Chapter 2: Conquest

The new life was Elizabeth, but I didn't know it yet.

"He hated me." It was lamentable, her meeting with Robb. That was good for me.

This was the next time I saw her, in a coffee shop just around the corner from her place, with a kosher bakery and sidewalk tables. Picture her face, wind-chapped cheekbones, a wool peasant sweater, the sky only partly cloudy, a beret pulled far down while she sipped cappuccino. I was happy because women who need you are vulnerable.

"I can't believe that. Tell me what happened."

"You know him. I don't. I just want to know what I did wrong."

"So?"

"Well, he was there with two other people. I started to play but he stopped me after a few bars and began correcting me!" She looked half humiliated and half angry. She shook her head. "I had to play the same passage over and over and he kept pointing out things. One of the others, the woman, asked me why I held the bow like I do, and suggested I change it. Edward, I hold it the way you're supposed to! It's not something idiosyncratic about me!"

She sighed and looked away. I waited.

"Then Mr. Rennick brought out sheet music and made me work on that. He never let me finish anything! Finally he said they didn't have any openings. He gave me the name of a teacher and told me to see him."

She stopped again.

"And?"

"Well what was I doing there? Am I that bad? They could have told me straight off they didn't want me, but they let me think I might have a chance!" I shook my head, sympathetically. "It was the worst experience in my life!"

It's dicey, Ed. Be careful how you handle this. She might be wrong. Or she could have blown it. She's feeling rejected, not thinking the experience through. Don't answer right away. Talk her through it. Get the details. Get the whole picture, so you can be her hero, her confidant, the man she thinks about in the evening. Ready? Go.

"How much time did they give you?" That much?

"And who else was in the room?" It's what I thought.

" And who did Robb send you to for lessons?" I know of him. It's okay. Almost certainly. Let her know. Yes. This will score big with her. You're on your way in, Ed Hyde.

"Okay. Okay. I see. Elizabeth, I think they liked you."

"You weren't there, Edward! He hated me!"

"Have you ever seen 'A Chorus Line'?"

"This isn't Broadway."

"It's still show biz, schweetheart. People can be cold."

"He hated me!"

"Look, I can find out. Do you mind if I call him?"

"No! I couldn't stand that."

"Just to check. He doesn't know we're having this conversation. I'll bring it up in the middle of something, an off-the-cuff question."

"What if he really did hate me?"

"Don't you want to find out?"

She paused. "I don't know."

In the end I sent Robb an email. "Do I get lunch? The divine Ms. Peabody thinks you hated her. Ed."

He answered that evening. "you get lettuce wraps and peanut sauce, ed -- a few months working with georgie s. and she'll be good to go -- and tell your friend this business ain't for sissies."

So now there was movement. You could feel it. Immense power. Momentum. Unstoppable. Panzers moving across the countryside, though I have no idea of the significance of that particular image. I got an enormous hug when I gave Elizabeth the news, and I parlayed it into a series of little kisses. And the rush continued. In the end, getting to fuck Elizabeth Peabody was far easier—and quicker—than I had expected.

I took her to Salem. That's 'witch-haunted Salem' for the tourist trade, and she was a complete tourist. I couldn't believe she had never been there. It's so her kind of place. Of course she was happy to go with me. It was sunny when we left Boston but there were clouds to the West and the breeze was starting to kick up, so it was going to have the right atmosphere. It was already chilly by the time we arrived.

I was careful. We didn't hold hands on the way up, or in the kitschy museums or the restaurant where we had lunch. I didn't push anything. She liked the little shops, especially the witchy and New Age ones. "If you like these, what about Nathaniel Hawthorne's house?"

"That's here?"

"Are you sure you're from New England? I bet you've never seen the Miskatonic River either." She got that joke. "We'd best hurry. It might rain." I checked the tourist map.

The house was perfect for her, as old as lust and full of shadows, especially so with the clouds now coming in low on the wind and the air turning cold. You could imagine witchcraft and demons about the place, and curses, and timeless romance. You could imagine anything. I could imagine Elizabeth sighing while I played with her body in a 17th-century attic. The sky fell just before I took a photo of her under the moss-covered roof at one of the doors, so her hair flew and she had to shiver against the wind. I told her how exotic and lovely she was there, how other-worldly. I showed her the pic so she could see it was true.

"You haven't read The House of the Seven Gables?" Again I had a hard time believing it. "You belong in a story like that, full of mystery and romance and ghosts."

Whoa! That's romance-novel dialogue. Unless she's a complete innocent she'll laugh at it.

But she didn't. That should have told me something.

I pulled her away from the house, out into the sky. Of course her hand was cold and she was glad for me to take it. We walked into legitimately old places, away from the tourists, away from the main streets, down lanes where people still live in houses built in the 1600s, across alleyways, got lost, somehow looped by the bay where the water was choppy and there were whitecaps, and finally wound up back in the tourist district, near the statue of the Puritan that people mistake for a witch.

We held hands almost the entire time. From time to time, really heavy gusts would hit us, and Elizabeth would hug her arms to her front and huddle against them. During the second one I gave her a bear hug and blocked the wind with my body, and she leaned into me until it passed. We did it again. She laughed during it. She sounded childlike, joyful, while we stood firm against the spirits of the wind. The next time I gave her a sneak-attack kiss to surprise her. The time after that, she waited for the kiss. After that we walked with our arms around each other between gusts.

On the way home she fell asleep. I could tell she was nodding off. "That's okay," I told her. "I'll wake you if we ever we get back to town." She smiled and said "No, I'm okay," but a few minutes later she was out, her cheeks red from the wind, her legs splayed open, her knees and inches of her thighs teasing me. I thought I could slide my hand up between them, but I wasn't stupid enough to let it take control right then.

"Wake up, Elizabeth." It was already dark because of the overcast, so dark the street lights had come on, but the clouds broke at the horizon and red light poured over us.

"I'm awake. Isn't it beautiful?"

"Mm-hmm. Would you like to stop for a bite?"

"Let's go to my apartment. I can fix us a quick meal." So I was being invited in. "Is that okay?" She sounded like she was afraid she had offended me.

"I'm honored."

She lives in an old, completely ordinary apartment building. The hall floors are covered by those tiny hexagonal tiles you see in almost all such buildings, and there are the plaster walls covered with seventy-two layers of ivory-colored paint. Her apartment, though, is something else. It is an Emily's home, tiny and chill, with dark oak floors and wainscoting. She had added wall-hangings, cloth carpets, small nineteenth-century prints, candlestick holders, and dark wood furniture to match the floors.

The first thing I noticed was her cello. It was resting on a stand with the bow hanging behind it, in front of a little gas-log fireplace that she lit, in a living room that was hardly an antechamber. She went around the place lighting candles everywhere. I couldn't be sure—not yet—If she was making it romantic for me, or if she always kept it like that, like an Emily would. I went to use the bathroom while she began preparing dinner. It shouldn't have surprised me to find two candles burning in front of the mirror. They made me want to leave the lights off entirely.

Back in the living room I brushed my fingers along the body of the cello. The finish was so old it was textured instead of perfectly smooth, and the fire shone only dimly on it, reddish, dark gold, in auras that shifted with the flame. When my arm touched the bow it swung back and forth.

Elizabeth had arranged her music in a little shrine—the cello, the chair, and the sheet music stand placed around the fireplace. It fit the rest of the apartment, the whole thing being archaic and isolated. She could come home, I thought, and close the door on the horns and sirens, the stores and the people, the T, the noises of the city, to her own little magical place. Was it the arrangement of someone who didn't want to notice how alone she was, or who wanted to imagine she was part of some enchanted world where she wasn't alone? Had it ever been shared with outsiders? It affected my imagination. I could see her playing the cello before the fire, practicing a tender melody to hold off her loneliness and—for the moment—being content.

"Edward..." She stuck her face through the doorway. "Will you open the wine? The tilapia's almost ready."

At the table she held a tiny bit of fish on her fork, a few inches above her plate, and watched me take my first taste. "Is it okay?"

"Yes. It's wonderful."

"Is it spicy enough for you? Sometimes I don't use enough."

"It's fantastic." Now I couldn't add salt.

"I hope it's not too bland."

"Elizabeth, the heavens will tremble to the taste of your tilapia, and stars will sigh in sorrow because I get to sup."

She smiled and looked down at her plate. "You're teasing me."

"Uh-huh. But it really is good eats." She had fresh cut pears, and had made a small salad of greens and sliced almonds and canned tangerines, and had prepared a wild rice dish. It was very good, even the wine, but she only picked at hers. "Aren't you hungry?"

"Oh, I'm ravished."

When she realized what she'd said looked down again.

My, my! Is that on your mind? Time to change the subject, to let you off the hook for now, to let you get comfortable with the idea.

"How old were you when you first knew you had it?"

"What? Had what?"

"It. Talent. On the cello. The hands. The feel for it. When did you know you were so good at it?"

"Oh, I'm not that good."

"Shit." She started.