The Beautiful The Damned - Kristine Kathryn Rusch, ebook
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KRISTINE KATHRY RUSCHTHE BEAUTIFUL, THE DAMNEDCHAPTER 1I Come From The Middle West, an unforgiving land with little or no tolerance forimagination. The wind blows harsh across the prairies, and the snows fall thick.Even with the conveniences of the modem age, life is dangerous there. To losesight of reality, even for one short romantic moment, is to risk death.I didn't belong in that country, and my grandfather knew it. I was his namesake,and somehow, being the second Nick Carraway in a family where the name had acertain mystique had forced that mystique upon me. He had lived in the Eastduring the twenties, and had grand adventures, most of which he would not talkabout. When he returned to St. Paul in 1928, he met a woman-- my grandmotherNell -- and with her solid, common sense had shed himself of the romance andimagination that had led to his adventures in the first place.Although not entirely. For when I announced, fifty years later, that I intendedto pursue my education in the East, he paid four years of Ivy League tuition.And, when I told him, in the early '80s, that, despite my literary backgroundand romantic nature, I planned a career in the securities business, he regaledme with stories of being a bond man in New York City in the years before thecrash.He died while I was still learning the art of the cold call, stuck on thesixteenth floor of a windowless high rise, in a tiny cubicle that matched ahundred other tiny cubicles, distinguished only by my handprint on the phone setand the snapshots of my family thumbtacked to the indoor-outdoor carpetingcovering the small barrier that separated my cubicle from all the others. Henever saw the house in Connecticut which, although it was not grand, wasrespectable, and he never saw my rise from a cubicle employee to a man with anoffice. He never saw the heady Reagan years, although he would have warned meabout the awful Black Monday well before it appeared. For despite the computers,jets, and televised communications, the years of my youth were not all thatdifferent from the years of his.He never saw Fitz either, although I knew, later that year, when I read thebook, that my grandfather would have understood my mysterious neighbor too.My house sat at the bottom of a hill, surrounded by trees whose russet leavesare-- in my mind-- in a state of perpetual autumn. I think the autumn melancholycomes from the overlay of hindsight upon what was, I think, the strangest summerof my life, a summer which, like my grandfather's summer of 1925, I do notdiscuss, even when asked. In that tiny valley, the air always had a damp chilland the rich smell of loam. The scent grew stronger upon that winding dirt paththat led to Fitz's house on the hill's crest -- not a house really, but more ofa mansion in the conservative New England style, white walls hidden by trees,with only the wide walk and the entry visible from the gate. Once behind, thewalls and windows seemed to go on forever, and the manicured lawn with itsneatly mowed grass and carefully arranged marble fountains seemed like athrowback from a simpler time.The house had little life in the daytime, but at night the windows were thrownopen and cars filled the driveway. The cars were all sleek and dark--blue Saabsand midnight BMWs, black Jaguars and ebony Cararras. Occasionally a whitestretch limo or a silver DeLorean would mar the darkness, but those guestsrarely returned for a second visit, as if someone had asked them to take theirostentation elsewhere. Music trickled down the hill with the light, usuallymusic of a vanished era, waltzes and marches and Dixieland Jazz, music bothromantic and danceable, played to such perfection that I envied Fitz his soundsystem until I saw several of the better known New York Philharmonic membersround the comer near my house early on a particular Saturday evening.Laughter, conversation, and the tinkle of ice against fine crystal filled thegaps during the musicians' break, and in those early days, as I sat on my porchswing and stared up at the light, I imagined parties like those I had only seenon film-- slender beautiful women in glittery gowns, and athletic men who woretuxedos like a second skin, exchanging witty and wry conversation under a dyingmoon.In those early days, I didn't trudge up the hill, although later I learned Icould have, and drop into a perpetual party that never seemed to have a guestlist. I still had enough of my Midwestern politeness to wait for an invitationand enough of my practical Midwestern heritage to know that such an invitationwould never come.Air conditioners have done little to change Manhattan in the summer. Ifanything, the heat from their exhausts adds to the oppression in the air, thestench of garbage rotting on the sidewalks, and the smell of sweaty human bodiespressed too close. Had my cousin Arielle not discovered me, I might have spentthe summer in the cool loam of my Connecticut home, monitoring the marketsthrough my personal computer, and watching Fitz's parties with a phone wedgedbetween my shoulder and ear.Arielle always had an ethereal, other-worldly quality. My sensible aunt, withher thick ankles and dish-water blonde hair, must have recognized that qualityin the newborn she had given birth to in New Orleans, and committed the onlyromantic act of her life by deciding that Arielle was not a Mary or a Louise,family names that had suited Carraways until then.I had never known Arielle well. At family reunions held on the shores of LakeSuperior, she was always a beautiful, unattainable ghost, dressed in whitegauze, with silver blonde hair that fell to her waist, wide blue eyes, and skinso pale it seemed as fragile as my mother's bone china. We had exchanged perhapsfive words over all those reunions, held each July, and always I had bowed myhead and stammered in the presence of such royalty. Her voice was sultry andmusical, lacking the long "a"s and soft "d"s that made my other relations soundlike all their years of education had made no impression at all.Why she called me when she and her husband Tom discovered that I had bought ahouse in a village only a mile from theirs I will never know. Perhaps she waslonely for a bit of family, or perhaps the other-worldliness had absorbed her,even then.CHAPTER III Drove To Arielle and Tom's house in my own car, a BMW, navy blue andspit-polished, bought used because all of my savings had gone into the house.They lived on a knoll in a mock-Tudor style house surrounded by young saplingsthat had obviously been transplanted. The lack of tall trees gave the house avulnerable air, as if the neighbors who lived on higher hills could look downupon it and find it flawed. The house itself was twice the size of mine, with acentral living area flanked by a master bedroom wing and a guest wing, the wingsmore of an architect's affectation than anything else.Tom met me at the door. He was a beefy man in his late twenties whose athleticbuild was beginning to show signs of softening into fat. He still had the thickneck, square jaw and massive shoulders of an offensive lineman which, of course,he had been. After one season with the Green Bay Packers -- in a year unremarkedfor its lackluster performance-- he was permanently sidelined by a knee injury.Not wanting to open a car dealership that would forever capitalize on his oneseason of glory, he took his wife and his inheritance and moved east. When hesaw me, he clapped his hand on my back as if we were old friends when, in fact,we had only met once, at the last and least of the family reunions."Ari's been waiting ta see ya," he said, and the broad flat uneducated vowels ofthe Midwest brought with them the sense of the stifling summer afternoons of thereunions, children's laughter echoing over the waves of the lake as if their joywould last forever.He led me through a dark foyer and into a room filled with light. Nothing in thefront of the house had prepared me for this room, with its floor-to-ceilingwindows, and their view of an English garden beyond the patio. Arielle sat on aloveseat beneath the large windows, the sunlight reflecting off her hair andwhite dress, giving her a radiance that was almost angelic. She held out herhand, and as I took it, she pulled me close and kissed me on the cheek."Nicky," she murmured. "I missed you."The softness with which she spoke, the utter sincerity in her gaze made mebelieve her and, as on those summer days of old, I blushed."Not much ta do in Connecticut." Tom's booming voice made me draw back. "We beencounting the nails on the walls.""Now, Tom," Ari said without taking her hand from mine, "we belong here."I placed my other hand over hers, capturing the fragile fingers for a moment,before releasing her. "I rather like the quiet," I said."You would," Tom said. He turned and strode across the hardwood floor, always inshadow despite the light pouring in from the windows.His abruptness took me aback, and I glanced at Ari. She shrugged. "I think we'lleat on the terrace. The garden is cool this time of day.""Will Tom join us?"She frowned in a girlish way, furrowing her brow, and making her appear, for amoment, as if she were about to cry. "He will when he gets off the phone."I hadn't heard a phone ring, but I had no chance to ask her any more for sheplaced her slippered feet on the floor and stood. I had forgotten how tiny shewas, nearly half my height, but each feature perfectly proportioned. She took myarm and I caught the fresh scent of lemons rising from her warm ...
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