Merlin and Lindley emerged from the clubhouse onto the terrace in their traveling outfits and ducked their heads as they dodged the rice grains being tossed their way. On the giant screen covering the blimp’s skin the words “Congratulations, Lindley and Merlin” scrolled and flashed with the image of a red rose on one side of the phrase and a counterclockwise whorl on the other. As the couple approached the leaf-blower archway, the groundskeepers blew high-powered jets of air skyward, and Chloris Godley tossed mounds and mounds of fresh rose petals onto the upwelling drafts. Even with the blimp looming behind, this created quite a spectacle, and everyone clapped at the novel gesture. Chloris was relieved and thrilled it went according to plan and was even more impressive than she thought it would be. Lindley and Merlin looked up in awe as handfuls of petals flew up on jets of air and descended around them.
When they were a few steps away from the passenger pod, the door opened and Tino Smakaporpous greeted the newlyweds with his signature bonhomie. Gold chains swung from his neck as he offered the bride a gallant hand to step aboard, and Merlin followed. Dirk Kajerka was at the controls of the Airmadillo wearing all of his captain’s regalia, including a jacket with epaulets, captain’s hat, and Ray-Ban aviator sunglasses. He turned to Lindley and Merlin as they entered and gave them a big smile and a tip of his hat. The couple settled into their seats.
“Nobody ever eats at their own wedding reception,” Tino said, “so I brought along some snacks for y’all’s first flight of the day.”
Tino lifted a big white cardboard box and opened it to show them an array of appetizers. He put it down and said, “I got dessert, too!”
“Baklava?” Merlin asked.
“That and the little key lime tarts you liked so much!”
Merlin and Lindley beamed, and Dirk said, “Okay, everybody hold on, we’re taking off!”
The groundskeepers released the blimp’s rope lines and as the Airmadillo nosed skyward, the band broke into “Up, Up and Away” by the 5th Dimension. The vocalists sounded astoundingly like Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr., et al., in the original version of the song, and the guests marveled at the newlyweds’ duly idiosyncratic yet spectacular departure from the reception. As the Airmadillo rose and banked northward for the trip to George Bush Intercontinental Airport, everyone waved and shouted, and the newlyweds responded with equally enthusiastic waves. Captain Kajerka got Lindley and Merlin to the big airport with time to spare for their evening flight to Europe.
• Seventy-three
Lindley and Merlin spent a few days in Paris and then flew on to Malta, where Lindley’s father had chartered a private cruise for them. They motored around the island nation for several days on the MY Ruby, a thoroughly comfortable, but by no means ostentatious yacht. Its helmsman, who asked the couple to call him Captain Omar, was Iranian by birth. Before dinner every evening, he recited ancient Persian love poetry to the couple in Farsi followed by the English translation.
Like Merlin, Omar was a fan of antique navigational instruments, and even brought a few old astrolabes and sextants on board. Merlin and Captain Omar took readings with various instruments a couple of times a day, and Lindley chuckled as the two men indulged their nerdy navigational and meteorological obsessions. She asked Captain Omar after he and Merlin had worked with one of the old sextants, “Do you know those levels that carpenters use?”
“Yes, of course. I use one myself on projects at home!”
“Well, we’ve taken up golf, and Merlin brings one onto the green and puts it on the grass to determine which way the putt will break!”
“Ha! That’s wonderful! I must do the same the next time I play!”
Lindley liked watching Merlin have a buddy to talk to. It made her almost as happy as she was about being with Merlin on the deep blue sea and swimming with him in coves where no one could see them.
To indulge her own interests, Lindley brought along a nice digital single lens reflex camera with a macro lens and a field notebook to record the local flora they encountered during their onshore hikes. One day, with the aroma of wild oregano in the air, they found a rock outcropping that served as a natural diving platform and they jumped and swam and jumped and swam in the clear cool water to their hearts’ content.
As the Ruby cruised the opalescent turquoise and indigo seas, they talked of the new developments in their lives—including their new home, an Arts and Crafts–era one-story bungalow not too far from Bayou Boughs—and of their careers. Merlin had accepted a job to teach at St. James’ School and coach the offensive line of the varsity football team in the fall, and Lindley had recently been named the executive director of the Bayou Boughs Garden Club, a position that would include frequent appearances as the gardening expert on Houston television and radio shows. She was also being courted to write a regular column about rose gardening for the Houston Chronicle.
At twilight one evening, Captain Omar anchored the Ruby in a protected cove. After night fell, Lindley and Merlin decided to take a swim. The dark water felt cold, but they adjusted to it and floated on their backs, looking up at the stars the way they had in Canada. They held hands as they floated and identified constellations.
“Look, you can even see that kind of snowy sweep of background stars,” Merlin said.
“Yes, this part of our arc of the galaxy—just like we saw at the lake.”
They released each other’s hands, then, like recombinant strands of DNA bridging the twin helixes, they extended their arms and joined both hands behind their heads—Lindley’s left hand in Merlin’s right and Merlin’s right hand in Lindley’s left. Merlin began to kick sideways a little, ankle over foot, and Lindley did the same until they were rotating in the water like a slowly moving twin-bladed propeller with the axis of the turning between each of their heads.
They spun like that and continued to talk. Then they spun in silence beneath the starlit vault of heaven—twin mimics of the Milky Way’s turning—consecrating the revolution in each of their lives that had created their lives together. They pulled one another close until the tops of their heads touched. They released hands, turned to face one another, and treaded water. They embraced for a kiss under the cool fire of the night sky in the bracing May waters of the ancient sea.
• Acknowledgments
Thank you to Greenleaf Book Group for believing in the story of Merlin; to Jay Hodges for the scrupulous copy edit and to Neil Gonzalez for the inspired cover design and illustration of Tite’s spontaneously combusting, flame-engulfed golf cart; also, to Jeremy Wells for the central cover illustration of Merlin at the helm of the Airmadillo, including pocket shrimp. Special thanks to my lead editor Amanda Hughes for her patient attentiveness and for indulging me as I rattled on about Merlin, Houston and tenuously related tangents. Our conversations have been a balm for me. Thank you, Sally Garland, for your crucial help with the last-minute edits.
Thank you to rose expert Mike Stroup at the Texas Rose Emporium (no beauty without thorns) and to former Harris County chief prosecutor Ann Johnson for providing me an overview of the tragedy of human trafficking and human smuggling. And thank you Lindsey and Judge Larry, respectively, for making these connections for me. Thank you, Mike Barone, for the thorough and thoughtful muscle car tutorial regarding the potential specs of an updated, souped-up, and tricked out 1971 El Camino.
Thanks to Kathy O’Brien Adjemian and Ellie Maas Davis for the timely encouragement. Thank you to my friend Sara Essex Bradley for the author photo and for being unwaveringly pro-Merlin.
Thank you to my friend and book doctor Ann McCutchan for the enthusiastic support for the project, yet requiring an outline to pass muster with her before allowing me to proceed beyond the book’s initial pages.
Major thanks to my friends and colleagues in the Indiana Street Group for their crucial help in shepherding this project toward the pasture of its culmination. Christa, my friend, special thanks for the good word you spoke over it.
I reserve most heartfelt thanks for
my dear friend and mentor Emily Fox Gordon who brought me into what would become the Indiana Street Group at its inception; her wise, steady and insightful counsel as the story of Merlin developed and matured was indispensable. Thank you for raising flags when necessary and for affirming me when needless doubt arose. Our conversations kept me on course and left me with a sense of relief and renewed motivation. Most of all, thank you for reveling with me in all things Merlin.
Thank you, Lucy Herring Chambers for hipping me to Greenleaf and encore thanks to the gate keepers at Greenleaf for the green light.
Finally, I thank God for revealing Merlin Mistlethorpe McNaughton and his world to me and for giving me the inspiration, grace and determination to follow this project to fruition. I am so grateful.
LOUIS GARDNER LANDRY
graduated from the College of Arts and Science at Vanderbilt University in 1985 with a Bachelor of Arts in English, magna cum laude. He is a native Houstonian.
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