Likes by Sarah Bynum (e novels to read online .TXT) 📗

his eyes. His face showed his struggle to understand what he saw. You fell, the king whispered. The older man looked at him with love. Yes, the man said, but I did not die. And from the king’s face the pain dropped away, and wonder took its place, for his old friend had been returned to him.

The moment was broken by the sound of water dripping. Eva gazed down at the bowl in her hands. Then she awoke, in the darkness of the bedroom, feeling wetness on her cheeks, pooled in the cups of her ears. She heard a voice beside her whispering. Eva, it said. Eva, it asked in soft dismay, why are you crying?

In the morning, it was her husband who held on tightly. He looked back up at her as he circled down the stairs. When he reached the bottom, out of sight, he called to her, as if he wasn’t sure she’d still be there. He told her to have a very good day. He told her to say hello for him to her friend. I will, she shouted into the stairwell, I will. The front door scraped open, lingered a moment, and then swung shut with a gasp.

As her husband had asked, Eva delivered his special hello to her friend. She was a young wife herself, and pregnant. Her doctor had offices in the part of the city where Eva worked, so after her appointment they would sometimes meet at a restaurant and eat together. Generally speaking, her friend had an exceptional appetite, but now she stared down sadly at her food.

She said, I bet this looks delicious to you.

Eva shook her head.

What? Her friend lit up. Are you pregnant too?

Eva shook her head again, and smiled.

Oh. Her friend subsided. You got my hopes up. I thought for a minute I wasn’t alone.

You’re not alone, Eva said.

She found her friend disturbing to behold. Her face appeared both drawn and puffy at the same time. Tiny blossoms of burst blood vessels had broken out along her cheeks and the delicate skin above her breasts. Her hair—all over, she said—had turned coarser. All day she stroked her stomach without knowing it, though her belly had only just emerged.

We have a favorite, she said. I want to know what you think. Lucy.

I like it, Eva said. And what if it’s a boy?

Her friend spoke the musical name of the king, and a shudder passed between them.

Can you imagine? her friend asked, for a moment on fire. She remembered herself. No, really it’s Jack.

I like that too, Eva said.

The waiter took their plates away, untouched.

Her friend dropped her head into her hands. I’m tired, she said. How did this happen to me? I’m tired all the time.

Eva didn’t know what to say. She reached across the table and rested her hand on the woman’s arm.

Her friend glanced up, brightened, and then began to scold. You didn’t eat anything. That’s unforgivable. You’re going to disappear before our eyes. Don’t you dare do that when I’m blowing up like a balloon.

After they had finished wrapping themselves in their coats and their scarves, her friend kissed her on both cheeks. One is for you, she said, and the other is for him.

As her friend had asked, Eva bestowed a kiss upon her husband. He was already asleep when she came home. She lit a candle and studied him as he lay sleeping in their bed. He too possessed his own share of beauty, or so she had thought in the beginning, and so she was repeatedly still told. Many people, men and women both, found his looks worth noting. But she could no longer see it. She saw only the face most familiar to her, most dear. Over time, her tender stare had drifted over his face and settled there—on his forehead, his eyelids, his cheekbones, his mouth—hiding from her what was beautiful in him.

She had thought, like Psyche, like all the other curious young wives, that she might creep up on her husband while he lay unconscious, a small circle of light hovering in her hand, and spy the secret face that had for so long remained invisible to her. Psyche had believed she would find a serpent. Another wife, a troll. And what did they find but Beauty. Their fair husbands had vanished like smoke. But why should Eva think of those old stories? The magnificent castles, the unseen servants. Imagine those wives in an apartment! Could enchantment take hold among the milk crates, the sickly houseplants, the student-loan statements? When the match sparked and the wick flared, all Eva saw was her husband’s face, neither stunning nor monstrous. The face that she loved. Wax did not drip from her candle; the spell went unbroken. He stayed right where he was, fast asleep.

For the first time, the king appeared alone in Eva’s dream, standing atop a dry and windy hill. His cloak flapped roughly about his legs, and above him the sky glowed with a strange luminosity. Heavy gray clouds moved low and swift over a scrim of sheer, pearly, roseate light. The clouds were edged in gold and vermilion, and seemed to portend that some stirring, unknowable change was on its way. But the king did not gaze at the mysterious sky, the dark gilded clouds sweeping overhead. He kept his eyes fixed on the barren ground. He ran his open hand over a brittle tuft of grass, he turned a small stone over with his boot. Suddenly he fell to his knees, his cloak gusting up behind him, and brought his face close to the turf. What he found excited him. Hurrying on in an urgent, uneven gait, half scrambling, half running, trying to stay low to the ground, the king followed a path of signs discernible only to him. Eva could not guess what he was seeking. Her perspective was puzzling: in one blink she saw the king as a distant figure, stark against the roiling sky,