Mistress of the Runes Read online

  Liz flipped on the radio only to be assured that indeed tornadic storms encircled us. The tornado alerts had progressed to the take-cover stage, and rain we couldn’t see through was slashing against the car windows.

  “Good grief, where did this storm come from?” I leaned into the window as if putting my eyeballs closer to the rain would let me see through it.

  “I’ve been trying to tell you! This is the same storm that’s been tracking us for two hours. I just find it really odd that it’s tracked us right to this barn. It’s not a good sign.”

  “What do you mean it’s not a good sign?” I maneuvered off the country road and merged onto the interstate.

  “I just don’t feel good about it.”

  “About what—the barn, the horses, the town?”

  “All of it,” she muttered in an all-encompassing way.

  “Well, that makes me feel better. We need to just go with the flow. I’ve never seen so much flow.”

  Cars pulled off the highway, their lights unable to penetrate the dark rain. Roadways were suddenly eight inches deep in water. Semis flew by, throwing veritable rivers of water up into our faces, blinding us for what seemed like treacherous minutes. Exit signs were completely unreadable in the downpour.

  Liz dialed the hotel number on her cell phone, trying to get directions, but it didn’t matter what the desk clerk shouted above the water pounding on our roof; we couldn’t hear him. We couldn’t see road signs, or intersections, or anything but buckets of water and howling, wind-driven rain.

  “I’m going to need a freaking chiropractor by the time we get there,” I said, clutching the steering wheel as if it might suddenly leap off its column and fly out into the windy night.

  “Just keep your eye on the road,” Liz directed me.

  “I can’t see anything.”

  “Do you want me to drive?”

  “Now how would that work?” Pressure always made me sarcastic. “We’re in a tornado! Do I pull over in the middle of the highway and let you out to walk around and drive?”

  “You’re not exactly grace under pressure,” Liz said, eyeing me.

  “Omigod!” I shouted as I dodged a truck that was hydroplaning into our lane.

  “We’ve got to get off this road. There’s your exit! Turn, turn, tuuuuurn!”

  “I’m not deaf. I just have to find the road!”

  “There it is.” She pointed to the hotel.

  We whipped into the driveway at the last possible second, coming perilously near a drainage ditch. After I put the car in park, we stared at one another, not believing what we’d gone through and not believing we’d made it safely.

  The hotel had no overhang, no way to keep me dry between our car and the front door of the lobby. I waited a moment, thinking a young bellman or valet parker or anybody under forty with an umbrella would jump out and save us, but no.

  “Stay!” I mimicked a dog trainer.

  Throwing open the car door, I dashed for the hotel entrance, arriving in the lobby seconds later, totally soaked. I stood dripping on the carpet requesting the appropriate form that would put me in a warm, dry place.

  “Is the tornado near here?” I asked as I scribbled my name.

  “Seems like it,” the young man said.

  “Do you have an umbrella?”

  He shook his head. Chivalry was indeed dead. I made another dash out the front door and back to the car, squished into the driver’s seat, and looked at Liz. “I cannot remember the last time I stayed in a hotel without…an awning,” I said through clenched teeth. Catching a glimpse of myself in the rearview mirror, I realized for the first time that I resembled a mad, wet cockatoo. Liz started giggling, which made me laugh.

  “I am a fucking sponge.”

  “Your hair’s a mess,” Liz said, and she made an effort to gently wipe away the water streaming down my face. For a split second I felt a claiming, as if I belonged to this woman, as if I’d always belonged to this woman. I sat perfectly still.

  “You’ll have to dry your hair before we go to dinner,” Liz whispered, caught in that same feeling, I was almost certain.

  Her touch rippled all the way down to a spot somewhere between my legs, and that heat surge made me tense up. “That’s been my concern for the past half hour, being sure I look good for dinner,” I said, trying to muster sarcasm to short-circuit the electric ties that were forming.

  I put the car in gear, then pulled around to the back of the building to our designated entrance nearest the second-floor elevators. Again no overhang.

  “You make a break for it and stand inside,” I ordered. “I’ll make a couple of runs and hand the bags to you. Can we just take one of the bags in?” I refrained from saying that she was traveling as if CNN might suddenly want to do a quick live shot of her.

  “No, I have clothes in one bag, makeup in another, and hair stuff in the third.”

  “Organizing your luggage requires the skill of a field general.”

  “Stop giving orders, and I don’t want you running in the rain. You’ll catch pneumonia,” she warned.

  “I’m already soaked. The faster we do it, the sooner I can change clothes. Go!”

  Liz bolted out of the car and arrived inside the hotel’s side entrance, only partially soaked. I made three runs, summoning every expletive I’d ever learned and linking them together in creative configurations. After my final run, I stood in the hotel hallway, dripping on the hideously ornate red carpet, and tried to catch my breath.

  “We can always go home,” Liz said.

  “And miss this experience?”

  “That would be the idea!” Liz grinned. “You’re a piece of work to travel with.”

  I snorted, turning over custody of her third piece of luggage. “For the record, this falls under my old-lady-lugging-her-crap category.”

  “Touché!” She wrinkled her nose. “It appears that we’re both type A—and we never forget a slight. So for the record, I wasn’t making fun of you that day in the antique store. You made me nervous, and I was just trying to be funny and make you like me, and then you snapped at me like tyrannosaurus rex.”

  I stopped walking. “For the record, I do fine with you, up until the time that you label me: old lady collecting crap, tyrannosaurus rex, type A.”

  “Oh, please! If that’s the worst thing you’ve ever been called, count yourself lucky.” She blew me off. “You are such a pampered executive.”

  “I just carried your luggage in for you through a thunderstorm to keep your air-hair from getting wet.”

  “Air-hair? Like I’m a television airhead, which by the way is terminology that trips my hot button. And furthermore, no one asked you to carry my luggage. I have carried my luggage through many a third-world country without any executive assistance.”

  “This is helpful,” I said and continued walking. It usually takes me living with someone to find out they annoy the hell out of me. Just saved myself at least two years! Liz Chase and I are friends and nothing more. And even friends will be a bit hard if she keeps this up.

  “Helpful how?” she asked, sounding equally piqued.

  “Creates perspective, that’s all.”

  “No, say what you mean. You mean, ‘Thank God I didn’t have a relationship with this woman because we would have killed each other.’ Well, what would have happened is I wouldn’t have let you talk down to me, or walk over me, or be in charge all the time, which would probably have rendered you catatonic, so yes, it is a good thing.” And Liz Chase walked on ahead.

  She has a cute walk, I thought, smiling to myself. It’s the mouth that would drive me to drink.

  Chapter Seven

  An hour later, having changed our clothes and blown our hair dry, we were on friendlier terms as we got ready to go to dinner. I’d mentally written off our confrontation to fatigue, mostly because it was just too damned difficult to be in close proximity to someone as sexy as Liz Chase and remain angry. Nonetheless, I was seeing a side of Liz I never sus
pected existed beneath those curls. She is an absolutely maddening woman, I thought. Way too strong! Would have to constantly argue with me over who’s in charge. But at least after a blowup, she gets over it right away…like changing channels.

  I sat on the edge of my bed, and from that angle I could see Liz applying her makeup in the bathroom mirror—leaning into the glass like a theatrical performer, searching for any little imperfection, meticulously blending every line, assessing every shadow. It was a slow, sensual transformation to perfection, from boyish road companion to elegant dinner companion, that was erotic to observe.

  Pretending to be reading, I watched her as she drew back from the glass and saw her entire demeanor change. She moved catlike and seemed to be more aware of her body as she stepped out into the bedroom, her head held high, struck a pose, and asked, “How do I look?” I smiled over the fact that she would unabashedly seek a compliment; however, perhaps in her world it was a question asked a dozen times a day.

  “You look breathtaking.” I said it lightheartedly, but I meant it.

  “Oh, that’s a nice word. Thank you. Let’s go.”

  My eyes panned down to her cleavage, which was exposed to a greater degree than I would ever attempt, and I wondered if it was for my benefit or if she buttoned all her shirts that low. I also wondered what it would feel like to rest my lips between those soft pillows of perfection. Purely a hormonal reaction and a natural one, I psychoanalyzed myself. I can be attracted to how someone looks without being attracted to who they are.

  “What are you thinking?” she asked when I looked up.

  “I’m starving, that’s all!” I sprang from the bed and led the way to the restaurant.

  *

  To avoid having to step outside in the deluge we walked through a rat maze of buildings, connected to one another by strange corridors, until we finally found the musty restaurant. By now the winds were howling so horribly they sounded like a train outside the building. A powerful breeze swayed the treetops in front of the twenty-foot-high restaurant windows, lightning crashed, and the windows went electric-white for a nanosecond, then diabolical shadows flashed on the wall beside us. The old English pub took on a centuries-old dankness.

  “Kind of a spooky place,” I said.

  A young waitress with her hair in a ponytail took our order and returned with it five minutes later, as if we’d phoned it in ahead of time. Liz frowned, and I surmised that she was thinking someone else had sent it back.

  “A lot of people must order roast beef,” I said in a roundabout attempt to find the answer. The waitress didn’t respond but instead pulled up a chair and joined us, staring directly into my eyes with her piercing blue ones.

  “So why are you two in town: business or pleasure?”

  Although put off by a waitress joining my table, I was grateful to be safe and dry, so I was tolerant, thinking she would leave soon before our dinner got cold.

  “We’re looking at horses.”

  “I love animals. You know what I’ve always wanted?” she asked as I paused in cutting my beef.

  Since we’d met only seconds before, I found that an odd question. I had no idea who she was or why she’d felt compelled to join us, much less what she’d always wanted. She continued, “I’ve always wanted a Viking hound, actually a Norwegian elkhound. They’re my favorite dogs.”

  “I’ve had two elkhounds.”

  “I’d get a male, the biggest male Norwegian elkhound I could find,” she added, as if I hadn’t spoken.

  “It’s strange that you’d say that”—I was slightly more interested now—“because my male elkhound was one of the largest elkhounds on record.”

  “I bet he’s wonderful,” the waitress said. “I’d name mine Odin, if I ever got one.”

  “That was my dog’s name—Odin.” I put my fork down uneasily.

  She never acknowledged me. “Odin is so great. Odin, the giant male elkhound.”

  “My dog died.”

  “Oh. But then really, when you think about it, dying only occurs when we believe in the past and the future, right? Like forward and backward? You know, knights in armor are in the past and aliens are in the future. Of course, no one we know has personally seen real live knights or aliens. We go by pictures, right? Pictures other people have painted for us. But we could raise a child and teach it that spaceships were here long ago and that one day in the distant future, we will be so strong that we can march around wearing heavy armor and be able to kill with our bare hands. Now what is backward and what is forward?” she asked sweetly.

  “But we know there is a past—” Liz began.

  “I don’t personally know that.” The waitress shrugged Valley-girl style. “I mean, suppose we could take the beginning and connect it with the end, in a circle. The circle of life.” She grinned mischievously. “Elton John sang that. At any rate, we wouldn’t be saying why am I back. We’d be saying see you around.” And she giggled endearingly, rising to her feet. “Leaving is so subjective.” She brought her hand down suddenly and covered her entire body, head to toe, in a thin white tablecloth—like a curtain separating us. “Have I left?” She laughed, her voice echoing in the cold, barren room.

  “Well, no,” I said, thinking her quite adept at magic as she deftly rolled the cloth back up and tucked it under her arm.

  “But I’ve got to leave now, for real. Enjoy your dinner.”

  “What are the odds of that?” I asked Liz as the waitress left.

  “God, the hair on my arms is standing straight up. I’m freaked!”

  “Think of it, out here in the middle of nowhere, elkhound. I mean that’s not a common breed—”

  “Then he’s this gigantic one—”

  “And his name is Odin,” we said in unison, then both sat perfectly still, trying to comprehend what had just happened.

  “And how did she do that with the tablecloth? That was some parlor trick. Maybe they do magic acts here,” I offered. “And what was all the forward, backward, around thing?”

  “It’s a sign,” Liz whispered. “I’m telling you.” Her voice rose in pitch. “I just feel like this place is in some sort of strange energy vortex.”

  I summoned a waiter and asked if he could send our waitress back. He said he didn’t know who we were referring to, but that he would be happy to handle our check for us.

  Suddenly neither of us was hungry. We agreed it was fatigue and walked back to our room chatting about our weird restaurant experience.

  Liz turned most of the lights out and undressed for bed as we talked. She unbuttoned her shirt and shrugged it off her shoulders, then unzipped her slacks and stepped out of them. The dim glow from the bedside light outlined her body, making it hard for me to maintain visual contact, my eyes begging to drift southward to warmer climes. She unhooked her bra, then turned away from me at the last moment to slip it off and slide on the nightshirt that had been lying on the bed. I suppressed a sigh.

  Even her back was beautiful and I wondered if she’d ever modeled. She had what I considered the perfect body: long legs that rose to narrow hips, her waist only slightly smaller than her hips, saving the big curves for her somewhat oversized breasts. Her silhouette in the dim light captivated me. She removed her underwear under the cover of her nightshirt and threw it across the room onto an armchair with her other clothes.

  When her lace-topped panties set sail, I left port as well, grabbing my nightshirt and dashing into the bathroom. I needed to rest my hot forehead on the cool sink tiles, to practice breathing, and to make the ache between my legs stop. I accomplished that by focusing on brushing my teeth, then scrubbing my face so hard with a washcloth that I nearly dermabraded it.

  All the lights were out, the room was silent when I came out of the bathroom, and I was aware of Liz lying in the dark.

  “Aren’t you going to call Clare?” she asked softly.

  “She’s out,” I said, only partially lying since “out” might qualify as a metaphor. I crawled into bed u
nder the cool sheets with no intention of telling Liz Chase that I no longer lived with Clare. I wasn’t going to leave myself open to another relationship of convenience brought about by being away from home, lonely and in the same hotel room as an attractive woman. No sleeping around. I had my word on that.

  “Is she in rehearsal?”

  “I don’t know.” Also the truth, I thought. Oh hell, am I really lying to Liz Chase in order to keep myself under control? Maybe I just don’t want her to think I’ve been dumped. Well, I have been dumped!

  “Actually, we aren’t living together anymore,” I blurted out. I could hear Liz breathing. “We’d planned to split. We just never got around to it. It was a rather unemotional breakup. No kids, no pets—”

  “So why now?”

  I paused before admitting the truth. “I came home and found her in bed with another woman.”

  Liz began a slow, low laugh. “That wouldn’t have been unemotional for me.”

  “We were actually very mature about it: I smashed her lover’s convertible with my car, then later she screamed and threw things at me,” I said and laughed along with her. “Now that I think about it, it’s ironic that she was hurling things at me, when I should have been chucking her cello at her!”

  “How long were you together?” Liz asked gently.

  “Four years. That’s my limit. I’ve done four years four times—a total of sixteen years. I’m forty-four—I had my first live-in relationship when I was twenty-eight. Four partners, four years each. In the end, I always walk away from everything we owned jointly—which is usually everything but my underwear—and I start over financially. Personal penance, I guess, for walking out on them or perhaps for having started the relationship in the first place.”