Lovers and Other Monsters Read online

  Then I return over the waves, walking like a lady of smoke, like a ghost. Once I near a ship that reminds me of a huge centipede, crawling in the moonlight on its hundred oars. When they spy me, the sailors cry out. They plead for succor, whether from me or against me I never know.

  Homeward, then. Crete has changed since the old days. There are castles now, and squat, tumbledown villages, and the Franks camp over the whole land like a cloud of locusts come to rest. The palace of King Minos I cannot find, not even the mound the boy spoke of. So I must return to the labyrinth, into the darkness, and awaken.

  I gaze up at a single star through the untraceable skylight. The boy has made no attempt to slay me, or to get away. He lies asleep, with one arm around my middle.

  ❖

  I know what I have to do.

  “Alexius, get up.” I nudge him gently with my nose, then crawl a little ways off, to give him room.

  “What? Huh? What does my Lady require?”

  I laugh again. He seems less shocked by my laughter this time. “You would serve me now?”

  “I dreamed that you had changed, that you were a beautiful lady—”

  “Alexius, you sound like one of those mooning, Frankish poets.”

  “Perhaps, my Lady.”

  “Very well, then. I command you to lead me out of this place, into the world, for I have seen it only in my dreams and long to know it in the flesh. Alexius, can you imagine how it is to have worn beautiful clothing only in my dreams, to have eaten at the banquet table only in dreams, and to somehow be kept warm and strong that way? I did not starve, subsisting on dreams, but I have not flourished either. Somehow your arrival motivates me... because in my nearly two thousand years I have not seen and touched what you have in nearly twenty.”

  He sits against the wall, silent.

  “Very well then,” I say. “We shall go now.”

  “Lady, I cannot lead you.”

  “Would you disobey me already? Maybe you are a worthless traitor after all.”

  I expect him to weep at that, but he is defiant. “It isn’t that. I simply don’t know the way.”

  “Ah, you forgot the ball of yarn.”

  For an instant he is puzzled, silent, but he knows the old stories as well as he knows his own name, for he is a Greek, not a Frank, and the answer comes to him. “Yes, that is it.”

  “I know the way. Before now, I have merely been unable to follow it.”

  ❖

  So we walk for miles, around and around in the labyrinth King Minos commanded Daedalus to build in order to contain the royal embarrassment, my ancestor. I lean on the boy’s shoulder, since it is difficult to so burden my puny hooves and ankles. We stop to rest many times.

  Once, I ask him about the wars.

  “Christian men take up the cross,” he says, “and go fight the pagans.”

  “These pagans, are they like Persians?”

  “They worship Mahomet.”

  “And what is that?”

  “A demon, some say, who sleeps in a coffin that hovers between heaven and earth. Others say he was a prophet.”

  “I knew a prophet once. His name was Tiresias. Blind. But he saw very clearly, for all the good it did him.”

  We pass through richly furnished, canopied rooms. There is much luxury in this labyrinth, for Asterius was, after all, the son of a king. But these chambers are near the outer part of the maze, and the resounding echoes make them unbearable for very long, through either the malice or negligence of Daedalus. Only in the heart of the labyrinth is there any quiet. Only there can one dream.

  “And what will you do in the world, Lady?”

  “I shall go to France. I have dreamed of it.”

  “Men will fear to behold you.”

  “Perhaps not.”

  Onward, as the accumulated echoes of our speech and movements thunder after us like an angry mob driving us forth into the unknown.

  It is like a birth, at the very last. I hold back. I am afraid. I feel a kind of pain I never knew could exist. The great bronze doors guarding the labyrinth are long gone. The corridors slowly blend into caves, then ravines, and at last there is a naked sky over us, and I am unable to go on.

  He takes me by the hand, gently but firmly, and leads me up onto a hilltop among some olive trees. There we sit, looking out over the sea.

  Spring flowers sway in the gentle breeze. What astonishing things are the flowers, how incredible the breeze.

  “And what will you do in the world, Alexius?” I ask him finally.

  “Nothing, Lady. I have nowhere to go. There is nothing for me.”

  “No one may know how his life is to be spun, Alexius, or measured, or cut. Do not blame yourself.”

  “Lady, in serving you I do penance for my many sins.”

  “You don’t really believe that, do you child?”

  “If I believe anything at all, yes, Lady.”

  “As you wish then.”

  So we wait until nightfall and emerge by moonlight, out of the trees, and walk along a road, meeting a single shepherd who falls to his knees at the sight of us. Then we come to a town and there, indeed, as Alexius had prophesied, men flee in terror. He leads me to a boat. I sit in the narrow stern while he rows.

  What an awesome thing the ocean is. On the water and under the stars, I tell him the rest of my story, how, it is said, creatures such as myself can become fully human if only someone can see the humanity in them. Asterius remained a monster, in effect, because he was not loved. That was the source of his rage. That was why he wanted to die in the end. There was enough of the man in his heart for that.

  I tell Alexius the story I heard in the windswept castle, from the mooning Frankish poet.

  “I know it too,” he says, letting go of the oars. For a time the boat drifts and the two of us see there while the moon sets into the water. Then, in the darkness he leans forward, careful not to capsize the boat, puts his arms around me as far as they can reach, and kisses me gently on my monstrous lips. For that instant, perhaps, he does not see me as misshapen at all.

  ❖

  Much later we hail a ship and are taken to another island, and to another, and another, to the growing wonder of the inhabitants. We travel through many lands, and the tales of us always precede our coming. Great crowds greet us in every town. Lords command us to attend them in their castles. We are the miracle and prodigy of the age.

  I run my hands through my long golden hair. That is marvel enough. Ladies show me how to comb it. I spend long hours gazing at my pale face in a mirror. That, too, is a marvel, for which men call me vain. Still, my eyes are my best feature, startling even when the sailors first found me naked but for Alexius’s cloak.

  My body is so light now, like a cloud. I move so freely. A marvel.

  As for my beast-man, he goes before me always, frightening then delighting onlookers with his clumsy tricks, rowing my boats, bearing my luggage, leading my horse. When we come to the France of my dreams it is I who lead him into the fair, though, with a leash around his neck. He holds back, afraid. I whisper gently in his ear.

  I don’t know if he can understand words any longer. I think he is forgetting that he was once Alexius, who sorrowed. Perhaps one day I shall kiss him on his terrible lips to remind him, summoning him back into himself.

  Perhaps.

  I run my fingers through my golden hair.

  Parke Godwin

  A Matter of Taste

  Among the excellent writings of my friend and erstwhile collaborator Parke Godwin are an award-winning ghost story, “The Fire When It Comes”; several historical novels, including Beloved Exile, Firelord, The Last Rainbow, and A Memory of Lions; such science-fantasy as Waiting for the Galactic Bus and its sequel, The Snake Oil Wars, and a semiautobi-ographical modern novel, A Truce with Time. “A Matter of Taste” is an urbane tale of two sophisticated lovers with decidedly unusual appetites.

  MEDIOCRITY LIVES in a crowded house. Perfection dwells alone. For Addiso
n Solebury life was lonely at the top. Even in the upper reaches of gastronomy his tastes were so lofty that no restaurant in the world could hope for his continued custom. In the main, he prepared his own meals, a process of considerable labor and research that only added zest to anticipation, feasts so rarefied in their reflection of taste that few could share, let alone cater them.

  His standards were arcane but not inflexible. On an off night he could squeak by with properly aged filet mignon and vin ordinaire, but for the most part, Solebury’s antipathy to the ordinary was visceral and had been all his life. He turned even paler than normal at the sight of margarine, fled a block out of his way to avoid the effluvium of pizza, and often woke whimpering from nightmares of canned tomato soup.

  Food—his ecstatic, almost sexual vision of it—was an art he could not see coarsened; therefore, integrity exacted its price. The absence of sharing, of a woman, was the minor mode of Solebury’s male lament. After all, not even the nightingale sang for the hell of it, but Solebury, through overspecialization, labored and dined for the most part alone. Time and again, he girded himself and went woman hunting, but with his intolerance of the mundane, his quest was akin to a majestic elk bugling for a mate in the city pound.

  Many were called, none were chosen. Me despaired of finding a woman of similar refinement. Even those for whom Solebury had the highest hopes revealed a gullet of clay. His fragile expectations would inevitably dampen as she attacked her salad, flickered as she swallowed garlic escargots with vulgar relish, guttered with the entrée, and died over brandy and cheese. Failure upon failure, until the coming of Pristine Solent.

  From the first tentative conversation in the library reference room where he worked, Solebury felt right about Pristine. When he peered over her shoulder, he found her scanning just those sources he ferreted out in his pursuit of perfection. An exploratory dinner was even more promising. Craftily, he suggested the Four Seasons and was heartened when Pristine answered her door in sensible clothes rather than the coronation gown an ordinary woman might have worn for the occasion. Clothes were not important. The key, the subtle clue to the unerring rightness of his choice was in the way Pristine addressed herself to food. Looks counted for something, to be sure. Pristine was short and robust, with a pale but infinitely well-nourished complexion, a square face with faintly critical brows, and a wide, ready smile that displayed 90 percent of her perfect teeth. For his own appearance, she seemed tacitly to approve of him: pallid as herself with a clear skin, perhaps a small roll of flesh around his fortyish middle that only attested to many years of choosy but ample diet.

  But her address to the food—ah, that was exquisite. Her fork balanced in a firm hand, Pristine studied the entrée, turned it this way and that in the manner of an inquisitive coroner, then, resigned that the chef could come no closer to her ideals, speared, chewed, and reluctantly swallowed. Solebury’s lips parted in silent admiration. He dared to hope.

  “The best is none too good, is it?” he winked at her, then applied the test. Would she join him soon again in a dinner of his own preparation? “I’m something of an expert on dining. In a small way.”

  “Small way” was the code phrase that separated cognoscenti from the uninitiated. He was instantly gratified.

  “Why don’t we?” Pristine touched her white hand to his, strong fingers curving around intimately to touch his callused palm. She wrinkled her upturned nose at him. “It sounds memorable.”

  Solebury leaned forward and their eyes met over the forgotten trout amandine. “I think it could be. You know what it means to meet someone you can truly share with?”

  “Yes, yes. I know.” Pristine stroked the back of his slightly trembling hand. “So seldom. So rare.”

  A bubble of happiness swelled in Solebury’s chest. “You’re very beautiful.”

  “I feel beautiful tonight,” said Pristine Solent.

  They got out of the taxi a few blocks before her apartment, not wanting the evening to end, holding hands, heads close together. Solebury kissed her with clumsy ardor at her outside door. Pristine swayed into him, then threw back her head to the night sky with a little mew of contentment.

  “What an evening. Oh, Addison, I hope there’ll be a moon next time. I’m so damned romantic about these things. And a moon is part of it.”

  “It is. So important.” Solebury positively quivered with joy.

  “And what’s a romantic dinner without moonlight?” Pristine squeezed his hand. “G’night.”

  If there was a sidewalk under him, Solebury didn’t feel it. He floated to the corner and let three cabs approach, slow tentatively, and pass on before remembering he wanted one.

  Like Lancelot, Solebury’s love quest lay through great deeds. Such a dinner could not be conjured for the next evening or even within a week. Pristine would consider that careless. This called for his full mastery. Since the bone of genius is discipline, Solebury went back to basics, to research.

  His own office, the library reference room, was his usual start. All the dailies were searched, torrents of fine print skimmed for the form of his menu. All professionals have their secrets; one of Solebury’s lay in his insistence on a slightly pungent spice overlooked by all but a few masters and not commonly used for centuries. Only one establishment, Whittakers, still used it in their prepared seasonings. Just a tiny dollop, but to Solebury it was sine qua non, adding an overtaste delicate as it was incomparable.

  At length his entrée was found. In a rising fever of concentration Solebury turned his attention to the treacherous but crucial matter of wine.

  Only a tyro considered geriatric vintages automatically best. Like any living thing, the grape had its youth, prime, and declining age. Of recent years he gave serious consideration to only one: ’76 of course—but ’76 what? Even within the confines dictated by a white-meat entrée, there were nuances of choice. Some masters—and Pristine could well be one—preferred a demi-sec where he would choose a drier variety. A blunder here, one false step, could shadow Pristine’s judgment. She’d be kind, but Solebury would feel a door closing behind her charity, and successive evenings would find her otherwise engaged.

  He let instinct guide him, recalling a champagne he’d chosen not two months back, a superb Chardonnay brut. His usual shop produced one remaining bottle at a larcenous price, but Solebury’s heart sang as he hurried home. He knew all this was preamble, part of the labor of love. A great deal of delving remained.

  One more choice awaited him: the time, more of a gamble than all the rest. Pristine wanted a moon, but though Solebury scanned the papers and the skies, one promised nothing and the other remained perversely overcast. At last came an evening when the early autumn moon entered like a diva from a proscenium of fleecy cumulus clouds. Solebury turned from his window and reached for the phone, at once stabbed to the heart and uplifted by Pristine’s throaty greeting.

  “Hello, Addison. I was just thinking of you.”

  He choked on his ecstasy. “You were?”

  “Must be ESP. I was looking at the moon and thinking tonight might be—”

  “Yes. Perfect. That’s why I called. You wanted a romantic moon. Shall we dine? Something very special?”

  “In a small way. Love to,” Pristine whispered over the wire. “I’m famished for something special.”

  A world of promise throbbed in her honeyed contralto.

  Solebury always dined late. Pristine was not surprised by the hour or the address, neither that fashionable.

  “It’s a perfect time, Addison. I’m never hungry much earlier than that. I’ll be there.”

  Solebury hung up in a soft rush of joy. Here was a mate for all reasons.

  ❖

  Humming with busy pleasure, Solebury twirled the ’76 down into the waiting ice. Even now, before Pristine arrived, there was spadework. He miscalculated slightly and was only half ready with final preparations when she appeared. If her first dinner costume had been sensible, her clothing tonight was downright u
tilitarian—jeans and boots and a wind-breaker against the cool. She gave Solebury a cheerful little peck and surveyed his labors.

  “Can I help?” she asked politely.

  “Oh no, really. There’s just a little further—”

  “No, let me. You’ve already worked so hard.”

  It flattered Solebury to see Pristine pitch in. She was very sturdy, but no dining of this caliber was ever accomplished without hard physical labor. At length Pristine paused, wiping her brow with the back of one white hand, and drew the champagne from its bucket to browse the label with admiration.

  “Lovely year, Addison.” She turned again briefly to the last shovel work, then stepped aside for her host. “You’ll want to open up and carve.”

  “Of course. You are a dear, Pristine.” Descending into the grave, Solebury wielded his implement with a practiced economy of movement. Three deft snaps with the crowbar broke the casket seals. With a gustatory flourish, he threw it open for her approval.

  “Bon appetit, darling.”

  He hovered waiting under the October moon for the sunbeam of her approval, but he saw only a frown of disappointment.

  “Beautifully aged,” he assayed against her silence. “Buried Thursday.”

  Pristine sat down on the freshly turned earth. “Oh, Addison. Oh dear...”

  “What—what’s wrong?”

  “Everything!” she wailed.

  He felt a premonitory chill. “But he’s perfect. Buried from Whittaker’s last Thursday. I use them exclusively, the only undertakers who still use myrrh in their preparation. You must know that.”

  Pristine’s disappointment turned brittle. “Of course I know that. There is Whittaker’s and only Whittaker’s. But as you see, the entrée is hardly Caucasian.”

  True, the entrée was decidedly dark. There was no mention of that in the obituary. He’d assumed white meat; a minor variant and trivial. Solebury vaulted out of the grave to sit facing Pristine like a teacher. “Pristine, that doesn’t really matter. Expertise is one thing, ivory tower another.”

  “Doesn’t matter?” Pristine corrected him like an errant child. “Surely you know non-Caucasian flesh doesn’t take the myrrh flavor well at all. It cancels it out.”