Niceville

Nips hit Pearl and he’d gone to serve with the First Infantry, a distant age that was, in his long memory, a glowing bygone era full of balls and cotillions and picnics along the Tulip with leggy girls in gauzy dresses and wide straw hats and baskets full of fresh strawberries, a time of light and music that had filled all the old homes in The Chase, until the war opened up under everybody’s feet and they all fell into the fire.
    But tonight Delia’s rambling old Victorian stood open, full of lovely music, an invitation to a dance.
    Gray called out Delia’s name a couple of times but doubted that she could have heard his voice over the cello sonata that was pouring out of every window and streaming through the doorways.
    He sighed and straightened up his shirt and smoothed out his slacks and walked unsteadily up the steps to the open door, hesitating at the threshold. He was aware that his breathing had become difficult and the skin and muscles across his shoulders were tightening as if he were expecting an assault. He shook that off with an effort, gathering himself, and knocked heavily on the frame of the door.
    “Delia? You home? Delia, it’s Gray.”
    No call.
    No movement.
    Just the music ebbing and flowing all around him, like an undertow now, pulling him in. He came slowly down the hall, walking, out of habit, to one side of the long Persian runner that Delia hated to see abused by a gardener’s shoes.
    He reached the door to the music room, which seemed to be the source of the cello sonata, looked in, saw the elegant octagonal space filled with light and sound. The cello music was coming from Delia’s old but powerful hi-fi set.
    This close to the source, and at this volume, the cello sounded less honeyed and more like the deep bass growling of a monstrous creature buried under the parquet floor, the heavy vibration thrumming through the soles of his feet and crawling up his shins.
    Every lamp in the room was on, including the big Tiffany dome inthe center of the ceiling. He walked in a few more feet, looking around, saw nothing out of place and no sign of any disorder.
    There was a crystal glass with an amber liquid in it, half full. He picked it up.
    Scotch, now warm and flat.
    The chair where Delia liked to sit and watch TV was dented and ruffled, her white fox comforter in a heap on the parquet floor, as if she had been in the middle of something when either the phone rang or the doorbell sounded.
    No. Not the phone.
    There it was, the cordless handset that Mrs. Bayer had insisted she buy, just in case.
    He stared down at the chair for a time, trying to put his impressions together into something useful, and failing. He was reaching out to shut off the music when he noticed movement beyond the closed French doors that led into Delia’s wood-paneled dining room.
    The glass panes in the doors were old and rippled, but it looked to Gray, as he peered through them, as if something—no, someone—was on top of the rosewood table in the center of the room. He could make out a blurred shell pink figure, spinning and spinning, arms spread wide, head back, and pale white face lifted up to the crystal chandelier that hung over the table.
    Even through the antique glass he could see that whoever was standing—whoever was
dancing
—on top of the table, it was not Delia.
    Delia had a full head of silver-white hair. This figure—unmistakably a woman—had shoulder-length auburn hair that flared out in an arc as she spun in circles on the table.
    Gray stood there looking at the woman for a long, timeless period, transfixed by the fury and the grace of her dance. After a moment, he realized that the woman was quite naked.
    This feverish vision, the dancing nude woman flickering like fire through the rippled glass of Delia Cotton’s French doors, combined with the deep, resonant rumble of the cello vibrating through the entire house, even through his own fragile bones, held him fixed and frozen, as if he had been hypnotized. Something about that dancing figure was disturbingly familiar, and precisely as the name came to him—
Margaret
—the nude woman stopped spinning and turned to face him through the glass.
    She opened her arms and opened her body to him and stood there, clearly waiting for him to come in to her, her face and body rippling and shifting as he watched.
    Thinking that he might be having a stroke, or that he was at the threshold of some great illuminating event, possibly even his death,