He stiffened. She always said the surprising, did the unpredictable. “I love you very much.”
She shook her head. Her long red hair streamed about her. “If you really loved me, you would marry me.”
He swallowed, hesitating. But there was no easy, kind way to tell her what he had come to say. He set the candle down on Preble’s cluttered desk. “God.” He rubbed his forehead. “Alexandra. I want to marry you.”
Her eyes lit up.
“You don’t understand!” He lifted a hand. “I cannot.”
She stared at him, and slowly he saw the comprehension filling her eyes. And the sick, sick look accompanying it.
He wet his lips. “I am already married.”
She did not speak. Her breasts, too large for the man’s shirt, heaved against the linen material. Two bright spots of pink colored her cheeks.
“Alexandra? I am sorry.”
Her chest rose and fell harder now. Her eyes were wide, wild; her jaw tensed hard. She was panting, clutching the bedcovers, as if she might actually shred them apart.
He felt guilty for not having ever mentioned this to her before. Yet he had been afraid to—afraid of just this reaction. “You need a glass of water,” he decided, moving to the small table beside the bed. He poured water from the pitcher and handed it to her.
“No!” she screamed. She struck the glass from his hand; water spilled across his shirt, the glass breaking on the floor. Her face was a mask of rage.“You lied!”
Instinctively he shrank away from her.
She stood before him, fists clenched, her entire body shaking, in the throes of a fury the likes of which he had never witnessed before. He was afraid. “It is not what you think,” he began in a whisper.
She shook her head wildly. Her red hair flew about her. And continued to fly about her, whirling, as if whipped by the wind. She shook and shook her head—and Xavier became very still, frightened now.
“Stop it,” he cried. “You will hurt yourself.”
But her head continued to shake and her hair continued to swirl as if she were in the midst of a gale. Her expression remained one of murderous rage. Watching her, Xavier was frozen—because her love had turned into hatred.
And as he stared, he suddenly realized that something was terribly wrong, because her body seemed to be shaking too, no, not shaking, but spinning.
Around and around. He cried out.
Alex’s face, mostly hidden by the flying strands of her hair, abruptly changed expression, and he saw the fear in her eyes.
“Alexandra!”
Her hands lifted. Her fists unclenched. “Xavier!” she cried, but his name was whisper-soft and seemed to come from far away. She started to float backward, away from him.
Vibrating like a spinning top.
Xavier did not understand, but panic filled him. “Alexandra!” he shouted, rushing toward her.
But when he reached her she seemed to be fading before his very eyes, like an apparition, and she seemed to be calling his name again—but this time no sound at all came from her open lips.
Her hands were outstretched. Her face, her hair, her body, seemed to be turning into shadows and air.
Screaming her name, Xavier reached for her left hand.
And gripped nothing but air.
Alexandra was gone.
40
