Father Panic's Opera Macabre Read Online Free PDF Page B

being.
     
    Now they were in a large warmly lit room that featured a regulation size English billiards table. There were several overstuffed armchairs off on either side of the room. At the far end, a sofa and a couple more chairs were arranged around a portable television set. The billiards table was in quite good condition, complete with string pockets, but the rest of the furniture was the same kind of battered old junk he'd seen elsewhere in the house.
     
    "Do you play?" Marisa asked.
     
    "I have played pool, but not proper billiards."
     
    "I'll teach you later, if you want. It's not hard to learn. The rules, I mean. The game itself is another matter."
     
    "I'd like to learn." As long as she was teaching.
     
    "This is the room where Hugo and I kind of hang out," she explained as she went to a small bar near the television set. "He likes to play billiards, so I learned just to give him some competition. Not that I'm very good. One of my uncles was crazy about the game and had this table shipped here from Paris. He died several years ago. The television gets two or three channels on a good night."
     
    Neil nodded sympathetically, but he didn't know quite what to say. It all seemed so dreary and depressing. Even this large room, with its clutter of furniture and its warm lamps, where at least two people spent some time and relaxed, somehow still felt dark, empty and lonely, bereft of life. Only family love and loyalty could keep somebody in a place like this, but even allowing that Marisa had an abundance of those qualities, Neil thought she was bound to go batty sooner or later if she stayed here for very long.
     
    "The table is beautiful," Neil said lamely.
     
    Marisa poured two glasses of wine and gave one to him-the same house red, he discovered when he took a sip. Either he was getting used to it or this was a better bottle, because he found it more agreeable now. Marisa perched herself on the fat arm of a heavy armchair, her legs open to the extent that her dress would allow. Neil's throat tightened and his heart felt like it was booming in his chest.
     
    Jamie had a somewhat fulsome figure too, at first, though in time she had become obsessive about taking off weight. Perhaps that was part of the big fuzzy why- why it all went wrong for them.
     
    "There are a couple of things I should warn you about."
     
    "Oh?"
     
    "Nothing serious." Marisa smiled. "It's just that my relatives are all still pretty much old world people. By old world I mean, you know-before the War. That was the world they grew up in and they still have a lot of those ways and attitudes. They might seem rather-"
     
    She hesitated, unable to find the word she wanted. "Different?" Neil offered. He was the writer.
     
    "Yes." Marisa smiled gratefully. "Different."
     
    "Thanks for telling me," he said. "But I'm sure it won't be a problem as far as I'm concerned. I'm always glad to have the chance to meet and talk with people who lived through that period."
     
    "Good." Marisa was still hesitating about something. "Oh, and if you don't like the food, please, you don't have to eat it. Just have some bread and salad, and I'll fix you something else later. I can tell them we had a lot to eat on the patio earlier."
     
    "We did, and I'm not that hungry now." Neil resisted the urge to smile at her warning about the food. "But I'm sure it'll be fine."
     
    "Thank you."
     
    "Not at all. I'm the guest here."
     
    "One more thing."
     
    "Yes?"
     
    Marisa stood up and stepped close to him. The thin gold bracelets on her wrist gleamed in the light as she put her glass down on the bar. A vibrant blue opal the size of a quarter dangled from a black ribbon that hung tightly at the base of her slender throat. How he wanted to kiss that throat.
     
    All of that lovely black hair, the fire in her eyes, the silky texture of her skin, the way her perfume seemed to settle around him and draw him still closer to her, the movement of her tongue moistening her