doubt the first cop who had ever sought a lover with an arrestee in his fist!
One, two, three . . . I couldn’t even make out any faces. They all swam together in a blurry mass, and I walked through it with a foolish grin on my face. Six, seven . . . too bad, I have another number, sweetheart. Ten, eleven . . . May I get past, please? Eighteen, nineteen . . . You’re the one I’m looking for, my lady.
“Are you doing this on purpose? Are you casting spells again?” asked a familiar voice. “You shouldn’t be doing this, Max. Well, anyway, that’s that. You can’t fool fate, can you?”
I finally managed to focus my eyes. The pale splotch of a face slowly acquired a sweet, familiar outline. Lady Melamori looked at me guardedly. It seemed she couldn’t decide what to do—whether to throw herself at me in a warm embrace, or run for her life.
“That’s it!” I said. “This really is the limit!”
Then I sat down on the floor and began to laugh. I couldn’t have cared less about propriety and all the rest. My good sense simply refused to take part in this implausible adventure.
My little tantrum seemed to convince Melamori better than any rational argument could that there was no plot against her, and never had been. Ever.
“Let’s get out of here, Sir Max!” she begged, sitting on her haunches next to me. She carefully stroked my poor, crazy head, and whispered, “You’re scaring the visitors. Let’s go. You can laugh all you want when we’re outside. Come on, get up.”
I leaned obediently on the strong, small hand. Sinning Magicians, this delicate lady lifted me up without any effort at all!
Outside, the fresh breeze seemed to put everything in its proper place, and I no longer felt like laughing.
“Strange things have been happening lately, Melamori,” I said. Then I was silent. What else was there to say?
“Max,” she cried. “I’m so ashamed. When I was in your bedroom—well, now I understand that I did something very foolish, but I was so frightened! I completely lost my head!”
“I can imagine,” I said. “You fall asleep in your own house, and you wake up the devil knows where.”
“What’s ‘the devil’?” Melamori asked.
It wasn’t the first time I had had to explain my way out of such idiomatic scrapes. Now I didn’t even try.
“It doesn’t matter. But you know, I really don’t know what I did. I still have no idea how it happened.”
“I believe you,” Melamori said, nodding. “Now I realize you didn’t know your own powers, but . . . it’s too late.”
“Why?”
“Because it has already happened. Only we’re going to your place, not mine. I live too close. Let this last walk be a long one.”
“The last walk? Are you out of your mind, Melamori? Do you think I’ll bite your head off in a burst of passion?”
I tried to be upbeat, so that I could raise my spirits.
“Of course you’re not going to bite my head off. It wouldn’t fit in your mouth,” Melamori replied with a weak smile. “But that’s not the point. Don’t you realize where we just met, Max?”
“In the Quarter of Trysts. You’ll never believe how I got there. Think what you wish, but I ended up there in pursuit of a fellow in a mother-of-pearl belt. You remember all that business with the belts, don’t you?”
Melamori nodded, and I went on.
“We had a little scuffle on the street, and then I arrested him. He’s still here.” I pointed to my left fist.
“Do you mean to say—” Melamori burst out laughing.
Now it was her turn to sit down on the sidewalk. I sat next to her, my arm around her shoulders as she howled with laughter.
“And I thought that you—Oh, it’s too much! You’re the most extraordinary fellow in the World, Sir Max! I adore you! What a shame!”
At long last, we got up to go.
“Have you never been to the Quarter of Trysts?” Melamori asked suddenly.
“No. In the Barren Lands everything is much simpler. Or much more complicated, depending on how you look at it. So, no. This is the first time.”
“And you don’t know—” Melamori’s voice broke into a whisper. “You don’t know that people who meet in the Quarter of Trysts are supposed to spend the night and then part forever?”
“In our case that’s absolutely impossible,” I said, and smiled, although my heart was slowly sinking down to my toes. “We aren’t both going to quit our jobs, I suppose.”
Melamori shook her head.
“That’s not necessary. We can see each other as often as we like, Max, only we will be strangers. I mean —well, you know what I mean. It’s the tradition. You can’t do anything about it. It’s my own fault. I went there to get back at someone. I don’t know who, or why . . . I shouldn’t have gone there, and you shouldn’t have either. Although, who knows whose fault it is? People don’t really have any choice in the matter.”
“But—”
I was completely bewildered. My mind was such a mess I should have just shut up.
“Let’s not talk about this, all right Max? Tomorrow is still a long way away, and . . . they say destiny is wiser than we are.”
“We won’t if you don’t want to. But I think all this sounds like primitive malarky. We can decide for ourselves what to do. Why do we need all those silly traditions? If you wish, we can just walk around today as though nothing happened. No one will tell anyone anything, and then—”
“I don’t want to, and it’s impossible,” Melamori sighed, smiling, and covered my mouth gently with her ice- cold hand. “I’m telling you, enough about that, all right?”
We continued on our way in silence. The Street of Old Coins was quite close already. Another few minutes, and we entered my dark living room. Ella and Armstrong began meowing pitifully. Day or night, in female company or all alone, as soon as I walk in the door they demand food! I was distracted for a moment by the feline distress signals. Melamori examined the cats with astonishment.
“So those are the parents of the future Royal Cats? Where did you get them, Max?”
“What do you mean? They were sent from Melifaro’s estate, didn’t you know?”
“Why does the whole Court consider them to be an unknown breed, then?”
“Magicians only know. I just started taking care of them. It seems never to have occurred to them that cats need to be groomed. Melamori, are you sure everything’s all right? More than anything on earth I hate coercion.”
“I already told you. Nothing depends on us, Max. It’s out of our hands. What’s happened has happened. The only thing we can do now is waste even more time than we have already.”
“All right. I won’t argue with you. For now,” I said, and put my arms around her. “I’m not going to waste any more time, either.”
“Just try not to let your arrestee escape. The one thing I’m not planning on doing tonight is chasing him all over the house.”
Melamori smiled a sad, ironic smile. I tried to imagine our pursuit, and laughed so hard I almost fell down the stairs, taking Melamori with me. Melamori struggled with her imagination for a second and then started giggling, too. Perhaps we weren’t behaving too romantically, but that was just what we needed. Laughter spices up the passions much better than the languid seriousness of lovers clinging to one another in melodramas. And I hate melodramas.
Of course, the thing that kept nagging at me was that crazy talk about “the last time,” which Melamori had started and ended so abruptly on our way to my place. They say that the anticipation of parting heightens pleasure. I’m not too sure about that. I think that night might have been perfect if it hadn’t been for the thought that morning would soon arrive, and I would have to wage a hopeless struggle against the prejudices and superstitions of my newly acquired treasure. These thoughts did not enhance my desperate attempts to be happy.
