Alexandria - 1896
More than anything about home he missed the moisture in
the air. The smell of the sea,
and the sting of the salt in his lungs. It was hard to breath
here - the air still and
suffocating, the heat a weight that he could never quite throw
off. There was no early
morning fog to cleanse the city of its stench, no late night breeze
to lull him into sleep.
Only the heat, the stale air, and Laura, pricking at every raw
nerve in his body.
On this morning he could add a hangover to his list of grievances.
Yesterday's letter from
Evan had only emphasized how far away he really was. No news from
his grandmother,
no greetings from any of them - only generalized accountings of
how the children were
growing, how the business was remaining steady, how those damned
gypsies were still
hovering about. Damn Evan anyway, what was he doing back there,
a world away? He
should have run those gypsies off by now. There was no telling
what nonsense that
woman was filling his grandmother's head with. He wondered again
what it had been
about him that had turned that gypsy woman against him, from the
beginning, at that first
meeting.
Evan's letter had made no mention of Jenny, that at least
was good news. He didn't know
where his wife had gone off to, didn't care. It was enough for
him to be free of marriage.
Maybe someday he would make that a formality, but for now the
fact of having a legal
wife somewhere didn't really matter. If anything, it could serve
well to keep him from
making that mistake again.
Outside his window the market place was coming alive with
the early morning sounds of a
city waking up. He wondered briefly if the woman he had spent
most of last evening with
was one of the crowd milling in the street - maybe he should rouse
himself enough to dress
and seek her out, let her companionship ease him through another
day. When had he last
seen Laura? Had it been two days ago, or three? Whichever, it
was the longest she had
disappeared since they had arrived here together. Maybe this time
she would stay gone,
and he could think clearly. When she was there she muddled his
thoughts so, he could
never remember exactly how he had come to be in this place with
her.
He knew it was a useless wish. She would come back around,
she always did. But where
was she now? Where did she go on these mysterious little retreats
of hers? He didn't care
that she was gone, only that she never stayed long enough to let
him reason clearly enough
to find his way out of her reach, and when she came back, he was
lost again in the
confusion. Lost and alone and far away from the safety of his
grandmother's affection
with only Laura to blame. She had done this to him, he wasn't
sure how, but knew that it
was all Laura's fault.
Where the hell was she? If only she would come back now,
when his hatred of her was
strengthened by the pain of last night's drink that pounded at
his brain. Come back now,
while the scent of another woman still lingered on him, curling
around his senses. Come
back now, while he felt far enough removed from her to walk away.
"Quentin?" He turned, and she was there. She knew.
Knew what he had been thinking,
and had come to suffocate his will the way the heat and the hangover
choked the breath in
his lungs.
"Where the hell have you been this time?" He glared
at her, hoping the force of his anger
could keep her from wrapping her presence around him.
"You've missed me?"
"Not at all. I don't care that you leave, I don't care
that you ever come back. I care only
that you don't make a fool of me."
She laughed, and her laughter wound its way through him,
burning a path through his
conscience, winding ever deeper, into the hollows of his soul.
"But, Quentin, I already have."