I consider myself to be an honest man, perhaps even a good one. Granted, an application for sainthood won’t be filed on my behalf any time soon. I have my fair share of flaws and vices. For a full list of them with considerable embellishment, ask Sheila. Just keep in mind that her application will be even further down in the pile than mine. It was her actions that set the demise of our marriage in full speed motion and placed her towards the top of Santa’s naughty list.
I freely admit that I did not live up to the potential she first saw in me, either squandering opportunities or else failing to pursue them aggressively enough. For this perceived sin, Sheila betrayed me. Sometimes I wonder if she would have stepped out on me with another man even if my career and bank account had reached greater heights. But I tend to swiftly change the subject from such useless thoughts. There is no impartial review of the instant replay in life. It works out as it does whether fair to you or not, and that’s all there is to it.
The four aspirin I took earlier have failed to make a dent in my headache. Only coming clean will accomplish this feat. I pick up the phone and ask Melvin to come over for a minute, explaining that I have something to tell him that needs to be said face to face. In a desperate moment of weakness I listened to the devil perched on my shoulder whispering in my ear. I temporarily forgot that there is no shame in defeat and no honor in deceit. In order to maintain self-respect, I must make my foyer a confessional. The doorbell summons my moment of truth.
“What’s up?” Melvin asks when I open the door but do not invite him in. Our chat will be a brief one. “You said you have something to tell me. I suspected you might, even made a little wager with Claire about it. She won though because you took a half hour longer than I guessed.”
The look on his face is the very definition of smug. Melvin’s air of superiority over me has been inflated well beyond what another mere victory at tennis would have resulted in.
“I do have a few confessions to make.”
“A few? I was only expecting one.”
“Well, you’re going to get three,” I inform him. “Do you
remember about six months ago when your Sunday newspaper was not delivered?”
“Not really.”
“Trust me, it happened. I ought to know because I’m the one who snatched your New York Times that day. I should have denied the impulse, but I didn’t. I apologize for it.”
“Oh, okay. That isn’t such a big deal. I’m glad you told me if it makes you feel better to get it off your chest.”
“It does. My second confession is for something I did about four months ago. Remember the dent you discovered in your car?”
“That was you?”
“I’m afraid so. Once again, my sincerest apology. The driveway had a thin coating of ice, my car got away from me for a few seconds, and your car took the hit. I didn’t want my insurance to go up. Ordinarily I would have offered to reimburse you for the repair charge, but I was consumed with how much money the divorce was costing me. I knew it was a jerk move on my part, but then it turned out you have a cousin who is a mechanic and you got it taken care of for free. So I figured all is well that ends well and kept my mouth shut.”
“Until now.”
“Yes, until now.”
“What’s so special about today?” Melvin asks, anxious for me to get to the confession he has been expecting.
“Just felt a need to put my accounts in order, which leads me to confession number three.”
Melvin smiles like a little boy coming downstairs on Christmas morning and seeing a big gift-wrapped box that he was certain contains what he wants most out of everything in the world.
It is not until this moment that I realize just how much he must have enjoyed beating me at tennis all those times. He never gloated, never bragged, yet he had become spoiled, taken domination of me for granted. That is, up until today when I made the call that awarded bitter victory to me. Only I can reverse it and restore the natural shape of our rivalry, with him back on top. I want to smack the satisfied grin off his face, but instead speak my piece.
“When I found out that Sheila was cheating on me, I did not confront her right away. I decided to take the payback route. There’s this woman in the neighborhood that had made it clear on more than one occasion that she was willing and able whenever I was. She said her husband did not know how to please her.
“I knew I wasn’t the first guy she had propositioned like this because two others told me she made them the same offer, and they both took her up on it repeatedly. After I found out what Sheila was up to, I took my place in this woman’s line, also repeatedly. We did everything I could think of that I never would have suggested to my wife, but nothing was too kinky or degraded for this woman. She gave new meaning to freakiness, at least in my own personal sexual dictionary.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Melvin asks, clearly intrigued by what I’m saying yet still impatient for what he had come to hear. “What the heck does it have to do with me?”
“Think about it, Melvin. Tell Claire that me and the fellas say hello.”
I close the door with rude quickness in case he is faster at releasing a punch than at figuring things out.
It is beyond debate that I ventured well across the line. This is a shame, perhaps to eventually blossom into a regret. After all, well matched tennis competition is hard to find.
KATE QUINN
Kate Quinn is a native of southern California. She attended Boston University, where she earned a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Classical Voice.
She wrote a historical novel in Boston University’s basement computer lab during her freshman year of college, and held down any day job she could find until it was accepted for publication. Titled MISTRESS OF ROME, it is scheduled for publication with Berkley Books in April 2010. Kate is currently planning both a sequel and a prequel to MISTRESS OF ROME. She now lives in San Diego with her husband, and her interests include opera, movies, cooking, and the Boston Red Sox.
THE SUPPER. God and the Devil have dinner once a year. Whatever do they talk about? S TRING OF PEARLS. Nora is a serene and middle-aged Cornish woman, welcoming her young niece into an insular seaside village. Nora is also the Undine—but what is that?
www.katequinnauthor.com
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2974095.Kate_Quinn
The Supper
Kate Quinn
Copyright © Katharine Quinn 2009 When I returned from my usual daily tour of my domain, I found a business card waiting in the salver on the hall table. I picked up the stiff ivory-colored rectangle, turned it over. Across the back was a jotted note in copperplate gold script: “Would dinner at eight be convenient? Godfrey.”
‘Yes’ I wrote across my own black-bordered business card, and signed my name at the bottom: ‘Nick.’ Then I rang for my butler. He appeared, his suit impeccable, his manner containing the perfect degree of haughtiness and civility. Only the glow of his eyes and the hint of flame at his nostrils betrayed what he was.
“Sir?”
“Who delivered the card, Mephistopheles?”
“Michael, sir.”
“Very good. Send this on up.”
He took my card, and went to the door. I couldn’t hear his
words, but the tones of icy disapproval carried clearly. Mephistopheles dislikes Michael, has disliked him ever since their original battle at the dawn of the world, and will very likely go on disliking him until Judgment Day. Demons are very single-minded creatures.
He returned, radiating displeasure. “Will there be anything else, sir?”
“Arrange for dinner at eight. Dry white wine, pheasant under glass, asparagus in butter, and trifle with strawberries.” It is winter, I believe, and strawberries will be out of season—but I can always get them. Things grow surprisingly nicely in Hell; the earth is very black, and there are never any blighting frosts.
I returned to my dim, rich chamber and read Trollope. I have been reading Trollope s
ince he published his first book, and I have followed his career faithfully. I am now in the middle of the Barsetshire novels; I’d have finished them long ago if I weren’t such a busy man, and if I hadn’t become distracted by Hemingway.
When my ebony clock struck seven-thirty, I laid down my book and allowed the imps to dress me. I used to be attended by succubi, but they too are single-minded creatures, and very inconvenient if one has a schedule to meet.
I dressed in black tie; Godfrey and I only dine together once a year, so it is something of an occasion. I looked into the mirror as I fastened my tie, and the glass flickered, as it always does. I suppose that’s because I have so many shapes: the Devil with horns and tail, Satan of the flickering forked tongue and the red eyes, Lucifer of the Old Testament, Beelzebub of the goat’s haunches and cloven hooves... I prefer the guise of Old Nick, who is dark and urbane and unfailingly polite. I look rather like Lord Robert Dudley, although I suppose he’s a bit out of your century. Picture Alec Baldwin with a slight orange gleam to his eyes; I look like that.
When I was suitably readied, I checked the dining room. The pheasant was succulent, the wine cooling in its ice bucket, the trifle shivered slightly. The candles burned steadily upward, lighting the red brocade walls and the mahogany table with dim, rich brilliance. The imps had done a beautiful job, although they too disapprove of Godfrey’s visits.
“Sir, may I announce the lord Adonai, Jehovah—”
“I know the titles, Mephistopheles.” I turned towards the door. “Hullo, Godfrey.”
“Hullo, Nick.”
He stood easily in the doorway, handing his hat and cane over to the icily polite Mephistopheles. Godfrey, too, flickers in the frame of a mirror. He is the stern long-bearded Patriarch of the Old Testament, the just and vengeful Almighty of the Puritans, the gentle, contemplative, loving God of a fresh young world. He is Buddha, Allah, Great Spirit, and Supreme Being.
To me he is Godfrey, a solid-shouldered man of medium height whose direct gaze and air of quiet command belay the grey in his hair. A man in old-fashioned top hat and tails like a Victorian gent; a civilized and decent man; a remnant from a better age. Anthony Hopkins might play him, in a movie.
“Are you well, Nick?”
“Well enough. You?”
“The same.”
We ate in easy silence. There would be time for talk later. We never rush, Godfrey and I. We have all the time in the world. At last we pushed our plates back, where the imps whisked them into invisibility, and I offered him a cigar. I poured into his glass a brandy that made him raise his brows in appreciation.
“1884 Armagnac,” he said, and I lifted my glass in acknowledgment. We drank slowly, alternating with drags on our cigars.
How did it start, this tradition of ours? We are enemies, opposites. We oppose each other in every battle. I am loathed while he is revered. He, who feels no hate, should come closest to it in his feelings for me. I, to whom hating comes easily, should hate him.
In the beginning, it was like that. Full of zeal for our respective positions, we never spoke, never met, never corresponded except by courier. But curiosity eventually got the better of us; we began to exchange guarded notes now and then. And now you could say we are friends, for neither of us chose our jobs, and we cannot help it if we like each other.
“Any business?” Godfrey asked, breaking into my thoughts.
“Only a few mistakes. I’ll make my usual apologies and send them on up. A stockbroker, a writer, a lawyer—”
“A lawyer?” Godfrey smiled. “How unusual. I haven’t any for you, Nick. Not as many crossed wires this year.”
“Remember when John F. Kennedy was sent down here?”
“Junior?”
“No, the first one. Punishment for all his cover-ups, I suppose, but try telling that to any of the Americans. I got more protest petitions that first week—”
“So did I. Even from the Monroe girl, although after what that family did to her...”
“And speaking of Miss Monroe, I don’t suppose you could find it in you to send her down to visit me—?”
“Nick.”
“Sorry, Godfrey.”
We fell into another comfortable silence. But this one stretched out too long, hung waiting for the question that would eventually emerge, as it always did.
“Shall we trade places this year, Godfrey?”
The very walls of my rich, insubstantial house rippled with shock. Godfrey swirled the brandy around in his glass. “I’m tempted, Nick,” he said. “I always am. And I always wonder what your motive is for offering.”
“It’s the Devil’s Bargain, Godfrey. What a feather you would be in my cap.” It’s true enough; part of me enjoys the thought. But it’s not my only motive, and Godfrey knows it.
“And?”
“I get tired,” I said, “of hating.”
He nodded, and I continued.
“I get tired of being suspicious. Of looking at a couple in love and seeing only lust, of looking at every friendship and finding only calculation, of looking at altruism and seeing only selfserving vanity.
“Breathing in the fumes of acid has made me unable to smell daisies, as it were. I can’t see love, or bravery, or kindness, or unselfishness. I see only lust, cowardice, cruelty, and greed. I’m tired of looking for the bad in everything, and finding it. I’m tired of offering Faust’s bargain to every dumb schmuck who thinks he’s so clever he can trick me...and I want to warn them that they can’t, but they’re all too stupid to believe me.
“There’s really very little evil in Hell, Godfrey—just stupidity. And I’m tired of stupidity, too, because I have nothing and no one to talk to. Only you,” I raised my glass, “and every year you force me to admit all of this, and I wonder why you do it.”
Godfrey puffed thoughtfully on his cigar. “To remind myself why I like you, Nick. Because most of the time, I don’t. I see plenty of your work—”
“Not mine. My agents. I don’t run this organization; I’m just the CEO. I’m not allowed to interfere with how it works.”
“Nor am I. The archangels run everything without my assistance. I get the feeling I’m a bit of a third wheel, sometimes.”
“That expression is eighty years out of date, Godfrey.”
“It suits me. Because sometimes I think that I am, too. Old and out of date.”
He looked at me. “What am I for, Nick? Why was I created? I do nothing. I sit on top of a vast machine set up long before I got there, and I can’t interfere with the way it works. But I have the privilege of hearing it. Day and night, people invoke my name. They bargain, they plead, they scream for help. And I can do nothing. Nothing. My ears ring with prayers, my dreams echo with pleas. I am never free of them. I see joy and I rejoice in it, but suffering is louder, and my ears ring with suffering from morning to night.
“The fall of Acre made me sick. World War Two nearly killed me. Every man who dies has a moment for a prayer. I hear them all. For thousands of years, I have had no peace. Even now, a little girl is asking me for a dollhouse on her birthday, and a soldier in Kosovo is begging me to let him die before the surgeons take his leg off.
“And the worst part of it, Nick, is that I can’t shrug it away. I can’t close my ears, or become indifferent, because of what I am. I love these people. I love the little girl, I love the soldier in Kosovo, I love the American who shot him and who is now carving another notch in the butt of his machine gun, and boasting. You say hating is a burden, Nick: what about loving? I love indiscriminately. I love people I cannot possibly like or condone. I loved Hitler when he ordered Kristallnacht, and I loved the Jews he murdered. How is that possible?
“People say it is because my heart is great, but I say it is because I am a fool. I was made wrong. I love everyone; that is as great a fault as hating everyone. And I was given the capacity to appreciate suffering, but no power to relieve it.”
The silence was long after that. The heatless fire danced. We drank our
brandy from glasses that would not smudge, and tapped cigar ash onto a rug that would not scorch.
“Hitler is burning, Godfrey,” I said then, deliberately. “He digs eternal graves for a pile of bones which gets no smaller, and the air he breathes is the gas from Zyklon-B poison crystals. He suffers, and he will suffer for another three thousand years. I made sure of it.”
Godfrey’s hand shook as he lowered his glass. “Thank you, Nick.”
“I was glad to do it.”
There was no more to be said after that. We sat in the weary quiet of two people who need to say nothing. What, indeed, is there to say? In all the world, there will be no one to understand Godfrey but me, and no one to understand me but him. We are unique. And we are alone.
He rose at last, the gold cufflink flashing discreetly in his sleeve as he straightened his tie. I walked him to the door, handed him his top hat and white evening scarf with my own hands.
“Good-night, Godfrey.”
“Good-night, Nick. Next year?”
“Next year.”
String of Pearls
Kate Quinn
Copyright © Katharine Quinn 2009 I saw the puff of smoke before I saw the train, a grey cloud above the crag, hovering in the blue sky before the train swept down on the station like a mechanical wolf. I waited as gears ground and doors opened. I was the only person waiting on the platform; we get few visitors in Covell.
The train pulled away with a screech, and I saw my niece: a tall girl in a blue coat, a plaid tam on her dark hair, a suitcase in one narrow brown hand. She had a three-cornered face with a blank expression.
“Hullo, Aunt Nora.” She made no move to hug me. I offered her my hand instead, and after a moment’s hesitation, she shook it.
“Hullo, Halcyon Grenville,” I returned.
“Hallie. I’ve never gone by Halcyon.”
“Hallie, then.” My Cornish vowels sounded broad next to her
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