(15) Later That Same Evening
Romance is all very well, Andrew observed, disengaging, but we must eat sometime. He looked down at her soft, pleasing face. You are hungry, aren’t you?
Lara played coy. Well, I could be. Actually she was starving but hadn’t cared to cough up the admission, thereby cancelling their extended pleasure. Well she was feeling kind of tired anyway.
She raised herself from the horizontal. Tell you what, I’ll light the fire while you put the flowers…
…In that vase that we didn’t ever buy?
Andrew chuckled as he walked away to chef it up. Good one, you had me fooled for, I dunno, a few seconds. Looking into the freezer box he called I might even have that cd over there somewhere. But Lara had already make tracks for the downstairs washroom. Returning, moments later, as he triumphantly scissored open a small package of frozen scallops, she found a Cassandra Wilson cd and soon they were being swayed by her silky smooth cooing. They swayed hips at the sink while peeling sweet potatoes and rinsing asparagus. It wasn’t perhaps exactly what a five star chef would throw together on impulse, but he was confident it would satisfy their vagrant hungers. Lara said she’d be happy with almost anything at that point, but did they need the sweet potatoes, and did he really say vagrant hungers?
Fortunately for the accused the phone rang and he could delegate chopping while he harrumphed and acted important. It was Jordan asking for updates. Andrew said he hadn’t heard anything. Jordan said no, he meant dreams. Hadn’t he been napping? Well yes he had, but there had been no perceptible results. Also Jordan had the distinct feeling that Imrat’s ghost was hanging around him. Andrew asked what he was doing about it. Nothing, it’s you he’s shadowing. Andrew admitted he’d had that very notion a couple of times already but had dismissed it as guilt driven fantasy. Jordan suggested he try communicating. Andrew, feeling ever so slightly bullied, agreed to make the effort. Sometime this evening perhaps. Sometime this evening definitely, Jordan replied. It’s merely a slight shift from lucid dream to telepathy. Oh is that all, Andrew mused pacing about for a moment before heading back to the kitchen area, and relating the gist to Lara, who promised to leave him be after snacking for what she termed the initial foray. He declared himself impressed. She squirted some lemon juice on the scallops, patted some butter on the asparagus and they sat down to slowly consume.
They were almost finished when Andrew offered wine. Demoting himself to space cadet status, he returned with a cabernet. Lara saved her last scallop for the first sip. Andrew insisted she that was very gracious to do so. There was no dessert to speak of. Andrew found a half-finished package of two bite brownies in the cupboard as Lara boiled water for herb tea. They agreed that the deluxe cheesecake lifestyle was not always what was required. Especially for people of their caliber. Lara insisted on at least stacking the dishes if not washing them, and then quietly removed herself to the conservatory where she could indulge herself in the “shivasna” she’d denied herself before. Andrew asked if that was yoga for those too lazy to do it and she laughed, merrily he would have said if asked, on her way out of the room.
Assuming a meditative pose would be appropriate, he seated himself with straightened back and arms on thighs, and slowing his breathing, seemed to be calming himself. The ghost had been observing for hours now, not that the passage of time meant very much to him. Having passed in fear, if indeed he had passed at all, which seemed very unlikely given his ridiculously buoyant state, he was yet gripped by its emanations. He’d stuck with Andrew as his light was reassuring, almost saintly except he wasn’t sure that a Christian could be saintly. Besides his house was lovely. In fact he wouldn’t mind living here himself.
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