David Handler: The burnt orange sunrise

“Besides, when we first got together we swore we’d never do this.”

“Do what?”

“There are two subjects we agreed that we’d never, ever obsess about-our slight cultural differences and our future. That’s written in stone, Bella. It’s a rule.”

“Tattela, we’re talking about a relationship here, not a nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Rules like that are made to be broken.”

“Not by me they’re not.”

“Okay, here’s a kooky idea-have you tried talking to him about it?”

“I can’t. I get all uptight and then I start feeling this horrible panic thing coming on that I haven’t had since I was fourteen. And, excuse me, but kooky?”

“So I’m not hip. Shoot me.” Bella furrowed her brow. “What kind of panic thing are we talking about?”

“We’re not talking about it.”

“Why not?”

“It’s incredibly embarrassing, that’s why not.”

“If you can’t tell me, who can you tell?”

“No one, I’m hoping.” Des stood there jangling her keys. “He’s met someone else, must be. Someone who he has more in common with. Maybe it’s another movie critic. No, no, that can’t be it. They all look like nearsighted mice. At least, that’s what he told me once. But maybe he was lying to me about that. Maybe they all look like Cameron Diaz. Or maybe he lilies nearsighted mice. Or maybe he…” Des stopped and came up for air. “I don’t know who she is, but when I find out I am going to hurt her.”

Bella shook her head at her. “Desiree, that man absolutely adores you, and he’d never give another woman so much as the time of day. He is not Brandon.”

“I do know that.”

“Do you? I don’t think so. If you ask me, you’re still schlepping your baggage around with you like Willy Loman with his sample cases.”

Des shot a hurried look at her watch. Past seven now. “Okay, then how do you explain the dead shark?”

“The dead what?”

“He made me watch Annie Hall with him last week-I’d never seen it before.”

“Did you like it?”

“It was okay, if you like watching white people whine for two hours. But there’s this scene with Diane Keaton on the airplane, when Woody says that a relationship is like a shark, it has to keep moving forward or it dies. ‘What we have on our hands is a dead shark,’ is what he says.”

“I remember the scene,” Bella said, nodding.

“Why did Mitch pick that movie for us to watch?”

“It’s a classic.”

“World’s full of them.”

“It’s very romantic.”

“Bella, it compares true love to a killing machine.”

“He screened Psycho for you a couple of weeks ago, did he not?”

“And your point is…?”

“Has he proceeded to hack you to death in the shower with a big knife?”

“No,” Des admitted. “Not yet, anyway.”

“Desiree, I want you to stop and listen to me very carefully,” Bella said sternly. “You have to believe in him. You have to believe in the two of you. If you don’t, you’re going to sabotage the best thing that’s ever happened to you, and you won’t have anyone to blame but yourself.”

“Bella, I’m not sabotaging anything,” she insisted. “And I’m not playing a head game. I know the signs. I know the man. I know where this is heading.” Des drew in her breath, her chest tightening. “Mitch Berger is getting ready to break my heart. And when he does, you may as well just dig me a hole and shove me in, because I am not going to survive. Not this one. I will die. Hear me? I will absolutely die.”

Astrid’s Castle was perched high atop an exposed granite cliff that overlooked the Connecticut River about ten miles upriver from the village of Dorset. For drivers heading north to Boston on Interstate 95, the immense stone replica of a medieval fortress was hard to miss, looming there as it did above the river, so majestic, so improbable, so floodlit. Many people, especially those who wrote travel brochures for the state’s tourism office, thought Astrid’s looked like something straight out of a fairy tale.

Mitch thought it looked more like the main attraction of Six Flags Dorset. If such a place existed. Which, happily, it did not.

A gate with stone pillars marked its entrance on Route 156. During the summer, when tourists flocked to the castle by the thousands, there was an attendant in a kiosk there, collecting admission. Now there was no one. Inside the gate, the private drive forked almost at once. The left fork was for visitors who had come to ride Choo-Choo Cholly, the castle’s whimsical, brightly colored narrow-gauge steam train. From May through October, Cholly was a big attraction for day-trippers with kids. It made a couple of stops at scenic overlooks and hiking trails as it chugged its way up the mountain to the castle.

The right fork, which was for guests of the inn and deliveries, led to a private road that climbed for three miles through heavily forested grounds. Mitch’s old truck labored as it made the ascent. The road was steep, twisty and very narrow, especially with the plowed snowbanks crowding in on both sides. Finally, he came around a big bend and crested at the top, and there it was before him in the floodlights, framed by a pair of giant sycamores that flanked the end of the road like sentries. Astrid’s was eye-poppingly massive from close up-wide, vast and three stories high, not counting its trademark tower. There was a moat. For arriving and departing guests, a circular driveway passed over it on a drawbridge to the castle’s main entrance. For Choo-Choo Cholly riders, there was a miniature train station with a platform that was roofed in copper and illuminated by Victorian lamps.

Mitch eased into the guest parking lot in between a silver Mercedes wagon with Washington, D.C., plates and a rental Ford Taurus from New York. The temperature had moderated since morning, up close to 30, but when he got out he discovered the wind was absolutely howling off the river, especially up on this exposed hilltop. Mitch could see the lights of Essex directly across the river. Yet he could not make out the moon or the stars, which he found a bit peculiar. When it blew this hard it generally meant the sky was clearing. Tonight, it was not.

The moat was solidly frozen. Mitch clomped his way over it on the wooden drawbridge, half expecting to run into Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone locked in a sword fight.

Instead he encountered a short, powerfully built young guy hunched over a snow shovel, clearing the remains of the day’s snow from the blue stone path that led to the front door. He wore a heavy wool lumberjack shirt over a hooded sweatshirt. The stocking cap he had on was pulled low over his eyes. His jeans were baggy, his boots scuffed. He wore no gloves. His hands were chapped and red, nails blackened with grease. He halted from his labors to glance up at Mitch. He had a thick reddish beard that grew up unusually close to his eye sockets. Very little skin showed, especially with that knit cap pulled so low over his eyes. Mitch thought it gave him the Lon Chaney, Jr., look, as in when the moon is full, as in Wha-oooo…

“Get your bags… you, sir?” the Wolfman asked him in a voice so faint that Mitch could barely hear him.

“I’m not an overnight guest, thanks. Just here for dinner.” Mitch realized on closer inspection that he recognized this particular lycan-thrope. “I see you at the hardware store all the time, don’t I?”

“Could be,” he replied shyly. “I’m in and out of there a lot.”

“Mitch Berger,” he said, sticking out his hand.

“Oh, sure. You’re looking after things out on Big Sister. I’m Jase Hearn,” he said, gripping Mitch’s hand. His was so rough it was like grabbing a chunk of firewood. “You’re a brave soul, man, wintering over out there,” he added, his voice growing stronger as he got more at ease.