American Quest Read online

  He parted the curtains again and watched the lovers on the street, enchanted with one another and oblivious to the canteshrikes who hovered about, cloaked in a different kind of enchantment. Passersby went about their business, lost in their own worlds. All of them ignorant, all of them destined to fall to their knees before him.

  Soon.

  Glueg cleared his throat, swirling his honey wine. “When are we to begin, then, master?”

  Enervata kept his black gaze fixed beyond the window. Eventually, he said, “I shall meet her a few days hence.”

  2

  NEW YORK

  GLORIA SETTLED INTO THE RESTAURANT chair and smiled, breathing in the scent of roasted garlic. The cafe wrapped them in warmth and candlelight, the familiar dining room tantalizing with smells drifting from the kitchen. The mirror by the hostess station reflected candlelight at an odd angle to the room. Gloria narrowed her eyes at it, suspicious now of rogue reflections.

  “Here we are!”

  Carlotta appeared from the kitchen bearing two steaming plates. Her ruffle-fringed apron flourished to a grand bow at the small of her back and she beamed with satisfaction.

  “Enjoy!” she said broadly, patting Gloria’s shoulder before she headed toward the kitchen.

  “Do you know who she reminds me of?” Gloria said. “Mama Bear, from ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears.’”

  Bruce lifted a forkful of pasta and glanced at Carlotta as she bustled through the dining room. He nodded. “Definitely Mama Bear. And I bet she makes up a mean pot of porridge.”

  Gloria smoothed her napkin over her lap. “You can tell good souls by the way they care about certain things. Carlotta definitely cares about food.”

  “No question about it. If there were more Carlottas in the world, there would be no suffering. None at all.”

  “Except for the occasional indigestion.”

  Bruce grinned. “It’s a small enough price to pay.”

  They dug into their food. Gloria truly was ravenous. Lunch had been an energy bar. Or was that yesterday? She couldn’t remember right now whether she’d eaten lunch at all this afternoon. Regardless, the escarole and beans was even more soul satisfying than usual.

  “What’s going on with the play?” she said after her fifth bite.

  Bruce’s eyes lit up. “I think we’re almost there. Good thing, since opening night’s coming at us fast. It’s all so cool. I still don’t buy why they’re putting our lead actress in the back at the start of her soliloquy, but . . .” He seemed to catch himself and shrugged. “I’m just an apprentice. I need to quit obsessing.”

  “You’re more than that; you know the theater like it was your brother. Anyway, I wasn’t asking about that play. I meant your play.”

  Bruce examined his plate. “Also known as the endless journey.”

  Gloria smiled softly. “I have Mr. Chang and you have your third act.”

  Bruce glanced up at her, a hint of resignation in his eyes. “Maybe I’m not ready.”

  “You’re beyond ready,” Gloria said in a voice she hoped wasn’t too insistent. “You just need to tap every resource.”

  Bruce nodded. “I know. Some of those resources are proving harder to tap than I expected.”

  Gloria chewed her lip. If he really didn’t want to go the extra mile, she wouldn’t push him, at least not now. But all Bruce ever talked about was how anxious he was to get this play out into the world. And she wanted it out there, too. She’d read passages of his work that spun her head around. Most of it wasn’t like that—not yet—but enough was to make her wonder at what waited to emerge from his soul.

  He looked beyond her and smiled, changing the subject with his eyes. Gloria followed his gaze over her shoulder and saw Carlotta moving in their direction.

  “Everything is okay?” Carlotta asked.

  “Fantastico!” Bruce said, kissing his fingertips.

  “What’s the secret to the escarole and beans?” Gloria asked. “I can never get the texture right.”

  Carlotta tilted her head toward the kitchen. “High heat. Hot hot hot! And fast. If you waste time or don’t use enough heat, it falls apart and is useless.”

  The sound of shouting filtered in from the street.

  Carlotta craned her neck. “Who’s yelling out there? I worry now. Two weeks ago, someone took a brick and smashed through the stained glass window of the church around the corner. Beautiful window! Who would do a thing like that? And this is a quiet neighborhood.”

  “I heard about that,” Bruce said. “It was the big leaded glass window, way up high where they hadn’t put bars. It’s too bad.”

  Carlotta nodded. “Some people see something beautiful and they have to smash it. I don’t understand that. I see something beautiful and I want to love it.”

  Carlotta stared at the middle distance. Gloria wondered what was running through her mind at that moment. It seemed to mirror the sense of disquiet Gloria felt herself. Why did she have this nagging urge to look over her shoulder? Her eyes traveled again to the mirror that hung near the hostess station, half expecting to see a strange woman in white.

  Suddenly, Carlotta’s expression changed. “Hey! Your wedding is soon, right?”

  “Yes,” Gloria said, grinning irrepressibly. “Prospect Park in a little more than a month. We’re having the reception there, too.”

  Carlotta’s arms spread wide. “Big wedding?”

  Bruce smiled and reached for Gloria’s hand. “A frugal wedding. Big on sentiment.”

  Gloria grazed his fingertips with hers.

  “Big on sentiment is best,” Carlotta said. She smiled at Gloria. “Your dress is ready, dear?”

  Gloria nodded. “Bridesmaids, too, Candace and Jamie. They’re going to be wearing pale green with blue sashes.”

  “Ah, sounds lovely. So much work, these weddings.” Carlotta rolled her eyes. “Big or small, you have the invitations, the flowers, the catering.”

  Bruce shook his head. “Too complicated for me. I leave it to the experts.”

  Carlotta smiled. “I’ve thrown weddings for two sons and one daughter. Now with the grandbabies, some day they’ll have weddings, too.”

  She paused and put a hand to each of their shoulders. “You are so beautifully in love. I can see it. Anyone can see it.”

  Gloria looked up at Carlotta, then at Bruce. Anyone can see it? That should be a good thing, right? Why, then, did the thought send a chill of apprehension up her spine?

  Gloria’s gaze darted back to the mirror. She shook her head. Her senses seemed extra sharp lately, almost to the point that maybe she sensed things that didn’t even exist.

  “So beautifully in love,” Carlotta repeated. “And you will have beautiful babies. When you do, you bring those babies here for pasta!”

  CANTESHRIKE GROTTO

  The flock danced in the ice cave, their lustrous pearl bodies swaying, feathers lifting. Musical laughter rang from the sparkling ridges of the ceiling, drenching the cave with harmonies of minor chords. One by one, two by three, they began to join with one another.

  “Isolde the Fair! Come hither and share!” they beckoned. “Let us partake in the fruits you bear!”

  Isolde raised a finger, bidding them wait.

  A pixiefly the size of a teacup was singing nearby. Rafe lifted his wings and then folded them. Isolde could see the tension in his bare back and hindquarters. The pixiefly drew nearer, mesmerized by the pearlescent glow of Rafe’s wings.

  In a sudden movement, Rafe snatched it from the air and swallowed it.

  He turned and regarded Isolde. “Our master will take the woman soon, and we must find ways to break them. The bond-recherché has achieved a heightened state.”

  “She coveted the woven prize. A thing we might use, I do surmise.” Isolde shook her silken hair, longing to join the rest of the flock for a romp, to join with their bodies and feel the electricity of them in and around her.

  Rafe scratched impatiently at the grotto floor with his
trident canteshrike talon. “The woven prize. I presume you mean the peacock tapestry. We will report as much to the master. And yet you miss my meaning entirely. Did you not see it? On the street, in the window, the lovers beheld our presence. Somehow they were able to see us.”

  “Am I so dense I might not know this? I too heard them converse about us!” Isolde paused, thinking. “That kaleidoscope burgh caught our likeness.”

  Rafe considered this. “A phenomenon of reflections and atmosphere ? Perhaps. It is possible the trick of rain and sunlight ensnared us in the glass.” His eyes narrowed. “But I think not. I suspect they have come to such a place in their love that a measure of power does now evolve. Through it, they glimpse the world of the canteshrike. Love yields resonant power.”

  “Through love, they see us? You are preposterous!”

  Rafe wheeled on her, and Isolde pulled back a bit instinctively. He was leaning close enough that the scent of his skin met her nostrils; a gentle invasion, yet one so sudden that she fought the urge to slash him with her talon. His bare, white chest loomed over her bare, white chest, and the feathers at their haunches touched.

  Rafe lowered his voice, now steely but with the quality of an opiate. “Have you truly forgotten its power? For me and thee, our love once meant the world.”

  Isolde turned from him, but in doing so let her left wing graze his chin. “Love bore us naught but servile fate.” Her eyes lifted to meet his. “Our power lies within our hate.”

  “Yes, our hate. An easy thing to nourish, when we must look upon one another century after caustic century in these bestial canteshrike bodies. Inasmuch as our love did once burn, our hatred burns brighter.”

  Isolde did not reply.

  Rafe squared his wings. “I must report back to Enervata, though I am tempted to omit the detail of how the two lovers spotted us.”

  Isolde’s yellow eyes lit, and then she lifted a single pearlescent shoulder. “A captain are you. Lieutenant am I. ‘Tis for you to do while I must bide.”

  “How very humble of you. And how opportunistic. That I might risk withholding information from Enervata, and that you might take your turn at his chair and whisper the truth, currying his favor. Offering up my head to hang in his hall.”

  She sighed a hiss of impatience, her wings twitching toward the entangled bodies of the flock.

  “Think you only of flesh, Isolde? Even now, at the dawn of what will be the world’s darkest hour.”

  “Darkest hour! ‘Tis the dawn of our power! The wild-lands for me and mortals for thee.”

  Rafe stroked his jaw where her wing had touched him. “I wonder of the choice I made so very long ago, Isolde, believing I could save your life, not damn it for eternity. Now I care only to see you suffer and to claim my scrap of power in our master’s inevitable kingdom. I hate without moderation. Love yields resonant power, it is true, but hatred is a faithful servant who bears an asset of longevity.”

  His jaw clenched. “Go join the flock if you wish. I will report to Enervata about this new ability of our bond-recherché. There is little time. Their connection has grown strong, perhaps even too strong. It is of no use to us if Enervata cannot break it.”

  The ice glowed blue and the cawing, calling music of the flock beckoned. Isolde’s desire burned.

  Rafe turned from her, taking silent footsteps, and paused. “How fortunate for us, fettered by Enervata in perpetual servitude. My hatred blossoms as his debtor.”

  He left her, and for a suspended while, Isolde’s eyes lingered on the empty space he had occupied.

  Finally, she whispered, “Hate blossoms, yes, and serves us better.”

  NEW YORK

  When dinner was over, Bruce and Gloria went back to their tiny apartment exhausted but content. Gloria had long since abandoned the idea of getting back on the laptop for Woven Hillside. It could wait until tomorrow.

  She slipped off her heels, sighing with the pleasure of flexing her feet. “Oh, those shoes!”

  “Come here,” Bruce said, taking her hand and pulling her to the couch. He lifted her feet into his lap and began to rub.

  Gloria closed her eyes and groaned, the massage sending waves of relaxation through her body.

  Bruce chuckled. “It’s funny what Carlotta said about us.”

  Gloria’s expression darkened, which she assumed was not what Bruce expected. “Do you ever worry?”

  “What do you mean?”

  She shook her head. “I’m not sure, really. Carlotta was saying how some people see something beautiful and they want to smash it, and then she tells us that we’re so beautifully in love. It just got my paranoia going. Sometimes I look around and I feel like we’re being . . .”

  Bruce’s face changed to mirror hers. “Watched?”

  Gloria stared at him, reading concern she hadn’t anticipated. “Yeah. Sometimes. More lately. I don’t know.”

  Bruce nodded, balling the back of his hand into the arch of her foot. “I think I know what you’re talking about. Every now and then when we’re out together, I feel my intuition prick up, as though . . . as though—I don’t know what.”

  “Right, exactly.” Gloria had experienced those same moments of “high alert” and she was just as incapable of explaining why.

  Bruce’s gaze grew more intense. Suddenly, his massage didn’t feel as comforting. “They are watching, you know,” he said darkly.

  Gloria’s eyes widened. “What?”

  “Weren’t you listening earlier tonight? ‘Can’t you see he’s sent the yellow-eyed counterstrikes to watch you?’”

  Gloria blinked twice, then burst into giggles. “You’re talking about that guy in the subway?”

  The more she thought about it the more absurd it seemed. “Counterstrikes? I thought he said ‘candy stripes.’”

  “Yellow-eyed candy stripes? You thought he said that we were being watched by teenaged girls who volunteer in hospitals?”

  Gloria grabbed Bruce’s wrist and pulled him up toward her. “Come here you nut!”

  “Thought you’d never ask.” Bruce moved with her and his face regained all of its handsome good nature. He climbed up her body and wedged himself alongside her on the couch.

  He put his lips to her ear. “There was that other thing Carlotta said, about how beautiful our babies will be.”

  Gloria snuggled into him, trying to bring him closer, though she supposed that was physically impossible. “Mmm.”

  “In a couple of years, we’ll buy a place. Something bigger than this. Could you imagine having kids here? I hope they’re black-haired and long-legged, like you. And that they have your Spanish eyes.”

  “Nn-mm. Sandy-haired and strong-chinned, like you.”

  He laid a kiss on her brow and she imagined those children. Smaller versions of her, or him, or a combination. Either or both genders. Whatever they had would be pure alchemy.

  He ran his hand slowly from her shoulder to her lower abdomen. “Do you think they’ll be like us when they grow up? Love the same things we do?”

  “Maybe a little.” She loosened the top button of his shirt and breathed in the scent of his neck. He moved his leg, and she felt his heat centering on her. “They’ll be more fabulous, of course,” she said.

  He groaned with pleasure. “More fabulous, definitely. Leaders of the world, great visionaries, and timeless artists all at once.”

  “For starters.” She shifted slightly and the pressure on her inner thigh gave her a little shiver of bliss.

  “I wonder what it’ll be like to watch them graduate, start careers, get married.”

  “And give us grandkids.”

  She played with the short hairs on the back of his neck and watched his eyes close dreamily.

  “I hope our grandkids are black-haired and long-legged, like you,” he said after a moment.

  Gloria giggled. “No, sandy-haired and—hey!” She sat up slightly. “I thought you said you never thought about what happened beyond today.”

  Bru
ce gave her one of his deep-eyed smiles and lightly touched his lips to hers. He reached down and moved his hand under her skirt, kneading the muscle of her leg and hooking his finger under the band of her thigh-high. “It’s fun to think about what we’ll be like years from now. To imagine the entirety of our lives together.”

  She rolled out from under him and then sat up slowly, eyes on his. “I love living it,” she said, her voice husky.

  “It’s only gonna get better, babe.” He reached his broad, warm hands into her blouse and unbuttoned it, then freed it from her shoulders, slipping his ring finger under the strap of her lingerie. “God, you’re beautiful.”

  She brought the fabric back up loosely to her chest, eyeing the window. “The neighbors will be scandalized.”

  “Nobody can see us except the pigeons. And they don’t talk. Much.”

  “Shouldn’t we withdraw to the bedroom?”

  He shook his head. “Mirrors everywhere. It’s lousy with candy stripes. I’ve got a better idea.”

  He untangled himself from the couch and lifted her, sweeping her legs up over his forearms.

  She brushed his ear. “Where are you taking me?”

  “I’m going to make love to you in the clouds.”

  She allowed him to carry her to the bathroom, where Bruce’s foot lightly kicked open the door. Without turning on the light, he set her down gently on the rug. Her toes settled into the soft, pale threads. She watched the stretch of his biceps, chiseled and thick but not bulky. He laid a folded towel over the toilet seat, then draped a large, white towel over that and lit the candles. The scent of sulphured heat drifted from the flames, and they flickered with the air currents of Bruce’s movements.

  He turned the faucet on the bathtub and twisted the lid off a bottle of her bubble bath, emptying it into the steaming clear water.

  She bit her lip. “You do realize you don’t need quite that much, don’t you.”

  “Shh.” He put a finger to her mouth. “Now where were we?”

  He slid her blouse from her shoulders and draped it over the mirror, then did the same with his own shirt. “There. Safe from the candy stripes.”