Florian's Gate (2 page)

Hers was not a lighthearted attraction, but rather one which remained surrounded by walls and hidden depths even after seven months of their being together. Her hair was very dark, almost blue-black in color, and cut very short in what used to be called a page-boy style and what now was referred to as functional. It was very fine hair, and it framed her face with a silky aura that shimmered in the light and shivered in the softest breeze. Her eyes were wide and grayish violet and very expressive, her mouth somehow small and full at the same time. Hers was a small, perky face set upon a small, energetic body. He loved her face, loved the quiet fluidity of her movements, loved the way she smiled with her entire being—when she smiled, which was very seldom. Katya was one of the most serious people he had ever met.

Only once had he seen the seriousness slip away entirely, when they had gone to Hastings for the day and spent an unseasonably hot early May afternoon on the beach. After a laughter-filled swim in absolutely frigid water, she had toweled her hair and left it salt-scattered, happy enough to be warm and wet and in the sun for a while. From behind blank sunglasses Jeffrey had examined this strange woman in her brief moment of true happiness, and wondered at all that he did not know of her. Her mysterious distance was a crystal globe set around the most fragile of flowers, protecting a heart from he knew not what. And as he looked, he yearned to come inside the globe, to know this heart, to taste the nectar of this flower.

That time on the beach remained one of the few moments of true intimacy they had ever shared. And even then Jeffrey had almost managed to mess it up—without intending to, without understanding what it was he had said, without knowing how to make things better.

They were lying on a shared beach towel after their swim, enjoying the rare day of summer-like heat that warmed away the water's chill. Katya sat supported by her arms, with her head thrown back, her uplifted face and closed eyes holding an expression of earthly rapture. Jeffrey lay beside her, turned so that he could watch her without her seeing him, knowing that he should understand her better to feel as he did.

She opened her eyes, squinted at the sky, then pointed upward and said brightly, “Look, that's where God lives.”

“What?”

“Over there. See the light coming through the clouds like that? When I was a little girl I decided that it happened when God came down and sat on the clouds. That's why they lit up with all those beautiful colors. And that big stream of light falling to earth was where God was looking down at people to see if they were behaving.”

“Do you believe in God?”

She turned and looked at him with clear gray-violet eyes that gave nothing away. “Don't you?”

“I used to. I used to feel as if God was around me all the time.”

“He is.”

“Maybe so, but I couldn't ever seem to find Him when I needed Him.” Jeffrey settled his hands behind his head. “I guess I stayed really religious for about three years. Then when I was seventeen I started going through some bad times. I ended up deciding that if God wasn't going to help me more than He was, then I needed to stop relying on Him and learn to help myself. So I did. I didn't mean to let religion slide, but I guess it has. No, I know it has. It just never seemed to matter very much to me after that.”

She looked down at him for a very long moment. “That is the most you have ever told me about yourself.”

You're not the most open person either, he thought. “I guess I've never had anybody seem all that interested before.”

She kept her solemn eyes on him, and for a moment Jeffrey
thought she was going to bend over and kiss him. Instead she turned her face back to the sky, said, “I ran away from home three times when I was six. That's what my parents called it, anyway. What really happened was I went running over to where God was looking down. I wanted to ask Him to make the bad things go away. But I never could get there in time. Sooner or later the light would go out and I knew God had gone to watch other people somewhere else.”

He lay and looked at the still face, with its delicate upturned nose and upper lip that seemed to follow the same line of curve. Her chin, too, rose just a little bit, as if carefully planed by a gentle artist. “Did you have a lot of bad times as a kid?”

She lay down beside him, her breath causing her breasts to rise and press against the suit's flimsy fabric. Jeffrey decided he had never seen a more beautiful woman in all his life. “I didn't have anyone to compare with,” she replied. “It seemed pretty bad to me.”

“Do you want to tell me about it?”

She met him once more with that same level gaze, as though searching inside him for something she couldn't find. “I don't think so,” she said. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“Have you ever thought about giving God another chance in your life?”

“No,” he replied honestly.

“Why not?”

“What for?” He turned his face to the sky. “Why should anything be different this time?”

“Did you ever think that maybe you'd understand why you had to go through what you did, if you'd give Him a chance to explain?”

“Why didn't He explain it then?”

“I don't know, Jeffrey,” she said, her voice as calm as her gaze. “Maybe you weren't listening. Or maybe you were listening for something that He didn't want to tell you.”

For some reason that struck a little close to home. He countered with, “What about you? Did you find all the answers you were looking for when you were little and hurting and went looking for God?”

“No,” she replied. “But I kept looking, and now I do.”

“You mean you found an excuse.” Her certainty irritated him. He sat up, said, “You went looking for a reason to believe in a God who let you be hurt when you were a little defenseless kid. So you found one. If I wanted to, I could come up with a thousand perfectly good reasons. But it doesn't mean God exists.”

She raised up to sit beside him. “You don't understand.”

“You're right.”

“I found understanding because I let God heal the pain. That's when it started to make sense, Jeffrey. So long as I was still hurting, I couldn't see beyond my pain. But when the wounds healed and the pain left, I was able to see the real reason. The only reason. You can too.”

“You really do believe, don't you?”

“With all my heart,” she replied simply.

He shook his head, turned to face the sea. “Crazy. I thought I'd left all that stuff back home.”

She rose to her feet in one fluid motion. “I think I'm ready to go now.”

“Why?” He looked up at her. “There's another two or three hours of sun left.”

“I'm going home, Jeffrey.” She began slipping back into her jeans. “Would you please take me?”

Jeffrey entered the shop and watched Katya walk to the back, retrieve her book, and leave with the fewest of words. He stood for a moment in the center of the shop and felt the vacuum caused by her silent passing. He sighed, shook his head, and carried Ling's bowl back to the cramped office space behind the stairwell. He set the bowl carefully on a Queen Anne rosewood table and turned on the hotplate.
While he prepared the formula and washed the eyedropper, he occupied himself with a rundown of the week's activities.

It was going to be busy, with a major buyer over from America, one of his paintings up for sale at Christie's, the Grosvenor House Antique Fair getting under way, and his boss coming in that Wednesday from goodness-knows-where. A buying trip, that much he knew. Probably from somewhere on the Continent, but he wasn't sure. Where Alexander Kantor bought his antiques was the best-kept secret of the international antiques market. Not to mention the basis for endless speculation and envy.

The most likely rumor Jeffrey had heard was that over the years Alexander had maintained relations with the Communist leaders of Eastern Europe. Now that they were out of business, he was making the rounds as a staunch supporter of the new democracies. Yet not the minutest bit of proof had ever been unearthed. The only thing known was that Alexander Kantor, the sole and rightful owner of the Priceless, Ltd antique shop of Mount Street, had more formerly unknown treasures to his credit than any other dealer in the world.

Jeffrey Allen Sinclair, former consultant with the McKinsey Group's Atlanta operations and currently Alexander Kantor's number two, filled the eyedropper and began feeding the mixture into the pitiful little mouth. Ling took it in with great swallows that wrenched his entire tiny frame. After five mouthfuls, he slowed down, pausing and weaving his little skull back and forth, then coming up for one last gulp before collapsing.

Jeffrey slid his hand under the fuzzy little body and was rewarded with a rapturous snuggle. Ling loved to be held almost as much as he loved to be fed. Jeffrey smiled at the trembling little form cradled in his fingers, extremely glad that nobody back home could see him right then.

He had taken in the bird the night they found it, since Katya had class the next day and didn't want to leave it alone in her own flat that long. He had kept it because it brought Katya
over to the shop every afternoon. No question about it, the bird was a much bigger draw than he was. For the moment, anyway. Jeffrey had big hopes for the future.

By the end of that week Jeffrey was hooked on the bird and wouldn't have given Ling up for love or money. If Katya wanted the bird, she'd have to move in—or at least that was what he was planning to insist on if she ever asked, which she didn't. Katya had an uncanny sixth sense that steered her clear of all such uncharted waters.

When baby was fed and burped and packed between pristine sheets, Jeffrey set up the coffee brewer, then started opening for the day. He flipped the switch to draw up the mesh shutters over the main window, turned on the shop's recessed lighting, and began opening the mail.

Just as the coffee finished perking, the front doorbell sounded. Jeffrey walked forward with a smile of genuine pleasure and released the lock. “And a very good morning to you, madame.”

A visiting American dealer named Betty greeted him with, “Does it always rain here?”

“I seem to remember hearing somewhere that Boston's weather wasn't always that nice.”

“Maybe not, but we get breaks from it. The sun comes out to remind us what's up there.”

He led her toward the back of the shop, asked, “Did you sleep well?”

“I never sleep well in London. My body is not accustomed to being under water. I need to breathe air that doesn't smell like the inside of an aquarium. I'm growing webs between my toes. Next comes oily feathers so the water will roll off.”

He helped her off with her coat. “Some coffee?” he offered.

“Thank you. I'm beginning to understand why you make it stronger than my nail-polish remover. It's intended to warm your bones on days like this.” She handed him a heavy plastic bag. “A little offering toward your continuing education.”

She always brought a stack of recent U.S. magazines; he
always played at surprise, but his gratitude was genuine. They were those she worked through on the transatlantic flight, and passing them on to Jeffrey was as good a way as any of tossing them out. But he had been in the business long enough to know that having a buyer perform anything that even resembled a courtesy was rarer than genuine Elizabethan silver.

He leafed through them in anticipation of a slow afternoon's pleasure. There was the
Architectural Digest
, at five bucks a pop;
Unique Homes
, filled with full-color full-page ads for the basic sixteen bedroom home and rarely showing anything valued at less than a million dollars;
HG
, the restyled
House and Garden
, struggling desperately to attract the yuppie reader;
Elle Decor
, basically concentrating on the modern, but just snooty enough to give him the occasional sales idea for a piece that wasn't moving; and a variety of upscale magazines to teach him what there was to know about the slippery notions of American taste—
House Digest, Southern Accents, Colonial Homes, Connoisseur Magazine
.

“These are great, Betty. Thanks a million.”

Betty shook a few drops of water from her short-cropped gray hair. “I've been here eight days now. No, nine. This miserable misting rain hasn't stopped once. Or correct me if I'm wrong. Perhaps I blinked in the wrong place and missed the glorious English summer.”

“It has been pretty awful. But we had a few days of beautiful weather back in May. Hot, sunny, crystal blue skies. I even went down for a day at the beach.”

“Impossible. I refuse to believe that London could have had sunshine. It would have made the front pages of every paper around the world.”

He smiled. “Come on downstairs, there's something I'd like to show you.”

He led Betty down the narrow metal staircase to the basement. It was a simple concrete-lined chamber, void of the upper room's stylish setting. The floor was laid with beige
indoor-outdoor carpeting and the low ceiling set with swivel lamps on long plastic strips.

“I've been saving this for you,” he said, reaching up to turn a lamp toward the space beneath the staircase.

The light shone on a gateleg table, one so narrow that with both leaves down it was less than eight inches across. It was simple oak, burnished for over three centuries by caring hands until the original finish glowed with fiery pride.

Betty ran a practiced hand over its surface, bent and inspected the straight-carved legs, pronounced, “Definitely Charles the Second. Late Jacobean.”

“I thought it might be.”

“No question about it.” She raised up, her eyes lit with undisguised excitement. “I know just where this is going.”

“You're not supposed to let it show, Betty.”