I pushed my book in my pocket and went outside, where it was clear and cold, with a faint kerosene tang of airplane fuel in the air. I cut across Central Parking to the Eastern Airlines terminal and caught the early afternoon PBA flight to Hyannis — just me and a noiseless Yankee woman and her bulging L.L. Bean canvas shopping bag in the eight-seater plane. The Osterville Taxi was waiting in the deserted parking lot.
When I gave the driver the address and some directions he said, “I’ve driven you before.”
“Right.”
“Big house. Top of the hill.”
“Right.”
“Nice spot.”
I disliked his showing an interest in my privacy, so I said no more. I cracked the window open and smelled the air — pine needles and salt marsh and damp leaves. The creamy dunes showed like surf across the marsh under a blue sky.
The driver knew the way. When I paid him he said again, “Nice spot.”
It always made me apprehensive when strangers praised the house. I feared their interest, because I knew they would always remember it. It was that sort of towering house on its own hill. I wanted it to remain secret.
I watched him go, so that he wouldn’t linger, and then I went inside. Everything was as I had left it. It was warm from the sun through the huge windows, my book was on the table where I had been reading, my slippers by the front door, my teapot and teacup next to the sink, the refrigerator door ajar. I tore two months off the calendar, and I called Eden.
“I’m here.”
She let out a little scream of delight and said, “Oh, Andy, it’s so wonderful to hear your voice. When can I see you?”
I unrolled the carpets and squared them off. I carried the framed Japanese prints that were stacked in the library and rehung them. I dug out the statues from the attic — the gold Tara, silver lama and bronze Buddha — and set them on their pedestals. I opened the windows, dusted the tables, and made the bed. I switched on the refrigerator and the hot water heater. I walked around the yard — picked up a few fallen branches and threw them into the woods, swept the pine needles out of a storm drain, picked some pebbles off the muddy lawn and tossed them on the path. I examined the shrubs. The magnolia blossoms were just blowing open, the tulips were rising, the azaleas were in bud. And there were small, hard, blood-colored buds on most of the bushes and trees. I unlocked the garage and looked for signs of mice: there were no corpses and yet all the poison had been eaten from the trays I had set out in January. I took the canvas cover off my rowing skiff, I pumped up a soft tire on the boat trailer. I reconnected the battery in the Jeep and let the engine run, while I cleared the spiders from the Jacuzzi. By then the household water was hot. I filled the tub and sat in the turbulence, easing my muscles; and then dressed in my Cape clothes — a sweatshirt and blue jeans, and moccasins that were cool from the closet.
I found a beer in the pantry and lay on the chaise lounge facing west and reading The Secret History of the Mongols. I became engrossed in the career of the Ong Khan, the supreme ruler of a people called the Keraits. He was a resourceful and imaginative leader and I began fantasizing about him and seeing myself on horseback, urging my warriors forward and ranging over great tracts of Mongolia. I wondered why someone as powerful as the Ong Khan had not posed a greater challenge to Genghis Khan.
And then I knew. The Ong Khan was unexpectedly defeated in a short battle. He lost his horse and all his equipment. He hurried away empty-handed, but he was safe — and he believed there would be more battles. He traveled a great distance — I looked up and saw the sunset reddening over Sandwich.
The Ong Khan [I read] was thirsty after this long journey and was going down to the stream to drink when a Naiman scout called Khori-subechi seized him.
He said, “I am the Ong Khan,” but the scout did not believe him, and killed him.
I stopped reading, I closed the book, I considered my life. I had not used it much in my writing. The sunset was still in my face, and I watched it, thinking of the Ong Khan and myself, until the daylight was gone, until the last drop was wrung out of the sky by the night, and my house was in darkness.
In that darkness, without a book, I watched for Eden. At the foot of the hill was a distant solitary streetlamp, and its old-fashioned blob of light showed on the road. It was an austere and moody Edward Hopper, like the undecorated gas station down the road, like the white clapboard house on the marsh to the north. I listened to the foghorn from the Cape Cod Canal entrance — one low hoot every fifteen seconds. For the moment it all seemed perfect — my solitude, the sky full of stars through the high windows of my house, the streetlamp standing like a single daffodil, and the foghorn sounding in the blackness beyond it while I lay, propped up on one arm and drinking. I had forgotten the Ong Khan; I was thinking only of Eden. To me anticipation was bliss, and nothing was better than waiting in the warm shadowy house for this woman to arrive. It wasn’t anything like repose. It was all motion, like a vivid journey, producing wave upon wave of fantasies and sensations.
In a random and disorderly world of hectic days and long nights this was a sure thing — certain happiness. The foretaste was so sweet that I became wistful when I saw the lights of Eden’s car in the long drive and knew that the thrill of my wait was over. The two wheels with golden cogs that had been turning against each other in my mind slowed and stopped.
In the stillness I went out to the car.
“Why didn’t you tell me when you were arriving?” Eden asked as we embraced in the driveway. “I would have met you at Logan.”
“I didn’t know what flight I was on until just yesterday.”
I wondered in a little shudder why I had told her this lie. Was it because I wanted to arrive at the Cape alone and savor the moments of anticipation?
“You never plan ahead,” she said gently. “You never have any idea what you’re going to do from one minute to the next.”
I clutched her and said, “I know what I’m going to do with you.”
She said, “Anything,” and kissed me long and hard, and began to cry — I could feel the sobs through her body. “I missed you,” she said.
“I missed you, too.”
Everything I said I examined for its truth. I told myself that this was true, as we went into the house, holding hands.
“Why did you stay away so long?”
“I had so much to do,” I said, thinking: That was not it at all.
“Don’t go away again, please.”
“No,” I said. “Never.”
I was restless and somewhat self-conscious in the house with Eden, and time seemed to snag against us. I sensed us faltering. I kept asking myself: What would I be doing if I were alone? What would I eat — where would I go?
Eden said, “I want to cook you something.”
“There’s no food.”
“We can get some — let’s go shopping. Aren’t you hungry?”
I did not know. If I were alone I would know, I thought.
“I ate on the plane,” I said. “Let’s have a drink.”
“Then you’ll conk out on me,” Eden said. “You always do when you have jet lag.”
It was still dark in the house. I had not bothered to put the lights on. I poured the wine in the dark and we drank at the window by starlight, watching the single streetlamp down on the road and listening to the foghorn from the canal.
“We have to talk about India,” I said.
“Do you still want me to go with you?”
“Of course I do.”
When I said that she came to me and crawled into my lap and nuzzled me. Her skin was soft and had the odor of flower petals, and I could feel her warmth against my eyes. She touched me and my mind went dead, my tongue became thick and stupid, and something deep within me came alive — a circuit that began to throb — whipping up my heart and my blood.