“We never will.” She realized it sounded more like a question than an affirmation. “Will we?”
“Never,” he said. “I’ll never willingly leave you.”
Chiara said nothing more for a while, using action as a substitute. His words made her wetter than the late humid August. Nothing would stop her. Not tonight. She took him then, there in the office.
It was her time to practice mastery, sitting astride him and controlling everything: depth, angle, frequency.
Chiara raised herself just enough, almost too far, so she nearly lost him. His tip brushed those hot slick lips like a lover’s lazy touch across her mouth. Illness, she reflected, had little diminished his reaction to her body.
He moaned.
“Shhh,” she said.
But she herself screamed when he bucked his hips up as she descended firmly around him.
The gargoyle watched them like a feral sentinel, a wild creature only marginally more benign than its human masters.
The cat gargoyle became their constant nocturnal companion. Chiara had the odd feeling the creature was almost sufficient to constitute the third party in an exotic ménage à trois. Her lover laughed at that.
One night he said, “So. What should I keep in the box?”
Her gaze flickered like the firelight. She spoke boldly. “In the pussy box?”
He laughed with delight. “The gargoyle box.”
“That’s what I was thinking of.”
“Liar,” he said.
Chiara nodded. “Prick,” she answered, grinning.
“Exactly.” He considered things for a moment. “It’s too big for paper clips.”
“And it’s too wet. They’d rust.”
“Elevate your mind.”
“I’ll elevate something,” she said.
“The gargoyle box—” he gamely persisted.
“It’s big,” she agreed. “It’d hold a quart at least.”
“What comes in quarts in a home office?” he said, sounding puzzled.
“Not what,” Chiara said. “Who.”
“There are times,” he said, “when I think the name Chiara surely derives in a truly loose sense from the word incorrigible.”
“And you love that.”
They stopped discussing the gargoyle box. Their mutual attention sidled into a whole new climatic zone.
“I know who I love.”
They both did.
“I haven’t been with you nearly enough,” Chiara said.
“Nor I with you.” The words glowed like coals.
They flickered.
“Just for a while longer …” Her words sounded forlorn, and that was the last time they did so.
They made love with the passion and heat of cats mating. But it was not a quick thing. Their voices were without human words, crying out, rising and falling like feline screams until exhausted silence fell.
The echoes persisted stubbornly.
She slipped away when he left.
That’s far too circumspect. More precisely, she ran when he died.
When she came back, she discovered he’d left a note, weighted beneath one corner of the gargoyle box.
“It’s not the idea of dying I mind,” he had said on more than one occasion. “I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”
Neither did she.
Chiara returned to the house and hesitated outside, watching all the lights in the first floor blazing. The upper story was dark. A paramedic gave her a note that had been left for her on the bed table.
It read: “I stole the line about dying and being there from Woody Allen. Give credit where credit’s due. But I hope you’ll give me credit too, sweetie. I love you.”
It was unsigned. It did not require his name.
“I love you too, darlin’.” Chiara cried for a long, long time.
And for a far longer time, it seemed to her, she lived by herself in the empty house with the gargoyle box. She moved it to the table by the bed. She went to sleep staring at the cat creature.
Nights fell around her, silent and cold.
There was no funeral and no burial. She permitted neither.
Then came the morning when the telephone rang. She ignored it. Ten minutes later, when it rang again, Chiara didn’t answer. She covered her ears with the pillow as the answering machine picked up the message.
Two hours later, the lawyer showed up at the door.
He kept his well-manicured index finger pressed to the bell until she answered.
All the while, the stone box kept silent company with her.
When what now remained of her lover was returned to Chiara, it reminded her of Chinese takeout. At least that’s what the white shiny-stock cardboard box resembled.
She unfolded the lid and contemplated the contents. When she stirred with one tentative and delicate forefinger, she discovered the bits of bone.
Chiara withdrew her finger and stared at the dusty patina that filled in the whorls of her fingertip. The rose glow of the Tiffany lent everything a sensual radiance.
The time seemed appropriate, so she talked to him.
Chiara talked far into the evening.
Eventually — and not to her great surprise — he answered.
I guess we ought to discuss our relationship, he said.
She smiled. “I always thought it was forged in heaven.”
Even now?
“We fought sometimes,” she said. “We had misunderstandings. A few times we hurt each other. But we learned to talk it out. Each of us cared enough to work for what we wanted.”
I miss you, he said.
She didn’t have to say anything. It was in her sudden tears. “Can we stay together a little longer?” she said.
I think so, the equivalent of his voice said, sounding wistful. There’s a way.
“I’d like that,” she said. “Tell me.”
Then … he began to whisper, you know what you need to do.
Yes, she did, but she had to think about it a while longer, denying herself food, drink, sleep. But she was a quick study. She required only a brief parching stint in the wilderness of her own soul to reach a conclusion.
Yes, she knew what she had to do.
And more, she wanted to do it.
She bought smooth stones, alleged to be, if not outright magical, at least highly spiritual, from a Boulder, Colorado, woman named Chalice. The surface of the stones was veined with a blue mineral.
Chiara used the stones to grind the bone fragments from the takeout box into a fine powder. Then she sat at the kitchen table under a bright light, her largest facial mirror set out on the checked cloth. She used the spare sharp X-Acto blades from the tool drawer to divide the powder into a finer dust. Some dispersed into the air with the quick, birdlike motions she employed.
She thought the cloud particles looked shiny, almost glowing in the light from the overhead.
“So beautiful,” Chiara murmured. She knew who that really described.
Some of the dust settled on her lips. She flicked with the moist tip of her tongue. The ashy residue tasted — she wasn’t sure at first — a little of salt, with a hint of something much richer.
Chiara licked her lips again, eager now.
She abruptly saw herself as if from another’s eyes, toiling in dirty work clothes with the sharp blades, the mirror, the powdered remains. Chiara laughed at the image and offered a silent half-serious prayer that the police were not somehow watching.
This would be a tough one to explain.
She finished powdering the bone and mixed it back into the contents of the box. Then she put away the smooth stones. Chiara realized she was humming, and her lips curved around the companion lyrics:
“Fee, fie, foe, fum …”
Tonight she did not feel alone.
Not one bit.