The Lover From an Icy Sea (10 page)

Seemingly indifferent to all of it, Daneka continued towards the reception area. Kit took several shots of her in untroubled transit from curbside to dockside as the maître d’—obligingly, protectively, almost possessively—accompanied her down through the throng of hungry, curious, envious, lascivious faces to a table next to the lake. When that same maître d’ seated her at a flattering angle to the water’s edge, Kit noted Daneka’s gesture to him—still present, still hovering, still obliging—followed by his nod, followed immediately by a lighted match and then a lighted candle.

The sun still hadn’t set. No other candles in the restaurant had yet been lit. But Daneka asked for—and got—her candle. The light from it and from a setting sun would give her face and upper body just the kind of nimbus she knew would deflect Kit’s attention from the difference in their ages. No matter how many anonymous heads she was able to turn, no matter how many unspoken but clearly obvious desires she was able to elicit, an older woman’s wisdom informed her that familiarity would slowly diminish any infatuation Kit might feel at the burgeoning of their relationship. This evening, this dinner—this moment sliced out from all that would follow—was her opportunity to enchant him with her beauty and make him oblivious of what by nature’s own conventions was unnatural. She wanted him blind: blind to other women, blind to any possibility of exit, blind to those events and choices in her past that had first informed, then molded, then finally hardened her character into what it was today.

A waiter approached—a too-eager and too-gallant Prince Charming—to take her drink order. From what Kit could see of the abrupt change in the waiter’s demeanor, Daneka didn’t hesitate to re-order his agenda. Her nod said ‘Yes, bring a drink’—and then she named one. The waiter-prince wandered off, his charm rebuffed to a slightly duller sheen. In the meantime, Kit had moved his focus in as tight as he could on Daneka’s face and shoulders, front-lit by the candle and the setting sun behind him. As he was about to take another shot, he saw her raise a hand to her shoulder, then push her dress to one side and begin to massage what appeared through his lens to be a bruise. Probably the result of a minor collision with something falling out of the overhead rack, he reasoned. The attendants were always warning of in-flight shifts in overhead baggage….

She looked down at the bruise and winced. Kit had the look and the strained curvature of her neck muscles in tight focus as he snapped his final shot. A look of minor pain on a beautiful face, he thought, gave him a portrait as perfect as he might ever hope to achieve.

Kit disassembled the tripod and retired his lens to his camera bag. Not twenty feet from where he stood was a rowboat. He grabbed his gear and walked over to it, then looked for an attendant—but none was present. He climbed in, found a pair of oars lying at the bottom of the boat and began to row towards the restaurant. He reversed his position in the boat so as to be able to watch Daneka as he rowed. The newer position might’ve been awkward, but he managed it without difficulty as he watched the waiter set a flute of champagne down in front of her. As she raised the flute to take a sip, her eyes looked out over the water and found Kit for the first time. He was still at some distance, but close enough for her to allow just the hint of a smile as she put the flute to her lips.

He answered with his own quiet smile. As successive pushes of Kit’s oars decreased the distance between them, each held the other locked in a stare.

When he finally landed at the dock, he extended a hand. Daneka emptied her glass, stood up from the table and descended the few steps to his waiting rowboat. Kit steadied her as she stepped down and in, then settled her at the stern. At that moment, the waiter reappeared with menus and handed one to each of them. Their menus remained closed and their eyes remained fixed—but not on the menus. Daneka was the first to order. She asked for a bottle of Veuve Cliquot and a dozen oysters.

“
No, make that two dozen. And some fruit—peaches, nectarines, plums.” And then, barely above a whisper, “and a banana.”

Kit looked hard at her and then ordered a second bottle of the same champagne and a dozen strawberries. “No,” he said, smiling mischievously. “For me, Grande Dame and two dozen strawberries. No bananas—instead, some pomegranates and figs.” He broke his stare at Daneka long enough to look up and ask whether the waiter could bring their order by gondola. The young man announced that well, yes … maybe he could … but that, well … it might be a problem … other customers, and … Kit looked at Daneka. “Don’t worry. We’ll make it worth your while,” he announced grandly. The waiter returned an ingratiating bow and smile; retired his pen and order pad to his shirt pocket; was about to walk off when Daneka asked him to dismiss her driver for the evening.

Kit pushed back from the dock with an oar. Daneka, facing him, sat in the stern. He rowed slowly away from the restaurant while she leaned over the transom and trailed a single finger in the water.

“
Tell me about yourself, Kit,” she said. “Tell me about your early years, your first memories, about growing up, about when you realized you wanted to become a photographer. Or if not a photographer, an artist. Tell me how and why you came to be what and who you are today. All of it. Tell me about your siblings, your parents. Tell me why your friends are your friends, and why your enemies are your enemies. And then tell me what you look for in a woman, in a mate.” She smiled ironically. “In the love of your life.”

“
How long have you got,” Kit asked, a little surprised at such a tall order, but also skeptical she would have the patience or stamina to sit through all of it.

“
We’ve got the evening and the night. I’m not going anywhere. Besides, we’re marooned out here. I can’t swim in these clothes, and I’m not yet ready to take them off.” She watched for a blush, but none appeared. She liked that.

“
Not yet,” he said—more of a statement than a question.

“
Not yet,” she answered, neither a tease nor a challenge. Kit knew she would take them off when she was damned good and ready to take them off—just as she had done once before in his apartment. This time, however, he wouldn’t be falling asleep.

“
And if I tell you everything, absolutely everything about me, will you grant me the same favor in return?” he asked.

“
Maybe,” she teased.

“
Maybe?”

“
Well, my story has a few twists and turns. Most of them happy, mind you. But just the same, a few twists and turns.”

“
Twists and turns?”

“
Like my birthplace. You know, I suppose, that I wasn’t born in this country.”

“
I would never have guessed it.”

Daneka feigned a look of hurt. “Is it that obvious?”

“
Your language is a bit too perfect for you to be home-grown. Your accent is—. Well, let’s just call it ‘finishing school,’ shall we? You’re very precise with both your consonants and your vowels. And I can almost hear the punctuation.”

“
Ahh! That’s because I’m reading
Eats Shoots & Leaves
,” Daneka said, barely able to suppress a snicker.

“
Excuse me?”

“
Eats Shoots & Leaves, Daneka repeated. “Or, if you prefer, Eats comma Shoots & Leaves. I picked it up in London a couple of days ago. It’s all the rage over there, or didn’t you know?”

“
No. I had no idea. But I’m not in the book business, remember? What’s it about?”

“
The quest for perfect punctuation. Maybe that’s why you hear it in my sentences.”

“
Uh-huh. Punctuation. Fascinating!”

“
Yes. It is, actually. As a matter of fact, I’ve been flirting with a little story myself. For the British market, mind you. Brits get worked up about punctuation the way Americans get worked up about pornography. You’re both voyeuristic to the teeth. Brits just have a more refined sense of where to look—as in, between the lines and after an elipsis. I suspect, somewhere down below their stiff upper lips, they also get worked up about sex from time to time. Otherwise, they’d have a real problem—as in no population to punctuate. And no punctuation to populate.”

Kit considered her logic; liked the sound of it; allowed himself a small smile. “And so your story—?” He left the question deliberately open-ended.

“—
Would use only punctuation marks.”

“
Uh-huh.”

“
If I had a piece of paper and a pen, I could sketch it out for you right now. But since I don’t, I’ll have to tell it to you through dialogue. Of course, less is more, you know, where storytelling is concerned. My written story will take up only half a page, top to bottom, and a couple of spaces, left to right, at the left-hand margin of that page. You’ll be able to read it in ten seconds. It’ll be something like cuneiform or hieroglyphics. It’s the future of writing, Kit—at least magazine writing—and much cheaper. It’ll accomplish the same thing where readers are concerned, but leave far more space for advertising. If only we could do the same thing with photographs…”

Kit was not at all sure he grasped her concept. He naturally understood visuals better than words. But he also understood words much better than naked punctuation marks. And he certainly didn’t care for her ruminations on the future of photography.

“
Okay. So shoot. Or eat. Or leave.”

“
Why, I thought you’d never ask!”

Daneka sat back in the rowboat, arched her neck and head dramatically, and declaimed. “My title is ‘Prurient Punctuation.’ I think it needs some more pizzaz, but that’s the working title for now.”

Kit was so mesmerized by her face, gestures and voice, he lost the sense of the first few lines and had to mentally recoup them before he could begin to grasp the sense of her narrative.

“‘
Would you?’ she whispered into his ear like a brooding question mark.’

‘
Would I what?’ he asked nonchalantly, his beady, black eyes staring back at her like a colon.

‘
Would you, you know, like to do it?’ she sniffed again, still apparently brooding interrogatively.

The colon exploded into a pair of bullet points. A bit of saliva squeezed out and hung from his lip like a semi-colon. ‘Yes, I think so—’ he answered, sounding to her ear distinctly like a double em dash.

She reached down between his legs. The double em stood suddenly at attention. ‘Yes, let’s!’ he whispered back, now sounding and looking more like a proper exclamation point.

‘
Hmmmm,’ she sighed into his ear. Suddenly feeling Iberian, she inverted, letting her sigh trail off like an ellipsis within easy reach of his exclamation. ‘¿Shall we…?’

‘
Oh, God, yes! Let’s!!!’ he exclaimed. As she gazed in admiration she couldn’t believe the size of it. That, or she was seeing his exclamation in triplicate.

He took the length of a paragraph break to study her legs from close up, his eyes once again an upright colon: those legs were, he decided, a delicious pair of parentheses, at the apex of which aired an asterisk. He visualized himself between them and inside it, but then paused, comma-like. Formerly colon-eyes became ##. ‘But you’re—’ The exclamatory in him floundered back down to the fluke of a double em.

‘
Yes,’ she said, two tildes hovering here gravely, there acutely, over a pair of accents. I’m in
medias res
. It’s called a period.’

He looked again—pausing between double ems—at her asterisk resting atop perfect parentheses. It blushed bright red like a squishy ampersand. The parentheses stiffened into brackets.

She bolted upright and exchanged Iberian impulse for a proper English point of interrogation. ‘You now don’t want…?’

‘
Full stop.’ The British Puritan in him had spoken.”

Her declamation at an end, Daneka looked down at Kit—somewhat sheepishly, he thought. He still wasn’t sure what to think about the story, but the delivery had enchanted him. She was an enchantress—pure and simple. His chin had been resting on has hands throughout her recitation. He extended the tips of his fingers and soundlessly applauded. Whatever it may have lacked in volume, his gesture made up for in spirit. She smiled in obvious delight and mock-bowed.

A closer assessment of her story didn’t really matter to either of them. What mattered to him was that he’d gotten her to reveal a part of herself—his real strategy. What mattered to her—for once, in the absence of any strategy whatsoever—was that she’d allowed herself to be spontaneous, unselfconscious, a girl again, and that he’d listened to her without motive— without anything to gain or lose—and apparently liked her.

Barely three-quarters of an hour had passed, and yet they’d moved to a point with each other that many married couples never achieve in a lifetime. As both of them were contemplating the same fact, their waiter arrived, as ordered.

The gondolier pulled up alongside their rowboat, and the waiter stepped from one boat into the other. The two men then worked together: one handed over; the other set out: tablecloth, napkins, silverware, ice bucket, flutes, two bottles of champagne, fruit basket, and a plate each of strawberries and oysters. The waiter moved to hand Kit the check. Daneka intercepted it; added tip and signed it; handed it back. As she reached into her purse for a twenty for the gondolier, the waiter couldn’t help sneaking a glance at his own gratuity—nor could he suppress the smile that announced his satisfaction. He bowed formally to Daneka and announced she had only to call: he was hers for the duration of their stay. He’d even brought along a crystal dinner bell for the purpose, which he now placed on the table. As the waiter prepared to exit the rowboat, he glanced once more at Daneka, then at Kit—neither of whom was paying him any attention—then stepped stiffly out of the rowboat and nodded to the gondolier by way of signal to return to the restaurant. The gondola swung out and away from the rowboat in the direction of the Boathouse. The gondolier, money already pocketed, began to hum an Italian folk tune that Kit knew had more of Cagliari in it than of Torcello. So much for Venetian spectacle, Kit thought—but kept the thought to himself.