Dark Light

41

When I threw my shoulder against the door, I felt the wood frame and dead bolt screws give. I stepped back to ram the door again but caught myself.

A dead bolt. Didn’t that tell me something? If the door was bolted, Chestra was inside.

No…she could have bolted the front door, then exited through the downstairs sliding doors, beach side.

My jacket had a hood. I held the hood tight as I splashed my way around the house to check, moon almost bright enough I didn’t need my flashlight. The glass doors were open, curtains billowing.

Strange for her to leave doors open…

I stepped inside to have a look—a light showing down the hall, beneath her bedroom door. I called her name.

Chestra?

Called once more.

Should I go to her room and knock?

No. Decided that would be intrusive.

I turned to look at the beach. The wind and rain were abating. The cyclone’s volatile bands traveled in incremental waves, the space of each lull shorter as the storm’s center neared. In a few minutes, the gale would resume.

If she was out there, now was the time to find her.

I closed the doors, and started along the path to the beach.

D uring the last storm, she’d led me in the direction of Sanibel Light. I remembered that.

When I reached the beach, I took a chance and retraced our course, then began jogging toward the point. To my right, the sea was a deafening darkness. In the far distance, the lighthouse was awash in monstrous clouds, each frail starburst reflected skyward, then absorbed as if ingested.

Over the Gulf, there was a flash of lightning. Another. The horizon was briefly illuminated by random voltage, an electrical pattern as intricate as synaptic nerve fiber.

Ahead, the automated beacon revolved with indifferent synchrony: two one-second flashes followed by darkness, over and over; a metronome warning to mariners that was issued every ten seconds.

Light-light…dark. Light-light…dark. Light-light…dark.

Ahead of me, at the surf’s edge, I saw movement…

What?

A person. Far down the beach. I saw the figure only for a moment as the beacon flared: a human silhouette tethered to its shadow.

A person, yes. Someone walking toward the lighthouse.

I jogged faster, leaning into a water-heavy wind. The storm was freshening. I knew it would rain soon.

It did. I heard the curtain of rain before I felt it: a xylophone patter backdropped by the drumming percussion of waves. Sand beneath my feet vibrated with each breaker’s weight; soft rain became a torrent. Wind arrived, a tumid wall that made it a struggle to run.

I was close enough to see it was a woman: a solitary figure, head down, dressed in pale clothing that caught the wind like scarves.

I jogged for another minute.

“Chestra?”

The figure turned.

I was close enough to see. It was her.

“Doc…? Doc!”

“Yeah.”

She held her hands out. I took them. “My God, what are you doing on the beach? I’m so happy to see you, kiddo!”

We were closer to the lighthouse; moonlight was diffused by clouds. Rain was angling.

“I was worried. Storms, I know you love them. So I came looking. Chestra, this is crazy. I’m taking you home right now—”

I was silenced by a sizzling explosion. Lightning. A blue glare illuminated Chestra’s face, her water-soaked hair. It was an incandescence so pure that I felt as if I were seeing her for the first time. Extraordinary. Had I once really thought she was old?

I found myself unable to speak. I had never been face-to-face with a woman as beautiful as Mildred Chestra Engle.

“What’s wrong, Doc?”

We stood for a moment in the silence of storm and pounding surf.

“Doc?”

I touched my hands to her hips; felt her arms go around my neck. Her eyes stared into mine, their intensity rhythmic in the contrasting tempo of automated beacon and wild electricity. Both revealed a woman who was described to me as ageless.

Light-light…dark. Light-light…dark.

Her eyes, her lips…her flawless face.

Yes, she was. Ageless.

We kissed.

I touched the back of my hand to her lips—no, I had not imagined their heat. My fingers moved to her cheek, her throat, then stroked her hair as I slipped my right hand inside her jacket, cupping her ribs through sodden blouse.

We kissed again.

In a lightning burst, Chestra’s eyes smoldered. They floated a question.

I touched my lips to hers in reply.

“Your house?” I said.

“No. The gazebo. It’s the way I’ve imagined it.”

I felt my pocket to make certain the cigarette case was there. “I have something for you. A surprise.”

Chestra put a fingernail to my abdomen, tracing downward. “I’m sure you do.”

T he gazebo was equipped for family barbecues. It was board-and-battened to waist level, then screened. There was a couch, a patio table, a couple of oil lamps, a little fireplace.

I was trying to get a fire lighted, using damp wood and damp matches.

Chestra was in the shadows, toweling her body, a blanket nearby.

When I broke another match, I said, “You’re right, it’s going to take charcoal lighter to get this thing going.”

She lowered the towel enough so that I could see her breasts, nipples pale beneath the thin material of her camisole. “Kiddo, you’re carrying the only fire starter I need. But I’ll pop into the house. When I get back, I promise you’ll have all the heat required.”

Lighter fluid, some rolled-up newspapers, and towels—she said it wouldn’t take a minute. A woman determined to make love beside a fire.

I smiled. It was around midnight, gale blowing. The gazebo was almost as good as being out in the storm, she said. Wind. Lightning.

We had not waited for the fire. Or dry towels. Or anything. I couldn’t wait. She was as eager.

We had undressed each other quickly…all but a sheer camisole top which Chestra wouldn’t remove. “Use your hands anywhere. Everywhere. But allow me this one conceit. Please, my love?”

I thought it was because of her age.

It was not.

Her body was alive beneath my fingers. She meant what she said. I could touch her. Anywhere. Everywhere. The camisole could be lifted for my mouth and eyes to enjoy.

Not her right shoulder, though. She would not bare it. There was scar tissue. Small indentations—several. Five? My fingers swept across them, counting. I felt the scars…but only for a moment before she pulled my hand away.

It created an uneasiness that, for her, vanished with our next kiss.

Incredible. Her body consumed mine. Astride me, she made low breathless sounds of craving, head back, eyes closed, her face a mask of shadow and light.

Her fingers knew male sensitivities as well as they knew keys on a piano. They understood where tiny collectives of neurons lay beneath skin and they played there delicately, then demanding.

In her hands, I disappeared. Within Chestra, I vanished. I felt a transcendent contentment, like a shadow released.

“Doc, you know what they say: A woman’s only as old as the man she’s feeling.”

I laughed. Her bawdy side. Earlier, she had made a dreamy growl of satisfaction, and whispered, “American men. You just reminded me why I prefer domestic to imported.”

I placed the damp matches on the table and stood. Chestra was wearing a robe now. I was naked—her eyes liked that. I said, “Your present. I haven’t given it to you yet.”

“You’re kidding. Then one of us wasn’t paying attention.” She came to me, let me slip my hands inside the robe as we hugged, then kissed.

I found my jacket. Took the flashlight and unwrapped the cigarette case. More of the black patina had come off on the towel. I looked at the case in the light, before saying, “This is what I was talking about.”

I handed it to Chestra as distant lightning flared behind her. “Is this…is this what I think?” I stood nearby and switched on the flashlight. “Oh my God! Doc, you found it. You actually found it!”

I expected her to be pleased. Instead, she was overwhelmed. Near tears. Holding the silver case, her hands began to shake. It was a reaction I would expect from a young woman who had just opened a box and seen an engagement ring.

“How could you have possibly found this and not told me immediately?”

Was she peeved? No. She stared at the case, hugged me, then hugged me again.

I got my first good look at it. On one side, the small engraving was visible: a doubled cross on a stiletto blade. The stiletto’s tip was overset with the Star of David. On the other side of the cigarette case were Marlissa Dorn’s initials: MD.

Chestra became animated. “Do you know what this means? Doc! I’m in shock. But, in a way…I’ve known it all along.”

I put my hands on her shoulders, steadying her. “What are you talking about?”

“When I was contacted about the house…the promissory notes, I was told that it was a bequest from Frederick Roth. That he hadn’t died in 1944. But all these years I thought he was dead. Lost in the storm. Then I’m told that he lived to a ripe old age, made a lot of money. Which meant that he left Marlissa and never came back. Freddy abandoned her, don’t you understand? Abandoned the woman he said was his only true love. He went on to live his life without her.”

I had never heard Chestra so excited. “Yeah?”

“This cigarette case was a present to Freddy from Marlissa. Don’t you see?” She waited for the flashlight before pointing to the cross and Star of David. “This was a symbol used by the German underground. The cross—it’s actually an F. Freiheit, it means ‘freedom.’

“Freddy was living aboard Dark Light at the time. Most of his clothes, his papers, were there. Even if he chose not to return to Marlissa, he would have never left this case behind. A German Jew in 1944? It was better than a passport. At restaurants, in train stations, people who understood would see it and know. Yes, Marlissa had been unfaithful. Heinrich Goddard made certain he knew all the gory little details. But Freddy still wouldn’t have left this.” I watched her pull the cigarette case to her bosom—an embrace. Why was she so happy to know that Roth had died the night of the storm?

“Heinrich Goddard?” I repeated softly.

“Yes. A Nazi. A terrible man. Evil. A medical researcher who worked at one of the camps. He had money, all the right connections. He was on the run. The night we read Marlissa’s diary, I mentioned his name.”

No, she had not mentioned his name. She used the initials H.G. It explained why a letter from an attorney named Goddard was upsetting.

“It was the night I suggested Roth was a Nazi agent. A spy on an island with so many powerful Americans? Threaten to expose him—take the Germans to their rendezvous or face a firing squad. There’s no statute of limitations on espionage. It made sense. At the time.”

Chestra turned. She began to retie her robe.

“But he wasn’t a Nazi agent. Apparently, he was part of the German underground.”

“Yes. That’s my understanding. I’m sure he was.”

“I wonder what they used to make him go out that night. Money…gold? Even if they offered, it wouldn’t have been enough. Not twelve miles offshore in a hurricane. And he certainly wouldn’t have taken a woman—even if she had been unfaithful.” I waited a moment before adding, “Even if Marlissa was the spy. But to save her from a firing squad…maybe that’s why he went out that night.”

Chestra was looking at the floor, her voice soft. “It’s possible, I suppose.”

I was thinking about the diamond death’s-head—it could have been a calling card. It could have also been a death sentence.

“Marlissa was very young. She wanted the world. If powerful men told her things…lies…she may have pretended to believe them. Even pretended to help them. But not for long.

“Frederick was an extraordinary man. A genius. Decent and good. Marlissa adored him. Loved him like she would never love another. Why else…why else would she drown herself when Frederick didn’t return?”

I went to Chestra and made her face me. “Then she wasn’t aboard the boat.”

“No.”

“Because she knew that Goddard was going to kill Roth?”

“No!”

“But Goddard did kill him. He must have.”

The woman’s eyes were teary in the moonlight. “I don’t know. There’s no way to ever know. But I so wish, after all these years…Doc?” She was looking beyond me, toward the beach.

“Yes?”

“The inscription on Marlissa’s grave. Do you believe it? The old saw about the sea giving up its dead?” Her breath caught; a muffled sob.

I said gently, “I don’t believe the sea takes anything. Or gives.”

I watched two slow tears move down cheeks. “It’s the worst sort of romantic nonsense, I suppose, thinking people have only one love. That they search for each other through the ages. I’m sure you don’t believe that, either.”

I didn’t reply.

A gust of wind pushed rain through the screening. Her attention had turned inward. It brought her back. I felt a shiver go through the woman’s body. She sniffed, touched a knuckle to her eye, then made a gutsy attempt to sound cheerful.

“Of course you don’t believe it! You’re a scientist and I’m just a sappy saloon singer. But what a fool I am talking about another man!” She pulled away from me and reached for her rain slicker. “I am alone in the tropics with a guy who is absolutely scrumptious. The storm is wonderful”—she was walking to the door—“and in two minutes I’ll be back with a bottle of wine, which we will drink by a roaring fire. But after we make love again.”

I had a towel knotted around my waist. I watched her duck into the wind and walk beneath trees, through pools of moon shadow, following the sand trail that led past the family cemetery to the house.

I don’t know why I would risk something as indelicate but I did. I called after her, “Marlissa!”

The woman slowed, turned, waited.

I wanted to ask who was buried in the vault. One of the Cuban fishermen who washed up on the beach that October night in 1944? A fisherman’s wife? Or was it empty?

“Don’t forget to bring matches!”

She waved and was gone.