I remembered my own drawing of Amy. She had praised it, and her parents had praised it, but it was not good. It was an overdone effort by a young, untrained artist too anxious to perfectly create the perfect face. Only someone as gifted as Jean Archer could draw, or paint, Amy Lourie.

I put away the picture and the stone and drank from the coffee, and I thought of a night on the mountain, late in the summer, only a few days before it would end with Amy. I was holding her under the covering of the birch and she whispered to me, “I love you, Bobo.” And then she did something she had never done. She pushed her body gently against mine, searching with her body, until she felt the pressure of the erection I could not stop. I heard her whimper and her arms tightened around me. “I love you,” she said again.

“And I love you,” I told her.

“Do you think this is wrong?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Do you feel guilty?”

“Sometimes, yes,” I said.

“I do, too. I think about—about others.”

I did not reply.

“Do you want to talk about them?” Amy asked.

“Not now,” I said. “Later. Not now.”

“All right,” she replied. “Later.”

We both knew it was something we would avoid as long as possible.

CHAPTER

9
 

LILA WAS IN MY ROOM, CLEANING IT, WHEN I RETURNED TO THE Inn. The chambermaid, she grumbled, had failed to report for work. “Happens every month. If I had cramps as bad as she does, I’d call a plumber with a Roto-Rooter,” she said irritably.

Lila was not meant to be a chambermaid. The bedcovering was crooked on the bed and the pillows smashed flat. She had not hung towels. They were stacked on the back of the commode. I could tell by the tracks on the carpet that she had only pushed the vacuum cleaner up and back once. The only thing in the room that was different was the cut-glass flower vase. It had three large jonquils. Their yellow trumpet mouths seemed to be playing a concert of color.

“Very pretty,” I said, putting down my briefcase.

She smiled a teasing smile. “I thought they’d brighten things up. But don’t get any ideas, Bobo. It’s not a pass. I took them from next door. They always have them. He stops at Dorrie Kincaid’s flower shop in Phoenicia and picks them up. Dorrie swears there’s a turn-on about those flowers. She tells me the only time she ever makes love is when she gets his order. It’s been going on for so many years now, she finally had to tell her husband the truth.”

“Won’t they miss them?”

“They checked out,” Lila said. “Same schedule every time. Monday through Wednesday.”

“How do they get by with it?” I asked.