
before
the fall term begins.”

Mrs. Constantine, seeing an opportunity, said, “I thought, until then, and with Byron gone, you might be able to use a little help, and moral support. I spoke to Ben Kurtz, my employer, yesterday—and if you'd like, I can stay another week.”

“Oh . . .
yes,
” Meg said, “that would be great.” She'd been wondering what she'd do without a single ally from the outside world—which is how she thought of every place beyond the gates of Arcadia—to talk to, have breakfast with, confide in if necessary. “Please
stay as long as you can stand it here.” They both laughed. “I need all the help I can get.”

“I only wish I could help you with
that,
” Mrs. Constantine said as Meg tried to wrestle another piece of wire into submission.

“This I'm doing to myself. If I had any guts, I'd just tell Anita Simon to go jump in the lake.”

“Let me know if you decide to—I'd like to see the splash.”

And they laughed again, mostly at the relief they found in laughing at all. The sound of their voices filled the boathouse and was answered by a sudden chorus of pinging from the cooling pots and vases near the door. The loose canvas Meg had flung over the two figurines she'd made, tucked away on the bottom shelf, rippled, almost imperceptibly, in a draft that must have blown along the floor.

Thirty-five

W
HEN LEAH WENT
into the bathroom, he pulled the sheet up over him again and smoothed it across his chest. Her room reminded him, in one way, of Nikos's cottage: above both windows and hanging from hooks in the ceiling were perhaps a dozen potted plants, their leaves and vines trailing down so low that when he was standing, they became tangled in his hair. The furnishings were few and simple: a white wicker chair and matching headboard, a round woven rug in the center of the floor, on the wall a small framed print of Botticelli's
Birth of Venus.
He
heard the faucet running.

“What are you doing?”

The tap was turned off; a moment later, she came out carrying a red plastic watering can. Except for a band of silver wound around her upper arm, she was naked.

“Got to water these,” she said, standing on her tiptoes to reach the highest plant. Peter watched as she tended to one after the other, turning the pots so that all of the leaves were exposed to the sunlight streaming through the open windows, plucking away any dead leaves and cupping them in her palm. The silver armband glinted in the light.

“You've got a green thumb,” Peter said.

Leah, puzzled, looked at her hand. Peter laughed.

“It just means that you're good with plants, that they grow for you.”

“Oh.” She finished with the watering and set the can down on the windowsill. “But look at you,” she said, smiling and coming to the bed. “What's this?” and she tugged playfully at the raised sheet. Peter held it down. “Do you still hurt?” she asked, solicitously.

“Not as much, when I'm with you,” he said. And it was true; the prickling in his ears, the ache in his bones, the sharper pain he had developed at the base of his spine, which made it so difficult to sit without a cushion, were alleviated by Leah's touch and company. She was the only one who knew, who had been allowed to see, the extent of what was happening to him.

Leah let the sheet stay where it was. Peter gently stroked her side. He seldom had an opportunity to see her like this, naked and in sunlight, and he marveled again at the perfection of her body. The small but perfectly contoured breasts, firmly uplifted; the long, slender legs; the flawlessly smooth olive skin. That more than anything was what amazed him about her—the flawlessness of her. There wasn't a blemish or birthmark anywhere on her body, not a single tiny cut or mole or vaccination spot. It was uncanny, he thought, as if she'd been air-brushed all over.

“Would you like me to rub you?” she asked. “On your back?”

“Do you want to?” Much as he enjoyed it, he was still shy about exposing himself, even to Leah.

“Of course I do. Roll over.”

Peter turned, awkwardly, onto his side, kissed Leah's knee—his mind flashed to Meg's knee, still scarred from the accident, and he had to force himself to blot it out—then onto his stomach. He pushed the pillow away and stretched out his arms, as much as he
was now able, on the bed. He felt the mattress give as Leah straddled him; he closed his eyes and breathed in her verdant scent.

Her fingers worked at the nape of his neck, kneading the flesh. Then they moved to his shoulders and back, drawing down the sheet as she went. Peter could feel the curly hairs that had sprouted on his shoulder blades tickled by the light breeze from the window. He remembered, as a boy, seeing men at the beach with hair on their backs. Maybe this was just something that happened to men as they got older; maybe his was just an unusually sudden case of it. Maybe it would even, somehow, recede.

Leah sat back for a moment, and Peter winced; she'd landed on that tender spot, the size of a walnut, just above his buttocks. He squirmed under her, and she quickly rose up again.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “I forgot.” She bent forward, her long black braid dropping down in front of his eyes, and kissed him lightly on the cheek. When she tried to lean back again, he caught hold of her braid and kept her there.

“No more massage?” she said, her breath warm on his face.

“Why don't you untie this?”

“I never do that.”

“You did that night we made love in the bay.”

“No,” she said matter-of-factly, “I didn't.”

Even if she'd forgotten, he hadn't. The swirling veil of long black hair, sweeping around his neck and shoulders, obscuring everything, even the moonlight.

“My mistake,” he said. “It must have been someone else.”

“It was.”

He rolled back onto his side, and Leah slipped off him. Then she lay down beside him, with her braid coiled like a question mark across the white pillow.

“That was Demetria.”

“Demetria?” he said.

“Yes. In the water.”

She had to be kidding, though she didn't look it. Then he remembered something. “You mean the girl who used to work here before you came?” Peter said. “The potter?”

“Yes.”

“That's impossible,” he said, dismissively. “We were the only ones out there.” He ran one hand lightly over her breasts, feeling the nipples stiffen. He knew she liked that. “And why would this Demetria have been joining in, anyway?”

“Because we share.”

“Me?” Peter said with a laugh. “You share me?”

It was clear he didn't believe her.

“Where is this Demetria now? Surely she can't spend all her time in the cove—she'd get terminally waterlogged.”

“Sometimes she comes out,” Leah replied, perfectly seriously. “Sometimes she goes back to the boathouse.”

“Meg's boathouse?”

“I don't think she likes it,” Leah confided, “someone else being there.”

Peter drew himself up onto one elbow.

“She thinks of it as
her
place.”

Peter was growing exasperated. Whatever all this gibberish was about, he wasn't enjoying it. And the faint note of warning that had crept into Leah's voice alarmed him. “I guess that's too bad,” he said. “She shouldn't have gotten herself fired, then.” He was growing aroused too. He bent his head to her breast, taking the nipple between his teeth. Leah's fingers slipped into his hair. He didn't want to hear any more about his grandfather's household help; that wasn't what he needed right now. His hands coursed down her body; her skin was as smooth and cool as polished stone. Flawless, he thought again. Flawless.

“Your wife is making a new statue.” Her fingers had found one of his ears; she was gently tracing its furry, leaflike shape.

Peter murmured into her fragrant skin.

“For the auction, I think.”

Funny, Peter thought, that Meg had told Leah and not him.

“What of?” he asked. He slid one hand down between her thighs. She parted her legs.

“Byron's dog.”

His ears involuntarily twitched; Leah laughed. Dodger? Why would Meg be doing something as grim as that? Why couldn't she just forget about it now? And who would want a sculpture of a golden retriever, anyway?

“When did Meg tell you this?”

“She didn't.”

He hesitated. “Are you saying Demetria did?”

“I'm not saying,” she replied mischievously. “I just thought I would tell you.”

“Then you've been poking around in there again. You have, haven't you?” he said, suddenly tickling her ribs. Leah squealed, and pressed herself against him. “Come on, admit it.” She shook her head. Her legs wrapped themselves around his. He took hold of her hips. “Somebody's been snooping around,” he teased, and he felt himself growing erect. Leah must have, too. She rubbed herself against him, then reached down and stroked his bristly, engorged penis. Hard, it jutted straight up now, almost flat against his abdomen. Not the way it used to. Harder than it had ever been in the past. But Leah had never seemed surprised by it, no more than by his ears.

“I haven't snooped.” She reached lower, cupped his swollen balls as, earlier, she'd cupped the fallen leaves. Peter groaned with pleasure at the coolness of her touch.

“I haven't,” she whispered, so close her words could be felt on his lips. “Believe me?”

“I believe you,” he said, kissing her. Anything she wanted.
This
was all that
he
wanted now. As if she'd read his mind, she plunged her tongue deep into his mouth. Withdrew it. Laughed. “I think you're ready,” she said, glancing down. “I think you will want the usual, yes?”

She slip upwards, as gracefully as if she were swimming, and took hold of the wicker headboard with both hands. Her knees spread, her back arched, she looked at Peter over one shoulder. He knelt behind her. The silver armband shone like a cresting wave. He fitted himself into her. She dropped her head, the black braid sliding slowly off her shoulder. He thrust forward; the wicker creaked. He pulled her backwards, then forwards, then back. The room was filled with the odor of flowers, the aroma that Leah always bore, mingled, and finally swamped, overpowered, by the thick, musky scent of a rutting animal.