The Testament

The cafe' au lait arrived, and he tore open three packets of sugar. Taking the oversized cup in his two hands, he sipped and immediately thought, Goddamn French coffee. It's strong enough to strip the lining off my stomach. Where's some good old Maxwell House when you need it? Typical of Bravo to suggest this place, he mused. But then Bravo had spent the last three years in Paris, much to Shaw's dismay. Perhaps some of his colleagues' virulent anti-French sentiment had rubbed off on him, but that was not the reason for his displeasure.

Pushing the offending coffee away, he glanced at his watch. Where was Bravo, anyway? Twenty minutes late. Well, he was flying in from Brussels. Thank God he had consented to come to the family reunion after all. Jordan Muhlma

"I'm best off not telling Jordan," Bravo had said from far-off Brussels. "He doesn't like change."

"I'm not surprised," Shaw had murmured.

"What? Dad, speak up. I can't hear you."

"I said you're doing the right thing, Bravo. Emma would have been devastated. Just get on the next plane to JFK and be done with it."

Truth to tell, Bravo must have wanted to come, because ever since he had informed Shaw that he had accepted the job at the multinational financial consulting firm of Lusignan et Cie, there had been a subtle rift between the two. Not that you could call it a war, exactly, but a certain chill had sprung up between them, their phone conversations shortened, their meetings less frequent. This was not what Shaw had desired-far from it. But experience had shown him that his son was as hardheaded as he himself was. Even though he had made it adamantly clear that he had wanted Bravo to continue his research work in medieval religions, his son instead had taken Muhlma

Nevertheless, from the moment Bravo had met Muhlma

Tensely, Shaw watched the waiter navigating with a charming swing of her slim hips the narrow aisles between the round tables. She asked him if he wanted to order and he said not yet.

More than anything else Shaw wanted to mend the rift, more painful to him than he had ever allowed Bravo to know. Today had seemed to him to be the right time to start. The tradition of reuniting every July fourth that had been started by Dexter's late wife, Stefana, had been continued by their daughter, Bravo's older sister Emma, at the family townhouse in which she lived. Still, knowing his son as he did, he had been leery of rushing the rapprochement. But now, suddenly, he had run out of time. Circumstances not of his making had determined that he have the conversation he'd always imagined he'd have with Bravo, though not at this time and certainly not in this hurried ma

Not that Shaw hadn't done his best to prepare Bravo for this moment. But then Jordan Muhlma

He had faith that Bravo would be up to the task, no matter how daunting. He had to be. As the waiter moved out of his field of vision he saw a man crossing the street toward him. As he approached, Shaw felt his own muscles tense. The man picked up his pace and raised an arm. Then he was striding past Shaw, smiling, into the arms of a waiting woman, who embraced him with uncompromising passion. Just as Steffi had once embraced him.

Don't go there, he admonished himself. But there she was in his mind's eye in the hospital bed, little more than a skeleton, wasting away while he looked on helpless and enraged. What was life when you waited for death? Could it ever be more than that?

"I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, amen…"

The words came back at him with the force of a boomerang. If only Steffi hadn't died, if only… But it wasn't meant to be. As his wife lay dying, his heart had broken.

"The keys of hell and of death.…"

Then he saw Bravo coming toward him and his heart leapt. He was sure that what he had done, what he was about to do, was the right thing-the only answer to the only question that mattered to him.

"Write the things which thou hast seen, and the things which are, and the things which shall be hereafter! "

He had already done that in the way he and Bravo knew best.

From the moment he saw his father sitting in sunlight at French Roast, Braverman Shaw was filled with conflicting emotions. The small boy in him wanted to run down the block, his arms open wide; the teenager wanted to thank him for the designated path he'd insisted on for his son, for Bravo had forgotten nothing of his studies in medieval religion, had lost little of the excitement he'd felt from the first day his father had cracked open the thick, illustrated book he kept by his bedside, introducing the child to the mysteries that would consume him for years to come. But the adult, who felt that he had been manipulated, took on the very attributes he hated most in his father, so that they came together not as father and son but as unstoppable force and immovable object. That term-immovable object-was appropriate, Bravo thought, for the man whose life and motives he found ever more puzzling and opaque.

"Dad."

Dexter Shaw stood. "It's good to see you again, Bravo."

They shook hands, formally and rather awkwardly, and sat down.

Braverman Shaw was thirty, taller than his father by a head, slimmer, but with the wide shoulders and long, powerful legs of a swimmer. In his own way, he was just as handsome. His hair was dark and curling, his eyes a blazing blue. He had the singular look of a seeker after knowledge, not of a risk management consultant. Emma had nicknamed him Bravo when she was six and Braverman was four. The name had stuck.

Bravo, eyeing the virtually untouched cup of cafe' au lait, said, "Too much flavor for you, Dad?" He said it in a bantering tone-whether to break the stony silence or as a form of self-defense he couldn't say.

Either way, it rankled Shaw, ruffling feathers he'd prefer remained sleek and undisturbed, especially now. "Why must you do that?"

Bravo called a waiter over. "Do what?"

"Provoke me."

Bravo ordered a double espresso. When the waiter had gone, he said, "I was under the impression we provoked each other." He engaged his father's eyes with his. "Don't you enjoy it?"

"As a matter of fact, I don't."

The espresso came. It had been six months since the two had seen each other. An undercurrent of loss and a certain sorrow was passing between them, amplified by the prickly exchange. It was the particular friction that arises between two people who are too much alike. Without the buffer of his mother, who had died ten years ago, sparks often flew between them. This was true even before Jordan Muhlma

Dexter shifted in his seat. "I want to talk to you about your future."

No, Bravo thought at once, I simply can't do this again. "Dad, you're always wanting to talk to me about my future. I'm too old for lectures-"