Mistress of the Runes Read online

  “You look fabulous,” she said, and I felt heat rise from my collarbone to my ears.

  “Are you sisters?” the waiter asked.

  “No,” I said kindly.

  “You sure do look like sisters,” the waiter continued, his expression puzzled.

  “Actually, we’re closer than sisters.” Liz jumped into the conversation. “We share the same likes and dislikes, and, by being together this evening, we have saved two other people from the certain misery of our opinionated, high-energy, New-Age-meets-middle-age lifestyle.”

  “I’ll give you some time,” he said and left.

  “Too much sharing,” Liz critiqued herself. “I’m sorry. Did that make you uncomfortable? But ‘are you two sisters?’ Really! I hope he never takes a job in California’s Russian River. He’ll have ‘sisters’ coming out his ass. This is such a great evening and it feels so…familiar. Do you ever have those moments of déjà vu?”

  “I had a really bizarre dream. Does that count?” I smiled, wondering again why I was here—on this planet, in this state, at this table, with this woman.

  “Tell me.”

  She must ask herself that question all the time. She’s doing the news. Is that what she came into this world to do—report traffic conditions? She knows that’s not it.

  “I don’t know…” I hesitated, not wanting to make a fool of myself. “My dreams seem to center around why we’re all here. I mean, what difference does any of it make? You, me, any of us? I can’t seem to get philosophical clarity on what we’re all doing…besides getting drunk.” I took another sip.

  She leaned in, propping her elbows on the table and cupping her wineglass in both hands, and stared over the top of it at me as if I were the most profound human being she’d ever met. I wondered if she practiced that kind of visual intensity merely to get good interviews, but her stare captivated me nonetheless.

  “Are we here to make the earth a better place for the next generation? Because that makes about as much sense as a beauty contestant saying her mission is world peace. Are we supposed to ignore any human return on investment in this lifetime and hold out for celestial ROI? Because frankly, I just don’t know if I can hold out,” I said, and finished off the wine.

  “You’re very passionate…”

  My chest tightened. Now the heat around my collar was sweeping up my throat and flushing my face.

  “…about life and about horses.” Liz finished the sentence. “I have a feeling you’re about to own a horse.”

  “’Fraid not,” I protested.

  “Now if I follow your philosophy, you should stop holding out. You should give in—let go,” she said, her voice sensual. “If you wait until life is perfect before you act, then you never take action or your actions are too late. Do what feels right, then life falls into place. At the end of the day, when you’re lying on your deathbed, do you say I’m so happy I never took that risk on the horses, or do you say I’m so glad I did that?”

  I laughed at her commentary and she gave me that penetrating look again—the one that was just this side of sexual. “How about taking a trip, just you and me, to a few Icelandic horse farms?” Her eyes glistened. “Let’s take a long weekend and drive around.”

  My mouth went dry and my mind, repository of standard thought, seriously considered her offer while my intellect, seeker of higher standards, gave me a sound puritanical slap.

  “Clare wouldn’t really appreciate that,” I stammered, inserting my lover between us like body armor.

  “Probably not,” she finally said.

  Those were the very words she used that night in the park. Why am I intentionally creating distance between us again? I’m supposed to create distance—I live with someone. I’m not out to pick her up!

  After an awkward moment Liz took a deep breath as if she’d been underwater for a long time and had nearly died. When she said she needed to get back to her hotel and get some sleep, her tone changed. She explained she was subbing for someone on air tomorrow night and had to catch an early flight so I signaled the waiter for the check, but she had already taken care of it, having given him her credit card before I arrived. She was definitely a woman who planned and who took charge. I appreciated the forethought that took.

  “Drink this entire cup of coffee before you leave, promise me?” she said, touching my arm, and I nodded in acquiescence, wondering just how drunk I appeared to her. “Thank you for coming to dinner…it was great fun,” she said as she stood up.

  “It was,” I echoed. She extended her hand in the formal way businesswomen say good night, and despite the brevity, I felt her tenderness and strength. She didn’t linger in touching me but pulled away and grabbed her bag, slinging it over her shoulder.

  “Well, take care. And have a safe trip back,” she said in that tone that sounded very much like this was a wrap—whatever might have been between us, now not possible. I nodded and wished her the same. Liz walked briskly out the door, and I noticed once again that her derriere was perfectly engineered. Perfectly. God, my head is stuck on that! I thought, irritated with myself.

  I was suddenly too warm and too agitated to stay inside. Taking my coffee with me, I wandered down the narrow lamplit path just outside the restaurant to the river where large flat rocks had undoubtedly provided resting places for countless diners over the decades. Across the river in a large pasture, black-and-white cows, visible in the moonlight, were chewing placidly and sauntering through the high grass—the embodiment of nowhere to go and all night to get there.

  After slipping off my socks, I plunged my feet into the icy stream, which immediately numbed any sensation all the way up to my knees. Relaxed, I let out a great sigh, my feet feeling no pain for the first time in weeks. I stretched my arms out behind me, placing my palms on the warm rock surface, and leaned back, gazing up at the stars. How was it possible to feel restless and calm all at the same time? This feels so good; I could stay here for the rest of my life. I wish Liz had stayed and she was sitting here with her feet in the water beside me, continuing our conversation.

  It had been a long time since I’d had an interesting conversation with Clare, one in which we focused intently on one another and not the stove as we cooked, or the sheet music as she played, or my computer as I worked. Perhaps only strangers focus on one another intensely. I felt loneliness, or guilt, or something nameless stir in me, and I speed-dialed Clare. It took five rings for her to answer, and she sounded groggy. I told her I was sitting on the banks of the Yakima River and knew how much she loved the out-of-doors and just wanted to say she would enjoy it here and maybe we should take some time to be together. She hesitated, which I took as silent inquiry as to the timing of my call.

  “Did I awaken you?” I asked.

  “It’s okay. I just have an early morning.”

  I apologized and hung up, wondering if one should have to apologize to one’s lover for calling her on a starlit night while away from home to say she was missed and to share vicarious moonlight. A light breeze picked up, moving the leaves so the moonlight flickered overhead. It was sheer heaven, and I decided not to let anyone take this moment away from me.

  I was surprised to see a man and woman standing on the embankment just to my left; I hadn’t heard them approach.

  “Wonderful, isn’t it?” The woman smiled at me.

  She looked like she was forty-three. Maybe. She was wearing khaki pants and a white shirt, dressed much as Liz had been, a loose jacket thrown over her shoulders, not the look of a tourist wanting to put her feet in the water.

  “I’m very familiar with this stream. My family lived on that farm across the river for centuries. In fact, the town of Samuelsville was named after my great-great-grandfather. So you’re just passing through, is that it?”

  “Leaving in the morning. I just stopped to have dinner with a friend and to put my feet in the river. It looked so cold and beautiful. In fact”—removing my feet from the water, I sighed and pulled on my socks—“I ha
ve to get going.”

  “Why do you have to go?” She seemed genuinely sorrowful about my leaving.

  “A business meeting tomorrow, back home.”

  She frowned slightly. “Why would you let a business meeting take you away from all this?”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it?” I smiled wistfully.

  “Well, now that you’re finally here—a remembrance of your trip to these healing waters.” She bent over slightly and handed me a postcard, and the tiny lights lining the pathway reflected off her beautiful blue eyes, as if drawn to their particular brilliance. I imagined her eyes were the color of this very stream in the daytime. I glanced down at the postcard in my hand: it showed the Yakima River photographed at just about the point where we were standing. The caption at the bottom read, Home of Edward Samuels until 1892, when he moved to San Francisco to start a ferryboat operation.

  “Well, thank you,” I said, looking up from the card, but she and the man had disappeared. That was odd. The way they seemed to just fade into the bucolic scenery. Almost ghostly! A shiver danced across my shoulders, and I jumped up from the rock, slapping at the seat of my pants in a parentally engrained Pavlovian response to perceived dust and dirt.

  Now I was even more restless than before I’d sat down by the river. Something had happened to me. What, I wasn’t sure. But I knew I needed to cancel my hotel reservation. I had suddenly decided to take the red-eye home that night. Why unpack, toss and turn, repack, and take a plane home at dawn? I’ll sleep on the plane, then sleep in until noon and go into the office late.

  For the first time in years I felt completely confused and restless. Always, I’d known where I was headed, what I wanted to accomplish, conquer, own—and now I was adrift. Nothing had the same significance for me. I didn’t want anything I had, and I wanted things I didn’t have. I have a great job and good health and a wonderful life! I told myself brightly. I need to pull myself together. What I really need to do is talk to Clare. We’re not in sync, that’s the problem. We’re just not in sync. We don’t share enough experiences together. We’ve got to fix that.

  *

  It took me two and a half hours to drive to SeaTac, the Seattle/Tacoma airport, and I caught late flight 111 outbound. The weather was perfect; it was dark outside and the cabin was quiet, people either sleeping, reading, or drinking. I didn’t awaken until the seat-belt sign dinged and we were told to put our tray tables in the upright position and prepare for landing. When the wheels touched down, I was congratulating myself on this smart move. Feeling rested and alert and having saved myself half a day, I had many things I could get done before dark.

  The sun was up when I pulled my car out of the airport parking garage. I’d asked Jane, my assistant, to cancel the limo service for this trip because the drivers could never refrain from quizzing me: Where was I headed? Was I from here? What kind of work did I do? Jane had spoken to the owner of the limo service who said he’d have a talk with the drivers, but somehow they couldn’t stop themselves. Jane said it was my kind face; I thought it was their poor training. A limo service should have drivers, a call center should have talkers. Although driving my own car meant I had to fight traffic, I could do it in silence.

  After paying the gate attendant I merged onto the freeway toward my house, Clare’s house, actually, but after four years and some minor redecorating I had come to think of it as my house as well. Ten minutes later, turning down the oak-lined street of two-story colonial homes, I pulled into the driveway, dodging a red convertible someone had left jutting out in the street two feet too far.

  I put my key in the lock, punched the entry code into the keypad, and headed for our bedroom. My heart hammered my chest as I spotted a woman, naked to the waist and wearing flannel jockey shorts with a black-and-white cow pattern on them, charging toward me in the hallway. I stood stock-still.

  “Who the hell are you? Clare!” I shouted, wondering if she was all right.

  “Shit!” the woman said, and ducked back into the bedroom.

  Moments later Clare appeared in the hallway clutching her robe, trying to wrap it around her half-naked body. My mind locked up. I couldn’t think. It made no sense. Clare was the one who didn’t want to discuss a breakup. Now she’s screwing around?

  The chest-of-drawers-shaped woman bolted out of the bedroom again, this time wadding her clothes up in a ball and tucking them under her arm like a running back. She mumbled something over her shoulder to Clare.

  How long has this been going on? Have Clare and this woman exposed me to some STD? Those thoughts fueled my actions and I flung myself into her path, infuriated and unwilling to let her off that easy.

  “Look, you two don’t have anything going, so don’t blame me!” the woman huffed in my face. I could hear Clare screaming my name over and over, as if to reason with me or distract me or stop me from what I was about to do.

  “Don’t blame you for fucking my lover while I’m away? Don’t blame you for exposing me to some sexually transmitted Mad Cow Disease? Or don’t blame you for running naked down my hallway begging me not to shoot you?” And with that I reached into my briefcase for a gun—well, she thought it was a gun. It was actually my car keys.

  “Brice, please don’t!” Clare screamed.

  The woman flung herself back against the wall, gasped, gathered energy, and charged me, apparently thinking she was about to be killed.

  “I’m out of here!” she yelled and dashed past me, but not before I swung my briefcase like a bowling ball into her kneecap. She drew up short, howling, Clare alongside her now bawling, the two of them in harmony like coyotes on a moonlit night.

  “You stay, I’m going,” I said flatly. “It will save me having to burn the sheets.”

  I could hear Clare whimpering my name and pattering after me on the wood floors as I left the house, slammed the door behind me, and backed the car out of the driveway and, in demolition-derby fashion, smacked it into the cherry red convertible whose owner I now knew. I was happy about the crunching metal and the hours cowgirl would spend in the body shop with a mechanic whose biggest smile would most likely emerge from the back of his pants.

  Chapter Five

  Madge opened her door after my loud and urgent knocking and stood there in her long silk pj’s staring at me with a twisted smile.

  “I just got in on the red-eye and caught Clare with another woman.”

  “How great is that!” Madge said, rubbing her hands together with more-than-obvious glee. “You’re free and it happened surgically. Cut, amputate, done!”

  “Why didn’t I know this was going on?” I asked as she held the door for me, signaled me to take a seat on the couch, then went to the kitchen to pour me tea.

  “Because you’re not in tune. You’re a smart, talented executive, but when it comes to women, you’re thick, Brice,” she stated as merely fact.

  “Well, when I’m done, I’m done. And nothing gets me done faster than being somebody’s seconds! Maybe Clare’s fucking the entire ladies’ basketball squad, for God’s sake! I should go get checked.” I was pacing and snorting and stomping around like a horse in a stall. “She said she didn’t need sex in her life the way I do. Here I thought she was freaking asexual, and she was only freaking asexual for me!

  “It all brings back terrible memories of my blue-fronted Amazon parrot who bit through my finger to the bone on the first day I had him. If I answered the phone, or spoke to someone, he screamed, shook his mammoth cage condo off the table, and shredded all the newspaper flooring in a rage. I was convinced he was insane, and I knew I had to keep him to save him from being killed by someone less tolerant. Then one day, my nerves could no longer take the screaming—not being able to speak above his shriek—so I gave him to a medical doctor who called that night to say my bird bathed with him in the shower and sang ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy.’ My parrot who had dive-bombed me and shredded my scalp until it bled sat happily on the naked doctor while he showered, and serenaded him with ‘
Yankee Doodle Dandy.’ Here I was trying to save the bird, and it was trying to tell me that it hated me and wanted to move on. Jesus, Clare is my parrot!”

  A long pause. “If that works for you, good,” Madge said, tilting her head to one side and peering at me not unlike a large bird. “You need some help getting your stuff out of there?”

  “No, it’ll be fine. Clare is nothing if not civil,” I said, thinking of how many boring, civil evenings I’d had with Clare.

  *

  I ducked as my peau de soie dress shoes came flying across the room at my head and Clare shrieked at me like a blue-fronted Amazon. “You don’t want to talk it over, great! You just want to walk out, great! Get the fuck out of my house!”

  She had been crying for two hours and looked absolutely horrific. It flashed through my mind that I had never seen Clare do anything but mist up, and here she was wailing. It was shocking to hear her utter the word “fuck” because, in addition to never doing it, she never said it.

  “Frankly, I don’t give a shit how upset you are, darling,” I said archly, moving at a slow and deliberate pace. “You, and not I, were found fucking some cunt in the bed in which I sleep!” I whirled and put my face within an inch of hers, wondering if I would actually strike her and deciding I should leave rather than develop a bad habit like battery. “You who never looks up from her sheet music apparently found time to go down on a cow! The bovine jockey shorts were the piece de resistance—they make her ass look like a Gateway Computer box.”

  “You’re never here and we don’t talk! Brice, I love you.”

  “And you demonstrate that by butt-fucking some bovine in boxers?” It was a crude remark but I was mortified, embarrassed, and not myself.

  I picked up my dress shoes, stuffed them into the last bag, and said the movers would arrive in an hour to collect the boxes and my furniture. My computer was already safely in my car, and with that, I left Clare squawking in the foyer.