A question she had asked came into my mind. A question about the epitaph on Marlissa Dorn’s crypt: WHOM THE SEA GIVES UP, GOD EMBRACES.
Did I believe it was true?
Of course not. But someone like Chestra might…
I called her name again. Then ran after her, still calling. Finally, the woman heard me. She turned.
“Hey, mister, what’s the problem?”
The voice was eerily similar: a dense, smoky alto, but it wasn’t Chestra. It was a young woman, lean, wearing a dark, one-piece swimsuit. The moon was not bright; the lighthouse was far down the beach. Even so, I could see she was remarkably fit. Painfully fit, Tomlinson might say.
“Mister? Is there something wrong?” The woman shifted her weight from one foot to another, communicating impatience.
I felt ridiculous. “No, I…I thought you were someone else. You looked familiar. I’m sorry.”
Overhead, clouds moved. Moonlight brightened. I could see her in more detaiclass="underline" the symmetry of cheeks, pale hair piled up, eyes peering out from two shadowed caverns. I was facing the moon. It was easier for her to see me, I realized.
“The name you called me, what was it?”
I said, “Chestra. It’s…an unusual name.”
The woman’s voice warmed slightly. “You don’t have to tell me. That’s my great-aunt’s name. Do you know Chessie?”
It took me a moment to answer. “Yes. We were…we are…friends.”
“Friends, with Aunt Chessie, huh? Really.”
The challenging inflection was familiar. Really. The woman’s voice, even the way she stood, nose to nose, comfortable inside herself, at ease with her body in the one-piece swimsuit, her attitude saying: Show me. Prove it.
Intimidating. I felt as if I was being inspected and judged at the same time.
I said, “That’s right. I enjoyed listening to her play the piano. She was working on a song when she was here. I liked it a lot. She wrote the song for—”
I stopped. That would have been going too far, saying she’d written the song for me. Indelicate.
As the woman patted at the pockets of her robe, she laughed—a purring sound, aloof as a cat. “My crazy old aunt Chess, yeah, I know the song you’re talking about. Chessie left the sheet music here. I was upstairs practicing, but I needed a break. I love the stuff she writes, but she won’t let me record anything. She’s so damn private, I’ve never figured out why.”
I had a guess but kept it to myself.
I said, “You’re a musician?”
“An actress, but I sing, too. I know the song well enough, I could play it—”
It was her turn to stop; realized that she should complete her inspection before inviting a stranger upstairs.
The woman stared at me for a moment, eyes invisible in their two smoldering caverns, an implicit intensity. She said, “You were running. You’re in pretty good shape—”
I didn’t think she would say it but she did.
“—for a guy your age.”
I said, “Thanks. I swim, too. There’s a pool at the school, but I like the Gulf better.”
That won her approval. The woman said, “Me, too. The ocean, it’s real. I love to work out, swimming especially. Which will mean no more of these”—she leaned toward her cupped hands, lit a cigarette, but left the lighter burning so I could see her face as she lifted her eyes to mine—“I’ll be here most the winter…if you need a partner?”