Let the Dark Flower Blossom Read Free

dined at the White House. He met Princess Di; she was rumored to be a big fan. Roman became a celebrity. He was a natural. People liked him.They bought his books; went to his lectures; laughed at his jokes; liked to know what he was wearing; where he ate and drank; what drugs he was doing or from which he was being rehabilitated. They followed his romances, indiscretions, his fetishes and bad breakups. And when he gave up his enfant terrible antics—married an honest-to-god Southern belle and finally, it seemed, traded his cosmopolitan perversions for suburban bliss—his readers breathed a collective sigh of relief. His readers wanted the best for him. For some strange reason, it seemed to be in America’s best interest to see Roman Stone happy.
    I never wanted to tell this story.
    I wouldn’t have considered it, but—
    This morning Beatrice picked up my mail for me. I remember. I remember this. Her face in the cold morning. As though she had run all the way through the woods. I was lighting a fire in the stove when she came in through the kitchen door. Beatrice held a letter out to me—and for a moment I could not take it from her. I had a terrible feeling. I felt as though someone had begun to dig my grave. When I looked back at the stove, I saw the newsprint photograph of Roman burning.
    I took the letter from her hand.
    I opened the envelope.
    It held a thin sheet of paper.
    I unfolded it. And read it while standing before the fire.
    S. Z. Schell:
    I know who killed Roman Stone .
    If you want to know about his death, answer three questions about his life .
    I will come to collect .
    And here he had signed his name.
    The way that my cat will present me with a mouse whose neck he has just snapped.
    Benjamin Salt —
    His name should have meant something.
    And, of course; it did. It does.
    No one could have expected this turn of events.
    Roman Stone is dead.
    And I am living on an island.
    Benjamin Salt is coming to visit.
    He has questions. He wants a story.
    I must ready the guest room.
2.
    Mrs. Sarasine found herself, on a Sunday morning in November, entirely alone. If it had not happened by plan or design, this solitude was still not unwanted. Quiet hushed throughout her elegantly appointed rooms. The early snow had brought about the cancellation of this month’s meeting of her baking club; and now the ingredient evidence of the proposed chess tartlets: the organic buckwheat flour and free-range eggs, the brown sugar, the bourbon vanilla, the hand-ground China cinnamon, the fat golden raisins and blanched pecans, the butter and fleur de sel, the slivered almonds, pistachios, and walnuts occupied her kitchen. Her husband’s return home from that interminable murder trial (where Louis Sarasine, counsel for the defense, had entered a plea of not guilty and had gone on to destroy the lone witness with a charge of false memory syndrome) had been delayed. The jury was—indecipherable, he said. Or was it enigmatic? It was hard to read a jury. They might be kind; they could be cruel, but Louis said that in the end they would follow the rules. He believed this: in the innatelogic of an argument. Or rather, in the innate logic of his own arguments. She had a brief image, an idea: a bird flying, an airplane crashing. She saw herself a widow in a black dress; she knew just the one—and then, no, no. Don’t think it. Don’t dream it. Don’t imagine it, and it won’t happen. What one dreams is always possible. Louis was an expert in possibility. He called every day to tell her stories of dead girls. He wouldn’t be in to O’Hare until who knows when. And her daughter was traveling abroad: vaguely and euphemistically abroad; and not due back anytime soon; so had said the scrawled hand on a postcard of a ruined amphora dated five months ago. Even the French bulldog, Zola, was spending the day at the groomer’s being shampooed, clipped, and—oh, undergoing some new