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“I’ll talk with Hack. We’ll get back the cup or whatever that thing is. I can do it. He listens to me.”
“Tell me what’s really on your mind,” he said. “And don’t tell me it’s not about you. There’s nothing you do that’s not about you, Maggie. That’s why I love you. You’re feline from head to toe, and I mean every supple and sensuous curve in your glorious body. Come in here with me. It would be the greatest honor of my life.”
“Don’t hurt him,” she said, surprised at the weakness in her voice.
“The war hero?”
“Stop pretending you don’t know what I’m talking about. I know you, Arnold. I’ve seen what you’ve done to others who have gotten in your way.”
“I think you do
n’t know me well enough,” he said. He opened his eyes and winked. “I’ve always wondered what the objection was.”
“I think you’re afraid of women.”
He smiled to himself. “Test me.”
“What’s that smell?” she said.
“What smell?”
“Something is burning,” she said.
“It’s my sandwich. I was reheating it in the skillet. Turn off the stove for me, will you? People don’t know what it’s like to lose one of your senses. I’d give anything to smell a gardenia again. Why do you feel so sorry for Captain Holland? His legs are fine. He’s handsome and has his whole life ahead of him. Why do you think me such an ogre?”
“You mock people. Me in particular.”
“I do not. You intrigue me. I love to watch you when you look in the mirror. The way you touch a line here or there. You make me think of a little girl.” He looked past her and raised himself in the tub. “There’s smoke coming out of the kitchen. Would you get in there, please?”
She went into the kitchen and turned off the stove. She returned to the bathroom and put down the cover on the toilet and sat on it. Through the window, she could see a solitary woman walking in the shade of the poplars that lined the road leading to Arnold’s building. “Say of me what you will. But let Ishmael go. You’ve seen the pain of war. Why not act with mercy to someone who’s shared your experience? He’s done you no harm.”
“I’m not the one standing in the way.”
“Are you talking about my former husband?”
“He stole my goods. No one steals my goods, love.”
“By ‘goods,’ you mean the cup?”
“The Grail.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“You’re not a student of history. Beatrice DeMolay is the descendant of the Crusader knight who brought it back from the Holy Land, along with the Shroud of Turin.”
“The what?”
“The winding sheet of Christ.”
“Why do you want a cup? What will you do with it?”
“Encase it in concrete under one of my buildings and never tell anyone where it is.”
She stared at him, blinking, unsure what she had heard.
“I’ll know where it is. But no one else. Not ever,” he added. “Unless I feel like telling them.”
He picked up a washcloth and wiped his armpits. She continued to stare at the curious combination of features that constituted his physiognomy—the slanted cheekbones and pointed cleft chin, the hooked nose, the analytical gleam in his eyes that dissected a person’s mouth and hair and the shape of his ears and delighted in discovering imperfection, the chain of scars that resembled hardened pustules dribbling down his neck, the shoulder-length silvery-blond hair indicating either his disdain for sexual normalcy or the presence of a cruel woman inside his skin.
