The Lover From an Icy Sea (23 page)

“
Daneka, my sweet, what would you like to do today?” Daneka moved to the back door and looked out over the ocean. In his minutes-long reverie, Kit had ignored the change in weather. Sun and sky were obscured by a dense fog rolling in like ephemeral, airborne ocean waves. The Atlantic itself, barely visible below, was just one broad carpet of gray except where the waves broke loosely on the beach like frayed ends of the same gray carpet, albeit in muffled white.

“
Exactly what we’re doing, darling. This and nothing more.” She sat down in his lap and laid her head on his shoulder, then met his ear with what sounded to Kit like a sigh of satisfaction.

“
Are you happy here, Daneka? With me, I mean.”

“
My God! Isn’t it obvious?”

Kit winced. It had cost him something to ask the question. That she’d answered his question with a question of her own—and that she apparently hadn’t wished to look him directly in the eye as she’d asked it—unsettled Kit and gave him pause to wonder whether he was, for her, just a temporary means to an end; a momentary plaything; a brief, entertaining interlude.

“
We could stay here, you know. Not in this villa, of course. But somewhere here on the coast. Or elsewhere in Portugal. Or anywhere in Europe, for that matter. I could continue my photography. You could do—. Well, you could continue doing what you do. Remotely. Then just fly over to New York when you needed to. We could lead a simpler life. Just the two of us—and an occasional goat.”

Kit had said as much as he wanted or needed to say. He’d laid out the gambit. Now it was up to Daneka to pick it up or drop it.

“
Baaaaaaaaaaah.” Daneka smiled.

“
That would be a sheep. A goat says ‘bauauauauauauauh’.”

“
Is that a fact?”

“
Yup. I know. I’m a country boy at heart, just trying to woo some big city-girl with my country ways.” Daneka looked at Kit for a long moment, her gaze and the thinking behind it inscrutable.

“
You say ‘bauauauauauauau’ and I say ‘baaaaaaaaaah.’ You say ‘skadoodle’ and I say ‘skadadle.’ Let’s call the whole thing off!” To the last bit of silly lyric, she added an exasperated sigh and the sweep of one arm, suggesting curt dismissal. Kit didn’t know exactly how to interpret the gesture. It could be drama for the sake of drama, or it could be something else, something entirely unconscious—as non-verbal communication all too frequently was in his experience. She then scrunched up her nose and waved a hand in front of her face to rid the cloud of smoke. Kit immediately reached out to the ashtray and detached the hot ash from the end of his cigarette. The ash continued to burn. Daneka reached down, grabbed the butt and stamped out the ash—not, Kit thought, without some suggestion of indignation.

“
You didn’t answer my question,” Kit said.

“
Which question?

“
About us. Here. Now. About a future for us. Here or elsewhere. A simpler future. A future without the buzz and grind of New York. A future without the bright lights—sure. But also a future of fados, of fandangos—or if not of fandangos, than of flamencos. I don’t really give a fuck what the dance is, or the song. I just want to know about our future.”

“
Speaking of, wanna?”

“’
Wanna what?” Kit’s eyebrows descended into a dark “V.”

“
Wanna fuck? What else?” Daneka’s eyebrows mirrored Kit’s, but inverted.

“
Who’s talking about fucking?” Kit asked, clearly annoyed.

“
Well, as long as we’re on the subject of finances—.” There it was. After all of the physical thrust and parry, all of the wordplay, all of the sweet words and warm tears in response to some of the local folklore, it boiled down to this. Kit smiled inwardly at how a little alliteration could lead like an arrow to a bull’s eye—to the real issue.

“
I’m aware of it,” he said. “I’ve been aware of it since the beginn—.”

“
No, darling. I didn’t mean that.” Kit was finally glad for some real dialogue between them.

“
Yes, you did. In some sense, anyway. And even if you didn’t, it’s about time we discussed it. I’ve been aware of it—painfully aware—since the beginning. We live in different worlds, you and I. That doesn’t have to stop us, but we can’t ignore it.”

“
Well?” Daneka took a seat opposite him, put both hands on the table and locked her fingers.

“
Well, nothing. This trip is clearly over my head. I’ll contribute what I can, but only as an investment. That’s the best I can do.”

“
As an investment?” she asked, and Kit immediately saw the hard, grey steel replacing the soft, olive green in a pair of eyes he loved even better than his own—or, at least, whose reflection he loved better than his own. As he looked hard at her, he noticed there was still a reflection. “My, how quickly we learn!”

He extended both hands across the table and grasped hers. “Yes, darling. As an investment—in us. I’m already way beyond my means on this trip. But it’s worth it to me. Every penny of it—and for as long as I may have to work to pay it off. I want to do the job—whatever the job is—that you hired me to do. But you and I both know we’re well beyond a mere job at this point. I just don’t know, in your mind, where the job ends and something else begins.”

“
Kit, darling. Let’s forget the job for the time being, okay? Let’s just enjoy ourselves and worry about that job, any job,
mañana
.” Daneka abruptly stood up. The discussion was at an end—at least for her. She turned back around to him. “And as for the cost of this trip, leave it to me. I can expense it.”

‘
I can expense it’ was not precisely the answer he’d hoped to receive to his original question. But their interlude was far from over. For now, he’d elicited—and received—a reprieve of sorts. They’d continue. He’d put her on notice that he was, financially at least, not up to the challenge. She’d answered, at least as far as he was concerned, that she understood and would accept the burden for both of them. If finances were the only obstacle, he was certain they could overcome it.

*  *  *

Kit was still young, naïve, “old world” in the ways of the new world in this new millennium—especially, where the ostentatiously new of old-world-Europe bumped up against the unsuspecting old of new-world-New York. New, old or middling really didn’t make much difference where New York was concerned. After all, New York wasn’t Philadelphia or Boston. New York was a casino where anyone could play. You needed only to have the chips and sufficient chutzpah—and Daneka had more than her fair share of both.

Chapter 31

As the day wore on, it became clear the fog was not going to lift—either over the Atlantic and their particular piece of coastline, or over their last conversation. Fog and finances couldn’t, like an under-performing employee, simply be dismissed—and so both of them were here to stay for a while.

Each time he lit up a cigarette, Kit was careful to move to the back door—or just outside it—so as not to contribute further to the strained atmosphere he felt hanging in the room. This was the first time, indoors or out, that he and Daneka had spent an extended period of time in close physical proximity, but absent any effort at intimacy. They were a pair of pewter goblets standing opposite one another at either end of a mantel, beneath which a warm fire should’ve been crackling. But none crackled. None even burned. Instead, small bits of unspent log smoldered in silence, each tiny spark of an effort immediately snuffed out by the weight of sighs as heavy as the fog that rolled in over the beach and up to their back door. The villa was theirs to do with as they wished. The bedroom was theirs to do with it whatever they wanted. The bed in the bedroom in the villa was theirs to do with as they knew how. Yet they did nothing.

Hour by hour, it became more difficult to delineate sky from water, water from beach, beach from dry land, the grey dampness without from the still more grey dampness within. The steady tick-tock of an antique clock hanging just over the dining room table was punctuated only occasionally by chimes marking the quarter-, half- and full-hour.

As seven successive hourly chimes suggested the likelihood of dusk, however invisible, Kit heard Daneka rise from their bed, open and close the bathroom door, and start the shower. He then rose from his own place of quiet vigil at the dining room table, lit another cigarette and stepped outside. It was indeed beginning to grow dark, or maybe the fog was simply growing more dense. In either case, each time Kit took a drag on his cigarette, the glow from its tip stood out to him in close-up relief against the warning flare of a buoy at some ill-defined distance from the shoreline below: two little bright orange lights surging, then receding, at regular intervals, and one in imitation of the other. He could interpret it as a sign if he wished to—but he didn’t. Instead, when he heard the shower stop, he dropped the remainder of his cigarette to the stones below, exhaled in one long, steady stream, and stamped the butt out. He returned through the back door; closed it behind him; walked across the dining room floor to the bedroom.

“’
Evening, darling,” Daneka murmured. “Hungry?”

“
Quite.”

“
Shall we go back to the same place?”

“
Yes, let’s, unless—.”

“
Unless what?”

“
Well, I doubt that we’ll want to sit in the garden tonight. I doubt that anyone will want to sit in the garden tonight. It’s rather damp outside. Damp and dreary. We could simply stay in. Get a fire going. Make an evening of it at home.”

“
At home?” Daneka looked at Kit.

“
Well, in a manner of speaking, I guess. A temporary home. A home away from home.”

“
I suppose that home is where the heart is,” Daneka answered flatly. “Yes,” she added with a bit more enthusiasm. “This is home—at least for the moment.”

She was looking directly at Kit for the first time in hours. He felt gratitude—even if her last qualifying phrase had left things open-ended once again—and smiled back at her. The fog that had been hanging inside the villa all day seemed instantly to vanish with the smile she returned. She walked to him, a thing of terry cloth from head to toe and without make-up, still wet in places she hadn’t yet reached with the towel.

“
Forgive me, darling. I’ve been brooding all day. I don’t know why, exactly. Probably the weather.”

“
That’s quite okay,” Kit offered. “I haven’t been particularly communicative myself. I own—. I’m to blame for at least half of this.” Daneka put her arms around Kit’s neck and let her towel drop to the floor. She pressed her body up against his, found his mouth with hers, gave him a long, passionate kiss.

Kit felt a tingle grow into a glow. When she finally broke the kiss, she remained with the tip of her nose touching his and looked warmly into his eyes. He felt a familiar sun rise back up between them.

“
All better now”? she teased in sing-song. And then, without waiting for an answer, she answered for him. “All better now.”

Kit stepped back. “Yes. All better now,” he mimicked. “Let me make another fire and then take a quick shower before we go. Okay?”

“
K,” Daneka answered. In the meantime, I’ll apply some science. And I think I’ll wear a dress tonight. No special occasion. I just feel like it.” With that, she picked the towel back up off the floor and continued to dry herself off until Kit interrupted her.

“
Let me do that.” She surrendered the towel to him, and Kit continued to pat her dry. When he reached under her arms to dry her armpits, she obligingly lifted them. Daneka, herself, would’ve been at a loss to explain why the same action she’d initiated only moments earlier with her own hands now resulted in a quite unexpected secondary benefit. She first noticed it in her nipples. That reaction was only further reinforced when Kit reached between her legs, which she opened without hesitation. He easily found the last, cool drops of shower water and removed them with the towel. These, however, were instantly replaced with something just as wet, warmer, and somewhat viscous. This internal reaction was quite involuntary—as was her slow rotation and the placement first of her hands and then of her elbows on the bed as she bent down from the waist. While keeping her hips high and what was between them fully exposed, she simultaneously spread her legs and rose up on tip toes so as to elevate her hips at best an inch higher. It was something primordial, atavistic, simian even, and she felt no shame in it. He was male and highly desirable; she was female and—even she felt it—highly desirable. Her body told her this. Her nerves and her blood and yes, even her endocrine glands told her the same. At this particular moment, only one thing mattered: copulation. It was the thing for which she’d been made, for which every cell in her body now screamed. If she were forced to confess the truth of it, no matter how much she loved this man and this man alone, no matter how desirable she found him and him alone, she would’ve taken any man, any number of men, to satisfy the instinct—the ur-drive—to have something of flesh inside her. The only thing that mattered now manifested itself in a blinding, raging desire to copulate, to fornicate, to fuck.