The Wolf Gift by Anne Rice Read Free Book Online

here are his favorite writers in English.” She pulled an old tattered leather-bound hardcover from the shelf. It had gilt-edged papers. She started turning the pages. “Well, Reuben, youtake the prize. Here’s the passage, all right, marked in pencil! I would never have ever found this on my own.”
    He took the book from her. He was flushed with pleasure, and beaming at her. “It’s kind of thrilling. First time my master’s in English literature ever proved useful.”
    “Darling, your education is always going to be very useful,” she said. “Whoever convinced you otherwise?”
    He studied the pages. There were many markings in pencil, and those strange symbols again, dashed off, it seemed, revealing in their opacity what a complex and abstract thing written language is.
    She was smiling at him with such obvious affection. But maybe it was a trick of the light from the green-shaded lamp on the desk.
    “I should give this house to you, Reuben Golding,” she said. “Could you afford to keep it if I did?”
    “Absolutely,” he said. “But there’s no need to give it to me, Marchent. I’ll buy it from you.” There, he had said it, and now he was blushing again. But he was ecstatic. “I’ve got to go back to San Francisco—talk to my mother and father. Sit down with my girlfriend. Make them understand. But I can and will buy it, if you’re willing. Believe me. Look, I’ve been thinking about it since the moment I got here. I’ve been thinking, I’ll regret this all my life if I don’t, and you see, if I buy it, well, Marchent you’ll always find the door open, anytime night or day.”
    She smiled at him in the most serene way. She was both very present and very far away.
    “You have your own means, do you?”
    “Yes, always have. Not the means that you have, Marchent, but I have means.” He didn’t want to go into the details of the real estate magnates who had founded the family fortune, and the trust funds arranged long before he was born. But how his mother and Celeste would scream when he told them. Grace worked every day of her life as if she was penniless. And she’d expected her boys to do the same thing. Even Phil had worked all his life in his own fashion. And there was Jim giving up everything for the priesthood. And here, he would go into his capital for this house. But he didn’t care. Celeste would never forgive him. But he absolutely didn’t care.
    “Rather figured you did,” Marchent said. “You’re a gentleman reporter, aren’t you? Ah, and you feel very guilty about that, too, I see.”
    “Just a little guilty,” he said under his breath.
    She reached out with her right hand and touched his left cheek. Her lips moved but she didn’t really speak. A tiny frown touched her forehead but her mouth was still soft and smiling.
    “Dear boy,” she said. “When you write a novel someday about this house, you will call it
Nideck Point
, won’t you, and you’ll remember me in some way in it, perhaps, you know. You think you might do that?”
    He drew close to her. “I’ll describe your beautiful smoky-gray eyes,” he said, “and your soft golden hair. I’ll describe your long graceful neck and how your hands make me think of birds when you gesture. And I’ll describe your voice, that crisp, precise way you say your words that make it seem like running silver when you speak.”
    I will write things, he was thinking. I will write something meaningful and wonderful someday. I can do that. And I’ll dedicate it to you because you’re the first person who ever made me think I could.
    “Who has a right to tell me I have no gift, no talent, no passion.…” he murmured. “Why do people say those things to you when you’re young? Doesn’t seem fair, does it?”
    “No, darling, it’s not fair,” she said. “But the mystery is why you listen.”
    Then all the old scolding voices went quiet in his head suddenly, and only then did he realize what a loud chorus they’d