Dance Macabre

Chapter: 3 Remembrance

"Cattleya, wait!" Nathan cried after Cattleya's pacing figure. The Victorian wall lamps were casting burnt yellow embers on her tanned back. Nathan's hands reached out for her shoulders but Cattleya turned in those split seconds and Nathan's hands were denied the touch of his fantasies, like always.
Cattleya's turn had her hair fall loosely on her bare shoulders and several locks of it concealing a part of her face, with her eyes almost on the verge of pouring.
"Cat, jeez! You've been sprinting or something, you walk ridiculously fast." Nathan added, with a breathless tone, muffling the words.
"Do you think you can joke with me? Nathan!?". Cattleya replies with subtle anger, redding her cheeks even more.
"Look Cattleya, I'm sorry for whatever happened, I am, but you gotta forgive me, a man has desires and he should not be punished for trying to fulfill those," Nathan added, with sheer arrogance dripping from his face.

"YOU TRIED TO SLEEP WITH ME!"
At this point, Cattleya was shouting. If it weren't for the thick concrete walls and the violin, the entire gathering would have turned their head in surprise. To see Cattleya Cloustas screaming.

"I was drunk, Cattleya," Nathan said with an apologetic tone.

"Drunk? You were drunk, Nathan!?. You were sober enough to cancel my cab. You were sober enough to drive me to YOUR house and you say you were drunk!"

Nathan tried to speak with Cattleya but she had made it clear, a word more and the chairman might get involved. Nathan turned and with slow placed steps started to walk away from the woman who was once married to his best friend. Nathan gathered his every last fantasy about the women he knew he could never have and threw in the bonfire that burnt the small logs of wood with soft crackling sound and sending long dark shadows of the shrubbery on the manor.

Nathan turned to look at the women of his dream once again but she had partly disappeared into the lit pavement leading away from the manor, only her scent of cloves and rose oil hanging in the air, with her heels making a clanking noise in the baked pavement, which was somehow far more smoothing than Bloch being played in the distant room.

It happened a few months ago..several months had passed after Caenon's death but Cattleya showed no sign of recovery. At a party similar to this, Nathan tried to get cattleya drunk and planned he would take advantage while she was drifting between worlds. But Cattleya got a wave of soberness moments before the heinous act was about to be committed. Cattleya quickly composed herself, forcing herself not to say anything while she was not in her senses to fathom what was truly going on. Cattleya checked for her cab only to find it canceled. It was then she realised, this is the brutal world Caenon always talked about. Where a man was not afraid to take advantage of woman who used to be married to his best friend but also had recently been widowed .

Nathaniel Carlson, Caenon's best friend and also a very successful and young businessman. Born into a family where wishes came true before they even had a chance to be completely said. Growing up in a family of extremely wealthy parents, he was sure he could buy absolutely anything that the world had to offer - respect, love, women, gems ...but this moment after 28 years of believing the same thought he was proven wrong, by a woman whose mother washed dishes in his best friend's house.