“I thought you said you weren’t coming,” Lev said harshly.
“I said I might not be able to get away,” she corrected him quietly. “Obviously I should have called first. Sorry.”
Clutching her purse to her chest, a just-in-case purse that probably held a toothbrush and a couple of other necessities should champagne turn into a sleepover, she set the bottle on a nearby counter and turned to go.
“Don’t leave on my account.” I had rebuttoned my blouse and was now scooping up crystal beads and shoving them into my Mexican purse. “I’m just going myself.”
“No,” she protested.
“Yes,” I said firmly. Passion was gone and so was I, just as soon as I could find my missing shoe. A cold thick rage consumed me.
Lev took one look at my face and silently handed over the high-heeled slipper that had come off before. So at least he’d learned that much over the years.
More beads sparkled across the floor when I stood, but I was too angry to stop. All I wanted was out of there. Linville stood aside to let me pass, but then I heard her steps behind me as she followed me up the ladder and off the boat.
We walked half the length of the planked dock in stony silence until the whole farcical ridiculousness of the situation abruptly hit me and I started giggling.
After a startled glance, Linville Pope gave an unladylike gurgle and by the time we reached the parking area we were both laughing so hard we had to hold onto each other to stand up.
“God! What bastards they can be,” she said at last when we had finally gained control again. “Come on over to the Ritchie House and let me get us another bottle of champagne.”
“I’m sorely tempted,” I told her truthfully, “but I probably shouldn’t show up in court tomorrow with a champagne hangover.”
• • •
On the long drive back to Harkers Island, though, I almost wished I’d accepted Linville’s invitation. I still didn’t have a handle on her, but I was starting to like the cut of her jib.
Lots of people came to her party, but Barbara Jean thought she was manipulative and coercive. Chet seemed to find her amusing except when she threatened Barbara Jean’s equanimity. Even Lev, damn him to holy hell, thought she was beautiful and smart but “maybe just a little too cute about the way she acquired property.” There had been that angry scene in the Ritchie House, something about the fraudulent sale of a boat? And I had a feeling that Mahlon Davis’s “bitch over to Beaufort” was going to turn out to be Linville Pope, too.
But anybody who could see the absurdity of the situation tonight and laugh that hard surely couldn’t be all bad.
It was well past midnight when I drove up to the cottage. Except for scattered security lights on tall utility poles, all the nearby houses were dark. No light out at Mahlon’s, but I saw the shape of Mickey Mantle’s pickup parked behind the boat shelter and wondered if his triumph in court had him driving without a license again.
The only thing I could hear was wind in the live oaks and low waves splashing against the shore. I got out of the car, walked up onto the porch, unlocked the door and set my garment bag inside without switching on a light. At that moment, the telephone began to ring—an intrusively mechanical, almost alien sound amid the island’s natural quiet. When I picked up the receiver, Lev’s voice said, “Red, I—”
I broke the connection, then laid the receiver under the pillow and walked away from its insistent beeping.
The wind was blowing in smartly off the water and it was chilly, but I slipped on Sue’s old windbreaker again and went back out to one of the porch rockers, hoping the rhythmic flash of the lighthouse and the sound of the surf would lull me into drowsiness. Seeing Lev again after all these years had roiled up so many old memories and conflicting emotions that if I tried to go sensibly to bed, I knew I’d only toss and turn till morning.
When we met, I was still running from a really stupid marriage, living on part-time jobs and money Aunt Zell sent. It was a bitter cold winter and the New York Public Library was a good place to stay warm. For some reason, I’d gotten it into my head that I needed to read Proust, and that winter, I did. From Swann’s Way straight through The Past Recaptured, though to this day I couldn’t describe a single scene or say what those seven books added up to. Yet while I read, I was totally addicted and it seemed to ease my homesickness.
And then one day I lifted up my head and there was Lev across the wide musty room and I realized that he’d been there all winter, too, in the late afternoon, in almost the same chair. Wiry hair in a perpetual tousle, close-knit frame, dark eyes set so far under the ridge of his brow that they were like two secretive intelligent creatures peering out of a cave.
He hadn’t noticed me, but once I’d focused on him, I couldn’t seem to quit. I circled to see what he was reading. Two of my cousins back in Dobbs were lawyers and I recognized that those were law books and landmark cases and that he was probably a law student somewhere in the city.
No ring on his finger and no study dates that winter.
Oh what the hell, I thought. I left Proust lying on the table and followed Lev out of the library that evening and when we were almost to the bottom step, I let myself fall against him so that we both went down in a tangle of books and scarves and laughing apology.
I must have slipped on the ice, I told him, and no, nothing seemed broken, but it wouldn’t be, would it, not with all the heavy coats and gloves y’all wear up here? He heard my accent (how could he not, the way I was laying it on?) and asked how long I’d been in New York and all I could think was that I’d never seen eyes so dark and piercing and the smell of his aftershave—I could almost smell it now, could almost—
I stopped rocking abruptly.
It wasn’t Lev’s aftershave I smelled, but a fragrance sweetish and equally well known. I stood up, sniffing now, quartering the wind like one of my daddy’s hounds.
Nothing.
Yet, seated in the rocking chair, I smelled it again, an elusively familiar aroma.
Insect repellent?
I walked over to the near end of the porch. In the dim light, did the grass there looked scuffed? If I hadn’t been looking straight down at it—a dark shape that I’d thought was a rock or a piece of scrap wood—I might not have noticed when it drew back very, very slowly and disappeared under the edge of the porch.
A booted foot.
I sat back down in the rocker and thought about that foot a minute and then went out to the trunk of my car and got the loaded .38 Daddy gave me a few years back when I made it clear I wasn’t going to quit driving alone at night or stop looking for witnesses in rough places.
Back up on the porch, I rocked for another couple of minutes, then slid the safety off and said in a low conversational tone, “I don’t know why you’re under my porch, but if you don’t come out now, I’m going to start shooting right through these planks.”
I heard a muffled “Oh shit!” and scraping sounds, then a man hauled himself out feet first. As he reached for his pocket, I said, “Keep your hands in the air, mister!” and tugged at the front door.
“No! No lights, okay?” His urgent voice was barely a whisper. “Please, lady.”
He was a tall and lanky silhouette against the faint light coming from the store a quarter-mile away. “If you’d just let me—”
“Officer...” I had to fumble for his name. “Chapin, is it?”
It was the same game warden who’d been in court that afternoon. He peered at me closely.
“Oh shit!” he swore again. “Judge? Excuse me asking, ma’am, but what the hell are you doing here?”
“I live here,” I answered. “At least, I’m staying here this week. More to the point, what the hell are you doing here?”