Grave Refrain: A Love/Ghost Story (15 page)

Instead, a heavily hennaed man with a preponderance of facial hair nodded in their direction as they entered: part surfer dude, part Black Sabbath cover band drummer, by Andrew’s guess. Emily made quick work of looking over the antique display counters, scrunching her nose up at the odd selection of jewelry, then turning her attention to a collection of old leather-bound books.

“I found a first edition Poe in here, believe it or not. They carry the oddest treasures. Odd and old, my favorite things.”

“Odd and old?”

“Um-hmm. I like the feel of memories. Antique brooches, vintage jackets—who wore them, what lives did they live? What secrets did they hold? I’ve traveled so little that I love finding things from far, far away. Like this old ring I found at the vintage shop where I work. I’m saving up for it. Can’t afford it, but I’ve got a childish fascination with it. Or this old hat.” She took a stylish fedora off a stand and playfully placed it on her head before turning to a mirror.

“Definitely not Garbo. With this hair, more like Harpo,” she mused, then returned it to its stand and shook her curls loose.

Like no woman in the world, Andrew wanted to say. She was of a different time, as if she had stepped out of an old photograph. Her quirkiness, her energy, her sadness. Odd and old. But in a good way. A good, good way.

He thought about the coat she had worn that night at the Skellar and pictured her in Paris. He pictured them together in the night, and what it would feel like to kiss her.

The man had taken his seat in the corner at a fringed table near a small wood burning stove and asked, “Honeymooners?”

They both stared at each other, and after a very heated pause blurted out, “No!”

“Yo, dude and dudess, that’s not the vibe I’m getting. Old souls. You’ve been together in at least one past life for sure. Here, come on over by the fire and let me take a look. Name’s Dwayne, by the way.”

Emily and Andrew both looked at the other, the deck of tarot cards, and a crystal ball on the table, with a combination of alarm and hysterics, each daring the other to go first. Finally they gave in. Andrew extended his hand in greeting, about to introduce himself, when Dwayne admonished, “No names, please. It damages my visions. Just sit on down. Her next to you. I need both your hands.”

Two small chairs sat empty next to Dwayne. Andrew pulled out one for Emily and sat down himself. Dwayne grasped Emily’s hand in his and pressed Andrew’s next to it.

“Oh man. You see these lines, these lines here?”

Their heads nestled together, Andrew felt her hair fall onto his shoulder and her breath warm his face. He swallowed hard. Emily’s heart was beating a mile a minute.

“That’s your life lines. See how they match, how they overlap in the same exact pattern? I’ve never seen anything like that.”

“What does it mean?” Emily asked.

“Well, it’s pretty flippin’ unbelievable.”

Andrew envisioned the worst. Ages of being brother and sister. Father, daughter…mother, son.
Christ.

“Look at the love lines. Just look at ’em—it’s the love lines that tell you everything, everything you’ll ever need. You mind if I call my friend? He’s never going to believe this shit.”

“Do you mind,” Andrew said, trying to hide his irritation. “We’re catching lunch and—”

“Yeah, yeah, I hear you, man. Bummer though. Egan, my friend, he’s one major palmist, and I’d bet you this shop he’s never seen anything like this.”

Andrew glanced down at Emily; she was pale.

“You belong to him.” The words froze them, inches from each other. They blinked their eyes at the same time and stared at him. Dwayne beamed at Emily. “You can’t diss this kind of fate. No how, no way. No matter how hard you try and fight it, no matter how far apart you are, it’ll always find you and bring you two together. I mean it’s seriously big-time karmic. You’re his. Always have been. Always will be. There’s never been a lifetime you haven’t been completely and totally his. I mean, like in the core of your being. See here? Slave, concubine, mistress, mistress, lover…goes on and on.”

He turned and laid his all-knowing gaze on Andrew. “Yo, man, this here lady’s your muse! Righteous.”

Emily’s eyes widened in utter disbelief. “What?”

Righteous indeed.

8

“W
AS
I E
VER
E
VEN
L
EGAL
?”

Emily stared at Dwayne as though he had just spoken to her in tongues. Her head shook in confusion, and if Andrew wasn’t mistaken, with no small amount of anger.

“You see that chain line?” His black enameled fingernail traced a basket weave pattern on her palm. “That’s oh, ten, twenty, thirty lifetimes right there. I don’t think you’re grasping the significance of this. You’re his inspiration, his drive—his reason for being, lady. Don’t matter if it’s legal or not.”

“But a concubine?” she challenged him under her breath. “How can you see that in a bunch of wrinkles?”

She was ticked off, that much Andrew could tell, and she didn’t appear to believe a bloody word. He also thought that if he didn’t move her quickly she might pick up the crystal ball from the table and smash the palmist’s head in with it.

She stared deeply into her palm and swallowed. “If he loved me so much, you think he’d find the decency to marry me, right? Anyway,” she said bracingly, “he already has a muse.”

Dwayne frowned at her in disagreement. “The lines don’t lie, lady. See your mound of Venus, here by your thumb…” His fingernails continued to poke at her hand, and Andrew saw Emily’s shoulders curl around herself in defiance. She was shutting down.

“Why don’t we head over to lunch,” Andrew insisted, almost lifting her up off the chair. “Thanks so much for your time, sir, it’s been…insightful, to say the least.”

He dropped a twenty near his crystal ball and whisked Emily out the door. By the time they reached the end of the alley, he had been holding his breath so long that he should have been rightfully dead. He could barely grasp how a stoner witch could summarize the driving force of his life within moments of looking at each of their hands.

They walked, Andrew not sure where they were going, his mind rushing to put the words together. How could he even begin to explain this to her?

Emily, this is it. My whole life. It starts with a boy. And a girl. Right? That much is easy.
But what to say next? How to make her understand?

How at eight years old, the boy sat in his bed one night, fingers playing an imaginary keyboard on the fringes of his bedspread, when his mind began to race with the wild blur of her, this girl, like an unloosed spirit, as the music wove new and thrilling patterns before his eyes. And she was there, always, from that day on. This girl, this same girl with the reddish hair, speaking to him, running joyously through his mind. How at fourteen, the pulse of his music had changed, with furor and rebellion. How he didn’t understand it, and he could only feel and ache and need. And then there was sex. And suddenly everything was sex, and she was sex, and she was his. Especially at night, in the quiet stillness. How at eighteen, words of black wit and a newly tried-on sophistication invaded his manners, his lyrics, his being—and fit like a coat that was too large though perfectly comfortable. It became the armor he wore to this day to battle everything, except her.

How could he confess that friends, family, and even sanity could slip away, but she was always there. For him. She would take one look at him and run screaming. Any sane person would.

Right now he had to focus on a way to tamp down these emotions, the ones that were demanding that he confess,
Yes, damn it, it’s true. All of it. Always you. Never another. There couldn’t be, there could never be—only you. In my very blood. That man is right. He is absofuckinglutely right! Don’t you feel it?

They walked in silence to the bistro, their shoulders inches from each other’s. Their reflection in a storefront window caught his eye. Although she was tall, Emily fit perfectly against his side, and he imagined how her body would feel against his, how his arms would hold her. The cool breeze blew back her hair, and she wrapped her arms across her old-fashioned sweater to keep warm. He considered surrendering his leather jacket but hovered his hand near the small of her back instead as they crossed the street, not trusting himself to do more.

The bistro proved to be like the countless others Andrew had hidden out in throughout his life. There were the familiar old art deco tiled floors, brick walls, a smattering of art and movie posters, and a lone little spiral staircase that led to nowhere. The air smelled of coffee and sugar and fresh cut flowers.

An effervescent young woman escorted them to a small table where they slipped behind their menus. Ella Fitzgerald sang out to them from somewhere.

Soon the restaurant filled up around them—students and professors by the looks of them, either intent on their companions or their laptops, a few tourists, and one couple that lay entwined on a sofa, kissing underneath a movie poster of
The Maltese Falcon
.

“I’m sorry about what happened back there, to mortify you like that. I wouldn’t have brought you in the store if I’d had any idea how crazy he was.”

“Mortified? No. It—I wasn’t mortified, though it isn’t something you hear every day, when you think of it—tied to someone through all eternity? Quite a commitment…” Andrew’s voice trailed off as he struggled to find something else to say in response to the look of earnestness on Emily’s face.

“At least apologize to your girlfriend for me, please. I don’t think she’d appreciate all that talk of concubines, but I guess that’s better than being your slave.” She cringed at her words and bit her lip as though trying to stem the possibility of anything more escaping.

Luckily, an old shuffling waiter took that moment to interrupt and take their order.

“I’ll have a pot of Earl Grey, please.”

“Make that two,” Andrew added, then dropped his voice to a more conspiratorial tone. “By the way, what is the exact definition of concubine? I forget. It’s Chinese, right?”

“It’s from the Latin,” the waiter replied in a stage whisper, causing both of them to turn their heads. “Would you like anything to eat with your tea?”

“Scones with lemon curd, please.”

“Thank you, miss. You see, the word is found in Old French and Middle English too, with Chinese and Muslim variants. It’s a splendid word, isn’t it? Concubine. Always reminds me of hookah pipes and intrigue. And you, sir?”

Andrew’s eyebrows rose. “I’ll have the same. Thank you.”

They watched him trundle off, waiting until he was out of sight before they started laughing.

“Well that explains it,” Andrew said. “I was rubbish at Latin, rubbish at most things, I’m afraid. No patience for it. It killed the philosophy major.”

“You were a philosophy major?”

“Philosophy, poetry, music, then—”

“How many degrees did you get?”

“None.”

“None?”

“I tend not to finish things. Except for pints and packs of cigarettes, but I’ve given them up—mostly—the cigarettes, that is.”

She tilted her head. “You finish songs.”

The look of sincerity on her face unnerved him. “It’s the only thing I can finish these days…But you never answered my question. What is the definition of a concubine?”

“You seriously don’t know?” She leaned forward and dropped her voice, deepening their conspiratorial nature. “Well, it comes from the Latin verb
concumbere
, as in, ‘to lie together.’”

Andrew devoutly wished for that cigarette. “I take it you’re an English major,” he said carefully.

She nodded. “And psychology.”

“Which is worse?”

“Psychology. Without a doubt.”

“No, which variant is worse.”

“Oh. The Muslim. Definitely the Muslim.”

“Which is?”

She hesitated. “A woman residing in a harem and kept, as by a sultan, for sexual purposes.”

His heart skittered like a rock down a cliff. The waiter appeared with their teapot. Andrew drummed his fingers, waiting for the old man to depart. At last, this was his chance. He finally had her alone.

“As for my girlfriend,” he said with a deep breath, placing the pot down after pouring each of them a cup, “I believe she would not care as I do not have one.”

“What?” Her eyes found his and blinked several times. Confusion and puzzlement passed through their gry depths until they settled on realization. “I’m so sorry. It must have been awful.”

“Excuse me?”

“The break up must have been hard.”

No, she couldn’t. No. Oh, bloody hell. This was turning into some drawing room farce. Emily thought he had endured some horrible break up with his muse, this suddenly very existent nonexistent woman, for which he was going to punch the piss out of Simon and Christian for bringing her up in the first place. And now Margot’s story would only corroborate the existence of a nonexistent break up.