LITMIR.BIZ

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of, he wanted to know.”

      “What a gentleman.”

      Pepper gives up on her fingernails and looks out the side. They’re passing close to the ocean right now, that grand old Atlantic, toiling away faithfully under the moon. “He was very good at the chase, I’ll say that. I always swore I’d never sleep with a married man. I know what everyone says about me, lock up your husbands, but the truth is I just flirt. Like a sport, like some women play bridge. And silly me, I thought he knew that. I thought we weren’t taking it past first base, until we did, one night. Big victory, big glasses of champagne, big beautiful hotel suite, and before you know it, the all-star hits himself a home run right out of the park, a grand goddamned salami. Oopsy-daisy, as my sister Vivian would say.”

      Annabelle drives silently. She keeps one hand on the wheel and one elbow propped on the doorframe beside her. Pepper steals a glance. Her head is tilted slightly to one side, showing off her long neck. The skin is still taut, still iridescent in the moonlight. What bargain did she make with the devil for skin like that? Whatever it is, Pepper would happily take that bargain. What was the point of an eternal soul, anyway? It just meant you spent eternity in fleecy boredom, strumming your harp. Pepper would rather have twenty good years on earth, flaunting her iridescent skin, and then oblivion.

      “What are you thinking?” asks Pepper.

      Annabelle raises her head and laughs, making the car swerve slightly. “Do you really want to know?”

      “It beats the Beatles.”

      “I was thinking about when I fell in love, actually. How grateful I am for that. We were in the South of France, in the middle of August, and I was nineteen and just crazy about him. We were right by the sea. I thought I was in heaven.”

      “What was his name?”

      She pauses. “Stefan.”

      The radio plays between them, the instrumentals, a low and mournful string. Someone believes in yesterday. Pepper stares at her thumbs in her lap and thinks about the night she lost her virginity. There was no sunshine, no Mediterranean, no mysterious Stefan. There was a friend of her mother’s, after a party. She had flirted with him, because flirting gave you such a rush of delicious power. Such confidence in this newfound seventeen-year-old beauty of yours, that a man twenty years older hung on your every banal word, your every swooping eyelash. That he would tell you how you’d grown, how you were the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen. That he would lead you dangerously into a shady corner of the terrace, overlooking Central Park, and feed you a forbidden martini or two and kiss you—you’d been kissed before, you could handle this—and then do something to your dress and your underpants, and a few blurry moments later you weren’t handling this at all, you were bang smack on your back on the lounge chair with no way to get up, and maybe it was a good thing he’d fed you those martinis, maybe it was a good thing you couldn’t remember exactly how it happened.

      The song changes, some new band that Pepper doesn’t recognize. She reaches forward and shuts off the radio.

      2.

      They reach Cocoa Beach at half past one o’clock in the morning. A bank of clouds has rolled in, obscuring the moon, and Pepper can’t see a thing beyond the headlights. She’s too tired to care, anyway.

      “Here we are,” Annabelle says cheerfully. “The housekeeper is in bed, but the cottage should be ready.”

      “You do this kind of thing often?”

      “No. I just had a hunch I’d have company.”

      Pepper stumbles out of the car and follows Annabelle across a driveway and up a pair of stone steps. A little house by the beach, she said, but this is more like a villa, plain and rough-walled, like something you might find in Spain or Italy, somewhere old and hot. The smell of eucalyptus hangs in the air.

      Annabelle holds open the door. “I expect you’re tired. I couldn’t keep my eyes open when I was pregnant. I’ll save the tour for tomorrow and take you straight to bed.”

      “I’ve heard that one before.”

      Annabelle laughs. “I expect you have, you naughty girl.”

      Pepper is just awake enough to appreciate the lack of censure in Annabelle’s voice. Well, she is European, isn’t she? She has that welcome dollop of joie-de-whatever, that je ne sais no evil. She’s not one to judge. Maybe that’s why Pepper spilled her guts back there, in the middle of the road, like a cadaver under dissection. Or maybe it was the moon, or the goddamned ocean, or the baby and the hormones and the nicotine starvation. Whatever it was, Pepper hopes to God she won’t regret all this over breakfast.

      “We bought the place in 1941,” Annabelle was saying, as they passed through the darkened rooms. “It was built in the twenties, during the big land rush. We got it for a song. It was in total disrepair, not even properly finished, but the bones were good, and there was plenty of room for the children, and it was all by itself, no nosy neighbors. There was something rather authentic about it, which is a difficult thing to find in Florida.”

      “I’ll say.”

      “I mean, except me, of course!” Annabelle’s midnight exuberance is almost certifiable. Pepper wants to throttle her. Of course, six months ago, Pepper could midnight with the best of them. Six months ago, midnight was just the beginning. That was how she got into this mess, wasn’t it? Too much goddamned midnight, and now here she was, stumbling through an old house in the middle of Florida, knocked up and knocked out.

      A latch clicks, a door swooshes open, and now they’re in a courtyard, full of fresh air and lemon trees. Annabelle turns to the wall and switches on a light. Pepper squints.

      “Just over here, honey,” says Annabelle.

      Pepper follows. “I don’t mean to be pushy, but does this guest cottage of yours happen to have a working lavatory?”

      Annabelle claps a hand to her cheek. “Oh, my goodness! What an idiot I am! It’s been so long since I had babies. Come along. My dear, you should have said something. I didn’t realize you were so polite.”

      “I’m not, I assure you. I just didn’t happen to spot any flowerpots along the way.”

      The grass is short and damp. They’ve moved beyond the circle of light from the house. Pepper sees a rectangular shadow ahead and hopes to God it’s the cottage, and nobody’s waiting inside. Peace and quiet, that’s all she needs. Peace and quiet and a toilet.

      A step ahead, Annabelle opens the door and steps aside for Pepper to enter first. The smell of soap and fresh linen rushes around her.

      “Home sweet home. The bathroom’s on the right.”

      3.

      When Pepper emerges from the bathroom ten minutes later, Annabelle is standing by the window, looking into the night. From the side, her face looks a little more fragile than Pepper remembers, and she thinks that maybe Annabelle is right, that she isn’t really beautiful. The nose is too long. The chin too sharp. The head itself is out of proportion, too large on her skinny long neck, like a Tootsie Pop.

      Then she turns, and Pepper forgets her faults.

      “All set?”

      “Yes. Thanks for the nightgown and toothpaste. I’m beginning to think you had this all planned out.”

      “Maybe I did.” Annabelle smiles. “Does that make you nervous?”

      Pepper yawns. “Nothing’s going to make me nervous right now.”

      “All right. Sleep in as long as you like. I’ll have coffee and breakfast waiting in the main house, whenever you’re up. Is there anything you need?”

      “No, thanks.” Pepper hesitates. Gratitude isn’t her natural attitude, but then you didn’t

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