Zurabia by Peter Dash

Author:Peter Dash [Dash, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781462048779
Publisher: iUniverse
Published: 2011-12-19T00:00:00+00:00

SEVENTEEN

There was no way to wake up after 7:00 a.m. in beautiful Barbados. Not with all the beauty and guffawing birds. Even a half hour past dawn, it was getting very warm; and especially where Drache Manor was, there was little breeze to abate the hot temperature during most of the day. Not even the curtains were dark enough to keep out the light known to be so strong as to bleach watercolors and wall paint to nothingness in a few years.

Yes, if you did not get up until much later, you had to be nothing, insensitive to temperature and light, insensitive of the welcoming paradise that beckoned. If you did not get up in Barbados by eight o’clock in the morning, it was time to send in the doctor to confirm whether a death certificate should be issued.

I was getting to feel very much alive on this island, even if I still felt a little pulverized from my Zürich mishap. So I had to get up. I got into a robe that had been left half-draped over a planter’s chair, which stretched out so long and deep that it looked like it would swallow you. I then stepped out of the room.

And there was Isolde wrapping a towel around her head, looking almost like it was sculpted, based on one of the famous African heads in the more hidden corners of the manor. It was like a very noble one of ebony that spoke of dignity. That could have vicariously spoken of the possibility that an African princess—though defeated on the so-called Dark Continent—had frequented these chambers. Just like a mistress, which I wished Isolde could be for me, and as curvaceous and sensuous as the large hurricane lamps, which were missing one fine feature unlike that African sculpture or Isolde—their heads.

Fittingly, I could not help myself and blurted out amusingly, “Good morning, Highness, looking smashing for all the wear of yesterday.”

“J. C., I wondered if you slept at all. Was it you, darling, who was up and about outside?” she said not intimately, but again with her coldness that reminded me something of Marlene Dietrich or Greta Garbo of the old film noir, though definitely shining more brightly.

“Strange. Where did you hear someone?”

“Just outside my room. Outside my window,” replied Isolde.

“Possibly security checking on something.” I said this attempting to assuage her, while actually knowing nothing of what it had been.

“Yes, you might be right about that.”

“Anyway, how about breakfast? Jones didn’t tell us about the meal plan, but surely nothing wrong with seeing if we can get a bite here,” I added.

“I’ll fix up my hair while you play house husband,” Isolde said with a wink.

“How kind, your Majesty.”

“Just Isolde is fine,” she said playfully.

“You can count on me to defer to you as your royal subject. Okay, okay, I’ll make myself scarce to the kitchen. And check out first the cockroaches—nothing less as your protector.”

“Protector? I thought it was me protecting you,” said Isolde in a bit of a play-acting huff.

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