The Four Corners of the Sky_ A Novel - Michael Malone [216]
It was Dan who put the last pieces into the center of the puzzle, so that the sky was one huge blue square. Clark, Sam and Annie stared at it, a little disappointed. Somehow, all those years, finding the right shapes, fitting them together, they had imagined that this square would be more than it turned out to be. Bluer? Bigger? Filled with meaningful symbols? Somehow more?
Clark embraced Sam and Annie. “Well, ladies, you know how that song goes. ‘It’s not how you finish, it’s how you start.’”
Sam said, “Clark, that’s not how that song goes. Listen, I’ll sing it—” She pulled away from him.
He held her fast. “Please don’t go in there and play it again, Sam. Please!”
“You’re a laugh riot.” She scooped the pieces of the puzzle into a large plastic bag that she promised to put in the trash. But her family knew she would take the bag to the attic and save it.
***
Annie told Sam that the wedding was, in every way, as perfect as she could have dreamed it. Even the fact that Raffy Rook called her collect from Mexico early in the morning and told her that Jack and he weren’t going to make it to the celebration. They had honestly been trying to get to Emerald for Jack to give her away but there’d been a slight problem. The two of them, Jack and himself, were fortune’s fools. They’d been arrested in San Miguel de Allende for selling a Hollywood producer the last Russian Czarina’s diamond brooch, which wasn’t exactly really Russian or exactly really diamonds either. Then they’d been robbed of all their money by the two convoy guards who were trucking them to jail. Not of course all their money, for Raffy still had a sizable bank account back in Miami in Chamayra’s name, even after the $200,000 he’d given his mother Maria Ramirez. The good thing was, the guards had allowed Raffy to escape in exchange for everything they had on them and they promised to let Jack out in just a few days if Raffy sent them some more money, which Raffy had done.
“Is Dad dying?” Annie asked him.
“We are mortal, Annie, and, as Buddha and Christ both concluded, that sadly includes your dad. We are all dying if we take a longer look.”
“Raffy! Is he dying now?”
The Cuban musician’s voice was like his songs, soft, sweet. “Now? Oh no, not now. I have no doubt in the universe that your father will be leaving Mexico tonight at the latest. He plans to borrow a car—well, from a car lot, and I am to meet him in Vegas. Annie, your father has a terrible weakness for the four-card flush. It’s his downfall.”
Annie laughed. “Well, if you see him, say, well…”
Raffy sighed happily. “You love him.”
“I love him.”
“Didn’t I tell you? ‘Love bears it out even to the edge of doom.’ And beyond, if you ask me. This wisdom of our humanness was true 500 years ago when the great Swan said it. And true it will be 500 years from now, when we all of us here today are unfortunately, or not, in the earth, silent as dirt, or, let us hope, singing like angels.”
***
Annie’s long satin wedding dress, perfect for her, had arrived weeks earlier in an elegant box from a famous designer in New York. The card with the dress said only, “For Annie. From Ruth.”
Down the garlanded stairs of Pilgrim’s Rest, its banister hung with the pale gold roses and ivy and white silk ribbon, walked Sam. Then Dan’s mother on the arm of his partner from the Miami Police Department. Behind them came the bridesmaids in dark green and then the ring bearers and the flower girls and then Georgette, slim and pale, in the perfect dress for her auburn hair.
Everyone turned in the hallway as the string trio played Annie’s favorite Mozart and Annie appeared in the beautiful dress. Everyone said the bride looked lovelier and more peaceful that she ever had looked before. She walked down the stairs of Pilgrim’s Rest on Clark’s arm. When she reached the hall, she paused an instant to touch the falcon carved above the words Peregrinus ergo sum. Then she turned smiling and walked into