Page 2 of In Love With a Master (Interview With a Master 2)

Pouring rain was hammering against the window with a sound like gravel on the glass. Howling wind buffeted the house and rattled the window in its frame so that when dawn came it was as cold wintery light that was not strong enough to chase away the darkness of the night before. I shifted stiffly in the chair where I had slept, and blinked. The fire had turned to ash sometime during the evening and now the cold seemed to seep through the walls. I stared back out through the window as the morning slowly began to spread across the rim of the earth, cold and grey, and weak watery shadows stretched across the carpet.

There was a lingering dull ache of remorse behind my eyes. I pushed myself out of the chair. My head felt filled with the numbness of tragedy and I swayed unsteadily on my feet. I pulled open the office door with barely the will to go downstairs.

Dead man walking.

Mrs. Hortez was in the kitchen early – there were plates and dishes, and cutlery and crockery stretched across the kitchen benches. She was dressed in black, still mourning Tiny’s death. She had her hair tucked up in a bun, held in place with a collection of pins and clips so that it looked like a bird’s nest. She heard me behind her and glanced over her shoulder, then turned her attention quickly back to the cooking. I drifted out into the foyer, wandering aimlessly, followed by the hollow echo of my footsteps. The whole house felt cold and empty, and I got lost in the depths of my despair and bitterness somewhere near the back rooms of the house.

I drew the heavy drapes aside and stared out across the lawns of the estate. The morning was damp and cold. Bleak rain clouds hung like a veil across the rolling green grounds and gardens so that even their vibrant colors were muted and dull. I drifted back upstairs to my office like a haunting ghost.

The phone rang, and the clamor of it was shrill and strident. I sank back into the leather chair and waited until the sound cut off.

I couldn’t help but think of Leticia. I didn’t know if it was her trying to reach me, but my thoughts snapped instantly to her: where she might be and what she might be doing. An image of Leticia in her apartment flashed before my eyes, and I clung to it. I visualized her in her tiny kitchen reading the morning newspaper, her finger drawing slowly down through the columns of type looking for my name in the obituaries. The image flickered and wavered behind my eyes like bad reception, and then came back as a close up of Leticia’s face. She was crying, just as she had been crying that first time she had driven out of my life.

Just like she had been crying at the funeral.

The day drifted by in a blur of whisky. The reek of alcohol and cigar smoke hung like a thick haze in the air. Empty bottles littered the edge of the desk as I drank heavily. The anesthetic of the alcohol numbed my grief and washed away the choking bitterness in the back of my throat. I visualized Leticia standing over my grave, at my funeral… and I realized suddenly that the thought of my own death no longer filled me with resentful anger. I began to embrace the idea – welcome its inevitability.

With my death would come relief.

The notion seemed to bloom in my mind. I stared up at the ceiling through the swirling blue haze and let my imagination take hold of the thought until it became something more tangible, more practical. I dwelled on the vision of myself laying slumped dead over my desk with a macabre kind of fascination. I imagined myself finally free – unburdened of a lingering grey existence, released and relieved.

Would I be mourned?

Would it matter whether Jonah Noble died tonight, rather than in a few months or maybe a year from now?

When I thought I had reached the point where the depth of my desolation could become no darker, no more consuming – when I could find no solace – I slid my hand into the desk side drawer and wrapped my fingers around the cold steel of a pistol.

I laid the weapon on the polished tabletop and stared at it for long seconds, coming to terms with the enormity of what it represented – what the weapon offered. I ran my fingertips over the blunt, ugly shape, caressing it like a lover. I took the pistol in my hand and felt the comforting weight of it.

I reached across the desk and switched on the lamp. Light glinted off the stubby, ugly barrel of the gun. I twisted and turned the weapon in my hand, examining it in minute detail as though I had never seen it before. I pulled back the slide to chamber a round, and the metallic ‘snick’ of the weapon loading was obscenely loud in the silence.

I turned my hand so that the black mouth of the weapon stared back at me like a long, dark tunnel. I twisted my wrist and then felt my finger instinctively curl around the trigger and begin to take up pressure.

Here was relief. Here was the ultimate escape from a slow, certain death and the relentless misery and ache of mourning.

I slumped back in the chair and closed my eyes. I thought for a moment on my life and considered my regrets.

I had won and lost fortunes, I had built a business empire, and I had known many beautiful women. I had made mistakes, but I had no regrets…

And then a thought came from far away, like a distant call, only just penetrating the fatigued numbness of my mind. I tried to seize it – tried to draw it closer to consciousness, but I was made slow and sluggish by the enormous crushing weight of my grief, so that it slipped back into the shadows and I groped into the emptiness. I drew a deep breath and tried to shrug off the despair until my mind was empty, my thoughts swirling.

I opened my eyes, and stared back down the barrel of the gun. As I did, the thought suddenly came back to me, ghosting from out of the depths and taking clear form, so that I felt a prickle of sensation jolt along the length of my spine.

My eyes flew wide in a sudden shock of understanding. The regrets I had were the things I had not done. I realized then that when a man reflects upon his life, it’s not the regret of mistakes made that he dwells upon, it is the regret of those opportunities that passed him by which threaten to haunt him into the next life.

Death was an instant away – one reckless moment of desperate resolve – one single heartbeat away, when I realized I would regret never knowing love.

I set the gun down on the table – slid it across the timber surface out of reach. I looked at my hand – it was sweating and shaking. I felt a sudden rush of relief and adrenalin so that my breathing sawed across the back of my throat. I felt a flush of warm blood, and cold beads of sweat broke out across my brow.

I had come within a moment of death only to realize that I had found a reason to live.

And I had found new resolve.

The angel of death no longer scared me. I had stared her in the eye and had felt no fear. I knew then that when my time came at last, I could go in peace if I could first reach out and seize the chance to know love.

“No regrets,” I said to myself softly, “because with no regrets comes no fear.”

On an impulse, I reached for the telephone, and then paused with the receiver in my hand. I stared down at the phone for long seconds, rehearsing the words I would say in my mind. I felt a tremble in my fingers, and my breathing became short as if I had been running.

“No regrets,” I crushed down on my hesitation. I dialed the number and waited.

It was late. The phone rang for long seconds and then finally a breathless, drowsy voice answered.

“Hello?”

A moment of blind panic – a moment where my resolve reverted to caution, and I could not speak.

“Hello? This is Leticia. Who’s calling?” Her tone was solemn and there were traces of ordeal in the subdued whisper of her voice.

“Leticia, it’s me. It’s Jonah.” My voice was husky and made rough from too much whisky. I felt a sudden sense of vertigo as though the floor had just dropped out from beneath me and I was falling. It was that terrifying instant where I realized I was committed… and from here there could be no retreat.

I heard Leticia take a sharp breath like a gasp, and then a rustled movement before her voice cleared and she sounded suddenly alert and concerned. “Jonah? Tell me what’s wrong? Is eve

rything alright?”

“I need to talk to you.”

“Of course. Is something wrong?”

“No.”

“Has something happened?” Leticia’s manner became full of pity and compassion.

“Yes.”

“Is it about Tiny?”

I hesitated and tried to smile but my lips would not hold the shape. “Yes… and no…”

“I can come over right now if you want, or you can come here.”

I thought for a moment and sighed – an empty sound. “No… I realize it’s late. For now, it’s enough just to hear your voice. Can you come here tomorrow night?”

“Of course. I can be there straight after work. Are you sure you are all right? Are you sure tomorrow night is not too far away?”

“No,” I said and there was a sudden uplift in my voice that caught me by surprise. I stretched out across the desk and reached for the pistol. I dropped the weapon back into the drawer and slammed it shut. I turned the lock in a gesture of finality. “Tomorrow night will be fine,” I said. “I can wait, Leticia. I have the time…”

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