Drag Queen in the Court of Death Read Online Free PDF Page A

dinner for tonight, but she didn't call. Surprisingly, I was looking forward to our visit now, to being enveloped by the atmosphere of peace and stability that she always provided. There would be no embarrassing questions, no thoughtless probings into my tenuous stability. Perhaps that was what had really drawn me to her so strongly all those years ago, what I had naively believed to be love, the basis of a marriage.
    Technically, Laura was still my wife, although we had had little contact for many years. Now that I was back, we met from time to time at parties, once or twice at the yacht club, where I now felt like an outsider. We talked of getting together, but I left it up to her and then when she did arrange something, I had to cancel. Tonight was long owing, as was the more formal dinner party she had set up for next Sunday. I was leery of the past. Although I had returned to my hometown, I told myself I was doing so on my own terms. But I had left almost a pariah; my wife in despair, my family not speaking to me, old friends avoiding me in the street. I was still not sure how much of the 'old' life I could handle.
    Laura was firmly entrenched in that 'old' life. She lived in the house where she had grown up, where I had courted her in the formalized rituals of our youth. It was a large, generously proportioned home overlooking the Rosedale Ravine. It felt odd driving up that familiar road. Years dropped away as I passed the ancient tree in the middle of their lawn and pulled sharply to the right, directly into her circular driveway. As I got out of the car, I glanced around, looking for signs of the passage of time. Everything looked exactly the same; the roses between the tall front windows, the geraniums spilling out of the white urns on either side of the front door, the carefully tended grass. The house gleamed with new paint, but the color, even the trim around the windows, was the same. I hadn't been here for twenty-five years, and it might have been twenty-five minutes, except for the size of the Austrian pine that had been planted the year Laura was born. It now towered over the far corner of the front lawn.
    I had barely touched the bell when the door opened and Laura stood there, trim, smiling, impeccably dressed in a simple white linen dress and gold jewelry. She held out both hands to draw me in.
    "Michael," she said. "You poor dear. I can see what a shock you've had."
"It was ... unexpected," I said, "and I'd rather not talk about it."
"Of course. How gauche of me."
Her skin felt cool and remote as I kissed her tanned cheek. She still wore Fleurs de Rocaille, and as the scent enveloped me, I felt a dizzying sensation of sliding back to a time when everything was bright and sure, and we had rules to guide our lives and keep us safe. I would stand in the hall watching her sweep down the stairs in one of her many long dresses, all with demure scoop necklines, watch her smile as she slid the short fur cape around her shoulder and come toward me, pulling on her elbow-length white gloves. But I had broken the rules, and that moment was long gone.
"Do you still like Saint Raphael Blonde?" I asked, handing her the bottle I had tied with a gold ribbon.
"Your memory is wonderful." She smiled. "But nowadays I add soda water. Let's sit on the terrace. Lupe made some sangria before she went to take her nap."
"God, she must be in her nineties by now," I exclaimed without thinking.
"She wasn't that old back then. We just thought she was, because she had so much more sense than we did. I think she's about twelve years older than I am, but she's not sure of her birthday, or so she says. We made one up when we went through all that trouble with immigration a while back."
"What was that all about? Didn't your father go though all that years ago? I seem to remember something."
"Well, that's what I thought. Apparently there are still miles of red tape left to wade through. Sangria?"
"Super." I winced, hearing myself slip back