Embers

EMBERS

Early Stories

by

S. P. Elledge

Embers: Early Stories by S. P. Elledge

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2016 S. P. Elledge

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Table of Contents:

1. An Abcedarium

2. Manifesto

3. Even Emma Bovary

4. Angel My Angel

5. My Big Ideas

6. Punch and Judy Today

7. Bad Baby

8. Last of the Casanovas

9. The Big Beat

10. Do the Ennui

11. Assassins

12. The Boy Who Painted Himself as Christ

13. Indigo Blue

13.2 Another Abecadarium

for old friends

An Abecedarium

ADRIENNE smiled to herself, running her fingers lightly along the hood of the gleaming limousine. Nothing would stop her now. She had the deed, the valise, and the complete trust of the Thistlewaites. Her smile grew more open, more defiant as she slipped into the backseat. Odd, how the woman she saw in her compact case looked no different from an hour ago. She set about remaking her face, but could not resist one final glance through the tinted glass at the burning stables at last retreating into the distance. Now, why wouldn’t the chauffeur drive any faster?

BASIL had run six blocks in the rain to see her before she got the chance to open the letter. He stood there, dripping, his white ducks splashed with mud, until she answered the doorbell. He wanted her to know he had never felt more in love, despite her uncle’s disapproval. She did not invite him in—she was crumpling something in her hands. I... I don’t ever want to see you again, she said with utter calm.

CELESTE tapped the toe of her bone-white pump. Her silk chemise was sticking moistly to the small of her back. She glared at the cigarette stub with its vermilion ring of lipstick. Leslie has gone too far this time, she thought, too incredibly far.

DUNCAN flung the sable, the brooch, the Chablis-soaked slippers, and the Parisian negligée off the chateau’s balcony. For the coup de grâce, he added the nearly transparent designer lingerie, which was borne aloft like silken leaves. That would teach her!

ESME liked the soft, subtle, soothing sounds of crêpe rustling in florists’ boxes, crystal chandeliers chiming in hotel lobbies, fashion magazine pages turning crisply in the breeze of ceiling fans, ice crackling in tall goblets of unadulterated vermouth and bitters, and long moist kisses in wistaria-shadowed gazebos. But perhaps the most pleasant sound she had ever heard was the popping of small bubbles on the surface of the penthouse pool, rather like champagne going flat. She felt strangely elated knowing the bubbles arose from Cyrus, who (still in dinner jacket and tie) lay motionless on the bottom of the pool.

FOSTER cringed when Lorna mentioned impotencies. And he was certain she misplaced the accent just to spite him. He thought of seizing her wrists.

GENEVIEVE concluded the letter: You must try to understand that it had to end this way. We were poisoning each other’s soul. I can scarcely hold this pen as I recollect all those wanton, wasted nights …. It is resolved. I shall board the next express out of Southampton. Adieu! That done, she folded the stationery, inserted it into the envelope, darted her quick little red tongue along the flap, and closed it. She sighed but once as she pressed Brandon’s signet ring into the sealing wax.

HECTOR, darling! the girl who wore too much of everything cried as she emerged from the phaeton. The entire garden party turned as one and gasped. Hector saw there was no place to hide.

ILSE finished her confession and offered Madame Glynne a demitasse of Ceylonese tea, so rare and expensive that summer before the war broke. She had been frank. She knew no guilt. She merely wanted the matter over and done with. Madame Glynne scrutinized her reflection in the polished surface of the samovar; as always, she understood. She rattled her many beads and prescribed a hearty opiate in his oolong, followed by a good long flight of marble stairs.

JASPER continued to stare into the rear-view mirror of his new roadster, searching for hints of last night in his face, in his bloodshot eyes. He remembered Gerald and Gerald’s hands. That quivering feeling, that sweet but bitter taste in his mouth came back to him. But just once wouldn’t make him one, would it?

KIRSTEN nearly swooned when she recognized the man beside her daughter in the rotogravure supplement.

LANGLEY studied Penelope as she stood within the bath-house doorway in her old écru riding habit—she wore it well; she could wear any old rags well. And …. yes, she was stunning, but to an unnecessary degree. She was stunning and lissome and (how would the French say it?) soignée, but cold, so cold—a swan carved in ice. Still, it did seem somehow a shame what he would have to do to her with his mallet during their polo match.

MADELEINE declared, in that sometimes appealing, sometimes strained mid-Atlantic accent of hers, that she would rather be six feet under. Niles tried not to show any immediate disappointment. Once, when they had just finished a late breakfast of pralines and isinglass pudding aboard her schooner, The Sea Wasp, she had held aloft an éclair and swore she would love to go to Vesuvius soon and stuff it with meringue. She hadn’t meant that, either.

NELSON felt that most subtle and terrifying of all things—a sense of doubt—when he stepped into the headmistress’s office and saw the negatives scattered across her desk.

OTTOLINE wished people in casinos did not talk so fast and so shrill. She nearly shattered the champagne flute in her hand when the bids were raised. If this was Max’s idea to abandon and frighten her... There was no way to escape the croupier’s gaze. Her eyes narrowed and the glittering crowd blurred before her; her mind was spinning like the roulette wheel. If this was Max’s idea... With no remorse, Ottoline bet it all.

PIERCE thought of a thousand things—twisting strands and strands of pearls around a slave-girl’s ankles and wrists, the scent of juniper and jasmine at a regatta, the red triangular sail of a boat he had once seen on the Rhône (or was it the Rhine?), an advert for Tyrolean bath-salts, the feel of skin against buckskin and sand against silk, foreign voices heard on a shortwave in the next flat, even Evelyn’s face reflected for a split second in the black window of a passing hearse—all in that endless moment of embrace.

QUIANA lay back on the hot sand and looked up into the gas-blue tropical sky. Only a month before Dashielle had confronted her with the half-empty vial of pills in their miserable aerie overlooking Central Park West. Now that was as long ago and far away as a fairy tale. She closed her eyes as the dark man beside her began to untie her maillot.

REGINALD’s finger struck one lucid note, like a drop of water on stone, on the baby grand in the still, still music room. Terèse stood opposite him, before the windows, half-shrouded in the curtains blown by the electric Mediterranean wind. Reg looked so cool; he always looked cool, cool as lilac and vanilla, so perfect in his restrained passion Terèse doubted if he could ever perspire. Reg, Reg, Reg: she was reminded of one of those fish that spends its entire life in a pool in a cavern, white and bloodless and oh, so blind. Yet—yet he kept her in thrall. Would he glide across the room as if across ice, and with one adroit finger touch her until she, too, rang a small note, and then rippling chords of desire?

SERENA knew that if she had not insisted on one daiquiri after another that fatal weekend, probably nothing of any of it would have happened.

THIERRY, handsome Thierry, Mrs. Courtlandt cooed. Unzip this gown, s’il vous plait. It’s simply suffocating. Thierry considered. Who did she think he was these days—a mere domestic servant, a dressing girl, maid-in-waiting to the empress? Then he considered her money, every last centime of it. Oui, madame! And your brassiere?

URSULA could find nothing more to say to William. She peered at him through the freesia, keen to the quaver of candlelight in his eyes. He was so, so innocent of it all, she thought for a moment she might hate herself. For some opaque reason, he reminded her of a man she had noticed while crossing the piazza in Milan more than five years before. The man had a silver-white mustache and wore an immaculate linen suit. As he passed her, he seemed to purposefully inhale the last breath she had exhaled. It was uncommonly sensual. Ursula succumbed to the memory—until William spilled his fingerbowl while humming that bloody aria again.

VICTOR swallowed another shot of rye to combat the bad night air. It was not the admiral’s first. The day air had lately, alas, turned rather sour, as well. He stared up at the brooding oil of Cecile above the landing. How she would wail, how she would admonish, how she would beat her hard little fists against his lapels if she were here. If she were here!

WINIFRED, invigorated by the salt spray which tousled her long brassy locks (no longer her own!), was reminded of the sea breezes that would sweep in from the coves near her family’s estate in East Anglia. (It was just Winnie in those days; when was it, at what point had she become Winifred?) She had been so free then, so content whenever she rode bareback along the pounding surf. So dearly had she loved those early mornings when the fog rose from the glistening, glittering strand! But it would be impossible to go back now. Soon they would know. Winifred breathed in the briny air and turned to Wallace, who was still rowing quite furiously. The once unspeakable was about to be spoken.

XAVIER, disguising the suggestion of a smirk, speculated upon pushing Lady Ashton’s face into her charlotte russe... but for only the very slenderest of moments.

YOLANDA’s tears fell heavy upon the faded satin cushions. This time he’ll regret what he said, she sobbed. This time he’ll realize how much he did mean to me. She dabbed her eyes (once described as violet, today looking merely pale blue) and glanced out this humble atelier’s window, out across that awful, barren cape. Snow again. She found it fairly easy to swallow the seventeen cerise sleeping tablets.

ZACHARY erased the last paragraph. That digression about Sylvia nearly flambéing the ambassador’s escort with a wayward pan of crêpes was perhaps too outré—or then again was it too predictable? Also the usherette would doubtless have overlooked those tiny spots of blood on the as-yet-unnamed fencing tutor’s wingtips. And Hyram would never, never have made so bold with the vicar. All in all, there needed to be more madness, lust, despair, et cetera. Zachary tamped his meerschaum. At last, he had it! The diamonds, not the stiletto, should be concealed within the beluga!

Manifesto

Introduction

To my imaginary public at large: What is printed below may be confusing, pointless, insightful, or amusing—depending on, perhaps, your opinion of the history of art or (as I see it) the art of history; I myself shall refrain from any attempt at analysis or theorizing on cults and cultishness and merely limit myself to describing the circumstances under which this peculiar manuscript became known to me. In the end, I leave the decision to burn or frame this article entirely up to the individual reader.

A second or third uncle of mine having recently died of mysterious causes (no condolences, please; he was very old and I did not know him), it devolved upon me the task, as closest living relative, of putting his material possessions in order for benefit of our inestimably scrupulous government tax assessors. Since no will had been left behind, and no one (including myself) elected to claim any right to inheritances (knowing full well Uncle was seriously in debt at the time of his demise, though I’m not quite sure to whom or for what), his estate would be—in the somewhat aquatic terminology—liquidated. The house had already been condemned and was to be razed in a matter of days, to be replaced by either a parking lot or a toxic waste dump.

There was really nothing much of interest or value in the house when I made my appraisal of it; Uncle had lived the solitary life of a pensioner (he had been a tollbooth operator for thirty years in this country) and altogether I was even more disappointed than I had expected to be by his humble furnishings. Since there had been rumors in my family when I was a child that this funny uncle kept some quaint