Amy did not move her eyes from the woman, but I thought I saw her face quiver involuntarily. She tried to force a smile.

“There must be some mistake,” Amy said quietly.

“Oh, but it couldn’t be,” the woman insisted. “Your eyes, your face, even the way you do your hair. It’s you. We were very impressed with it. My husband wants to include it in the purchase agreement, if we buy the house.”

“But I’ve never posed for a painting,” Amy said evenly.

The woman blinked confusion. Her eyes flashed to her husband, then back to Amy. “But—”

“It isn’t me,” Amy said. “I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh—”

CHAPTER

22
 

AMY TRIED, BUT SHE COULD NOT COMPLETELY DISMISS, OR IGNORE, the woman who had seen Jean Archer’s painting.

She had smiled pleasantly, accepting the woman’s embarrassed apology before the woman returned to her table. To me, she had whispered, “I must look like someone,” then she had detoured the conversation to the wine and a visit she had made with her husband to the wine regions of France. It was a rambling, fragmented story. I listened patiently, but watched her closely. I saw her eyes flit occasionally—almost necessarily—to the woman’s table, then away. She smiled obligatorily when I made obligatory comments. And then Paul and Maggie ushered out the dinner in a performance so splendid it begged for applause.

It was as though the food was a diversion, and for an hour the specter of Jean Archer’s painting was what Amy had tried to make of it—a mild intrusion, an odd case of mistaken identity. She laughed gaily. Her eyes sparkled. She drank liberally from a second bottle of wine, and when we left the restaurant, she was giddy, insisting that Maggie and Paul would visit her soon. Outside, in the parking lot, under the dimmed lamp of the moon, she whirled in a full dance step and cried, “Oh, God, Bobo, I’m happy!”

We returned to her house, and to her bedroom, and I relaxed on the bed as she lit candles and placed them on the nightstand and on the dresser. She opened the curtains of the windows.

“I know I’m slightly tipsy, Bobo, but I want to make love with the stars watching us,” she said.

“The stars may not be the only eyes out there,” I warned. “There’s a road—”

“I don’t care,” she said. “I want them to see us. I hope they do. I hope the whole valley sees us. I hope God sees us. God and Avrum, stopping one of their arguments to watch. Would anything please Avrum more? I hope Carter drives by and looks in. Don’t you think it would make him happy? I do.” She glanced seductively over her shoulder. “Did I ever tell you he tried to make love to me that summer?”