Merrick - Anne Rice [93]
I think I prayed the way I had in the old days, in Brazil. I prayed to all those benevolent deities unseen to be with us and protect us from any form of harm.
Merrick joined me a few moments later—making the Sign of the Cross and kneeling at the Communion Rail for long moments of prayer. Eventually I went outside to wait.
There I spied a somewhat wrinkled old man, short of stature, and with shoulder-length black hair. He was dressed simply in a machine-made shirt and pants. I knew at once that he was the local shaman. I gave him a respectful bow, and though his eyes lingered on me with no hint of menace, I went my way.
I was hot but I was supremely happy. The village was fringed with coconut palms and there were even some pine trees due to the elevation, and for the first time in my life, as I walked about the bordering jungles I saw many exquisite butterflies in the dappled gloom.
There were moments when I was so purely happy that I could have given way to tears. I was secretly grateful to Merrick for this journey. And I concluded in my heart of hearts that no matter what happened from here on out, the experience had been well worth it for me.
When it came to our lodging, we chose a compromise.
Merrick sent the four field assistants to live in the village homes, after they had pitched and stocked a tent for us just behind the most far-flung village house. All of this seemed perfectly reasonable to me until I realized we were an unmarried man and woman residing in this tent, and it wasn’t very proper at all.
Never mind. Merrick was powerfully stimulated by our adventure, as was I, and I was eager for her company alone. The Talamasca assistants outfitted the tent with cots, lanterns, camp desks, and chairs; made certain Merrick had ample batteries for her laptop computer; and, after a wonderful supper—tortillas, beans, and delicious wild turkey meat—we were left alone as night fell, in marvelous privacy, to discuss what we meant to do the following day.
“I don’t intend taking the others with us,” Merrick averred. “We’re way beyond the danger of bandits, and, as I told you, it isn’t far. I remember one small settlement along the way. It’s tiny compared to this one. The people will leave us alone.”
She was more excited than I’d ever known her to be.
“Of course we can cover some of the road with the jeep before we start walking, and you’ll see Maya ruins around us just as soon as we set out. We’re going to drive through those, and walk where the trails gives out.”
She settled back on her cot, resting on one elbow, and drank her dark Flor de Caña rum, which she’d bought in the city before we set out.
“Wooh! This is good,” she told me, and of course this struck predictable terror in me that she meant to go on a bender here in the jungle.
“Don’t worry about it, David,” she said. “Fact is, you ought to take a drink of this yourself.”
I suspected her motives, but nevertheless succumbed. I was really in Heaven, I have to confess.
What I remember of that evening still produces in me a certain amount of guilt. I did drink far too much of the delicious aromatic rum. At some point, I remember lying back on my bed and looking up into the face of Merrick, who had come to sit beside me. Then Merrick leant down to kiss me and I pulled her very close, responding a little more rashly perhaps than she had expected. But she was not displeased.
Now, I was a person for whom sexuality had pretty much lost its appeal. When I had been occasionally aroused, during those last twenty years of my mortal life, it was almost always by a young man.
But the attraction of Merrick seemed somehow to have nothing to do with gender. I found myself overly excited and eager to consummate what had so haphazardly begun. Only as I shifted to let her lie beneath me, where I wanted her to be, did I gain some control over myself, and rise from the cot.
“David,” she whispered. I heard my name echo: David, David. I couldn’t move.