Closing my office door, I phoned Katrina, but she wasn’t in. Not wanting to draw more attention to the matter than necessary and not wanting to talk to her assistant, I sent her an e-mail asking for electronic copies of the proposals she had given me on her visit two weeks before.
That was all I could do. That, and worry.
THE AROMAS OF WARM bread mingled with garlic, salami, and olives. It had once been an endurance test for me to make it to Prince Street without getting sidelined by every temptation on Salem. When Aubrey and I used to come to the North End for dinner, we would stop afterward at the twenty-four-hour bakery to buy turnovers and semolina bread for lunch the next day. In our last year of marriage, we still perused these streets for new restaurants, but the discussions we once had over pasta and veal dwindled to the clinking chatter of our cutlery, and we often forgot the bakery.
On the corner of Prince and Hanover, I paused before the iron gates of Saint Leonard’s, which bore the emblem of nail-scarred hands folded in front of a cross. In the summer, especially on feast days, church ladies sold Saint Anthony’s oil and religious icons at a table around the corner. Tonight the heavy wooden doors beyond the gate were locked tight, as though against sin itself—in addition to editors who cavorted with demons and spent entire nights contemplating Satan. Standing before the crumbling plaster of the church, I felt like more of a stranger to that churchgoing world of my youth than I did to Lucian’s spirit-inhabited realm.
But most unsettling, I felt less and less a part of the secular world in which I lived.
It was nearly seven o’clock. I hurried down Hanover, the smell of the ocean briny in my nose. In summer the restaurants—barely more than little open-kitchen joints boasting no more than eight tables apiece—threw open their doors, spilling tables onto the sidewalk to catch the influx of tourists and saints’ feasts celebrants. Tonight they were closed up against the coastal chill, menus peering out from windows, the flames of tiny candles dancing on the tabletops inside.
On the second-floor entrance of Vittorio’s, I experienced a brief moment of déjà vu when the host informed me my party was already waiting, and again when he led me to a candlelit booth where a woman in her thirties waved at me.
She was a wholesome, if average-looking woman. A gold chain and single diamond pendant dangled over the folded neck of her navy blue turtleneck. Her blonde hair was pulled back in a ponytail.
I slid into the booth and took the menu from the host. When he had gone, I said, “If Aubrey is going to show up, tell me now.”
Her eyes widened slightly. “Not as far as I know.”
I shrugged out of my coat, still winded from the walk, my ears tingling from the cold. Then I noticed the glass of red wine on the table. Had she ordered it for me, to antagonize me? Did she know about my night with the bottle of cheap red wine that day after the walk through the Commons?
I ignored the wine, saying little as the waiter brought us bread and took orders for dinner. “Mussels Fra Diavolo,” I said, gazing at the woman across from me. Lucian rolled her eyes.
“Your name means ‘light,’” I said without preamble when the waiter had gone.
“Yes.”
I tried to see past the faint laugh lines around her eyes, the diamond stud earrings, the indentations through her sweater where bra straps bit into her shoulders, the wedding ring on her finger.
Such elaborate lengths, I thought, slightly sickened. “An angel of light?”
“Sometimes I still take that form.”
I tried to imagine what an angel of light would look like, but it was like trying to summon a modern-day leprechaun.
“You can’t fathom it, so don’t bother.” She leaned back.
“How long will this go on?”
She tilted her head and seemed, for the first time, to have no ready answer. Finally, she said, “Until it’s finished. Or we run out of time.”
“Until what’s finished?”
“Your story.”
“You mean your story.” I thought of my discussion with Helen, of the proposal from Katrina. I needed time to sort it all through, to figure out how much of a hole I had dug for myself and how I would get myself out. Meanwhile, the only thing that mattered was having more of her story to take home with my leftover pasta tonight.
“Tell me about Adam.” I began the mental calculation of when I might get home and how late I might stay up scribbling, perhaps even in bed, and how many hours of sleep I might get. Helen’s blunt conversation with me today had returned at least a portion of my focus to the routine necessities of my job, no matter how empty they were to me these days.
“All right,” she said, tracing the edge of the table through the tablecloth. “About Adam . . .”
“Wait. How do you know the Bible so well?”
She laughed then and seemed surprised. “Because I lived it! I understand Scripture intrinsically and intellectually better than any of your so-called enlightened churchgoers. Lucifer himself is a master theologian. Better than any of your preachers or seminarians, I assure you.”
Intrinsic understanding. A theological master. It was the claim of thousands of spiritual gurus, self-proclaimed prophets, Kool-Aid killers, and Branch Davidian leaders.
“Now, about Adam”—she propped her chin in her hand—“history and popular myth have done him a great disservice. Let me tell you that Adam was perhaps the best-looking man I have ever seen. Of course, at that time, there was nothing to compare him to, and for the better part of a few centuries, humans were all clay freaks to me. I guarantee you, if your backyard compost pile suddenly got up and started taking over your house, you would feel the same. But in retrospect I can honestly say he was handsome.”
I wondered if I should point out that I didn’t have a backyard, which reminded me—
“How come you’ve never shown up at my apartment?”
Her impatience turned into a moue of distaste. “Please. I’m trying to tell you something. Can we come back to this later? Listen to me now: Adam was an admirable man. For as much as I resented him, I also found myself drawn to him. Sure, the plants were nice to look at, and the animals were entertaining, albeit predictable—all that eating and rutting—but Adam . . . he was dynamic. I never tired of watching him, and neither did Lucifer. Of course, Lucifer hated him because of who he was and who had made him. Adam not only bore the Creator’s stamp; he bore his likeness. He was a brilliant thinker, a creature of reason. He observed the things around him. He was a scientist. He was also an agriculturalist, a botanist, a zoologist, and a horticulturist,” she said, ticking all the “ists” off on her fingers. “He was a husband, a man with responsibility: He cared for the garden; he ruled the animals; he was a family man. And he walked with God. Literally.”
As she spoke, I noticed that she moved differently than she had as the woman in the museum. It reminded me of the effect costumes had on actors.
“And what about Eve?”
She stroked the stem of the glass, silent for a moment. “In Eve,” she said softly, “of all creatures, I saw something that might have inspired me. Something with which I could most identify. She was second-generation mud, of course, but she was intelligent, intuitive, and beautiful—striking in fact. She reminded me a little of myself.”
One of the cooks in the small kitchen had started singing. I recognized the strains of Puccini’s “Nessun Dorma”:
Depart, O night!
Set, you stars!
At dawn, I shall win.
She propped her chin on the back of her hand. “Life then was beautifully predictable and secure. Oh, the bliss of that age! I watched and dreamed and experienced peace vicariously.” She glanced down at the tablecloth, scratching at it with her finger. “But Lucifer remained vigilant, a spider on the periphery of his beautiful web.