Medical. Told me we’ll have to deal with the old man. Meaning Darren Wylde controls fifty percent. Worst-case that scenario, please. I do not want to be blindsided by a proxy war. I’ll check back with you on Monday.”
When Milada returned to the balcony, Troy was talking with the man she had been introduced to before, Mr. Newhall. He saw her and said, “Ah, Miss Daranyi.”
So her religious status had been amended.
The house lights dimmed. The audience found its seats. Mr. Lockhart appeared again, turned to the orchestra, and raised his baton.
Milada closed her eyes, steeled herself for that great explosion of brass that begins the prelude to Scheherazade, a fanfare that bursts out, recedes, dies, fades to near silence before the solo violin echoes the theme, the small, soft, seductive voice of the storyteller herself. The prelude always struck Milada as Rimsky-Korsakov’s ironic reply to the excruciating foreplay in Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde, the waiting, waiting, waiting for the climax. All classical music was about sex. Or death. Or death and sex, if it was Wagner.
None of that for Rimsky-Korsakov’s sultan, who hops in the sack and gets it over with first thing. Then it’s up to Miss Scheherazade to entertain him for the next, oh, thousand and one nights. Talk about having to be resourceful in bed.
The music burrowed into the recesses of Milada’s mind, into the places where memories moldered like rotting corpses in forgotten graves. It turned over soil and brought up bones on the blade. She could remember so much if she wanted to, and she did not want to. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. Or the year, the decade—or, frankly, the whole bloody century. The past was the past, and she didn’t live there anymore.
She opened her eyes. The one thing even the best of recordings on the best of sound systems lacked— all that movement. The weave of the baton, the stroke of the bow, fingers blurring on glittering brass. A symphony was a life lived in exaltation and killed with triumph. Eternity made the best of music monotonous, the best of lives meaningless. The performance was made wondrous by the fact that it would end. Dramatically. She lived in that moment and died with the last, fading notes, in the vanishing echoes before the applause.
She preferred experiencing death in music. She’d experienced too much of it in real life.
Chapter 19
Desire is nourished by delay
M ilada enjoyed the drive home, enough to put aside her phobia of open-top automobiles. The city, at street level, was quiet and orderly. Composed like a postcard. The headquarters of the Mormon church occupied several blocks in the heart of downtown, a Vatican City in miniature. Gray granite buildings with heavy stone foundations. A kind of architectural temperance movement.
Back in the suburbs, they’d long since rolled up the sidewalks. Porch lights were on. Bedroom windows glowed behind drawn curtains. Troy drove up Larkspur Lane. He pulled into her driveway and switched off the engine.
“I’ve had a great time this evening.”
Milada smiled at him. “So have I.”
The boy returned the smile sheepishly. He hesitated, making an internal calculation. Milada added up the numbers for him. “Why don’t you come in for a nightcap?”
They got out of the car. Out of the corner of her eye, Milada saw him take a package out from under the front seat. “What is that?”
Troy held up a box slightly bigger than a video case. He seemed pleased she had noticed. “I’ll show you inside.”
The night only gets more interesting.
Contrasted to the desert night, the house felt musty and warm. Milada took off her blazer and went around opening windows. Troy said, “You’ve got a swamp cooler, don’t you? You can air out a house pretty fast at night just turning on the swamp cooler fan.”
As she slept in the basement, Milada rarely bothered with it. The switch was located on the wall at the top of the stairs. She stepped
When Milada returned to the balcony, Troy was talking with the man she had been introduced to before, Mr. Newhall. He saw her and said, “Ah, Miss Daranyi.”
So her religious status had been amended.
The house lights dimmed. The audience found its seats. Mr. Lockhart appeared again, turned to the orchestra, and raised his baton.
Milada closed her eyes, steeled herself for that great explosion of brass that begins the prelude to Scheherazade, a fanfare that bursts out, recedes, dies, fades to near silence before the solo violin echoes the theme, the small, soft, seductive voice of the storyteller herself. The prelude always struck Milada as Rimsky-Korsakov’s ironic reply to the excruciating foreplay in Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde, the waiting, waiting, waiting for the climax. All classical music was about sex. Or death. Or death and sex, if it was Wagner.
None of that for Rimsky-Korsakov’s sultan, who hops in the sack and gets it over with first thing. Then it’s up to Miss Scheherazade to entertain him for the next, oh, thousand and one nights. Talk about having to be resourceful in bed.
The music burrowed into the recesses of Milada’s mind, into the places where memories moldered like rotting corpses in forgotten graves. It turned over soil and brought up bones on the blade. She could remember so much if she wanted to, and she did not want to. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. Or the year, the decade—or, frankly, the whole bloody century. The past was the past, and she didn’t live there anymore.
She opened her eyes. The one thing even the best of recordings on the best of sound systems lacked— all that movement. The weave of the baton, the stroke of the bow, fingers blurring on glittering brass. A symphony was a life lived in exaltation and killed with triumph. Eternity made the best of music monotonous, the best of lives meaningless. The performance was made wondrous by the fact that it would end. Dramatically. She lived in that moment and died with the last, fading notes, in the vanishing echoes before the applause.
She preferred experiencing death in music. She’d experienced too much of it in real life.
Chapter 19
Desire is nourished by delay
M ilada enjoyed the drive home, enough to put aside her phobia of open-top automobiles. The city, at street level, was quiet and orderly. Composed like a postcard. The headquarters of the Mormon church occupied several blocks in the heart of downtown, a Vatican City in miniature. Gray granite buildings with heavy stone foundations. A kind of architectural temperance movement.
Back in the suburbs, they’d long since rolled up the sidewalks. Porch lights were on. Bedroom windows glowed behind drawn curtains. Troy drove up Larkspur Lane. He pulled into her driveway and switched off the engine.
“I’ve had a great time this evening.”
Milada smiled at him. “So have I.”
The boy returned the smile sheepishly. He hesitated, making an internal calculation. Milada added up the numbers for him. “Why don’t you come in for a nightcap?”
They got out of the car. Out of the corner of her eye, Milada saw him take a package out from under the front seat. “What is that?”
Troy held up a box slightly bigger than a video case. He seemed pleased she had noticed. “I’ll show you inside.”
The night only gets more interesting.
Contrasted to the desert night, the house felt musty and warm. Milada took off her blazer and went around opening windows. Troy said, “You’ve got a swamp cooler, don’t you? You can air out a house pretty fast at night just turning on the swamp cooler fan.”
As she slept in the basement, Milada rarely bothered with it. The switch was located on the wall at the top of the stairs. She stepped
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