The Wonders (26 page)

Rhona softened her stance as Christos, despite his moods and outbursts, worked hard for the next month. Kathryn held her tongue, and Yuri dodged the worst of Christos's temper. All they had to do till the end was keep the peace.

A
FTER THEY RETURNED
to Overington and the storm had settled, Kathryn had Leon and Minh to her apartment. She poured them a gin, lime and soda, and they toasted Yuri, the buffer who saved them so often from the wrath and rants of Christos.

“We have to make Christos be kinder to Yuri though. Imagine spending twenty-four hours a day with Mr. Pomposity. Mr. I'm-an-artist-and-you-are-a-peasant. Sometimes I worry Yuri will leave. I think I'd be more devastated than Christos.”

“You'd be crabby too if you'd had the kind of surgery he's undergone, Kathryn.”

“Sweet as always, Minh. But let's face it, he was an arsehole well before we met him.”

“Maybe. But one who loves Yuri, even though he doesn't always show it that well.” Minh reached around Leon's waist and into his jacket pocket, feeling around for the tissues she had put there before they left the apartment. Leon couldn't help placing his own hand on the outside of his pocket to experience
the sensation of her slender fingers moving around inside in a gesture of such intimacy and ease. “And Yuri's found his own work, the photography. He disappears to do that when he needs to. He's so talented.”

“I know,” Kathryn said. “Still, Christos is a fool—no, a dunderhead, the way he treats Yuri like a slave. Yuri's our baby brother. He's the real angel here.”

Kyle appeared in the doorway. He stood there, smiling at the three and smoothing his hair on the left side with the heel of his hand in an unconscious gesture Leon had seen a million times. Pressing the hair flat against the head again and again as if he could contain some unruly thoughts that threatened to escape.

“Do you want a drink, Kyle, or are you just going to stand there staring at us?” Kathryn said.

Kyle pushed himself away from the doorjamb and strolled over to the couch. “Thanks for asking.” He sat down beside Kathryn and sank back into a plump scarlet cushion while she mixed him a drink on the tray on the coffee table. The housekeeper brought a fresh bucket of ice and was gone before anyone had a chance to thank her.

Leon could see that Kyle was making an effort not to accidentally brush against Kathryn as he caterpillared forward on the couch to receive his drink. Was this confident PR man actually nervous around Kathryn?

They lifted their glasses. The filtered light caught curls of lime peel in luminous movement as if they were live creatures swimming between the bubbles in the glasses. The four drank in silence, gazing out through the windows of Kathryn's apartment at the clouds shifting shape in the milky pink sky of sunset. In the distance one of the elephants trumpeted. The other answered with a muted call. The understory vegetation Leon
had seen being planted when he first arrived at Overington had now formed a dense hedge. Ashy green blueberries swelled beneath the dappled shade of a stand of red spruce and maple trees. The four-pointed stars of partridgeberry flowers in their distinctive pairs glowed against the glossy leaves trailing the ground.

They drank another glass while the light faded in the garden. When Kathryn stifled a yawn, Minh stood and stretched and said she was going to her studio to finish some work. She was gone before Leon had time to stand up. He said his good-bye to Kathryn and Kyle and was halfway across the common room before he realized he had left his phone beside his chair.

Kyle was talking in a low voice as Leon walked back up the carpet runner of the hall to the doorway. Leon hesitated. He was reluctant to interrupt, but he needed his phone, and so he stood swaying in his indecision, trying not to listen. Kyle's voice stopped, then started, stopped, then started, a dogged drilling tool. In the third pause, as Leon was turning to leave, thinking he would call Kathryn and ask her to bring the phone to the apartment, Kathryn spoke.

“Kyle—”

Kyle's interruption was inaudible, a low buzz. Leon heard the swish of Kathryn's cape and a hollow tap as one of her heeled slippers clacked on the parquetry floor.

“I like you, Kyle—”

Again the buzz. Two quick clacks, as if Kathryn was edging backward. Or perhaps she was moving toward him. Perhaps it was the mating dance of to and fro, attraction and fear of rejection. How could Leon know, and why was he even pondering this when all he had wanted was to pick up his phone? It was time for him to stop hanging around behind the doorway.

“No, really, Kyle, you're a pal, but . . . Anyway, we have to work together. Let's keep it—”

Clack, clack. Now Leon was sure she was stepping away. He decided to go into the room, help break up the awkward moment. He rounded the doorway, hand on the architrave, and caught sight of Kyle standing close to Kathryn, closer than Leon had seen anyone to her, face-to-face. She must have been able to feel his breath on her lips. Shockingly, Kyle reached up and placed his hands around the back of Kathryn's neck, as if to pull her face toward his. She reared away, almost unbalancing as her slipper heel caught the edge of the rug, then righting herself.

“I've asked you not to touch me. I don't like being touched. I do like you, but not in that way. I'm sorry.”

Leon had to speak, to make his presence known before they saw him standing there. “Hello? Um, I left my phone.”

When they both turned to him, at such a speed he barely saw their heads move, Kyle's face was so full of emotion Leon felt as though he was seeing three or four faces struggling to take control. What a terrible mistake. Why hadn't he waited, or gone to the apartment and called? For a second he watched the turbulent performance of Kyle's features. By the time Kathryn had squeezed behind the couch and begun to poke around the chairs for Leon's phone, Kyle's face was composed again, but his arms had dropped as if broken at the shoulders.

“Have to keep moving.” He smiled at Leon, the super-sincere toothy smile he could produce no matter what the occasion. “I'm out of here. Catch you later, Kathryn.”

“Yeah, okay, sure.”

Kyle pulled out his phone and began scrolling through screens as he sauntered past Leon and out the door.

“Found it.” Kathryn held up Leon's phone.

“Great, thanks.” He would pretend he'd seen nothing. He took the phone from her.

“So, Leon, shall we forget about that . . . little scene?”

“Of course,” he said.

But he would never forget Kyle's face in that moment, the wretched expression caught between grinning and grimacing.

F
OR THE LAST
couple of weeks, Leon had been working with a ghostwriter on a book commissioned by Kyle, who had heard about Leon's library of self-help titles.

“Mate, do you think you could knock one of them out?” Kyle had asked. He often called Leon “mate,” and occasionally tried out “no worries” or “she'll be right” with an upward inflection as if he was practicing a foreign language. “We'd get you a writer, of course.”

Leon supposed it was worth a try. He must have read hundreds of them. And it would pass the time.

“We'll get a presale, market the hell out of it. This can be an ongoing income stream when we've shut down.”

The ghostwriter's appearance was suitably spectral. He was in his fifties, with long thin blond hair. When he dipped his head to read or write, the hair closed in a lank curtain around his face. “What I do,” he told Leon, “is listen to you talk and channel you into lively accessible prose.”

The trouble was subject matter.

“Hearts would be logical. Broken hearts? Mending hearts?” the ghost asked. “Tell me your story. There has to be plenty of material in that. How did this all start?”

They worked on the book in the tiny study Leon and Minh had used when they were looking for Susan, a recorder on the desk between them, the ghost's pen poised over his pad. As yet, the book was a collection of chapter titles with almost no content: “Three Keys to a New Heart,” “Broken Is a Way to Mend,” “Unblock Your Emotional Artery,” “Healthy Habits for a Healthy Heart.”

“So, Leon,” the ghost said, “all this physical stuff you've told me is great, but maybe you could give me a bit more about your emotional journey. You know, so we can take the physical and make it a metaphor. How about you think about it and we try again tomorrow.”

Minh caught Leon on his way to the gym. He was wearing his rank old shorts, monster running shoes that seemed to be made to walk in space, and the chest brace that had been designed by Howard for him to wear whenever he exercised.

“You're wearing the brace,” she said dully. “I always hated that brace.”

The first night Leon had spent in Minh's cottage, when he was still anxious about his first sexual encounter after the surgery, he'd pulled away like a shy bride from Minh. They had been lying on the couch, kissing and stroking each other.

“Back in a moment,” he said.

He'd hurried to his apartment, fitted himself out and slipped through the dark hallways and the garden to Minh's cottage. She had turned off the lights and opened her curtains onto the garden. The moon was a silver curl above the lions' hill. Maisie and Maximus were asleep, two black mounds leaning together under the grassy fringe of their open-walled summer shelter.

Inside the room Minh lay on the couch. She too had changed clothes while Leon was away. Her silky nightdress parted in a split to the top of her thighs. He walked to the couch and kissed her brow. She dropped her head backward to kiss his lips, but when she caught sight of what he was wearing she sat up straight, knocking against his head.

“You're not wearing that? How am I supposed to hold you?”

The brace was snug around his chest and had pads to protect the front and back of the cavity.

“It won't get in the way.”

“You want me to hug a medical brace? You think we can be intimate with that between us?”

“But my heart . . .” He trailed off and watched as her fingers began to undo the side straps.

“I am a doctor. I look after you. I want to make love with you, not with some piece of S-and-M equipment.”

With Minh in her nightgown before him, he raised his arms as she undid the brace and lifted it away. She dropped the brace on the floor and led him toward the window.

“Here.” Minh spread her hand and pressed it against the hole in his chest, where the moonlight had been shining through. “I will not let anything happen to the gizmo. But I need you to pay attention to me, not to what your heart is doing. It is a machine, Leon. It is not you.”

He had put his arms around her and absorbed the warmth of her body, the transfer of her energy into his own flesh.

Now he stood strapped into his leather brace before her on his way to the gym. Minh picked at her nails as she spoke.

“It's hard for me to say this, Leon, but I can't see the point in being together.”

Leon shook his head, confused. What was she saying? “We love each other. We're together because we love each other.”

“That's what I used to think was enough. But you know what? It's been almost a year and I don't know you any better than when we married. I shouldn't have said yes to such a quick wedding.”

“You do,” he said without thinking. “You know me better than anyone.”

“No, I understood for sure when I read what you wrote to Susan. I don't know you, and you don't know me. We're not getting closer, we're running on a parallel track. I am your wife. You sleep with me every night. We spend most days together. How is it that a letter to a stranger reveals more about you than I have learned in a year? I think the only way you can know someone is through a screen or a speaker. You mediate your whole life so that you will never actually have to reveal yourself. I thought you were coming into the world more, Leon. So wrong. And you know what else? I wonder if you only married me because I'm a doctor. Your very own live-in doctor.”