Original Love. J.J. Murray
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REUNITED
“Ebony, I—”
She stands on tiptoes and kisses my lips. “Not tonight.” She takes my hand. “I don’t want to talk tonight.”
I slide my hand around her stomach, and it’s soft and firm. God, It’s like she hasn’t changed in twenty years! She lifts her shirt and places my hand on her smooth skin, my fingers tickling her gumdrop belly button.
She leads me to the Captain’s berth, a single votive candle flickering from its holder on a desk crammed with nautical charts and map books. She peels off her shirt and lies on the Captain’s bed, both arms reaching out to me.
“You haven’t aged a day,” I say with a trembling voice.
She shakes her head. “Shh. We’ll talk tomorrow. Come to me, Peter.”
“It’s been a long time,” I whisper as I ease myself on top of her, her skin hot, burning.
“I’ve been waiting twenty years.” Tears well up in her eyes. “You’re my one and only love. Just don’t let me go this time.”
“I won’t. I promise.”
Books by J.J. Murray
RENEE AND JAY
SOMETHING REAL
ORIGINAL LOVE
I’M YOUR GIRL
CAN’T GET ENOUGH OF YOUR LOVE
Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation
Original Love
J.J. Murray
KENSINGTON BOOKS
KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.
http://www.kensingtonbooks.com
Once again, for Amy
Contents
Part One Ebony Lost
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Part Two Ebony Found
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Author’s Note and Acknowledgments
Part One
Ebony Lost
Yet nothing can to nothing fall,
Nor any place be empty quite,
Therefore I think my breast hath all
Those pieces still, though they be not unite…
My rags of heart can like, wish, and adore,
But after one such love, can love no more.
—from “The Broken Heart” by John Donne
1
I’m writing the synopsis to this novel while flying from Pittsburgh to JFK. Unlike many of the other passengers on the plane, I don’t need to look out the window after takeoff to catch a glimpse of where that plane of heroes went to its holy grave in a southwestern Pennsylvania field, I don’t need to look down through the smoky clouds at Ground Zero in Manhattan, I don’t need to see the ruins, I don’t want to relive that day, and I don’t stare at other passengers as potential terrorists carrying knives and box cutters.
I have so many other days to relive, so many other fires to put out, so many other ruins to explore, and I had already lost all the illusions that used to color my world at the tender age of thirteen back in 1976, the 200th anniversary of the dyslexic Untied States of America. The rest of this country is just catching up.
And if birds were frisked and inspected and made to wait in line for hours, they would never fly.
I stare at the folded and creased poem in my hands, a poem Ebony wrote to me twenty years ago, and I wonder if it’s possible to repeat the past, to renew an original love:
My soul loves you endlessly…my whole life
even before I knew you
you were what I wrote and hoped
things my day and night dreams were made of
original love.
You brought gentle peace…even in anonymity
the thought of you
the very idea of you
and me ever coming to be
was hope and power and love.
I wrote your name up there…in clouds
said it to myself out loud
made you more real to me
again and again and again
I craved you way back then.
You came to me…with splendor and glory
just like in my dreams
reigning strong and supreme
constantly giving what I’d need
making the you in me a necessity.
Like pen and paper…destined to meet
a joyous time to bear
to write you, ignite you
simply to delight myself in you
makes pure the air I breathe.
My soul loves you endlessly…my whole life
more hope than my head knew
my heart could ever have
dripped into my life on slanted autograph
original love.
No matter how often I read it, I still see Ebony Mills, the girl I left behind, the girl of my dreams who I fed only nightmares. Maybe we’ll be destined to meet…again.
After a harrowing trip from JFK around roadblocks, under flag-draped windows, and past closed-off streets in my rented Nova, I show the synopsis to my old editor, Henry L. Milton, at Olympus Publishing in midtown Manhattan. Light streams into Henry’s forty-third floor office, sooty clouds obscuring the street below. Aside from some classical harp music, nothing seems to move in Henry’s office, not even the air, as he reads.
Henry shakes his head, his gray ponytail swishing behind him, flashes of light reflecting off a tiny lightning bolt earring. Henry still thinks he’s a child of the sixties, even though he wears a blue Armani suit.
“Pete, this sounds far too