The Everborn - Nicholas Grabowsky [85]
His grand tour was a thorough presentation but determinedly hurried, as Andrew interjected more than once that they’d better sit down to dine before he’d be resigned to microwave the finger foods. His attitude and the way he carried himself was like a humble rich kid host on an excursion through a luxurious mansion that wasn’t a mansion nor was it luxurious. Andrew maintained the same innocence and boyish charm which had so attracted her to him at the club. She found herself fascinated by the littlest things, all the while alert to those little things which might present a small portion of insight or clues to what may be hidden behind his innocent persona.
But then, she also found herself forgetting what she was truly there for, caught up as she was in the intriguing normalcy of it all.
His bedroom tour went first, after the introduction of where the bathroom was and she would’ve taken this as a sly insinuation if it wasn’t for his preoccupation with a closeted toy collection, something he was quite proud of. Melony distracted him with minor questions concerning his workspace, a lengthy wooden desk flanked by file cabinets and enthroned by shelves of books and a typewriter surrounded by piles of papers and office accessories, all a few feet from his Niagra adjustable bed.
He didn’t seem at all interested in his writing or of his affiliations with Cooper. This was all his forum, with his interests and flamboyant showmanship, until they could both get comfy and settle down in the kitchen. Mel could wait for that.
The living room was the final and only frontier as eccentric but otherwise cozy as it was, with its atmospheric black-and-green-clovered wallpaper and legions of books, and its prominent large-screened television. Melony was drawn to the exhibited relics of yesteryear, the framed book cover of Into The Grave II, penned by Andrew himself in his late teens and of his once-famous director father’s signed and framed poster of a sixties B-horror flic....
To my son,
I in you, and you in me.
Loving timelessly,
-your Dad, A.J.
A.J. was just as much a mystery as Melony was convinced Andrew was, maybe more so in consideration of his sudden and still yet unsolved disappearance, though Mel seemed certain that the matter was unsolved in Andrew’s mind as well. Or was it? Only dinner conversation would tell.
Then it would be her forum.
The Chinese food was splendid. Every last morsel of it. Andrew’s conversation was tedious, talk-of-the-weather, but Melony made sure to turn that around as subtly and as mannerly as she could. But it was important to listen to Andrew regardless of what he said, for each word was an insight into a personality somewhat foreign to her, somewhat familiar, somewhat universal in the underlying human loneliness of it all. And she couldn’t help but notice how handsome he was, how attractive he was to her, though regardless of everything else she had at least ten years on him. And she was married. To an asshole.
A half an hour had passed, give or take some minutes. Fleetwood Mac were repeating their rundown of song selection from the living room stereo. Mel discussed her safe drive to Andrew’s, commented on the wonderful food, reiterated over her likes and dislikes of Ralston’s gig the other night.
Andrew took it from there, “So tell me more about what you do, Mel. This Diverse Arcanum newsletter. It’s a newsletter, and yet you got yourself a table for Ralston’s big night when more reputable publications were knocked back to corner barstools.”
“I’ve got connections,” Mel told him. She sipped her second glass of Brandy. “Besides, I got lucky. There was only so much space in that dive to begin with. Is there a reason why you happen to live down the street from such a place, a place which eventually happened to be the showcase for such a night?”
“There’s no coincidence. I’ve lived here for a while. Ralston and I hung out together to discuss projects at that club. It’s his kind of place. He’ll go on to bigger and better places, whether or not he did