Roosevelt Lodge by Patrick Sean Lee (read novel full txt) 📕

Isabella
Paradisum

Matthew started a fire. It is after nine. Dinner is a sweet memory laced with only a single disconcerting moment, and now we are back in our room beneath the thick, crocheted comforter on our couch. No uneasy questions arise, and there are no bridges that need to be erected to enter one another, nor are there wounds scarred over that require hiding. I am profoundly happy, at peace, my head lying on his chest and my legs tucked beneath me. The lights are off. Two goblets—mine half-full, Matthew’s empty—sit on the coffee table in front of us. A bottle of champagne stands to the left of them, and all of the glass captures, embraces, then releases the flames of the fire in hauntingly beautiful reflections. Diamonds and prisms; night-blue tints of the crystal, the ebony of the bottle. I glance upward, following the shadows and puffs of light. The lattice ceiling is incredible, blinking subtly between deep ochre and dark, dark brown, covering us like some unbelievable alien sky during an unbelievably lovely alien sunset. All of it is warmth and beautiful mystery.

I feel the heat of his side, the ripple of his ribs beneath the light sweater he is wearing. His arms are wrapped around me, his legs are stretched out onto the coffee table. He hasn’t spoken for a few minutes, and now I feel his lips touching the top of my head. Time has slowed. Maybe it will stop to sculpt this moment into a memory that is white marble and eternal.

“Would you really buy this lodge?” I ask, staring at the shape of his toes beneath the comforter. “Could you?”

“I think I would. I mentioned my interest in it to Bernie last week. He reacted very well. If he and Gertie…and Charlie, of course…could stay on. This is their home. Getting up in years, though. It’s hard for them to keep up with everything these days, especially during the height of the season.” Matthew is talking softly into my hair, his fingers moving gently on my side. “Would you consider staying here with me?”

When he mentioned the idea before dinner I was shocked. I’d planned to go home in a few weeks. Matthew with me; he to his home, me to mine. We pick up there. But here? So far away, so, so…altogether out of my present reality. What would it be like? Innkeepers. The Book of Isabella closed. All those years, all those chapters behind. Book One of our lives. The end.

But, I can see it. I would stay. I know I would. The old volume is complete. Almost. Just the frayed strings of the ending that need to be unraveled; left to dangle in whatever fashion they choose, however they must. I could do this new life with him. I think.

I think.

I venture into territory that is uneasy for me. “How much money do you really have, Matthew? What would it take to buy the lodge?”

“I have a lot,” he laughs. “More than enough. My folks are gone. They left me a substantial fortune to begin with. “Saving Isabelle” and my other books added a lot more. I invested well. I could buy more than a few of these lodges fairly easily. How much for Roosevelt? Bernie threw a price at me. Four Million. And their room. And Gertie’s beloved kitchen. A hand in the management. I told him I’d ask my partner.”

“Who is that?” I’m trying to picture what his investment adviser might look like. Short. Thick, black-rimmed glasses. Conservative. Partner?

Matthew kisses my head again and laughs. “Silly girl. I love you.”

Oh. Oh, of course. Stupid girl. Suddenly I have a new set of parents, a rambling home in the mountains. A mute caretaker. My own forest. An enchanted lake that I love. An enchanted life.

The logs pop and crackle suddenly. Embers rocket up and fly into the old screen covering the firebox, then fall like tiny shooting stars that have traveled from the middle of the Milky Way right into our room. I believe in good omens.

“Yes.”

Matthew unwraps his arms from around me and turns my face to his. His blue eyes are sparkling. He smiles. “Then it’s done. I’ll speak to Bernie and Gertie. I’ll make it happen.”

“What about your career? I mean, as a writer?”

“I have never felt better, more inspired to work. It’s perfect here. It is my cathedral.” Suddenly, unexpectedly he says, “Would you like to read a little of my new book?”

I feel his skin. In my mind I taste his mouth. I see our bed.

“No, my heart, not tonight. Let’s go to bed.”

Matthew closes his eyes and softly kisses me, and then we throw off the comforter and rise.

Now it is time.


Matthew
Paradisum

Here in the darkened living room of our suite I see a new masterpiece. Something painted by Rembrandt or Caravaggio with colors lifted from the soil of a brand new earth. Isabella’s body is next to mine, soft, relaxed, inviting in a way I could never have imagined. Her face is mere inches away, now, alive with a kind of wonderment after what I’ve just asked her, alive with contrast.

“Yes,” was what she said. And I am taken in some strange, inexplicable way, far away by that single utterance; back to an eternity before my birth, forward; through depths of tropical waters, through the suns of distant worlds.

She has asked me to make love to her, and so we rise. We leave the room and the fire to dance until they tire and fall asleep. Long before we will.


Isabella
Early

Matthew does not sleep in pajamas. He does not sleep clothed in anything save my body. His breath, I think, must be sweet, but at this moment I don’t notice, nor do I care. His mouth is close to my skin, on it. On my temple, and he is breathing almost imperceptibly into the muss of my hair. His right hand is on my breast; the leg that he injured is bent slightly, the knee and strong thigh crossed a little way over mine. It is very early, and if I move I fear he will too. A reaction, not an awakening. But if I awaken him clumsily I might lose him for a while, or maybe forever--this dream will vanish. The strength and gentleness of his body—the passion that still reverberates, as though his blood is thunder, or explosions deep inside the earth—might suddenly disappear. I dare to raise my arm and place my hand on the one of his that cups my breast. Never leave, Matthew Ash. That cord of the soul or spirit that you spoke of has entered me, bound me. I know the language of it, too. I will tell you something of what it says to us, Matthew. Listen:

My desire for you has risen from the earth of me,
with eyes and ears and mouth of lava fierceness.
Ferocity that wheels and spins and seeks its fissure,
the entrance to the elements of you; the steel and
unbreakable rock that seeks to bind our existences.
I am every diamond, vein of purest gold, thread of
silver, flung out in hot delight. Sunlight unwrapped
in the passionate breath and blood of my body earth.
My earth, our earth; the core of all my raging
desperation to erupt, to find you, flow into you.
I have found you, oh my love, I have found you…
I will melt inside of you, Matthew. I will be
the white hot liquid of your being. I will become
you in granite cliffs and marble precipices, in plates
of purest china, solidified in the center of that which
no god or emperor or king can in this eternity undo.
I love you, Matthew Ash…
Believe this. Listen, my heart!

And now I understand. The voice of my dreams had its origin not in a locket, some distant dimension or disembodied wanderer. It came from deep, deep inside my spirit and my heart, and that part of me that craved completion. It was me, whispering to myself. It was me.

What do I do? Where do we go from here? I scream to remain in this bed, wrap myself in him, rise with him, shower with him, dress with him, walk with him, breathe him. Become the other half of him that makes us whole for the first time in our lives.

I begin to fall in and out of sleep once more, and somewhere in that space in between, I sense that I am approaching a harbor of sorts where I can’t see beyond the arc of the horizon miles and miles away. Matthew will take me by the hand and we will board a ship of wondrous beauty and proportion anchored there. And then we will sail westward behind an autumn, setting sun. We will stand on the bow and look out at the horizon, watch it never draw closer. It will forever be beyond us, beckoning, but running away as though it were a mischievous child, taunting us, at play, or a dream that must always, yet never entirely, elude us. It doesn’t matter, either way, because he holds my hand and my heart. He is with me.

I feel the increasing weight of my eyelids. I am beginning, once more, to float away. I begin to see the start of wonderful, impossible dreams. I see Matthew’s face.

                                 *


“Wake up, Isabella.” His softly-spoken words take a moment to register, and when I open my eyes he is standing at my side of the bed, smiling, a pure white towel cinched around his waist. I smile up at him…hello dear Matthew...but then I picture my hair; the mess it has to be. Instinctively I pull the top of the sheet up to cover myself, then rush my hands to my face. I don’t want him to see me as the ghoul of morning that I must be.

“Go away! I look hideous!” I laugh, mocking myself.

He does not answer, but I know that he is smiling. I feel soft hands grasp hold of mine, and the irresistible, gentle force of them pulling, unwrapping. I close my eyes. These wondrous hands with fingers like fleece and down, the fingers that touched me throughout the night and throughout the hidden regions of my body, move slowly downward. The sheet covering my breasts slides satiny to my waist. I cannot open my eyes but I spread my arms and let him see me in the daylight.

A moment, two, or possibly forever, slips by. I hear the towel drop almost without a sound to the floor, and then feel the edge of the mattress depress. The sheet lifts, and my body is hit by a slight, cool rush of air as the momentary vacuum refills. Matthew is beside me once again, holding me, kissing my eyes. We will make love once more. And after that—who knows, maybe again and again until the energy in us dwindles to nothing. That is a delightful thought.

His hands are so soft.

                                     *


It is nearly ten o’clock. I lay on my back with my hand on Matthew’s thigh. He is sitting upright beside me, leaning forward slightly, with four pillows propped behind him against the carved, arched headboard. He is reading the printed pages of his new book. The turning of my head makes him glance down at me, and I let my hand slip to the mattress.

“Good afternoon,” he coos. For the hundredth time he leans in