“But you weren’t alone. I was still with you, in a way. No matter where you were, you knew I was there, too, somewhere in the world.” Jonathan struggled upright, weary. “Things have changed for me. I have something to tell you. I didn’t want to, Lanny. I don’t want to hurt you, but you have to understand why I’m asking you again. Why it’s important to me now.” He took a deep breath. “You see, I fell in love.”
He waited, expecting me to react badly to news of the best thing that had ever happened to him. I opened my mouth to congratulate him but, of course, no words came out.
“A Czech woman, a nurse. We met in the camps. She worked for another aid organization. One day, she was called to Nairobi by her home office for a meeting. I got the news over the radio out in the bush that she’d been killed in a car accident in the city. It took me a day to be helicoptered out to recover her body. We’d only been together a few years. I couldn’t believe the injustice-here I’d waited so long, lifetimes, to find the one I was meant to be with and we had just a short time together.” He spoke quietly, without too much grief, to spare me, I think. Nevertheless, as I listened my insides twisted tighter and tighter.
“Do you see now? I can’t go on anymore.”
I shook my head, determined to be tough, steely, in the face of his pain.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said. “And I know you know the pain I am going through. Do you want me to tell you how wonderful she was? How I couldn’t help but love her? How impossible it is to go on without her?”
“People do it every day,” I managed to say. “Time passes, you forget. It gets easier.”
“Don’t. Not to me. I know better. So do you.” Maybe he hated me at that moment. “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t bear her loss; I can’t accept that there is nothing,
He reached out and struck the wine bottle against a rock. The cascade of notes, high and harsh, went through and around us. He clutched the neck and shoulder of the bottle in his fist, serrated peaks of green glass, held in his hand like a bouquet. It was the only weapon at hand; it was crude and violent, and he wanted me to use it on him. He wanted to bleed to death.
I wanted to say that to him, but I couldn’t. He had brought me an inarguable reason: he had lost his love and couldn’t go on. The time had finally come to let him go.
I couldn’t speak and only knew I was crying from the cold ignited on my cheeks by the wind, cold like biting fire. He reached up and touched my tears. “Forgive me, Lanny. Forgive me that it’s come to this. I’m sorry I couldn’t give you what you wanted. I tried-you don’t know how badly I wanted to make you happy, but I couldn’t make it work. You deserve to be loved in the way you have always hoped for. I pray that you will find that love.”
Slowly, I took the broken bottle from him. Jonathan took his shirt off and offered himself, and I looked from my hand to that pale chest, glowing blue in the moonlight.
We should have had a life of great love.
I couldn’t look at him; I simply pushed against him, knowing the edge of the glass would do the rest. The teeth of green sank into his flesh, a perfect circle of a bite, soft and yielding. The broken bottle sank deep and Jonathan’s blood welled up to my fingers. He let the quietest gasp escape.
And then a swipe of my hand, and three lines were drawn across the white blankness of his skin. Deep, the wounds split open, letting more blood escape. Jonathan crumpled, falling on his chest and then rolling on his back, hands held limply against the wound, blood gurgling out of him. What stood out to me was that the flesh had given way so easily. I kept expecting the edges of the wound to knit back together but they didn’t. I must’ve said the words “by my hand and intent” in my head. There was no denying that deed had been done by my hand, but surely this was not my intent. I had made a mistake-this had not been my intent.
And then I did, waking up in the woods with the one I loved rocking, convulsing, in the dirt before me, choking and sputtering, but smiling. His chest rose and fell with deliberation, and I realized I’d seen Jonathan do this once already, in Daughtery’s barn. And in an instant I was next to him, pressing his shirt against the wounds, foolishly trying to hold back the flow of blood. And Jonathan shook his head and tried to push the shirt from my hands. In the end, all I could do was hold him.
That was when it hit me, what I had lost. Jonathan had always been there, even during the years when we were apart, and the resonant hum had always been in the back of my mind, a comfort. Now all I had was a great, sucking void. I had lost the only important thing in my life. I had nothing, I was alone, the weight of the world crushing down on me with no one to help me. I’d made a mistake. I wanted Jonathan back. Better to be selfish. Better for him to resent me to the end of time than to feel like this. To feel like this and have no way to make it right or make it go away.
I held his body a very long time, until the blood had gone cold and I was covered with a film of wet slickness. I don’t remember letting go of Jonathan. I don’t remember leaving the body and running through the woods, screaming to the heavens to take pity on me and let me die. Let it be over for me, too. I could not go on without him. I don’t remember ending up at the highway, limping along the logging road to be found by the sheriff and his deputy. It wasn’t until I’d been locked in the car with my hands cuffed that it all came back to me, that I realized all I wanted was to be back in the woods with him, to die with him so we could stay together forever.
FIFTY
The narrow front hall of the town house is filled with crates, the wood fresh and prickled with splinters. A hammer, nails, and a pair of work gloves rest on a pedestal table along with a pile of unopened mail. Luke carries a marble bust down the stairs, his face reddening from the exertion. The bust is the second in a pair going to the Bargello, in Florence-one of Italy’s many museums, chosen over the Uffizi for its superior collection of Renaissance sculpture-the first piece already packed in its own crate. From the wall, watching the activity, is the one piece of artwork that will never leave the house, the charcoal sketch of Jonathan that Lanny took from Adair’s house. The portrait was moved from its original spot-at the foot of Lanny’s bed-to the front hall, though Luke had no particular objection to leaving it in place. He is no more capable of being jealous of the man in the picture than he is of hating the golden sunrise or the Notre Dame cathedral.
Lanny comes out from the study with a sealed envelope in her hand. Inside the envelope is a note of apology for having kept the piece of art from its rightful owners, whoever they might be after all this time. The note-which has accompanied every piece shipped so far-is contrite but vague, devoid of any facts relating to how the piece was appropriated, or when, or by whom. Lanny worked on it for days, read several versions aloud to Luke before the two settled on the final wording. They wear latex gloves as they work, so they’ll leave no fingerprints. Lanny has arranged for the shipping and the donation of the anonymous gifts to be done through her Parisian lawyer, whom she picked especially for his devotion to his clients and his flexible attitude toward aspects of the legal code. She has no concern that the shipments will be traced back to her, no matter how insistent the various museums and other recipients may become.
As for Luke, he’s a little sorry to see all these marvels go so soon after his arrival. He’d like more time to make sense of what must be the most expansive private collection of art and artifacts in the world. Lanny hadn’t exaggerated when she told him her house was more amazing than any museum. The upper floors were stuffed with treasures, stored with no rhyme or reason. Each time he dislodges one item to ship, he uncovers eight or ten more. And it’s not just paintings and sculpture; there are mountains of books, undoubtedly including many first editions; Oriental carpets made of silk so fine they can pass through a woman’s bracelet; Japanese kimonos and Turkish caftans of embroidered silks; all manner of swords and firearms. Grecian vases, Russian samovars, bowls
