Seamless Sky

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Señor dreamed, too, but the dreams of the hateful are more complicated, if not more complex. He had loved Adelia Cabral once—or at least he had convinced himself that lust and obsession were kinds of love. She in turn had loved Señor—or at least she had been passionately attached to his wealth. They began by lying to themselves and ended by lying to each other. She had betrayed him—so he said—with others and with one other in particular, the despised Monsieur, owner of the neighboring estate, Belleville, of which Señor was zealously jealous.

She in turn was betrayed—or so she thought—by a man who had taken much and given little. So, she grabbed what she could and, when she realized that it would never be enough, she took her own life and very nearly his.

Whatever Señor had once felt for Adelia had long since been replaced by a cold fury that rivaled his former feelings in intensity and depth. Now he lived to torment the son she had borne but had never loved, the child he would never recognize as his own, even if it were so.

Instead, Señor had become a kind of land-locked Capt. Bligh—crossing John Virgil’s Fletcher Christian at every turn and waiting for the moment when he could deliver the excruciating coup de grace. That moment arrived, as all great moments do, unexpectedly, in the curvaceous form of a woman, one with long, thick, wavy black hair; green eyes; and a creamy back that was shown to great advantage in her white halter dress—another Eve for Señor’s labyrinthine Eden.

“I’m so sorry,” the young woman was saying. “I was looking for the inn—I’ve had a flat, you see—but I fear I’ve wandered onto private property.”

Señor was about to shriek, That’s right, you stupid b***h, when he realized that the woman was not only strikingly beautiful, but—and this was extraordinary for genuine beauty—strangely familiar.

In an instant, he recognized who she was—Isabelle Didier, only child of the loathsome Monsieur and presumably sole heiress to Belleville. With its bisque-colored stucco, tiled circular courtyard, fountains and cypress trees, Belleville was far grander than Bethzatha, and, unlike Señor’s estate, had never fallen on hard times, necessitating anything so vulgar and humbling as the establishment of an inn and public tours to pay off the debt.

Now that the inn and the gardens were a success—the toast of all those glossy magazines—Bethzatha had a cachet that Belleville could not match. Still, Belleville was owned by Monsieur, who represented everything Señor detested in this world. He had cuckolded him with the sluttish Adelia and may have even been John Virgil’s real father (or so Señor came to believe, despite her too-ample protestations). He strode the Earth on two healthy legs. And he was French. Señor was as proud to be an equal-opportunity hater as he was to be an American of pure Portuguese descent. But if there was one group he particularly detested, it was the French—all style and no substance.

“That’s why they could never beat the Brits and the Krauts,” he once told a shocked John Virgil. “Too nancy, too nelly. Always worried about which napkin ring to use, as if the world gives a damn. The Krauts were able to stuff six million Jews in the ovens, because those Froggys were more concerned about which sauce to serve with the fish. Remember it, boy: Substance always trumps style. Always.”

And here at last was a way to prove this, the great lesson of Señor’s twisted life—by chaining Monsieur’s lovely seed, rising like a sea-foam Venus before him, to Adelia’s illegitimate spawn.

“Not to fret, my dear,” Señor said to the goddess, with what passed for a smile. “You just come up to the porch and sit for a while, and we’ll have that tire fixed in a jiffy.”

“Miguel,” he hollered to the hapless worker who was watering the pink impatiens that lined the long walkway leading up to the house. “Miguel, fetch John Virgil immediately.”

Soon, John Virgil came bounding up the walk, flushed from the exertion and the startling sight of the woman before him, whom he immediately intuited to be only slightly older but a lot more sophisticated than he.

“Well, just don’t stand there blushing like some i***t schoolboy,” Señor barked. “This is Isabelle Didier. Miss Didier, this is my boy, John Virgil. He’ll drive you home or wherever you have to go. He can fix the flat and return your car later.”

“Oh, no, that’s too much trouble,” she said.

“Nonsense, I insist,” Señor said. “John Virgil, take Miss Didier wherever she wants to go. And don’t use that old jalopy of yours. People can walk faster than that thing can ride. Take the Bentley.”

“As you wish, Señor,” he said. “I’ll be back in a minute, miss.”

“Please, my name is Isa. And if it’s all the same to you, I’d just as soon walk to the car. Goodbye, Señor, and thank you.”

As they headed down the steps and across the circular driveway, Isa glanced over her shoulder to see Señor staring after them and shuddered.

She leaned over, whispering, “If you like, we can take your chariot, John Virgil.”

“You sure you don’t mind? It’s nothing but a heap.”

“Not a bit. In fact, I’d prefer it.”

“Well, that’s a relief. To tell you the truth, I’m not really comfortable driving one of Señor’s automobiles.”

“One of them? How many does he have?”

“Five, no, six. To tell you the truth, they’re stashed all over the estate. I’ve lost count. I think he has, too.”

“Why so many? His being handicapped and all.”

“Status, I guess. Señor always says the cars are what help separate him from the rest of us.”

“Indeed,” Isa said sharply.

They drove mostly in silence, each making small talk and stealing a glance at the other only when his natural reserve with the opposite s*x would allow.

Finally, she ventured, “I’m glad to have this moment and not just because I was lucky enough to get a ride home.”

He lowered his eyes, blushing again, and Isa noticed the longest, lushest pair of eyelashes she had ever seen—a curling, ash-blond awning for those cut cheekbones. Why did boys always have such thick lashes? she wondered. If God had really wanted to play fair, he would’ve parceled those out to the girls instead, she thought, only half-amused, though she supposed that God had given women wiles enough to lure any man they desired.

Desire—it hit the virginal, heretofore complete-within-herself Isa with the full tsunami force of the shockingly, thrillingly new, boring through to her soul as John Virgil laughed and colored, his eyelids and lashes fluttering like a butterfly. It seemed to Isa then that everything about John Virgil quivered on the brink of life’s promise—the blond tendrils clinging to the damp, burnished flesh at the nape of his graceful neck; the huge, brimming ocean-blue eyes; the Achilles pout of his full lips. How very young he was, she thought, though she suspected that he was slightly older and more experienced than she.

Or at least, more tempered. She knew about him, of course. Who didn’t know about him—or anyone else, for that matter—in that small town? The bastard son of that bastard Rodriguez and his crazy b***h, who went to Vietnam—where he acquitted himself honorably, earning a whole bunch of medals—and came back, only to work for that bitter old man.

Still, how very young he was, and how very dear and how achingly beautiful, like a Greek marble of a long-ago lover. She wanted to freeze time, to drink him in, to hold and protect him forever.

But she could not, and presently they were at the gate of Belleville, where she asked him to stop, saying, “The less I have to explain to my father the better.”

“Of course,” he said in the resigned manner of a man who understood he would always be on the outside of the gate.

“Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?” she said.

“Guess not.”

“What did Señor Rodriguez mean when he called you his boy?”

“That I’m his man, his mainstay, his right arm,” John Virgil said, the hurt in the sarcasm unmistakable.

“Why do you let him treat you that way?”

“Because I’m his son, and because one day he’s going to recognize me and my true worth for all the world to see.”

“Is that so important? I mean, isn’t it enough to know your own worth and have it appreciated by a handful of discerning others, including a certain someone who is very likely to say ‘yes’ if you were to ask her out, say, this Saturday night?”

“Oh, she is, is she?”

“I’m sure she is.”

Isa got out of the car and headed up the long, arcing drive alone on foot but not before she turned and whispered, “Just as I’m sure, John Virgil, that one day, she’ll marry you.”