lights.”
“Hell. I’m rubbing it in my hair, see? Imagine!”
“Very wasteful.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
It was red wine and it was aged just right.
“Maybe they left this one barrel for a reason,” I said, taking a long drink from the cup. My cup was a plastic one so the wine didn’t taste bad. It wouldn’t have tasted bad anyway.
We looked at each other. “You mean,” Verne said, “maybe they put something into it, like Borgia?”
“Thou wert once too august for adoration,” I quoted.
I refilled my cup and Verne drank from his helmet.
We mused above the wine. It was an aromatic drinking place. After a while we were drunk. We were brothers. Sharing was wonderful.
“We share the wine,” Verne said. “If I have a wife, we’ll share her, too. Do you have a wife, Alex?”
“No.”
“Well, we’ll share her, won’t we?”
“Certainly. Are many wives better than one?”
“I think one wife is best.”
“One at a time.”
“Yes.”
“On a share basis.”
A piece of the hospital that we couldn’t see went away with a loud noise and the empty barrels rocked. Plaster and dust fell into my cup. Verne dumped his helmetful over his feet and refilled the helmet from the wooden spigot. He couldn’t stand very well. Whenever he got really drunk he fell all the time. It was bad when there was snow on the ground. Once I saw him crawl on his hands and knees for quite a distance along the Champs Elysées. He said the air felt cold, and since it was raining he’d take no chances.
We had been through a long war and there was still more to come and we were tired and drunk and we were brothers.
“You’ll see,” Verne said. “I will marry a beautiful wife. You’ll visit with me and she will warm your bed.”
“Thank you, brother,” I said.
But he hadn’t meant that, really. And he hadn’t remembered, and here I was. I glanced over at the picture of Petra in the hammock on the desk.
How very much Verne had changed! He wasn’t the same man now. Something terrible had happened to him. I didn’t know him at all as he was now.
She smiled out at me from the hammock with her leg dangling. I went over and turned the picture face down. Then I went out into the hall.
I walked around the stair well and down the upstairs hall toward a door at the far front of the house. This room would be opposite mine, but where my door opened just beyond the top of the stairs, this one opened next to the end of the hall. The door was open.
It was a large room, and the moment I hesitated by the door, I knew whose room it was. Hers. The perfume, among other intangibles, told me. Excitement and panic both crowded my chest. It was a feeling I had never experienced before. The room was empty. She wasn’t there. I didn’t want to enter, I forced myself against it. It seemed, as I stepped inside, that I was invading the privacy of her flesh itself. Everything in that room read Petra. To the left, along the whole front wall of the house, were huge windows, reaching from ceiling to floor, casement windows. They were screened on the outside, and their inside surface was hung with draped curtains of a peculiar red-and-black color conglomerate. The walls were a deep shade of red-violet, the ceiling a rich, allusive midnight conventionalized by neither stars nor moon. A large room, made to order—ordered by a woman laden with sensuality.
I stared down at the rug’s thick nap. It snuggled against the baseboards of all four walls, a heady, unbelievable auburn glinting in errant light like the coat of a freshly slain animal.
I was drawn into the room as I was being drawn to Petra. It was like standing in a vacuum that had become feverish, the airless air writhing against itself in a kind of savage, futile bewilderment, like two newly awakened lovers in the dark.
The bed was large, half again normal size, with thick brown leather headboard and footboard, the spread of the same deep red-violet as the walls. All the
“Hell. I’m rubbing it in my hair, see? Imagine!”
“Very wasteful.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
It was red wine and it was aged just right.
“Maybe they left this one barrel for a reason,” I said, taking a long drink from the cup. My cup was a plastic one so the wine didn’t taste bad. It wouldn’t have tasted bad anyway.
We looked at each other. “You mean,” Verne said, “maybe they put something into it, like Borgia?”
“Thou wert once too august for adoration,” I quoted.
I refilled my cup and Verne drank from his helmet.
We mused above the wine. It was an aromatic drinking place. After a while we were drunk. We were brothers. Sharing was wonderful.
“We share the wine,” Verne said. “If I have a wife, we’ll share her, too. Do you have a wife, Alex?”
“No.”
“Well, we’ll share her, won’t we?”
“Certainly. Are many wives better than one?”
“I think one wife is best.”
“One at a time.”
“Yes.”
“On a share basis.”
A piece of the hospital that we couldn’t see went away with a loud noise and the empty barrels rocked. Plaster and dust fell into my cup. Verne dumped his helmetful over his feet and refilled the helmet from the wooden spigot. He couldn’t stand very well. Whenever he got really drunk he fell all the time. It was bad when there was snow on the ground. Once I saw him crawl on his hands and knees for quite a distance along the Champs Elysées. He said the air felt cold, and since it was raining he’d take no chances.
We had been through a long war and there was still more to come and we were tired and drunk and we were brothers.
“You’ll see,” Verne said. “I will marry a beautiful wife. You’ll visit with me and she will warm your bed.”
“Thank you, brother,” I said.
But he hadn’t meant that, really. And he hadn’t remembered, and here I was. I glanced over at the picture of Petra in the hammock on the desk.
How very much Verne had changed! He wasn’t the same man now. Something terrible had happened to him. I didn’t know him at all as he was now.
She smiled out at me from the hammock with her leg dangling. I went over and turned the picture face down. Then I went out into the hall.
I walked around the stair well and down the upstairs hall toward a door at the far front of the house. This room would be opposite mine, but where my door opened just beyond the top of the stairs, this one opened next to the end of the hall. The door was open.
It was a large room, and the moment I hesitated by the door, I knew whose room it was. Hers. The perfume, among other intangibles, told me. Excitement and panic both crowded my chest. It was a feeling I had never experienced before. The room was empty. She wasn’t there. I didn’t want to enter, I forced myself against it. It seemed, as I stepped inside, that I was invading the privacy of her flesh itself. Everything in that room read Petra. To the left, along the whole front wall of the house, were huge windows, reaching from ceiling to floor, casement windows. They were screened on the outside, and their inside surface was hung with draped curtains of a peculiar red-and-black color conglomerate. The walls were a deep shade of red-violet, the ceiling a rich, allusive midnight conventionalized by neither stars nor moon. A large room, made to order—ordered by a woman laden with sensuality.
I stared down at the rug’s thick nap. It snuggled against the baseboards of all four walls, a heady, unbelievable auburn glinting in errant light like the coat of a freshly slain animal.
I was drawn into the room as I was being drawn to Petra. It was like standing in a vacuum that had become feverish, the airless air writhing against itself in a kind of savage, futile bewilderment, like two newly awakened lovers in the dark.
The bed was large, half again normal size, with thick brown leather headboard and footboard, the spread of the same deep red-violet as the walls. All the
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