Part 32 (1/2)
”All right then,” she said to everyone, though she continued looking at me. ”We have a wedding to do. What say we all get to it?”
”Wait,” said Carlos. He stepped up onto the porch. The five of us were now crowded onto the tiny slab. ”I have something I want to give the happy couple.” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out an envelope. ”Here.” He gave it to Dominic. ”It's for both of you.”
”A wedding card. Thank you, Carlos.”
”Go on. Open it.”
Spinelli opened the envelope, but instead of a card, it yielded a photograph. He turned it over and studied it briefly before handing it to Ursula. ”Look,” he said. ”It's a picture of this house.”
I looked at Carlos. His grin looked suspiciously stupid. ”Wait a minute. Let me see that.” I s.n.a.t.c.hed the photo from Ursula's hand. ”No. It is not this house. Look. The landscape is all wrong.”
Spinelli s.n.a.t.c.hed the photo back. ”Yeah, and the walkway is different. Other than that, it's the same.”
Lilith was next. She plucked the photo from Spinelli's grasp. ”This isn't anything like my house. The color is all wrong.”
I grabbed it back. ”It is not. The color is right. It's the lighting that's off.”
”Wait,” said Carlos. He swiped the picture from me and gave it to Ursula. ”It's not this house. It's Ursula's house. It's Dominic and Ursula's wedding present.”
Dominic said, ”I don't understand.”
”It's simple.” Carlos stepped off the porch and cast his hand in a broad sweep across the front of the house. ”Remember last year when Lilith first showed us this house?”
We all answered yes.
”Dominic, you said to Ursula, maybe you two could own a house as charming as this someday. Well, this is it. I called a contractor, had him take a look at this place and then asked him to duplicate it as best he could.” His brows gathered tightly. ”It's not quite finished, though. Seems he's having a hard time staying on the job. I don't think he's a well man.”
Lilith said, ”So that's why this guy kept coming around taking pictures. I thought he was a peeping Tom.” Her eyes fell away, as a decidedly unflattering cringe tugged at her face.
Carlos asked, ”Lilith, did you do something to my contractor?”
”No,” she said, and added, ”Nothing much.”
”What does that mean?”
”Well, I didn't know.”
”Oh, dear G.o.d. What did you do?”
She shrugged off her unease with a dismissive wave. ”Nothing serious. Tell your contractor you suspect his rash will clear up soon. Say it's environmental.”
”Wait. Forget the rash.” I stepped off the porch and took the photo from Carlos. ”Are you telling me you built a house for these two?”
He smiled. ”Yup.”
”A house like this one?”
”Yes.”
”A house?”
”Yes. I can afford it. I have money you know.”
I laughed. ”No. Most times I would not know that. I can hardly get you to buy breakfast at the Perc, and here you build them a house.”
”Well I think it's super,” said Lilith. She stepped off the porch and gave Carlos a hug and a kiss.
”Aye. 'Tis a wonderful thing you do, Master Carlos,” said Ursula, who also offered up a huge hug and a kiss.
We turned to Dominic, expecting a similar show of grat.i.tude. ”Dominic?” I stepped back to offer a clear path through. ”Don't you have something to say to Carlos?”
”Yes,” he answered, in a sharper tone than the occasion called for. ”I do have something to say.”
”Dominic.”
”No, Tony. He's going to hear this. You are all going to hear this.” He s.n.a.t.c.hed the photo from my hands and pressed it to Carlos' chest. ”I don't need your house. I can provide for my new wife. I don't need anyone's help.”
”Dominic,” I said, ”no one is saying you need help. This is your best friend offering you a wedding gift from the bottom of his heart.”
”It's a house, Tony. He's giving me a house.”
”No. He's giving you and Ursula a house. Don't you think she has some say in whether you should accept it?”
He looked at Ursula, her lips drawn tight, her porcelain eyes wide and unblinking. ”Ursula. I don't want you thinking me any less a man for not providing you with everything you need.”
She came to him, took his hand and pressed it to her chest. ”My love. Thou hast given me all I need already.”
”But I can give you so much more with time.”
”Time is my gift to thee. 'Tis thy love I need and naught more do I ask.”
”So you don't want the house?”
She kissed him softly before whispering something in his ear that made him smile. ”Okay,” he said. He turned to Carlos and offered his hand. The two shook. ”Carlos. I don't know what to say.”
Lilith piped up. ”Say thank you.”
”Thank you.”
”Great.” She clapped her hands and snapped her fingers in the air. ”Let's marry somebody. Shall we?”
”Let's go,” I said.
We followed Lilith through the house and out the back door. Only a few steps beyond the clothesline begin a wooded tract stretching fifty acres or more, ten of which Lilith owns. In the year since moving in, I have come to know the property well. Though not part.i.tioned by fences or the like, numbered surveyor stakes planted on the corners and at points along the sides demarcate the boundaries. I know this because frequent squabbles with Lilith have afforded me countless opportunities for long walks through the woods.
We came to a clearing on the northwest point of Lilith's parcel where hers intersects three others, forming a four-corner scenario. It is there she had prepared ahead for the wedding ceremony. On the ground, extending out from the four corners lay a ring of stones in a circle some twenty feet across. Four white candles burned in mason jars along the edge at the compa.s.s points. Within the circle, more candles burned red, brown, yellow and green. In the center, surrounding the surveyor's marker designating the four corners, stood an altar of sorts, consisting of two wooden crates, one stacked atop the other. On that was the athamethe one used previously in the coven ceremony. A silver chalice, an empty nip bottle (corked), a thin piece of rope, a gardener's hand spade and the black mirror also lay atop the crates. Leaning against the crates, a willow branch the length of a broomstick. A narrow carpet of cut flowers in a kaleidoscope of colors led from there back to the eastern edge of the circle.
Lilith halted us outside the perimeter, instructing us to take up positions along the stones. She entered the circle from the east, the direction of the sunrise, indicating its significance reflected the constant give and take in a relations.h.i.+p. Naturally, I wondered whose relations.h.i.+p she was referring to. I suspected she read my thoughts then, because when I turned away, a pebble struck me on the head. It came from within the circle. I looked up at her and she was smiling.
”Greetings and merry meet,” she said, her hands spread wide in a gesture of welcome. ”Behold ye friends of the coven.” She picked up the athame and pointed it at the altar. ”We a.s.semble here, at these four points, a terrestrial crossroads symbolizing the paths that intersect and now forever join this couple, Master Dominic and Lady Ursula, in love's eternal embrace.