“I have some steaks,” he said. “Will you stay for dinner?”
“I—I’d like that,” she said softly.
He glanced toward the darkening garden and began to clean up his paints. At his direction she washed two potatoes and put them to bake, feeling smug that she was cooking in an upperworld kitchen. He went to wash, then put some records on and fixed her a whiskey. He made a salad, and while the steaks broiled he called the little cat. He looked disappointed when she didn’t appear. “I guess it’s silly to be concerned, but she’s gotten sick a couple of times.”
“It isn’t silly at all, just very caring. But I don’t think she’ll come while I’m here. Cats always avoid me.”
They ate on the terrace by candlelight, watching the garden for the cat and listening to records. The music was strange to her, exciting. There were trumpets, clarinets; he called it swing. Then one number struck her memory, making her unbearably nostalgic, and Braden said Alice had liked it.
They washed the dishes together and played another stack of records and talked about nothing and about everything—about McCabe, about Alice and the Kitchens, about the city, its galleries and museums. Isolated memories touched her, of pollarded trees in Golden Gate Park, and then of wind on the ocean. Of a room with a skylight and a fountain. Ugly memories touched her, too—pictures of a dozen different schools where she was always the new child, picked on, hazed. He had the same kind of memories, from moving so often as his father followed the oil fields. She remembered being thought a strange child because she liked cats, but she kept that memory to herself. As they discovered mutual childhood fears and pains she found her need for him rising in a way she had never felt before.
She got him to talk about his work, though she had to read between his remarks. Slowly she began to understand the search he embarked on with each new painting. She began to see how he groped, each time, for some entity almost beyond the painter’s grasp. He laughed at himself. “Late night talk.” But she liked very much the way he explained his feelings.
He was not self-conscious. His words seemed to be a way of exploring, as if he seldom put his intentions into conscious thought. She understood that his vision of the work came from deep inside; she thought that his deep response to the world was almost like an inner enchantment.
Late in the evening he called the cat again, then brought Melissa a cup of tea. She said, “The moon’s full—it makes cats crazy. She’s probably playing up in the garden, climbing trees.” She smiled at him. “She’ll be home in the morning, don’t worry.”
Leaning to set the cup down he touched her hair, then tilted her chin up, looking deeply at her. She swallowed, ducking her head to press her face into his hand. Rubbing her cheek against him, she rose and led him to the bedroom.
In the dim moonlight, touched by the cool salt wind, she let him undress her. She was already used to his nakedness, and was amused because she couldn’t tell him that. She rose to his stroking, to his lips on her, as if she had never before been loved, as if this was the first time.
Chapter 52
Wylles reached the top of the garden filled with rage at Melissa for the spell she had tried to lay on him. There was too much power in the Catswold woman. Though her spell hadn’t destroyed his memory, he had felt his face go slack, had felt himself starting to drop into the dull state of forgetfulness, had used all his power to counter her enchantment. He was pleased that he had hurt her, saw the blood as she turned away. Saw with disgust Braden West open the studio door for her and put his arm around her. And then at the top of the garden, when he spied Olive’s two kittens sunning on her porch, all his fury focused on them. He thought about cat blood spurting and thin bones broken, thought how the kittens resembled Melissa, if not in color, at least in their soft, furry weakness.
He approached the kittens casually, as if he didn’t really see them. Ignoring them, he sat down on the top step.
They looked at him with curiosity and soon the bolder kitten approached him. It was gangly despite its thick, soft fur. The thought of wounding it made him hard; he cupped his hand over his crotch. With a sudden hot, shivering bliss he pictured not the gray-and-white kitten rent in his hands, but Melissa: he saw the calico rent and torn.
The kitten approached innocently and stood looking up into his face. The second kitten skittered close behind it. He waited until they were both winding around his knees, then he grabbed them suddenly, one in each hand, meaning to bash them together, seeing Melissa crushed.
Pain hit him: hot pain shot through his neck and throat. Then someone knocked him up off the porch, hitting him from behind.
