Alligator - Lisa Moore [83]
Nobody said.
They said quite the opposite.
There is no cold on earth as unequivocal as this wave that is higher than her head and about to smash itself against her skull. It is as cold as cold can be. Because how can matter be so blasted with sunlight, so sparkle-riven, and curve with such blood lust and be so soul numbing? A wave is the bone around a marrow of light.
Isobel is standing up to her waist and wading out and she gets the wave full force, right in the face, up her nose, in her ears, in her mouth, down her throat, out her nostrils.
Valentin is behind her on the beach, overdressed. Even while she is deep under the water she can feel his eyes on her, the red dress billowing out and clinging, billowing out and clinging with every stroke she takes. She’s a jellyfish making for the horizon. She knows she’s safe for the moment; he won’t risk getting his leather shoes wet.
MADELEINE
SHE HAD WOKEN in a sweat; Archbishop Fleming in the corner of the room, the ghost of Archbishop Fleming.
He was showing up in her dreams more frequently since she’d gone into production with the summer shoot. Fleming had wanted silver chalices for the Eucharist in every church on the Southern Shore. Archbishop Fleming cracking a whip over the backs of four white stallions, and they come tearing out of a snow squall like the wrath of God.
She’d invented the character, Fleming, on a blustery afternoon several years ago while reading letters he’d written to the Pope. She came out of the Roman Catholic Archives and the world had been transformed, a fresh blanket of snow. And now when she falls asleep in the afternoon, there is the archbishop standing in the corner with his white robes and scarlet cape and his staff.
The premier had said they could helicopter the horses to shore. Because of the ice, they had no way to get the horses. There was a sling they could use, and it was expensive and dangerous, but it had been done with racehorses in Kentucky.
The animals would be blindfolded of course, and they would be lowered very carefully from the clouds. She had made a few phone calls. It was impossible, she had been told. It had never happened in Kentucky, or anywhere else. They would not helicopter the horses in, was she crazy? The animals would die of panic.
FRANK
HE HAD TOLD Valentin he would give him $1,000. They had met on the stairs and the Russian had said about cigarettes he wanted to buy cheap and sell at twice the price.
He wanted to borrow a grand that he would return the next day and even give Frank some extra for his trouble. Valentin said all of this casually, without reference to the ransacking of Frank’s apartment or the desecration of Frank’s mother’s ashes. Valentin honestly seemed to be asking for the loan the way someone might borrow a cup of sugar.
We are neighbours, said Valentin. When Frank agreed to the loan the Russian took his hand and shook it vigorously and said he thought they would be great neighbours now.
We must be friends, the Russian said. I like you because you are a businessman. You are like me. This is what we have to understand: there is a system but it is like a suspension bridge, it has give. People like us must exploit the give, do you know what I mean? Frank said he understood.
With persistence and patience, Valentin said. He clapped Frank on the shoulder.
But now all Frank’s money was gone and he could hear the Russians waking up. He could hear the toilet and something boiling and the door to the fire escape banged against the wall and he could hear them speaking to each other in Russian. Valentin would be down soon looking for the money.
She was from a comfortable home where, Frank bet, she had never needed anything. She’d never been in a welfare office. She had never had to get a brown paper bag from the breakfast program at school. She’d never been evicted from an apartment because her mother was three months behind in the rent. She had never