The Spirit Wood (6 page)

She was holding back the curtains—two layers of them—that surrounded a round, marble sunken tub, large enough to accommodate two or three people easily. The gold faucets, shaped like leaping dolphins, sparkled in the pink light from an electric chandelier directly overhead, and were reflected in the floor-length wall mirrors that alternated with panels of aqua-colored tiles. “Welcome to Caesar's Palace,” she said.

“You think this is what Las Vegas is like?”

“This, I think, is what Las Vegas
aspires
to,” she said, her laugh booming, uncharacteristically, against the cold, flat surfaces of the room. She flipped one of the dolphins’ tails, and a torrent of hot water gushed into the tub. “Ummm, that would feel terrific right now,” she said, running her hand under the water. “I feel like I've still got burrs stuck all over me.”

Peter looked around the room, saw the oversized bath towels neatly arranged on the rack, the fresh cake of soap sitting in a golden dish shaped like a seashell. “Why don't you?” he said, and Meg laughed again. “No, really,” he insisted. “There are towels, soap, everything you'd need. It's almost as if you were expected to. And anyway, this is
our
house; we might as well enjoy it while we've got it.”

Meg smiled and bit her lower lip, like a child contemplating a raid on the cookie jar, and swished her hand through the frothing hot water. “Is there time, you think?”

“I
think
we're staying for dinner.”

“It's an awfully big tub,” she said, suggestively,
without looking up at him. “Easily big enough for two people at once.”

Peter felt a tiny tingling sensation in his stomach; it was so funny, he thought, reacting this way to a harmless proposition from his own wife. And perplexing, too. How long was this going to go on, he wondered. How long was he going to want her, without feeling able to take her? He could already feel that tightening in his crotch, not of arousal, but of nervousness. He knew that the longer he let things go on like this, the harder it would be to get them back to normal again. But he couldn't face the possibility—not just now, not when they'd had such an otherwise successful day together—of blowing it; he wanted to hang onto the day and its small triumphs. Driving the car again. Holding hands in the gazebo. Exploring the grounds together, discovering the phallic mascot on the back lawn. It was so rare now that he felt this close to her, so much in sync, that he didn't want to risk disrupting it . . . even for something that he knew she needed so much. Something that he needed, too. She had kicked off her espadrilles and rolled back one sleeve of her shirt; the water was swirling just below her bared elbow now.

“I only thought it might be fun,” said Meg, almost apologetically. “I had no . . . other plans, honey. I only thought it might be fun.”

“You go ahead,” he said, more urgently than he'd intended. “I don't feel like getting all undressed. But you go ahead. I'll just do a little more exploring.” He left quickly, so he wouldn't have to see the disappointment in her face.

Five

T
HEY
PASSED THE
remainder of the afternoon apart, Meg soaking in the tub, then, wrapped in a blanket she'd found in the closet, basking on the terrace in the last rays of the sun; Peter disappeared into the private study Leah had pointed out, where he found a worn, green leather armchair, a large desk whose drawers were filled with incomprehensible business papers and records, and two walls of built-in bookshelves. Most of the books were standard fare, from Sidney Sheldon to William Shirer, but beneath a darkened oil painting of a rustic landscape—it appeared to be very old, but Peter could find no date or signature on it—there was a smaller bookcase. Its latticed shutters covered dozens of leather-bound volumes and sets, some with gilt edges, some crumbling and held together with tape and string. This case, Peter discovered, was locked, and even after looking in all the likely hiding places—under the glass paperweight on the desk, in the thermidor on a nearby shelf, inside the copper vase on the windowsill—he couldn't find the key. Leah, he figured, would know where it was; which reminded him—he ought to find her and tell her they'd be staying for dinner, after all.

He'd found her downstairs, arranging cheese and fruit on a wide ceramic platter. When he said they'd be happy to accept her dinner invitation, if it still held,
and mentioned that Meg in the meantime had been unable to resist trying out the sunken tub, she smiled and accepted both bits of news as if she'd never doubted either for a moment. Her fingers continued to nimbly wash and dry and arrange the fruits; Peter wasn't so much piqued as puzzled at her confidence in her own ability to predict the actions of what amounted to perfect strangers. He felt a little . . . transparent. When she asked what time they'd like to dine, his first inclination was to say six-thirty, the time they usually ate at home, but partly because he felt she might have predicted that too, and partly because he thought it might sound unsophisticatedly early, he amended it to seven-thirty. On an impulse, he asked what time his grandfather had usually had dinner.

“Ten o'clock, maybe eleven. It was always different. Mostly he liked his food cold—cold lamb, cold chicken.” The timer buzzed. “Tonight,” she said, opening the door of the oven and peering in, “I get to show off.” She turned the temperature dial to off.

Meg was rather subdued when Peter went back up to the room; she was leafing through a copy of
American Heritage
she'd taken from the study.

Peter snapped his fingers and said, “I must be losing my mind.”

“Why?”

“Because I went downstairs to ask Leah where the key was to that locked bookcase under the painting, and I forgot to ask her.”

“You told her we'd be here for dinner?”

“Yes.” Meg turned another page. “That's okay, isn't it?”

She murmured her assent. He was about to ask if she'd enjoyed her bath, then decided it might be best not to bring it up. He went into the bathroom to wash—the sink was as large as their kitchen counter at home—then out onto the terrace until the evening air became too chill. It was a relief to both of them when
Leah rapped lightly on the half-open door, earlier than they'd expected her to, to tell them everything was ready downstairs.

She had set two places for them at one end of the dining room table, with lighted candles and, as a centerpiece of sorts, the platter of fruit and cheese, studded now with bright black olives. They sat down, self-consciously, in the hard straight-backed chairs, while Leah brought out bowls of the egg-and-lemon soup.

“Smells wonderful,” said Meg, unfolding her linen napkin.

Leah smiled. “It's an old Greek favorite. We call it avgolemono.”

As they bent their heads to take the first spoonful, their eyes met, and the strangeness, even absurdity, of the situation—the two of them being served ancient Greek specialties, by a maid or cook or whatever you wanted to call her, in a house the size of the college conservatory, a house that
belonged
to them yet—was too much, and they exchanged a look of affectionate confederacy. Meg stretched out one leg under the table and touched his foot with her own. Whatever tension there had been between them even an hour before seemed to evaporate; feeling like two imposters known only to each other, they sipped the hot and fragrant soup.

In the kitchen, they could hear Leah opening the oven and removing the pastitsio. Then they heard her say something, and another voice, Nikos's, answer. There was the jangling sound of his boot clasps, and then with a bump the swinging door opened and Nikos appeared, dressed exactly as he had been that afternoon but with a red bandanna tied around his neck, and clutching in one hand a bulbous straw-covered wine bottle.

"Yasou,”
he exclaimed, waving the bottle. “I knew that you would be too much in love with this place to
go back to . . .” He waved the bottle again, to indicate that he'd forgotten where. He plopped the bottle down on the table. “You cannot eat without also drinking. This I have made myself.”

Neither Peter nor Meg knew what to say; Nikos grunted and, taking their silence for assent, popped the cork with one thumb and hastily filled their empty wine goblets.

Peter hadn't had even a beer since the night of the accident, and Meg had no idea what he'd do now; she fumbled for some excuse he could use. “Peter,” she said, “do you think you ought to—” She was going to add something about medication and mixing it with alcohol, but he had already taken the glass in his hand and, with Nikos's stubby fingers planted on his shoulder, raised it to his lips.

“
Stin eeya sas—
drink up!”

Meg raised her own glass and watched with concern as Peter tilted the wine to his mouth, just enough to wet his lips; she knew he was trying to keep from insulting Nikos, and she tried to create a distraction by taking a sizable swallow herself and returning the glass to the table with unwarranted vigor. But Nikos was too vigilant.

“What's this—a Constantine that doesn't drink?” He jestingly put one finger under the bottom of Peter's still-lifted glass and tilted it back toward his mouth; in the caretaker's eyes, Meg detected a look of quiet mischief and at the same time crude appraisal. His teeth were small and rounded, very white, each one slightly separated from the next.

Peter drank the wine, put the glass back down, and, as if not quite conscious of doing it, began to rub the elbow of his bad arm; it was the first time in hours it had seemed to bother him.

“So—what do you think?” Nikos asked. “Not bad for Long Island, huh? I used to tell your grandfather, we should sell this wine. We could have made a
fortune from it. Krasi Arkadias—the wine of Arcadia,” he said rhapsodically, holding up one hand with the fingers spread as if reading the name in the air.

Meg, who knew nothing of wine, had to admit that it tasted surprisingly good—sweet and light, but with a strong and distinctive flavor—"woody” was the word she thought a connoisseur might use. Something about it made her think of spring grass and sun showers, a forest after it's rained; the taste of it lingered on her tongue even after she'd taken another spoonful of the soup.

Leah came in, carrying the kind of large serving tray waitresses employ; on it were two salad plates, with greens and sliced tomatoes, and two dinner plates heaped with the pastitsio and garnished with paper-thin slices of cucumber. She placed them purposefully in front of Meg and Peter, and shot a quick, reproving glance at Nikos. He caught it, Meg saw, but clearly intended to do nothing about it. He stood patiently to one side of Peter's chair until Leah had finished.

“She's a wonderful cook, this girl,” announced Nikos, not looking in her direction.

“I have a plate for you in the kitchen,” she said, holding open the door. “Come and eat it while it's hot.”

Nikos shifted his weight, the boot clasps jangling listlessly. “Drink,” he said, leaning over the table and filling their glasses to the rim.

“Father,” she said, firmly.

There was a moment of awkward silence, which Nikos, Meg felt, was subtly trying to exploit; he was angling for something, and the moment Peter coughed nervously and suggested it would be fine if Leah and Nikos joined them in the dining room, she knew that that had been it. Nikos smiled and loosened the knot on his neckerchief, as if it had now fulfilled its purpose.

“
Efcharisto,
” he said, “I am glad to,” and he pulled back the chair next to Peter's, its legs scraping loudly on the floor. Holding onto the back of it, he settled himself down with a groan. “It's good to sit,” he said, using his hands to swing one leg around to the front. Then, looking up at Leah, who was still frozen in the doorway, he said. “
Leepon
—I thought my dinner was going to get cold. You can bring it in here.” He added nothing about bringing in her own.

“This is an . . . astonishing house,” Peter said, to make conversation. Nikos had taken two olives from the central bowl and popped them into his mouth like peanuts. Leah returned, silently put a full plate and empty wineglass in front of him, and disappeared into the kitchen again. “I was particularly impressed by the mosaic in the front hall.” Peter wished he hadn't put it quite so much like a curator; Nikos spit the olive pits into his cupped hand.

“Yes, yes,” Nikos agreed, but without much enthusiasm, “the house is filled with things like that. Your grandfather, he used to like such things.” He filled his glass with wine, then drank half of it down. “But tell me—what did you think of the outside?” he asked, with real interest. “What did you think of the land?”

“Well, there was more of it than we could see in one afternoon, especially since we got lost on those pathways more than once.” He laughed, self-deprecatingly. “But what we
did
see was"—he wondered how he was going to finish that—"very interesting.” He'd blown it again.

“Did you see my house?” Nikos asked. “Or the dogs? You went down to the boathouse, yes?” This he directed at Meg.

“No, we never actually made it that far,” she said. “We got sidetracked by the gazebo.”

Nikos grunted again; Peter assumed it to mean he didn't think much of them as explorers. “Tomorrow,”
Peter thought he heard him murmur under his breath; even if he had heard correctly, this wasn't the time to correct him. While they ate, Nikos continued to ask them questions, but now about what they did to earn a living, what kind of apartment they had, how they liked to spend their time; Peter found this interest in their lives a little surprising—he put it down to Nikos's having led a fairly isolated life on the estate, not seeing many other people—but Meg, who let Peter do most of the talking, had the feeling Nikos was compiling some kind of dossier on them, that he was accumulating as much raw data as he possibly could in the hope of sifting through it later and finding something, some kernel or clue, he could put to use.

At one point, for instance, Peter had admired the ceramic platter for the fruit and mentioned that Meg was both a potter and sculptor. Nikos had looked up from his plate at that, and with his mouth still half-full exclaimed that she must see the kiln set up down in the old boathouse, that the platter on the table had been thrown there—by whom he didn't say. He was very enthusiastic about this lucky coincidence and mentioned it two or three more times before the meal was over. He seemed to be using it as a sort of selling point for the estate, the future of which, it began to be clear, was what the conversation, and the questions, had all along been chiefly about. When it suddenly dawned on Peter, he kicked himself for having taken so long to understand what should have been so apparent—that Nikos was wondering about his own job prospects now that his employer had died. He was trying to find out their plans for the estate.

“Of course, our plans are pretty much up in the air right now,” he said, hoping to address the question indirectly, “while the lawyers and the Internal Revenue Service argue about who gets what, and then what's left when they're done. Whatever happens, I
think it's going to be summer before we know exactly where we stand. I'm not expecting to make any changes,” he added, hoping it didn't sound too presumptuous, or too obvious, “on my own initiative.” What did Nikos earn, he suddenly wondered. And Leah, too. He'd have to ask Kennedy about their salaries, and make sure they were continued to be paid.

Nikos ate with gusto, frequently refilling his own wineglass and topping off Peter's whenever he'd taken so much as a sip. Which, to Meg's surprise, he did more and more often as the meal went on. By the time Leah had cleared the plates and returned with small cups of thick black coffee, Peter had probably drunk two or three full glasses. While Meg was pleased in a way to see him forgetting one of his own prohibitions, she wished for better timing; now she'd have to do the driving on the way back home, and she wasn't that crazy about expressways at night. The coffee, she hoped, would help to clear his head, and hers. She was trying to catch his eye, to tap her wrist and indicate the time, when Nikos, plucking a handful of grapes from the central platter, bellowed something in Greek to Leah in the kitchen. She replied, apparently refusing to do whatever he'd asked, because he suddenly lurched to his feet and with the same choppy motions he'd used while eating, exacerbated by the wine perhaps, stumbled through the swinging doors. He returned with another bottle of wine in one hand, and in the other a strange-looking instrument, made of coarse wooden pipes ranged beside each other like teeth, and curved from one end to the other like a crescent moon. He filled their empty coffee cups with the wine—"Ouzo,” he declared, “your grandfather, this was part of his business"—and then sat down on his chair, drawn back from the table, with his legs spread out on either side. He studied the instrument with some care,
blowing away a strand of grass that was stuck between two pipes, wiping off a smudge with a wet forefinger, and finally licking his lips in preparation to play.

“I play for you a song of welcome,” he said, raising his neckerchief and rubbing it back and forth across his mouth. “From my home.” Hunching forward in his chair, he bent over the instrument as if he were about to bite into a generous slice of watermelon; he blew hard into a couple of the pipes, clearing them, then with his eyes closed, drew from the instrument a long, high note of unusual delicacy and sweetness. The sound vibrated and hung in the air, piercing but pleasant, and unlike anything Meg and Peter had ever heard before. It was more breathy and robust than a flute, high-pitched but less shrill than a piccolo; with his fingers dancing now across the air holes, his lips just grazing the ends of the pipes, Nikos played for them a fast and happy melody, the notes tumbling over one another like frolicking children, the refrains periodically bobbing to the surface of the song, then submerging, then reappearing again to lend the cascade a shape and direction. His boots beat time to the rapid tempo, their open clasps ringing like a tambourine; he was like a one-man band from a vaudeville revue, Peter thought with amusement.