The Pirate's Daughter Read Online Free

agenda. Andrea wanted to know why he didn’t do anything with his life, why he didn’t—for example—go back to Ashland and finish up, or get a career-track job with the state historical society, anything. Wilson couldn’t say, really. His reasons were inarticulate, having to do with the dread that afflicted even his best days. He was not an idle man, just a man who was waiting—though he couldn’t say for what. And to wait properly, you must be in readiness, free from extraneous attachments. Also, he had decided, there was something horrible about archaeologists. They dug up things that the earth had meant to conceal, put to rest: the bones of the ancient dead buried in sandy graves with the pitiful objects—pots and spoons and combs—that had served them in life; shattered bits of monuments to forgotten, murderous kings; vanished cities of execrable memory marked only by a few postholes filled with rubble and a dark stain in the clay. To Wilson, there was more than a little bit of grave robbing about the discipline.
    But it was the teeth that had finally done it for him. In the year before Wilson quit school, he had gone on a dig at Asidonhoppo in Brokopondo State, Suriname. They opened a sacred cave dedicated to Ampuka, the Warrou Indian god of the mouth. Before the dig was over two months later, they had removed nearly 300,000 sacrificial teeth from the dank hole—human molars, incisors, canines—allvery interesting indications of the diet and physical condition of the original owners, and so forth, but, from Wilson’s point of view, the most dreadful thing he had ever seen. His dreams for years afterward were haunted by the million teeth of some monster mouth, chomping down and masticating whole families, villages, the landscape itself.
    The eight messages noted or returned, Andrea shook out of her work clothes on the white rug in the living room in a sort of spasm of suit, silk blouse, pumps, and pearls and, with a wave toward Wilson that meant “wait,” padded down the hall to the bathroom for her home-from-the-office shower.
    He watched the door close, heard the sound of the water, then skulked around the apartment, hands in his pockets. He couldn’t bring himself to sit down on her stylish, uncomfortable furniture, couldn’t say just now why he had come over tonight. He squatted for no reason, put his hand palm flat against Andrea’s expensive clothes in a smooth heap on the rug. They still held the warmth of her body. Then, he went out onto the granite balcony and stood staring down at the panorama below.
    You can see a long way from the thirtieth floor of Pond Park Tower—from the Harvey Channel in the east to the hazy suburban hills of Warinocco County north of the interstate. It was the last long moment before evening. The sky above the city looked swollen with color. The earth curved away to the sea, toward far islands, each concealing its own secret life, its own story: a house on an unknown stretch of beach, over-hung with royal palms and tamarinds, a room with rattan shades drawn against the bright sunset, a white bed draped with mosquito netting, a wooden bowl full of pomegranates on the table. In the garden, the wide leaves of a banana tree nattering in the wind as a beautiful woman emerges from the surf … One is filled with such ridiculous longings in that diminishing hour. Wilson, no better than the rest of us, stood helpless as a child before the tragic vastness of the world at dusk.The city teeming to the bridges, the vague outline of mountains behind, the ocean’s monotonous swell, all the faces he would never know.
    When the shower went off in the bathroom, Wilson stepped back inside and pulled the heavy sliding glass door shut. Andrea padded into the living room naked, rubbing her dark hair with a blue towel. She paused when she came onto the rug and let the towel drop to her side. Her body looked perfect. Wilson