by Blake Banner
Now I knew what I was hearing in his voice. I felt sick for a moment, then a twist of pain in my gut. I looked out at the great Pacific Ocean, still and peaceful under the vast sky. I fought to keep the hurt from my voice and said, “She surely is, Bat. A good mother and, for the right man, a perfect wife.”
“Yes, sir…”
“How does she feel about you?”
He was too honest to bullshit. He was quiet for a moment and said, “We haven’t talked about it. I wouldn’t do that till I’d spoken to you. But I know she likes me. She still loves you, sir, I think she always will, but given time… I think I could be a good husband for her.”
I nodded. “I think you are exactly the kind of man she’s been looking for, Bat. I hope it works out.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Give them my love, be happy.”
I stood and made my way up to the great feasting table. Jim was at the head. He was laughing his big laugh, pouring good wine from a stone jug into his absurd goblets. Njal was smiling, with the light from the flames turning his skin amber and the beautiful Maria, Mioko, and the third girl whose name I did not know were smiling and laughing also, carving the meat and bringing dishes of roasted vegetables.
I arrived at the table and sat. Mioko handed me a goblet of wine and I smiled into her beautiful eyes. She smiled back. Jim toasted again, and after that, we must have toasted a hundred times as we ate and drank, doing justice to Jim’s insane, glorious vision of life.
And as we ate and drank, and even sang songs occasionally, I felt, perhaps for the first time in my life, embraced by the warmth of something real. Absurd as it was, I could not deny it was real. More real, I decided, than the toxic madness that was engulfing the world which we were taught to believe was normal.
And then it dawned on me: there is no permanent, fixed, immutable reality. As Timmerman had said to me in the train, reality is what we make from one instant to the next, it is the memories with which we dress our experience. No one reality is more real or more valid than the next. What Jim Redbeard had learned to do, what made him wise and powerful, was his ability to create the reality he wanted, and revel in it without shame and without apology.
I remember then, as the crescent moon rode overhead and then began to slide down toward the sea, as we were rounding off our meal with whiskey, cheese, and succulent dates, Maria sat on Jim’s lap and kissed him. Njal had gone inside to put an original vinyl Led Zeppelin on an old record player, saying something about the greatest of all songs. And as Robert Plant’s voice bellowed out across the night about the Land of Ice and Snow, and the hammer of the gods, Mioko offered me her hand and led me back down the path toward the dancing, wavering fire. There, she slipped off her robe, made me sit on the grass and began to undress me.
I remember my cell phone chimed, telling me I had received a message. I looked at the screen. It was an un known number. I opened the message as Mioko pulled off my boots. It said: Do you know what you have done? Do you realize the damage you have caused, the destruction that will follow, brother?
I wrote: It is the light that destroys, Ben. The darkness that preserves.
Then I switched off the phone and surrendered to Mioko’s delicate, supple beauty.
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ALSO BY BLAKE BANNER
Up to date books can be found on my website: www.blakebanner.com
DEAD COLD MYSTERY SERIES
An Ace and a Pair (Book 1)
Two Bare Arms (Book 2)
Garden of the Damned (Book 3)
Let Us Prey (Book 4)
The Sins of the Father (Book 5)
Strange and Sinister Path (Book 6)
The Heart to Kill (Book 7)
Unnatural Murder (Book 8)
Fire from Heaven (Book 9)
To Kill Upon A Kiss (Book 10)
Murder Most Scottish (Book 11)
THE OMEGA SERIES
Dawn of the Hunter (Book 1)
Double Edged Blade (Book 2)
The Storm (Book 3)
The Hand of War (Book 4)
A Harvest of Blood (Book 5)
To Rule in Hell (Book 6)
Kill: One (Book 7)
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[1] See, To Rule in Hell
[2] See, A Harvest of Blood
[3] See, Kill: One
[4] See Kill: One
[5] See Dawn of the Hunter
[6] See The Hand of War