The Lover From An Icy Sea Read online

  Kit stepped into the living room and began to study the interior with a photographer’s eye. Immediately to his left, a baby grand piano, with musical scores of Bach and Chopin sitting conspicuously to suggest either the presence of a classical pianist, or else the presence of someone who wanted visitors to believe that Bach and Chopin had a place in this household. He had no way of knowing which. At the far end of the room, two sofas and an armchair covered in damask bordered what looked to be a very serious rug. Kit was not an expert in rugs, and so he merely ventured that this one might actually be an Aubusson. Casually throwing an Aubusson on the living room floor for someone to warm his heels on was conspicuous spending beyond mere ostentation. Either money meant nothing, or the appearance that money meant nothing meant everything. He studied the floor-length curtains that matched the cover of one side table. Both were done in a tasteful print, meticulously coordinated with the rest of the interior. The ensemble suggested an obsession with studied refinement. In fact, everything about the living room—and the dining room adjoining it through French doors—suggested a carefully constructed refinement and an obsession with appearances.

  Kit felt slightly nauseous—as if he were not in a home so much as in a salon. This was not a living room; it was a presentation room. He wondered about children and whether any lived here; tried to imagine how, if there were any, they, too, would’ve been treated like presentation pieces—allowed to sit in the living room only if their clothes coordinated suitably with the surroundings; would otherwise be restricted to their own bedrooms or to anywhere but this room.

  The lighting was low, apparently to produce the correct effect. Assorted pieces of art stood around the room, strategically placed. The walls, too, displayed their share of art—all carefully presented in frames that would not have been out of place on the walls of a museum. Even their arrangement, Kit thought, might’ve been accomplished with calipers. Each hung precisely aligned with its fellows, not a millimeter out of place, not one of them giving evidence of a displacement caused by any more than a cursory glance from a safe distance across the room.

  As there was still no sound of anyone’s imminent arrival to greet him, he moved closer to the sofas enclosing the Aubusson—also to the coffee table upon it. He noticed a couple of crystal candlesticks much too casually placed to have found themselves in that position by accident, and wondered what, in terms of time and study, their precise placement had cost—and who had paid that price. Then, of course, there were the obligatory books: Scandinavian interior design; French country houses; a visual feast on the gardens of Spain; and finally, another pictorial digest on Shaker furniture.

  A glance at the books arrayed on the coffee table led Kit’s eyes to examine the contents of the bookcases. There were several in the living room and in the adjoining dining room—though if there was any order to the books they held, he couldn’t discern it—not alphabetical, not chronological, not arranged by subject matter or category. But then, upon closer inspection, he noticed there was simply no reason for order. The books didn’t belong to a reader; they belonged to a displayer of books, for books’ sake—libri gratia librum, he thought to himself ironically. They suggested no particular interest in literature or history, philosophy or psychology, not even in art, music or cuisine. The only thread Kit could discern in the entire collection was a kind of haphazard reflection of the owner’s own eclectic tastes in brief acquaintances or fashionable opinions. He pulled one book at random from the shelf. The spine creaked as he opened it—suggesting it had never been looked at, much less read—although he noted that the author had signed it with a dedication inside the front cover. He put it back immediately without reading the dedication.

  His eye next fell upon a stack of CDs piled beneath a side table and next to a boom box. Surely, he reflected, with a baby grand in one corner of the room and an expensive rug lying on the floor, this can’t be the extent of her musical investment.

  Kit was beginning to feel uncomfortable with his survey. None of this was any of his business. He was here on an errand, nothing more. And however one person might choose to spend her time, money and attention was really not his affair. All he could conclude at this moment—as he had always suspected of most people who’d learned to define themselves by their acquisitions—was that life and the living of it for her must be almost unendurably wretched, however much appearances might belie the fact. To have to pander to others’ judgments; to be enslaved to a kind of competition of good taste; to deprive oneself of the privilege of unstudied relaxation—maybe even abandon—in one’s own home—this was the barest root of poverty. How would the owner of such a home ever sleep soundly, since sleep was necessarily beyond her control? Worse, how could the children in such a home—if there were any—feel anything but frigid sterility?

  At that moment, the woman who’d greeted him at the front door reappeared with a cup of coffee, sugar bowl and creamer, and laid them out on the coffee table.

  “Señor Addison,” she said quite simply. “His coffee.”

  “Thank you very much,” Kit replied. He then extended his hand. “Please, the name’s Kit.”

  “Sí, Señor. Con mucho gusto.”

  “And your name?” Kit asked.

  “Estrella. My name is Estrella.”

  ‘Star,’ Kit translated to himself a name he hadn’t heard in years—a name that immediately conjured up warm memories of a former Spanish lover. His reverie was interrupted by the sound of someone else’s footsteps arriving from just out of his field of vision.

  She approached from across the room with an outstretched hand. Kit lifted his arm and took her hand, then let her dictate the contour and force of the grasp—which was full, firm and warm, though hardly overbearing. She would, he thought, be a fair partner—in work, in play, in love. “Mrs.— or is it Miss Sorenson?” he asked, as if there were any question about this woman’s identity.

  “Neither,” she answered. “Please just call me Daneka.” She smiled and looked him in the eye.

  “Daneka, then,” he answered, returning her smile and meeting her glance just as directly. Eye contact upon making a person’s acquaintance was always a test, and Kit had been in the adult world long enough to understand its significance. Eye contact was an unwritten ritual, fraught with dangers, but also with possibilities. It could spark a friendship or a love affair in an instant. It could strike a bargain or cement a deal in as little time. It could just as easily result in a still-birth to any of these. And so he knew he would hold her stare and her hand for as long as she felt it to be necessary to satisfy her definition of the gambit.

  Daneka was the first to withdraw her hand and break eye contact. As far as she was concerned, the terms of engagement had been defined, communicated, and accepted to her satisfaction. Kit was equally satisfied. This visual acquaintance confirmed what he’d been led to expect on the basis of his first and only telephone conversation with her.

  “Please, sit down,” she suggested.

  As he took a seat on one of the two adjoining sofas—quite intentionally at the end closest to the sofa in front of which Daneka was still standing—she sat down on the other, also at the end closest to his sofa. Their knees were close enough to touch if either of them cared to. Kit took advantage of the momentary gap in their first oral exchange to study Daneka. She was clearly a few years older than he, though it was impossible to say by how many. Deference to her would’ve come naturally to him on the basis of that fact alone—never mind that upbringing had taught him always to defer to a woman. What’s more, pragmatism had always dictated to him the necessity, under most circumstances, of deferring to a client and to that client’s wishes. He knew he was at liberty to politely ignore the woman or to pass on the client. But he was also sufficiently socialized to know he should resort to such a course neither too abruptly nor too rudely.

  In this case, however, no such decision weighed on him. He was, quite simply, captivated by her beauty, her charm, her presence. He thoug
ht to himself in that instant that he’d never met a more feminine woman. She carried herself as naturally as a candle carries a flame.

  “I see that Estrella has brought you a coffee,” she said. This was the first indication to Kit since he’d spoken to her from his office five days earlier that American English was not her native tongue. However many cups of coffee she might have had in her life as a coffee-drinker, however many on the continent of North America, she had apparently not gained a foothold on this particular native idiom. He found it enchanting.

  “Yes, she did. And an excellent one at that!” Kit added mock-pompously.

  Daneka appeared to be quite pleased with her housekeeper’s performance—pleased, too, at Kit’s satisfaction. The truth is, she liked to see and be surrounded by satisfied people—most especially, when she had it within her power to be the engineer of their satisfaction.

  As Kit and Daneka exchanged pleasantries, it occurred to each of them almost simultaneously that the other was not a total stranger. Neither could’ve said with any authority why this was so—much less, what exactly might’ve given rise to the sensation. And yet, each of them somehow sensed it.

  Knees nearly touched. But knees were not noses. “Tell me about your work, Kit.”

  She may not have absorbed the idiom for a single portion of coffee, Kit thought to himself, but she has clearly spent enough time on these shores to know to dispense with the formality of titles and last names. Also, to cut to the chase when the matter at hand is business. “You know, of course, that I’m a photographer. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have invited me here.”

  “Oh, but I might have invited you here just to get a better look at you,” she said, bending her neck at a certain angle and lowering her gaze to the floor.

  Kit was instantly smitten, though he didn’t precisely know why. He was simply too inexperienced a soldier in the war of the sexes to know any better. This rudimentary gesture, however unconscious on her part, was to him the equivalent of an entire armada, and he was already preparing terms of his own surrender.

  As he gazed at the line of Daneka’s neck, the diminutive curve of it, he saw perfect beauty. To him, a neck was the thing that defined a woman’s beauty. Other men might favor breasts or buttocks, thighs or stomachs. Hair, of course, had historical precedent. Eyes might be the window to the soul, but to whose soul? You gaze into another’s eyes and think you know that person. The reality? You merely get to know yourself a little better through them and through their reflection, if there is a discernible reflection. The moment that reflection dies is the moment you first begin to know what you’re really made of.

  But a neck? Kit followed the wave of Daneka’s neck and imagined, just beneath the skin, the tension. He wondered for a second how practiced that tensor maximus was in achieving just this gesture. He couldn’t possibly have known that it was extremely practiced—that it had reached the point of an automatic reflex—except when Daneka might choose to withdraw it from her repertoire—as she could withdraw many things. Still, there was for the moment something in it of Michelangelo’s Pietà. The downcast eyes—in this instance, certainly not in mourning or grief, but rather suggestive of modesty and humility. Perhaps, in the end, they were the same anyway—grief and humility, mourning and modesty—but Kit was not religious or philosophical, and he had only a layman’s knowledge of human psychology. He was a photographer with a fine, intuitive sense of beauty, nothing more. He was an æsthete—not by education, but by birthright. It was as if he’d been born with an innate sense of how objects and space belonged together and to each other; of how to create visual harmony between them; of what was genuine or artificial, and of what was not.

  In his ignorance, Kit had at this instant only one thought and one wish: that he could, with impunity, put his lips to the nape of that neck and explore it as uninitiated fingers might explore Braille: letter by syllable by word by thought—to learn its secret.

  In the meantime, Daneka had been studying Kit from a certain distance as if she, a predator, were studying the movements of her prey. She quite liked this specimen of a male. There was nothing devious or mischievous either in his behavior or in his language. He appeared to be something of an ingenue—if she could apply that epithet to a man. In any case, there was no question of his masculinity. He simply didn’t wear it on his sleeve.

  She glanced down at his arms and hands. They were, like the lines of his face, both graceful and strong. He had the aspect of an artist, but the physique of an athlete—at least, those parts of his physique that were visible, and these were limited to his head, neck, arms and hands. She wondered what it would take to get his clothes off so that she could inspect the rest of him. She wondered whether he would be easy, aggressive, technical, fanciful, or playful. She couldn’t imagine that he would be dull, selfish or boastful. Men put together like Kit never were. They didn’t have to hunt; they were hunted. And so, they could afford to be selective and patient.

  The truth is, Daneka had known a great many men. She’d honed an instinct over the years as she’d moved in and out of men’s beds, in and out of men’s lives. She’d logged a great many hours in the so-called act of love—a number of them in the mere act of fucking—and she knew practically at first glance whom she could trust and whom she couldn’t.

  She decided—tentatively—that Kit was one of those she could. Moreover, she had in that instant an almost overwhelming desire to take him to bed in order to prove the accuracy of her instinct. She also knew, however, that this desire could wait. He wasn’t going anywhere, and neither was she. It, she and he could all wait.

  “When can we see your studio?” she asked.

  “Whenever you’d like.”

  “Actually, and for reasons I’ll make clear to you when the time is right, I’d rather have you do the shoot in your apartment. Would that be a problem?”

  “No, not at all. I’ve got a portable light pack at home. Depending upon what you want me to shoot, it may be enough. What—or who—is it, anyway, you want me to shoot?”

  “All in good time, Mr. Addison. All in good time.” She said it through a smile, but also in a way that suggested to Kit she was going to want to manage every aspect of the project. The mystery both of her and of the project left him feeling a bit off kilter—but it was a feeling he decided he could live with for a few more days.

  “Shall we say next Sunday?” she asked.

  “The day after tomorrow, or a week from this coming Sunday?” he asked, already unhappy at the thought of a long wait between this first meeting and the next one.

  “No, no,” she laughed. “You might forget me in ten days. I meant the day after tomorrow.”

  Kit kept his ecstasy to himself. “Very good,” he tossed off easily, as if to suggest that yes, maybe he could forget her in ten days. “Does early afternoon work for you?”

  “Early afternoon is perfect,” she answered. Say, one-ish?”

  He was about to answer her suggestion with a confirmation, but suddenly lost his train of thought while staring at her face. Groping for something—anything, really—to get the conversation back on track and not allow this first, brief meeting to come to an end, he looked down at his feet.

  “By the way, I was admiring your rug when I first came in. I’m afraid I can’t quite identify its provenance.”

  “Oh, that,” she said rather too haphazardly, even as Kit thought he detected a certain pleasure at his observation of it and now at his question. “It’s an Aubuisson. I picked it up at practically a yard-sale price. I thought it might complement the décor.”

  “Really?” Kit was intrigued. “Then you like junk sales?” He was already beginning to assemble a short list of things they might have in common—even if the pronunciation of this particular rug wasn’t one of them. Daneka, in the meantime, registered Kit’s misinterpretation and welcomed the opportunity to correct him.

  “No, it wasn’t a junk sale, precisely. I got it at auction. I don’t remember exactly what I pai
d for it, but I think it was in the neighborhood of $40,000, plus or minus. The slight smugness of her smile played havoc with her attempts at nonchalance.

  Kit’s feet instinctively rose up off the rug. He was dumbstruck. The equivalent amount of money would’ve paid his rent for two years, would’ve kept entire families in New York alive for as long, would’ve maintained a small African village for probably much longer. Not to mention the hidden cost, on average, of a pair of child’s eyes for every such hand-woven rug. And his goddamned shoes were on it! No less, the stain of his mispronunciation. Certainly—he made a quick mental note—the authority of someone who could afford to throw forty grand down on a foot-warmer outweighed any dilettante’s knowledge he might possess on the subject of rugs.

  Daneka had already risen from the sofa and was extending a hand. Kit extended his own, which she grasped warmly. Unusual in his experience, she continued to hold onto it as she led him to the front door. He wondered whether this was some European custom he was unacquainted with, or whether she had simply forgotten—or was too befuddled—to drop his hand. In any case, he relished these extra few seconds of physical contact with her and was in no rush to withdraw his hand from hers.

  Daneka, meanwhile, knew exactly the effect she was producing. Kit would’ve felt predictably awkward walking the length of the room with his right arm crossing his own body in order to maintain the parting handshake which she had launched and was holding fast to. Daneka didn’t wish to discomfort him precisely. But she did wish him to be slightly off balance—and to fix the memory of these last few seconds in his head, at least until Sunday afternoon.

  The fact is, Kit would not forget those few seconds—or the preceding ten or fifteen minutes—for the rest of his life.