Page 437 - Some Dance to Remember

Some Dance to Remember 407

of Leather.’ Work it through. Write him off.”
“That won’t change anything. He loved me. He left me. I’m alone.
He betrayed me.”
“We all betray each other. It’s our nature. Betrayal is what is.”
“I love him.”
“Stop loving him today,” Solly said. “That’s truly your best revenge.
Stop loving him and start living again. Life goes on.”
“Long after the thrill of living is gone.”
“Forget Kick. Forget Logan. Forget Teddy. Forget ’em all.”
“I don’t want to forget,” Ryan said. “I want to remember all of this. I
meant what I said. I’d rather feel what I’m feeling than never know that I
could feel so much at all.”
“You must end this.”
“I will,” Ryan said. “I will.”
Solly did not like Ryan’s Look. “I think I took my little hypnotic
therapy too far.”
“No,” Ryan said. He pushed Solly’s legs from his lap and walked to
the fireplace. “I know I must do something.”
Ryan missed the excitement of being close to the edge with Kick. He
needed the feeling of danger.
He leaned against the mantel and closed his eyes. A nightbird darted
by the open windows. A voice that was not his voice came from his face. He
was not imitating a movie; he had become a movie. He was Claude Rains,
speaking perfectly in that actor’s accent, “A vampire can only be laid to rest
by one who truly loves him.”
“Get out of here,” Solly said. “Go home. I was supposed to be the one
humoring you. Now you’re scaring me.”

8

The night of the Mr. California contest Ryan knelt next to his bed.
“Listen to us in our darkness, we beseech thee, Oh, Lord.” He prayed
again the same passage he had prayed before from the Book of Common
Prayer. “And by thy great mercy defend us from all the perils and dangers
of this night.” This was the ritual darkness of ending and exorcism.
He had been passive long enough.
The time had come to take his life into his own hands.
In the end he could not deny his human heart.
Always he had known, long before he stood that rainy March night
outside California Hall on Polk Street, with the gun in his hand, that

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