The Woman Who Married a Cloud: The Collected Short Stories (62 page)

Although that hope was always there, burning bright, he would still take the next step: If his lover was happy where she lived, he would find the best apartment in the building or house on the street and empty it. Sometimes that procedure was as simple as offering the owner a large sum of money. More often though because home owners are generally a stubborn sedentary lot, he brought death or some other horrible event inside the home that would make the owner want to flee and get as far away from it as they could.

Once the place was empty, he would hire a company to come in and renovate it from top to bottom. By then he would know what kind of home his girlfriend dreamt of inhabiting so he knew exactly what changes and specifications were needed for the renovation. One woman wanted cold-metal sleek, another a Welsh cottage with a thatched roof. A tall woman who was going deaf dreamt of a view through floor to ceiling windows of endless empty sand in the Namibian desert. It was the least he could do after all they had given him: a dream home in return for their great love and misplaced optimism. Sometimes he would tell them about these homes before they were ready. Sometimes they even got sneak peeks if that’s what they wanted.

If he could never know what it was like to be truly human, at least he could be as kind as a human being and give these nice women something they desired. When the renovations were complete, he would say the necessary incantation and suddenly the woman would be living in her dream home, her memories of him and their relationship having faded into many months ago. How she came to be living in this marvelous new home would not even be a question—she was just here. She had been here all along.

He picked up a puppet and slid it onto his hand. A glass of water was on the table. He lifted it with the puppet hand and took a sip. The water trembled in the glass as he moved to put it back on the table. “Nervous water” he said grinning.

“Water can’t be nervous.” He had the puppet say. He remembered! That’s what his girlfriend had said the night they made love for the first time. After they’d finished she asked for something to drink. He brought her a glass of water from the bathroom. Handing it to her, it jiggled a little in the glass. They both saw this and he joked “Nervous water.”

She said “Water can’t be nervous; it’s your
heart
that’s shaking.”

H
E WAS THE ONLY
man she knew who actually looked
good
in a Panama hat. Before meeting him, she had never seen a man wearing one who didn’t look either like a poser, a hoser, a loser, a tool or a fool. But not him, not Mills. He looked great—like a deliciously shady character in some Graham Greene novel set in the tropics, or a sexy guy in an ad for good rum. He also owned a cream colored linen suit which he often wore together with the hat in the summer. That outfit was totally over the top, but he could get away with wearing such things.

She never knew when he would contact her so when he did she was always both surprised and pleased. He’d say something like “Beatrice it’s Mills. Can you take tomorrow off? Let’s go play hooky.” And unless there was something absolutely pressing, she would.

He was a lawyer. They met when he represented Beatrice Oakum at her divorce. In court he was cool, precise and quick witted. Her ex-husband and his lawyer didn’t know what hit them until the judge awarded her almost everything she asked for in the divorce proceedings.

At a victory lunch afterwards, Mills asked if they might be friends. The way he asked—shyly and with a charming tone of worry in his voice—flustered her. In court he was so confident and authoritative. But here he sounded like a seventh grade boy asking her to dance. On the verge of saying of course, it struck her uh oh maybe he doesn’t want to be just
friends,
he wants—As if reading her mind, the lawyer put up a hand and shook his head. “Please don’t take that any way but how I said it. I just think you and I could be great friends. I hope you do too. No more and no less than that. What do you say?” He stuck out his hand to shake. A funny, odd gesture at that moment—like they were sealing a business deal rather than starting a friendship. It told her everything was all right. She hadn’t misread his intentions.

They lived about an hour away from each other so at the beginning it was mostly long phone calls and the occasional visit. That suited them though because they were both busy people. The calls came in the evening or on the weekends. They were relaxed and uncommonly frank. Perhaps distance had something to do with it. Because fifty miles separated them, both people felt free to say whatever they wanted without having to worry about the possibility of seeing each other unless they agreed on a time and a place to meet.

Mills loved women. A confirmed bachelor, he usually dated two or three simultaneously. Sometimes they knew about each other, sometimes not. He said he liked the drama that invariably came with ‘dating multitudes.’ Hell, he even liked the confrontations, the recriminations, the hide and seek that was frequently necessary when divvying up your heart among others.

Eventually Beatrice realized Mills wanted her in his life partly because he did not desire her. At another time that would have hurt—no one likes being unwanted. But after her divorce and the exhausting cruel events that preceded it, she felt like a tsunami survivor. The last thing she wanted now was someone new in either her head or her bed. So this kind of friendship was okay with her, at least for now. They’d be buddies, Platonic pals with the added bonus that each brought to the table the unique perspective and insight of their sex. Neither of them had ever had a really good, non-romantic friend of the opposite sex and it turned out to be a gratifying experience.

Mills asked questions about why women thought or behaved certain ways so he could better understand and win the hearts of his girlfriends. Beatrice asked many of the same kind of questions but for a very different reason: she was curious about how men saw life so she could better understand why her ex-husband had behaved the way he did. Mills teased her about this, “You’re performing an ongoing postmortem while I’m just trying to get them to say yes.”

They ate meals together, went to the movies (although they had very different taste and choosing what film to see often was a good natured tug of war), they took long walks. Mills had a big mutt named Cornbread that regularly went along with them. That made things nicer because the dog was a sweet gentle soul who wanted nothing more than to be your friend. When they passed other people on these walks, Beatrice could tell by their expressions that they thought Mills and she were a couple. The happy hound bounding back and forth between them further proved that.

One afternoon they were sitting at a favorite outdoor café by the river. It was a gorgeous June day, the place wasn’t crowded, Cornbread slept at their feet: A moment where you couldn’t ask for more.

“Tell me a secret.”

“What do you mean?” She straightened up in her seat.

Sticking his chin out, he said in a taunting voice “I dare you to tell me one of your absolute deepest secrets. One you’ve never told anyone before, not even your husband.”

“Mills, we’re friends and all, but
come on
.”

“I’ll tell
you
one of mine—”

“No, I don’t want to hear it!” She made a quick gesture with her hand as if shooing flies away from her face.

“Come on Bea, we
are
good pals now. Why can’t I tell you a secret?”

“Because things like that ... you should keep to yourself.”

He smiled. “Are your secrets so ugly or dangerous that they can’t be told?”

She tsk’d her tongue and shook her head. This was the first time he had ever made her feel uncomfortable. What was the point? “Tell me about your hat.”

He looked at the Panama on the table. “My
hat
?”

“Yes, I love that hat. And I love it on you. Tell me where you got it.”

“You’re changing the subject but that’s all right. My hat. I got it as a present from a client who was a pretty interesting guy.”

“
Was
?”

“Yes, he’s dead; he was murdered.”

“Wow! By who?”

“Well they never found out. He was Russian and supposedly had quite a few enemies.”

“You were his divorce lawyer?”

“Yes.” Mills signaled a passing waitress to bring him another glass of wine.

“Who was he married to?”

“A very out of the ordinary woman; an American. They met when she was a guest professor at the Moscow Institute of Steel and Alloys.”

“Do you think she killed him?”

Mills smiled strangely. “She
was
on their list of suspects.”

“Who wanted the divorce?”

He picked the hat off the table and put it on his knee. “He did, but she got everything in the settlement because he just wanted out and away from her.”

“If he lost everything in the settlement, why’d he give you a present afterwards?” Her voice was teasing, but she really wanted him to answer the question.

“Because after it was over I convinced his wife not to turn him into gold.”

Beatrice wasn’t sure she’d heard right. “
What
? Say that again.”

Mills turned the hat round and round on his knee. “I convinced her not to turn him into gold and he was grateful. I’m a very good negotiator, you know. That’s why he gave me the hat; he was thankful.”

“What do you mean,
turn him into gold
? What are you talking about, Mills?” Beatrice looked at her friend suspiciously, as if he must be putting her on, or that there was a joke in all this somewhere that she either wasn’t getting or he’d told badly.

Cornbread woke up and immediately began biting his butt with great gusto. Both people watched while the dog attacked himself and then stopped just as suddenly, curled up again and went back to sleep.

“Mills?”

“I told you they met when she was a guest professor in Moscow. She’s a metallurgist, but also an alchemist. Do you know what they do?”

Beatrice snorted her derision “I know what they’re
supposed
to be able to do—turn dross into gold.”

He rubbed his neck and nodded “ ‘Dross’ I like that word; it’s very medieval. But yes you’re right—that’s what they do.”

“But there’s no such thing, Mills, and don’t pretend there is. I know nothing about it, but I do know alchemy is more myth than anything else. People have always tried to transform worthless stuff into gold. But it’s a metaphor—a nice one—but it’s not
real
.”

No longer smiling, Mills said “Oh, it’s real. Believe me, I’ve seen it happen. I saw her do it more than once.”

“Stop it, you’re teasing me. But listen—I am completely gullible about these things. I believe what people tell me. That was half the problem with my husband—I always believed him and you know how
that
ended.”

Mills rubbed his throat again and looked at Beatrice a long few moments. It was clear he was carefully considering what to say next. “We met back in seventh grade. I was the first boy she ever slept with.”

“Who is this? Who are you talking about?”

“Her name is Heather Cooke. Alchemists aren’t made, they’re born. It is an inherent talent. Contrary to what most people believe, you can’t
study
to be an alchemist any more than you can study to be a violin prodigy or sports star. Studying makes you smarter and practice makes you more adept, but neither is able to create the divine spark that flares into genius. It’s either within you from the beginning or not. That’s why all those geniuses so accomplished at other things—Paracelsus, Isaac Newton, St. Thomas Aquinas—failed at alchemy.

“Heather always had the gift. But the irony was she didn’t want it; didn’t want any part of it. The ability was thrust on her like a physical handicap. She once even said she would rather have been born blind than possess the ability to do alchemy. But too bad—that was her burden.”

Beatrice listened to Mills rattle on, half expecting him to start chuckling at some point, pat her on the shoulder and say he was kidding—this was all a joke. But he didn’t and as his cockamamie story went on, she became more and more engrossed in it.

“She would never tell me how she did any of it, not that I would have understood or been able to duplicate the process even if she had. Heather said anyone can find and mix ingredients but the last most important element is the touch, whatever that meant. I asked if she literally meant physical touch but she said no, it was something far more abstruse than that. She made it plain that she didn’t want me to ask more about it.”

“You actually
saw
her do alchemy—change dross into gold?”

“Yes, twice. But there are different kinds of alchemy. Not just—”

“Can you tell me about them?”

Mills took a deep breath and both cheeks puffed when he let it out again. “The first time we made love we were fifteen. Heather’s father died when she was a child. He was a draftsman for an architectural firm. One of her prize possessions was an expensive ‘Yard o Led’ mechanical pencil he owned. She carried it with her everywhere. That first night we were at her house because her Mom was out playing bridge. The pencil was on the desk in her room. I’d admired it earlier. When we were done, she excused herself and left the room. Before she did, she stopped at her desk and picked up the pencil. Then she smiled at me over her shoulder.

“A few minutes later she came back and said ‘this is for you.’ She handed me a solid gold mechanical pencil,
that
mechanical pencil. She wanted me to have it as a keepsake of that night.”

“But how did you know it was the same pencil?”

“Bite marks. Her father chewed on his pens and pencils when he was working. That one was no different. All over the top of this beautiful heavy gold mechanical pencil were bite marks.”

The waitress brought Mills his glass of wine. Neither of them spoke after the woman left. Beatrice kept waiting for him to give her a sign—a smile or a wiggle of the eyebrows, something that said okay, I
am
teasing you. But his face looked even more serious than before.