Of Love and Evil - By Anne Rice Page 0,8
The Right Man had told me the night we met that I had the coldest eyes he’d ever seen.
“You’re a bit heavier,” she said, as though she’d just realized it. “More muscular, but I guess that’s normal. You were so thin when you were a boy. But your head still has the same shape, and your hair’s as thick as ever. I could swear you’re more blond; maybe it’s the California sun. And your eyes look almost blue sometimes.” She looked away and said softly, “You’re still my golden boy.”
I smiled. I remembered now that she used to call me that, her golden boy. She would say that in a whisper.
I mumbled something softly under my breath about how I didn’t know how to handle the compliments of beautiful women.
“Tell me about your studies,” I said.
“English literature. I want to teach college. I want to teach Chaucer or Shakespeare, I haven’t made up my mind which. I’ve had fun teaching grammar school, more fun than Toby cares to admit. He looks down on kids his age. He’s like you are. He thinks he’s a grown-up and he talks to grown-ups more than he does to children. It’s his nature, just like yours.”
We laughed at that because it was true. That’s the nicest kind of soft laughing, when you laugh as an answer, or as punctuation, and southern people do that easily and all the time.
“Remember when we were kids we both wanted to be college teachers?” she asked. “Remember you said if you could teach college and own a beautiful house on Palmer Avenue, you’d be the happiest man in the world. Toby goes to school at Newman, by the way, and he’ll tell you as soon as you ask him that it’s the best school in town.”
“It always was. Jesuit runs it a close second when it comes to high school.”
“Well, some people would argue about who’s on first when it comes to that. But the point is, Toby’s Jewish and so he goes to Newman. My life’s been happy, Toby. You didn’t leave me in the lurch, you left me a treasure. And that’s how I’ve always seen it, and that’s how I see it now.” She folded her arms and leaned forward on the table. Her tone was serious but matter-of-fact at the same time. “When I got on that plane, I thought, I’m going to show him this treasure that he left me. And I’m going to show him what that treasure might mean to him.”
She stopped. I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. And she knew it. She knew it by my tears. I couldn’t put the fullness of happiness or love into words.
Malchiah, can I marry her? Am I free to do that? And what about that other angel, is he near me? Does he want me to reach across this table and take her in my arms?
CHAPTER THREE
WE DROVE OVER TO THE MISSION OF SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO that afternoon.
I figured there were many wonderful things for a little boy Toby’s age to see on the West Coast, Disneyland, for one thing, and the park at Universal Studios, and other places of which I didn’t know the names.
But the one place I wanted to take him was the mission and he seemed completely delighted by the idea, and though I had to provide watch caps for both of them, Liona and Toby both liked the Bentley convertible quite a lot.
When we reached the mission, I took them for a leisurely walk around the grounds, through the garden patches I loved, and around the koi pond, which delighted Toby. We looked at some of the mission exhibits that have to do with the way people did things in those days, but it was the story of the big earthquake that had destroyed the church which fascinated Toby the most.
He was having a lively time with his iPhone camera, and he took dozens of pictures of us in just about every setting imaginable.
Sometime or other, when we were browsing in the gift shop, amid the rosaries and the Indian jewelry, I asked Liona if I could take Toby with me into the chapel and pray.
“I know he’s Jewish,” I said.
“It’s fine,” she answered. “You just take him and talk to him about it any way that you want.”
We tiptoed inside because it was shadowy and quiet, and the few people at prayer in the plain wooden pews seemed very serious at it, and the candles gave a