King Arthur's Last Knight Read online

  So she’d gotten rid of his name when she’d gotten rid of him. I’d always thought women should keep their husbands’ names, but in that instant I changed my mind.

  “What library?” Paul sneered. “I haven’t seen any library.”

  Jill jerked her head backward. “It’s over there, behind the pocket doors.”

  Paul strode over to them. “No!” we both shouted. Startled, he stopped and turned around.

  “Why not?”

  I couldn’t very well explain that I didn’t want Jill to see that I was using more expensive wood than I was charging her for, so I kept silent, hoping he’d just lose interest. Jill had other ideas.

  “Jim doesn’t want me to see it until it’s done, so I’ll be surprised,” she explained. Even to me, it sounded dubious.

  Paul looked from one of us to the other. “Let me get this straight,” he said, slowly. “You’re paying this guy beaucoup bucks to build you a library, and you don’t know what you’re getting? Because he doesn’t want you to look? And you’ve known him what? Two, three months? And did you check him out with the BBB or anything?”

  Jill lifted her chin. “No.”

  “Where did you find him?” Paul’s gaze in my direction was pure venom.

  “At a crafts show.”

  “Ah!” Paul’s eyes widened, as if he suddenly understood everything. “A crafts show. Well, no wonder you decided to trust him to work without supervision. Everyone knows that crafts shows have the highest standards.”

  My face—no, my entire body—burned with rage and shame, but I couldn’t argue. Everything he’d said was true.

  “For one thing,” Jill spoke slowly and distinctly, “it’s not your money that’s paying him, so you have nothing to say about it. For another thing, he’s helped me fix a lot of things around the house so I didn’t have to pay to have someone else do it, so you have nothing to say about it. For another thing, he’s helped me learn to do things on my own—something you never did—so you have nothing to say about it.”

  Paul stared at her for a minute, then looked speculatively at me. An unpleasant smile settled at the corners of his mouth, a serpent readying to strike. Eyes gleaming with malice, he drawled, “Oh, now I see. Yes, indeed, I see it all perfectly.” And the serpent struck. “So, have you fucked her yet, or do you have a few more screws to adjust around the house before you get to start screwing her?”

  Jill gasped, and I, of course, stood there like a moron. I knew I was old-fashioned, but I couldn’t conceive of anyone speaking about a woman—a lady—like that, ex-wife or not. I couldn’t think of a way to respond to such an unjustified attack, so I stood there, speechless.

  “That’s uncalled for,” Jill said, jaw clenched. “Jim has always been a gentleman and has never made an improper suggestion. Anyway he’s married. He’s helping me as a friend.”

  The viper turned his attention to her. “I believe I was married, too, and the fact that I had a ‘friend’ of my own was what finally made you decide to leave. So, now you’re the other woman. Well, what goes around comes around, as they say.”

  I finally found my voice. “I’m not having—sex—with her,” I stammered. Dammit, why did I sound like such a prude?

  The serpent turned back to me. “No, I suppose not. I’ve known Jill considerably longer than you have, and I think her tastes run to men a bit—shall we say—leaner, and not quite so mature? Unless she’s decided to go for the father figure type. Hmm, Jill?” To my relief, she didn’t respond to this, only stood with lips compressed. “Well, I’ll leave you two to your cozy nest. Don’t say I didn’t give you the chance, Jill.” He left, slamming the door behind him.

  After a long moment, Jill slowly exhaled. “I’m so sorry, Jim.” She sighed, seeking my eyes from across the room. “He’s absolutely toxic. I don’t know what possessed me to marry him in the first place.”

  I met her eyes but dropped mine again quickly. Although what her ex-husband had said wasn’t technically true, in spirit it was. Like former President Carter, I had committed adultery in my heart, and he’d seen it. How many others had? Abby? David? Jill herself?

  “I should have said something, but I was so horrified at what he said, I couldn’t think of how to respond,” I excused myself. It sounded pathetic even to me.

  Jill shook her head and flopped into a wing chair. “It’s probably better that you didn’t. Paul loves to goad people. If you’d replied, he’d still be here spouting his outrageous comments. We didn’t give him anyone to argue with, so he left. It’s better this way.”

  I sat uneasily on the sofa. “Does he come here often?”

  “No, this was the only time. My bet is Andrea—the woman he was having an affair with—dumped him. He doesn’t like losing, so he decided to try to talk me into going back. As if.” She looked at me directly again. “Please, please don’t pay any attention to what he said. He’s like a spoiled brat. Whenever he doesn’t get his own way, he makes life miserable for everyone else. He was just saying the most hateful things he could think of to hurt us. Don’t let him.”

  I nodded and headed off to work in the library. I couldn’t tell her that he was right.

  Possibly from long experience in dealing with her insufferable jerk of a husband, Jill seemed able to forget what he’d said almost as soon as he left. I tried to show my unconcern as well, but I think our walks and lunches were a bit conversationally deficient on my side for a while. I was glad I had plenty of time alone in the library, fitting, joining, and sanding, to think things through.

  I was kind of embarrassed by the adultery-in-my-heart thing. Had anyone besides President Carter and me ever thought of such a thing? If we resisted it, was it really a sin? My fantasies were not the sort of raunchy sex fantasies men were supposed to have. Mine were more along the lines of extensions of what we did already. Instead of just lunch and walks and long conversations, we’d add breakfasts with lots of coffee and very little if any conversation—Jill had confessed she wasn’t a morning person, either—dinners by candlelight in the winter and on the back porch in the summer, evenings spent going to concerts or reading companionably side-by-side in the new library. And, at the end of day, turning off the light and reaching over to put my arm around her shoulders before I fell asleep, knowing she’d be there in the morning.

  It was, I realized with a mixture of amusement and chagrin, not a sex fantasy. It was a marriage fantasy. The difficulty being, of course, that I was already married to Abby. And I’d never leave her.

  Also, Jill had gotten divorced because she’d found out Paul was having an affair—if what he’d said was true, and I thought it was. Knowing I was married to Abby, would she even consider sleeping with me? Some other women might say, “Fair is fair,” and go ahead, but I didn’t think Jill was one of them. In some ways, she seemed almost as old-fashioned as I was.

  Though it was painful to contemplate, it was also true that I was not exactly affair material. Without even looking in the mirror, I knew I was the complete opposite of Paul. It was easy to imagine women swooning over him; the only way a woman would swoon over me was if I happened to catch her during a spell of vertigo. And, although I tried not to dwell on it, I was old enough to be Jill’s father.

  So there I was, too old, too chubby, too married, too moral to tell Jill that looking into her eyes made me feel like I was seventeen again. And if I worked any more slowly on her library, it wouldn’t be finished until she was my age.

  ****

  Christmas was approaching, and I should have finished Jill’s library long ago. If I’d been a regular contractor, she probably would have complained about me to the Better Business Bureau. But I puttered along, tweaking things that didn’t need to be tweaked, sanding edges that were already smooth, refastening shelves that were already securely bolted. I should have finished and gone home to start building lamp bases, desks, and night stands to sell at next year’s shows, but I couldn’t bear the thought of not seeing Jill again. So I tweaked and
sanded and fastened some more, with the usual interruptions to help her fix something that was falling apart on the house—I’d never been so grateful for the deficiencies of one hundred twenty-five-year-old houses before—and a happy couple of days helping her decorate the house and put up her tree.

  “I know it’s an awfully big tree for someone who lives alone,” Jill said with satisfaction after we’d finally gotten the eight-foot pine successfully erected, straight and unwobbly, in the bay window of her living room. “But this house just calls out for a big tree, don’t you think?”

  I did. And Abby didn’t need me to help her with our house. Since the kids had grown up and moved away, she’d taken a minimalist approach to decorating, and a couple years ago had bought a pre-decorated artificial tree in a box that she could put up herself in five minutes. Now I closed my eyes and sniffed. The scent of the pine tree mingled with the smell of cinnamon from the wine Jill was mulling on the stove. Christmas music played softly on the stereo. I opened my eyes and looked around. Leftover pine boughs decorated the mantel. Electric candles flickered on the windowsills, real ones on the dining room table. An enormous wreath festooned with red and green plaid ribbons hung over the sofa. I realized I’d missed all the trappings of Christmas, and wished I could spend it here with her, instead of at home. Of course, I immediately felt ashamed of such a thought, but I wondered what Jill would do. Would she celebrate Christmas all alone in her gloriously decorated house? I hadn’t seen any friends come to visit, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have any. They would have come over in the evening, after work and on weekends, not during the day when I was there. I wondered if any of them had peeked at the library. Had they pressed her to look, too? Or had she prevented them? Was my surprise not really a surprise at all?

  To cover my confusion, I reached out to straighten an ornament on the tree and got stuck to it by pine sap. Maybe there was something to fake trees after all. At least they weren’t sticky.

  Jill spent most of her time at the computer, writing the little dribs and drabs that paid her bills and would, ultimately, pay me. One-paragraph fillers for the end of newspaper and magazine articles. Welcome brochures for hotel chains. Survey forms for businesses. At my request, she found a box full of magazines that held her previous articles. In addition to the one about King Arthur, she’d also written about such things as traveling by caravan along the Silk Road, riding the Trans-Siberian railway, and following in the steps of Henry Stanley on his search for Doctor Livingstone. Not the usual go-to-Paris-and-stay-at-this-hotel-and-shop-here stories. Really, did people need an inducement to go to Paris anyway? I hadn’t heard that France was suffering a tourist shortage. Jill’s stories were about places most people would never think to go, and after reading her descriptions I felt the dripping heat of an African summer and smelled the sweat of unwashed bodies pressing close in the bazaar in Samarkand. It broke my heart that this talented woman was reduced to writing “Ten Extra Uses for Vinegar” just to pay her electric bill.

  “You have to go to England and see the King Arthur stuff,” Jill said, leaning over my shoulder. “If you don’t go, you’ll regret it. In the end, it’s not the things you’ve done that you’re the most sorry for, it’s the things you haven’t done.”

  I sighed and closed the magazine I’d been reading, with her article about visiting the Seven Wonders of the World. Come with me, I wanted to say. Show me yourself. No strings, just come with me because I cherish your company. But, of course I didn’t.

  Jill shuffled through the pile of magazines until she found the one she wanted. To my horror, she ripped several pages out of it and strode to the kitchen. When she returned, she slapped the pages down in front of me. They were her article on King Arthur. Across the title page she’d written in big, black felt-tip letters, “GO! Love, Jill.”

  “So do it already,” she said.

  ****

  December twenty-third, the last day I’d be at Jill’s until after New Year’s, as Abby and I planned to visit Mark and Noreen for the holidays. I’d brought her a small gift: a biography of Gustave Caillebotte, her favorite artist. I opened the door and went through to the living room, as I did every morning, and found her crying on the sofa. At first I thought Paul had been back again, just in time to brighten her holidays, but then I noticed she cupped a small furry body in her hands. Louie.

  “He just died,” she said, her voice breaking. She wiped her eyes and added the Kleenex to the substantial pile already on the coffee table. “I got used to hearing him run on his wheel during the night. A lot of people say the noise keeps them awake, but I found it soothing. It always helped me fall asleep, knowing Louie was there, getting his exercise.” She paused to blow her nose. “I woke up last night and didn’t know why, and then I realized it was quiet. No running on the hamster wheel. So I turned on the light, and Louie was lying next to it, on his side. That’s not normal,” she explained to me, a hamster non-expert, as I sat beside her, stroking Louie’s soft fur. “He was still alive, barely, but in the middle of the night, you can’t get a vet. He felt so cold, so I wrapped him and held him, hoping he could hold on till morning, but I knew he wouldn’t, you know what I mean?” I nodded. “I held him and told him I loved him, and his breathing got slower and slower, and then he just made a little squeak and moved a little like he was trying to run away from something, and then he was gone.” Her voice gave out, and she began sobbing in great heaves. I put my arm around her shoulders and moved her face into the spot between my neck and shoulder.

  I held her that way for a long time, until finally she sat up and pushed wet, limp strands of hair out of her eyes. “Thank you,” she said. “And thank you for not saying, ‘He was just a hamster’.”

  “I’d never say that.” It was true that I had previously considered only dogs and cats to be real pets, but after meeting Louie I’d altered my views. Nobody got as much enjoyment out of eating one single raisin as Louie. He picked it up in his tiny front paws and nibbled around the edges—much as I did with a cinnamon danish—until finally the last scrumptious morsel disappeared into his chubby cheeks. I got a kick out of watching him, and, realizing I’d never do it again, my eyes teared up, too.

  “Louie was a character.” I stroked his side.

  Jill nodded sadly. “He was. Paul thought he was stupid.” Paul, I mused, seemed to think everyone but himself was stupid. “He didn’t really like animals at all, but I always had all sorts of pets as a kid, and I feel lonely without animals around. So he finally said I could get a hamster. Of course he didn’t know that hamsters are primarily nocturnal, so he was annoyed right off the bat that Louie slept most of the day and ran on his wheel all night. But I wouldn’t get rid of him.” A ghost of a smile flitted across her lips. “I got rid of Paul instead. When I left him—and before, when I’d travel for work—I’d leave him with my friend Jan, because I didn’t trust Paul to take care of him. I thought he’d either ‘forget’ to feed him and give him water, or just flush him down the toilet and then tell me he’d died while I was gone.” She paused. “Or stuff him down the garbage disposal. I was really, really afraid he’d do that, especially at the end when he knew I wanted a divorce. He hated me so much, and killing Louie would be the best way to get back at me. He only saw Louie as a thing anyway. I think he suspected I loved Louie more than him.”

  “Who wouldn’t?” I hadn’t actually meant to say it aloud, but she turned and smiled at me.

  “Thank you for your sympathy. Thank you for liking Louie. And thank you for not being like Paul.”

  I helped her find a pet crematorium that would come pick up Louie’s little furry remains, because the ground was frozen too hard to dig a grave. I devoted the rest of the day to building a box out of some leftover cherry wood so Louie’s ashes would have a nice final resting place.

  “I wish this hadn’t happened right before Christmas,” Jill said, watching the crematorium’s van pull away.

  It occurred to me that she’d never really bee
n alone before; Louie was all the company she’d wanted or needed, but he was gone. I touched her shoulder briefly. “I’d invite you over, but Abby and I are leaving tomorrow to visit our kids...”

  She shook her head vigorously. “I don’t mean to be pathetic. In any case, I won’t be here myself; I’m visiting Jan until after New Year’s Day. I’ll have to explain why I’m coming alone.” She bit her lip and her eyes brimmed with tears. “The hard part will be when I come home again.”

  Abby and I left the next afternoon to visit Mark and Noreen and the kids. On Christmas morning, both kids woke up with the stomach flu. By afternoon Mark wasn’t feeling well either, so we came back home. I looked around at our meager decorations and fake tree, and thought about Jill’s beautiful house with no one to celebrate in it. I thought of her being sad all over again when she came home without Louie, and thought of buying her another hamster, but rejected the idea. She was entitled to choose her own pet. But I had a better idea.

  I’d had a key to her house since the beginning, and on the twenty-seventh I went over and looked around. Her library was, finally, done. I’d dragged the work out as long as I could, but there was literally nothing left to do. I’d even stained the wood. All I had to do was clean up.

  I picked up the last little bits of walnut and tossed them in my hand. I looked around at all the nooks and crannies, swept the dust, and went home.

  ****

  On January tenth I was at Jill’s door, for the last time, at ten o’clock. I was relieved to see that the couple of weeks away had done her good; she no longer looked so sad.

  “Are you ready?” I asked.

  “I can hardly wait,” she replied, eyes like sunlight sparkling off emeralds. “I’ve been waiting for this for months!”

  “I took the liberty of shelving the books that were in the boxes,” I said. “You’ll probably want to re-shelve them, but I thought it would look more like a library with books in it.” I preceded her to the pocket doors and slowly slid them open. “Ms. Francent, your library.”