6.

Decker opened his eyes, peering up at the vigas and latillas that beamed the flat ceiling. The evening sun cast a crimson glow through a window. Silent, Beth lay next to him. In fact, she had not spoken for several minutes, since the moment she had climaxed. But as the silence persisted, Decker became uneasy, worried that she was in the throes of regret, second thoughts, guilt that she had been unfaithful to her dead husband. Slowly, she moved, turning to him, touching his cheek. So it was going to be all right, he thought.

Naked, Beth rose to a sitting position. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were firm, the size of Decker's cupped palms. He recalled the exquisite hardness of her nipples.

She glanced down at the brick floor she sat upon. They were still in the room where she kept her paintings, the glorious color of which surrounded them. "Pa.s.sion is wonderful. But sometimes there's a price to pay." She chuckled again. "These bricks. I bet I've got bruises on my spine."

"My knees and elbows have the top layer of skin sc.r.a.ped off," Decker said.

"Let me see. Ouch," Beth said. "If we got any wilder, we'd have to go to the emergency ward."

Decker started laughing. He couldn't stop himself. It kept coming and coming. Tears welled from his eyes.

Beth laughed, as well: a soul-releasing expression of joy. She leaned toward him and kissed him again, but this time the kiss communicated tenderness and affection. She touched his strong chin. "What you said before we ... Did you mean it?"

"Completely and totally. The words seem inadequate. I love you," Decker said. "So much so that I feel as if I didn't know anything about myself until this moment, that I've never been truly alive until now."

"You didn't say you're a poet as well as an art critic."

"There's a lot you don't know about me," Decker said. "I can't wait to learn it all." Beth kissed him again and stood.

Decker felt a tightness in his throat as he admired her nakedness. It pleased him that she was comfortable with his admiration. She stood before him, her hands next to her hips, her nude body angled slightly sideways, one foot before the other and positioned at a right angle, suggestive of a dancer's pose, natural, without any trace of embarra.s.sment. Her navel formed a tiny hollow in her flat stomach. Her dark pubic hair was soft and tufted. Her body had the contoured, supple tone of an athlete. Decker was reminded of the sensuous way in which ancient Greek sculptors portrayed nude women. "What's that on your left side?" Beth asked.

"My side?"

"That scar."

Decker looked down at it. The jagged indentation was the size of the tip of a finger. "Oh, that's just-"

"You have another one on your right thigh." Frowning, Beth knelt to examine them. "If I didn't know better, I'd say-" .

Decker couldn't think of a way to avoid the subject. "They're from bullet wounds."

"Bullet wounds? How on earth did-"

"I didn't know enough to duck."

"What are you talking about?"

"I was with the U.S. Rangers that invaded Grenada back in '83." Again, it grieved Decker to have to lie to her. "When the shooting broke out, I didn't hit the ground fast enough."

"Did they give you a medal?"

"For stupidity?" Decker chuckled. "I did get a Purple Heart."

"They look painful."

"Not at all."

"Can I touch them?"

"Be my guest."

Gently, she placed a finger into the dimple on his side and then into the one on his thigh. "You're sure they don't hurt?"

"Sometimes on damp winter nights."

"When that happens, tell me. I know how to make them feel better." Beth leaned down to kiss one, then the other. Decker felt her b.r.e.a.s.t.s slide along his abdomen toward his thigh. "How does that work for you?" she asked.

"Everything's working just fine. Too bad they didn't have nurses like you when I was taken to a military hospital."

"You wouldn't have gotten any sleep." Beth snuggled next to him.

"Sleep isn't everything," Decker said.

It was enough to lie close to her, enjoying her warmth. Neither of them moved or spoke for several minutes. Through the window, the crimson of the sunset deepened.

"I think it's time for a shower," Beth said. "You can use the one off the guest room, or ..."

"Yes?"

"We can share mine."

The gleaming white shower was s.p.a.cious, doubling as a steam area. It had a built-in tiled bench and jets on each side. After lathering and sponging each other as the spray of hot water streamed over them, after kissing and touching, stroking, caressing, and exploring as steam billowed around them, their slippery bodies sliding against each other, they sank to the bench and made trembling, heart-pounding love again.

7.

The evening was the most special of Decker's life. He had never felt such emotional commitment to physical pa.s.sion, such regard-and indeed awe-for the person with whom he was sharing that pa.s.sion. After he and Beth had made love for the second time, after they had finished showering and dressing, he became aware of other unfamiliar feelings, his sense of completeness, of belonging. It was as if their two physical unions had produced another kind of union, intangible, mystical. As long as he was near Beth, he felt that she was within him and he within her. He didn't have to be close enough to touch her. It was enough merely to see her. He felt whole.

As he sipped a gla.s.s of red wine while he barbecued the T-bones Beth had requested, he glanced toward stars beginning to appear in the sky, its evening color remarkably like that of Beth's eyes. He gazed down the wooded slope behind Beth's house toward the lights of Santa Fe spread out below him. Feeling a contentment he had never before known, he peered through the screen door into the glow of the kitchen and watched Beth preparing a salad. She was humming to herself.

She noticed him. "What are you looking at?"

"You."

She smiled with pleasure.

"I love you," Decker said again.

Beth came toward him, opened the door, leaned out, and kissed him. A spark seemed to jump from her to him. "You're the most important person in the world to me."

At that moment, it occurred to Decker that the hollowness he had suffered for many years had finally been filled. He thought back a year and a quarter to Rome and his fortieth birthday, the ennui he had endured, the personal vacuum. He had wanted a wife, a family, a home, and now he would have all of them.

8.

"I'm afraid I'm going to have to leave town for a couple of days," Beth said.

"Oh?" Driving along the narrow pinon-rimmed curves of Tano Road, north of town, Decker looked over at her, confused. It was Friday, September 9, the end of the tourist season, the first evening of Fiesta. He and Beth had been lovers for eight days. "Is it something sudden? You didn't mention it before."

"Sudden? Yes and no," Beth said, gazing over sunset-bathed low hills toward the Jemez Mountains to the west. "Finding out that I had to take the trip the day after tomorrow is sudden. But I knew I'd have to do it eventually. I need to go back to Westchester County. Meetings with lawyers-that sort of thing. It's about my late husband's estate."

The reference to Beth's late husband made Decker uncomfortable. Whenever possible, he had avoided the subject, concerned that Beth's memories of the man would make her ambivalent about her relationship with him. Are you jealous of a dead man? he wondered.

"A couple of days? When do you expect to be back?" Decker asked.

"Actually, maybe longer. Possibly a week. It's cra.s.s and petty, but it is important. My husband had partners, and they're being difficult about how much his share of the business is worth."

"I see," Decker said, wanting to ask all sorts of questions but trying not to pry. If Beth wanted to share her past with him, she would. He was determined not to make her feel crowded. Besides, this was supposed to be a joyous evening. They were on their way to a Fiesta party at the home of a film producer for whom Decker had acted as Realtor. Beth obviously didn't want to talk about her legal problems, so why make her do it? "I'll miss you."

"Same here," Beth said. "It'll be a long week."

9.

"... died young."

Decker heard the fragment of conversation from a group of women behind him as he sipped a margarita and listened to a jazz trio positioned in a corner of the s.p.a.cious living room. The tuxedoed pianist was doing a nice job on a Henry Mancini medley, emphasizing "Moon River."

"From tuberculosis," Decker heard behind him. "Only twenty-five. Didn't start writing until he was twenty-one. It's amazing how much he accomplished in so little time."

Decker turned from listening to the piano player and studied the two hundred guests that his client, the film producer, had invited to the Fiesta party. While uniformed caterers brought c.o.c.ktails and hors d'oeuvres, the partygoers went from room to room, admiring the luxurious home. Famous local residents mixed freely. But the only person in the room who occupied Decker's attention was Beth.

When Decker had first met her, she had worn only East Coast clothing. But gradually that had changed. Tonight, she wore a festive Hispanic-influenced southwestern outfit. Her skirt and top were velvet, their midnight blue complementing her blue-gray eyes and auburn hair. She had tucked back her hair in a ponytail, securing it with a silver barrette whose glint matched that of her silver squash-blossom necklace. She was sitting with a group of women around a coffee table made from blacksmithed iron that supported a two-hundred-year-old door. She looked comfortable, at ease, as if she had been living in Santa Fe for twenty years.

"I haven't read him since I was at UCLA," one of the women was saying.

"Whatever made you get interested in poetry?" another woman asked, as if the thought appalled her.

"And why Keats?" a third woman asked.

Decker mentally came to attention. Until that moment, he hadn't known which writer the group was discussing. The reference, through a complex chain of a.s.sociation, sparked his memory, taking him back to Rome. He repressed a frown as he vividly recalled following Brian McKittrick down the Spanish Steps and past the house where Keats had died. "For fun, I'm taking a course at St. John's College," a fourth woman said. "It's called 'The Great Romantic Poets.' "

"Ah," the second woman said. "I can guess which word in the t.i.tle appealed to you."

"It's not what you're thinking," the fourth woman said. "It's not like those romances you like to read, and I confess I do, too. This is different. Keats did write about men and women and pa.s.sion, but that's not what he's about."

The repet.i.tion of Keats's name made Decker think not only of McKittrick but of twenty-three dead Americans. It troubled him that a poet synonymous with truth and beauty could be irrevocably a.s.sociated in his mind with a restaurant full of charred corpses.

"He wrote about emotion," the fourth woman said. "About beauty that feels like pa.s.sion. About... It's hard to explain."

"Darkling I listen; and, for many a time / I have been half in love with easeful Death." Keats's dirgelike lines occurred spontaneously to Decker. Before he realized what he was doing, he joined the conversation.

"About beautiful things that seem even more heartachingly beautiful when seen through the eyes of someone very young and about to die."

The group looked up at him in surprise, except for Beth, who had been watching him with covert affection throughout the conversation.

"Steve, I didn't realize you knew anything about poetry," the fourth woman said. "Don't tell me that when you're not helping people find beautiful houses like this, you take courses at St. John's, also."

"No. Keats is just a memory from college," Decker lied. "Now you've got me interested," one of the women said. "Was Keats really in his early twenties and dying from TB when he wrote those great poems?"

Decker nodded, thinking of shots being fired in the dark in a rainy courtyard.

"When he was twenty-five," the fourth woman repeated. "He's buried in Venice."

"No, in Rome," Decker said.

"Are you sure?"

"The house where he died is near Bernini's Boat Fountain, to the right as you go down the Spanish Steps."

"You sound as if you've been there."

Decker shrugged.

"Sometimes I think you've been everywhere," an attractive woman said. "One of these days, I'm going to get you to tell me the fascinating story of your life before you came to Santa Fe."

"I sold real estate other places. It wasn't very interesting, I'm afraid."

As if sensing that Decker wanted to move on, Beth mercifully stood and took his arm. "If anybody's going to hear the story of Steve's life, it's going to be me."

Grateful to be relieved from talking about his mood, Decker strolled with Beth onto an extensive brick patio. In the cool night air, they peered toward the star-filled sky.

Beth put an arm around his waist. Smelling her perfume, Decker kissed her cheek. His throat felt pleasantly tight.

Leading her off the patio, away from the lights and the crowd, concealed by shadowy pinon trees, Decker kissed her with pa.s.sion. When Beth reached up, linking her fingers around his neck, returning the kiss, he felt as if the ground rippled. Her lips were soft yet firm, exciting. Through her blouse, her nipples pressed against him. He was breathless. "So go ahead-tell me the fascinating story of your life."