Monday, August 5, 2013

Gabriel's Rapture - Chapter 30


Gabriel strode through the misty blackness into the woods behind what had been the Clarks’ house. He brought a flashlight, but he almost didn’t need it. He knew the woods so well that even if he’d been drunk or coked out of his mind he could find his way to the orchard and back again. He was good at navigating the dark.
He stood at the orchard’s periphery, eyes closed, as the chilled rain washed down. If he opened his eyes and squinted, he could almost see her — the outline of a teenage girl resting on a man’s chest, the couple nestled on an old, wool blanket. Her hair floated across her shoulders, her arm rested on his waist. He could barely see the man’s face, but he could tell that the man was besotted with the brown-eyed angel in his arms.
Gabriel stood very still, listening to the echoes of memories that were half-dreams…
“Do you have to leave?”
“Yes, but not tonight.”
“Will you come back?”
“I’m going to be thrown out of Paradise tomorrow, Beatrice. Our only hope is that you find me afterward. Look for me in Hell.”
He hadn’t planned to return to the orchard without her. He hadn’t planned to leave her. He’d broken her heart. Although he was oppressed by guilt and regret, he knew he’d make the same decision again.
Julianne had already given up so much to be with him. He’d be damned if she gave up her future too.
Gabriel’s Rapture
257
P
Gabriel stood shirtless in his old bedroom, drying his hair with a towel and fumbling with the stereo. He was in the mood for painful music. Which meant, at that moment, that he was listening to “Blood of Eden” by Peter Gabriel. Midway through the chorus, the telephone began to ring. He’d forgotten to ask Richard to cancel the telephone service when he moved to Philadelphia, after Gabriel bought the house.
Leaving the call unanswered, Gabriel paced like a restless ghost. He reclined on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. It was a passing fancy, he knew, but he swore he could smell Julia’s scent on his pillow and that he could hear the gentle tide of her breathing. He toyed with the platinum band on his finger, twisting it over and over again. Lines from Dante’s La Vita Nuova crowded his mind, describing Beatrice’s rejection:
“By this false and evil rumour
which seemed to misfame me of vice…
she who was the destroyer of all evil
and the queen of all good, coming where I was,
denied me her most sweet salutation,
in the which alone was my blessedness.”
Gabriel had no right to compare his situation to Dante’s, since his misfortune was the result of his own choice. Nevertheless, as the darkness closed in around him, he was stricken by the possibility that he’d lost his blessedness. Forever.

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