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 I awoke this morning with passionate difficulty to discover Lucinda weeping in the room next to mine. What happened between the time she hesitated in the archway and I fell asleep with my stormy moon? I cannot say with certainty. I can tell you no more than that my waistcoat lay disturbed on the pillow beside my feet. This is not like me. I am fastidious and habitual about my clothing. I own duplicate sets of costumes, one here at the mansion and a twin facade who hides behind the lace curtains of a beach cottage to which I return whenever I pen romance novels or cozy mysteries.Shall I admit to you that my mask this time failed to meet its blind intention? Carlton Ewing became the man I needed him to become. Lucinda was his catalyst. She's a sweet girl who fears the ghosts who haunt the wicked, fears them enough to care for me whenever my story grows delirious. I sometimes feel like touching her, while at other times I know she touches me. For a moment this morning, as I stood almost naked in the doorway, I thought I loved Lucinda. And then the telephone rang. I listened, and by the third alarm I remembered that I do not own a telephone. Could this be love, or just the distress of growing old? Was I wrong last night to tell you that love is gone, always gone with the sputter of lonesome candles and the crash of waves below the cliffs of greystone mansions? No matter really, the answer to this question, because as I told you, I awoke and I soon recalled my function. My function is to warn you, and so I bathed and dressed myself. I left Lucinda there to vanish with a shock of sunlight slanting through the shutters. I think she meant to tell me that she would return when I felt ready, although I dare not trust these thoughts of mine and Carlton's, as they wander into memories whenever I allow just one of us to speak with another. The stain along the back side of my right hand remains a dark, wet pattern. I told you it could not be washed away. I study the way it changes with my mood. Just before I pressed the buzzer to release the gate, I slipped on a pair of lambskin gloves. The peasant Coburn greeted me with a tired nod and the smile of a cynic as I passed through his garden. I heard my footsteps run ahead of me, along the gravel path that Coburn's father followed toward his death the year before I wrote the tale of his son's incurable bitterness. I moved beyond the last forsythia bush, the one my mother planted more than fifty years ago to serve as her gravestone. Coburn loved my mother, although of course he never understood her. Each night he prays to her, although of course he never understands the words he mumbles. This is all according to the line of my thoughts. My office is on the third floor of the courthouse here in Bronwell Corners. I went there this morning, in spite of my intentions to leave the waistcoat and cravat behind. I saw several clients, all of them distraught. I took detailed notes as each one declared her tragic story. I promised nothing and I claimed high fees. At five o'clock in the evening I dictated one last letter to Lucinda, and then we walked home together. We followed our footsteps as far as the first plank of the wooden staircase that climbs the cliff through stormy moonlight, and there we looked up to see the one candle burning. *** Thanks for stopping by to visit us here at SpilledBeans.com. If you'd like to be notified whenever something new is posted to SpilledBeans.com, then please join the Spilled Beans notification list. -- Con affetto, Anthony V. Toscano, Editor SpilledBeans.com  |
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