70 AMBROSIA

70

AMbrOSIA

Warm light strops the sharp edges of the amber cut-glass cups that hold the many candles, and the silverware sparkles as if each knife and fork and spoon were an instrument of supernatural power borrowed from a wizard's portmanteau. Pools of light pulsate on the dining room ceiling, and luminous waves wash up the walls, as though Regis and Wendy are in a glass vessel submerged in a golden sea.

No less marvelous than the ambiance, the food is the best he has ever eaten, pleasing to both the eye and the palate from the crab cake in blue cornmeal, through soup and salad and entrée, to the mandarin-orange crème br?lée. In Greek mythology, the food of the gods is ambrosia, but Regis doesn't believe that even the gods of old had eaten as well as this.

He lacks education in classical music, but the pieces Wendy has chosen to accompany dinner are neither loud nor too soft, of great beauty and yet perfect background to their conversation, although he finds her voice to be the most pleasing music of all.

He expects to talk of urgent matters—how to escape the wrath of Boschvark and the Bead family, how to stay out of the clutches of the politicians and authorities, how to protect his wealth from people and agencies well practiced at stealing. She will have none of that. She says that she can deal with those threats tomorrow. "My brothers never learned a thing from me, but I listened to everything they said and learned all the wicked ways to thwart the law. I know to whom you can go to subtly change your appearance, to launder your money, to obtain new ID that can never be proved false. Using all that dirty knowledge to help you will be a clean thing." So instead, she speaks of herself in ways that reveal the essence of her, how she became who she is. Soon he's likewise revealing more of himself than he ever has to anyone else.

They are in living room armchairs, by the fireplace, enjoying coffee spiked with Baileys Irish Cream, when she says, "There's one thing you must understand if this is to work."

Here in the firelight, her eyes are bluer than the bluest sky and deeper. Although it will sound corny to tell her such a thing about her eyes, he decides to tell her anyway, but he finds himself saying she looks like the greatest anime heroine who ever slayed a dragon. He has told her that earlier, so now he is babbling.

"That's the one thing you've got to understand, Regis."

"What is? What one thing? Tell me."

"Although you set out to be a bad man, you wouldn't have been able to sustain that even if I hadn't come along. At heart, you're sweet and good. But you must understand that I'm not a cartoon."

"Cartoon? No, no, no. I never said that. I said you're like an anime heroine, which means you're wonderfully cute and smart and brave. Anime isn't cartoons. Anime is art. Anime is—"

"Animation."

"Well, yes, but—"

"It's a bad idea to marry a fantasy instead of the real woman."

In recent years, on those occasions when he has found himself breathless, it's been because of some megalomaniacal scheme Terrence Boschvark has sworn to undertake and into which he has drawn Regis. This is quite different from that. "Are you saying you'd marry me?"

"For heaven's sake, Regis, I'd first have to be asked."

"Oh. Right. Of course. I'm sorry. So then—"

"Now isn't the time to ask."

"It isn't? When? When will it be time to ask?"

"When we're pretty sure you aren't going to be murdered. If I married you and the Beads or someone contracted a vengeance hit on you, I'd have to open a third beauty shop to keep from going crazy. The only place worth opening another one in this county is over in Dossburg, and I don't like that place. It's a tawdry little town."