ERICA ORLOFF

is a transplanted New Yorker who now calls South Florida home. She is a writer and editor who has worked in publishing for over a decade. She is the coauthor of two books of humor writing, and the coauthor of The Sixty Second Commute about the home office phenomenon, as well as two books for children, including The Best Friends’ Handbook, aimed at empowering teen and preteen girls. As an editor and ghostwriter, she has worked behind the scenes on many publishing successes.

Erica despises the “c-word” (cooking) and likes to write on her laptop, poolside. She presides over a house of unruly pets, including a parrot who curses as avidly as she does. She loves playing poker, a game she was taught by her grandmother, and regularly enjoys trying to steal her crew of wonderful friends’ money playing five-card stud.

Spanish Disco
Erica Orloff

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To my parents, Walter and Maryanne Orloff.

And to the memory of Robert and Irene Cunningham.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my wonderful, beloved agent, Jay Poynor, for always believing in me and my work. You are friend, cheering section, critic, confidant, and family.

To my father, Walter Orloff. I am a writer because, first and foremost, you are a terribly interesting character. Second, you are the father in chapter thirteen who challenged me to read well beyond my years. All I am is because you challenged me.

To my mother, Maryanne Orloff, who bears no resemblance to the mother in the pages herein. My love of reading stems from your love of reading. Thank you for taking me to the library in second grade, letting me sign out seven books on a Friday and taking me back on Monday to sign out new ones.

To my sisters, Stacey Groome and Jessica Stasinos, and to my girlfriends, Pammie, Cleo, Nancy, Kathy L., Kathy J., Lisa, JoAnn and Meredith…for your friendship and support. To Kathy Levinson, in particular, for tolerating my trips to New York (and giving me a place to stay) with my over-the-top fear of flying. You are my personal “flying shrink.” Thanks to Marc Levinson, as well—same reasons. And to Pam Morrell, especially, thanks for believing I am “winsome.”

To the members of Writer’s Cramp: Pam, Gina, Becky…and Josh.

To the members of my women’s book group, for your friendship (and great food once a month).

At Red Dress Ink, thank you to Margaret O’Neill Marbury, for your insight and wisdom and belief in this book. And to all the people at Red Dress who made this book possible.

To Alexa, Nicholas and Isabella. Thank you for giving me a reason to breathe.

To my godmother, Gloria, and to my cousin Joey D., because I always promised you I would mention you in my book.

To the late Viktor Frankl. I live because of your philosophy.

To anyone I’ve somehow left out. You know I’m not that organized, so please forgive me.

And finally, to J.D.

You know all my secrets, even the ones I share with no one else, and you know all my pain and joys. And though I often want to kill you, you make me laugh every day.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Book Group Questions

1

“H ello, Buttercup.”

Most people panic that a jangling phone at 4:09 in the morning is a death call—the one in which a cop is about to tell you he’s found your sibling or mother or father plastered like a bloody possum on the pavement of I-95. Instead, I uttered his name like a curse: “Michael!”

“Yes, darling, it’s me.”

I reached in vain for the lamp.

“I don’t suppose there’s any point in asking if you know what time it is.”

“What would David have for breakfast?”

“Breakfast?”

“Because I think eggs indicates a surprising lack of concern about his health. After all, his wife has been nagging him for years about his cholesterol. His smoking. And this could be his lone act of defiance. His way of telling the world to fuck off, as you, my dear, would so eloquently put it.”

“Or he could merely like sunny-side up and a side of bacon, Michael. Is it that important what your character eats for breakfast?”

My fingers found the little pull-chain on my bedside lamp. I squinted and reached for the glass of warm bourbon and water I keep on my nightstand for conversations precisely like this one.

“Vitally.”

“Michael, you know I am not at my best until a good, solid six hours from now. And that only after a pot of coffee. Can’t this wait?”

“Be a love,” he said, his English accent trying to charm me through the phone line. “Greet the dawn with me.”

“Greet the dawn? Michael, I don’t want to greet the dawn with you. I don’t want to greet noon with you.”

“Impossible! You don’t want to enjoy the splendor outside your balcony with me? Your favorite author?”

“Favorite is not—most definitely not—the word that comes to mind right now.” I sighed. “Those acknowledgments better drip with praise.”

“To my dream editor, the love of my life, Cassie Hayes, without whom this book would not be possible and without whom I would curl into a fetal position and remain there. For life without the beautiful and witty Miss Hayes would, in fact, be life not worth living at all.”

“That’s a start.”

“And she has a remarkable sense of the sublime and a true command of all dangling participles.”

“And?”

“And she’s simply charming before the dawn.”

Stretching, I sighed. “All right. Let me grab my robe and start a pot of coffee.”

“Are you naked, Cassie?”

Michael Pearton was, quite possibly, the best writer I had ever worked with or read. He was also faintly mysterious. His back cover head shots showed a man with black curly hair and a crooked smile offset by a long, ragged scar on his decidedly square chin. He was both movie-star handsome and bar-fight dangerous. We’d never met but indulged in flirtation bordering on phone sex. Because I wasn’t getting any other kind of sex, I tolerated his predawn ramblings.

“Why, yes, Michael, I am,” I murmured. “Stark, raving naked. My nipples are hard because you know I keep my house colder than a meat locker regardless of what the weather is outside. And I am now shoving said nipples into my robe and shuffling in my bare feet to the kitchen where I will start a pot of coffee.”

I rested the portable phone on my shoulder, talking in my pre-coffee rasp as I tied my green silk kimono, a gift from another author’s trip to Singapore.

“I do so love it when you talk dirty, Cassie.”

“I do so love it when you call me in the middle of the day.”

“So nasty when you haven’t had that cup. You know you should switch to tea, love. Do you ever use the set I shipped you?”

I flicked on the kitchen light, shielding my eyes from the brightness as it reflected on my Florida-white tile and cabinets, and stared at the sterling tea set perched, never used, on my breakfast bar. He had bought it at a flea market of some sort and shipped it over to the States. It was tarnished, but the elaborate handle on the teapot was ornately baroque, and though it matched nothing in my condominium, I adored it.

“Yes. It’s gorgeous.”

“You’re a horrible liar. But I know it probably looks lovely wherever you have it.”

“Michael, why does inspiration only strike you in the middle of my night?”

My Mr. Coffee machine started making noises, and I willed it to brew faster.

“It’s very odd really. I go to sleep and wake up in the middle of the night absolutely certain of what must happen next. Oh…and showers. I get inspiration in the shower. And now, everyone else in London is getting ready for lunch, and I just have to finish this scene. It’s sad, really. I have a twenty-thousand-dollar antique cherrywood desk good enough for the queen herself, and I never write a damn word sitting at it.”

I knew he was sitting stark, raving naked in his bed, with his laptop and a hard-on for companionship.

“So your inspiration is that David is worrying about breakfast?”

“Yes. It’s the morning after he’s been denied tenure. He feels completely emasculated. And now, as an act of defiance, I see him having eggs.”

“Okay, then. Let him eat eggs.”

“What kind?”

“Michael, who the fuck cares what kind?”

“What kind? Would he eat poached eggs or scrambled?”

“I thought I mentioned sunny-side up with a side of bacon.”

“But that was an offhanded comment. I don’t think you really gave it much thought.”

“Poached.”

“You think so, really? What about eggs Benedict? Because then he would be eating all that wicked hollandaise sauce.”

“I don’t care, Michael. Give him hollandaise if it makes you happy. It’s four-thirty.”

“Is your coffee ready yet? You certainly are particularly crabby this morning.”

“Michael, I don’t know a single other editor who would put up with this kind of shit.”

“Precisely. Which is why you have authors eating out of the palm of your hand, and Louis O’Connor has the most successful small publishing house in the States.”

Eyeing the coffeemaker with lust, I smiled. “Coffee’s almost ready. I’ll be human soon.”

A minute or two later, I sat down at my kitchen table an ocean away from West Side Publishing’s most valuable author. Michael clicked away on his keyboard, and I drank coffee and held his hand long distance as we worked through the scene. He’d been blocked. I knew he couldn’t get past the fourteenth chapter. Every book was the same. Somewhere in the middle he lost hope. He gave up. He got sick of his book, its plot, of his own characters. And then he didn’t work for a while until he had an epiphany—usually in the middle of my night—and called me and we talked for hours waiting for the sun to rise and, with it, the resolution of his crisis. Although I think it was an excuse to hear me talk about my nipples.

“Michael,” I yawned two hours later, “the sun is rising.”

“Tell me about it,” he whispered.

I stepped out onto my balcony, facing the view a Boca Raton condo can buy. “Well, the Atlantic’s really calm this morning—a beautiful azure blue. I see a seagull gliding lazily and a pelican swooping down. The sun is just peeking—the horizon is pink and purple and still midnight a little. The crescent moon is sharing the sky with the beginning of the sun. And here it comes…. God, it’s beautiful, Michael.”

The salty breeze kissed my face.

“You give good sunrise, Cassie.”

“Well, if it weren’t for you, I’d never see them, so I guess I should thank you. But I won’t. I’m going back to bed.”

“You’ve had a pot of coffee. Aren’t you wired?”

“No. Good night, Michael.”

“Good morning, Cassie. You are the bloody best. Thank you.”

“May the next time I hear your voice be after lunch.”

I hung up and ran a hand through my bedhead of messy black curls. I padded back to my room, drew the blinds tighter and dropped my robe, crawling sensuously beneath my sheets. I loved the decadence of going back to bed. I picked up the phone and dialed the office, pressing extension 303.

“Lou…it’s me. Michael Pearton had another pre-dawn meltdown. We were on the phone discussing his main character’s menu choices ’til just now. It’s 6:30. I’m exhausted. I won’t be in until at least noon if you’re lucky.”

I shut my eyes and thought I’d skip the whole day at the office. My boss let me work three days at home, thanks to voice mail and e-mail, and his sheer adoration of me. I was supposed to go in on Fridays, but the hell with it. I turned the ringer off on my phone. Sleep returned quickly. I dreamed of swimming in pools of hollandaise.

At 11:00, the phone rang, muffled, out in the kitchen. I could hear the caller ignoring the fact that I wasn’t answering. I heard four rings, a voice speaking. Hang up. Four rings. Voice speaking. Hang up. Four rings…

“Oh for God’s sake, what do you want, Lou?” I finally snatched the receiver next to my bed.

“How’d you know…”

“You’re the only person stubborn enough to do that, Lou.”

“I need you in here today.”

“Sorry. I put in my hours with the ever-neurotic Englishman last night. Or actually, this morning, but you know what I mean. I’ll be in on Monday.”

“This is big.”

“What do you mean?”

“Bigger than Stephen King, big. This could make me millions. Your bonus could send you into early retirement.”

“So who is it?”

“Can’t tell you.”

“Lou…this isn’t high school. Not that I think you ever went to high school. You were born eating your young.”

“Cassie, my dear, you come and go out of here as the diva you are. But this one time, I’m telling you to get up, get dressed, and meet me at the office. I will mainline you a pot of coffee.”

“This better be worth it.”

“It is. In spades.”

I climbed out of bed, still far too early for my taste. In the kitchen, I dumped out the grinds in Mr. Coffee, the only man in my condo in the last year and a half, and put on my second pot of the day. After a hot shower, a dab of crimson lipstick, and a sort of shaggy-dog shaking of my hair, I dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, threw a linen blazer on, and headed down Florida’s A1A ocean highway to West Side’s offices.

I’m not sure how it is I came to live in a land of pink palaces and perpetual sunshine. It doesn’t suit my personality. But when Lou moved down here from New York, he took me with him. He came for the fishing and the sunshine. He came to get away from New York after Helen died. And I came because he did.

I climbed out of my mint-condition Cadillac that I bought for a song from the estate of an elderly man who had died. His kids wanted cash. Bargains abound in Florida if you don’t mind owning stuff that belonged to dead people. When Lou first saw it, he thought I was nuts. “A banana-yellow Caddy? You like driving fruit?” But I have claustrophobia. I drive luxury land tanks.

Pressing the elevator button for the seventh floor, I rode up in glass to West Side’s offices.

“Morning, Cassie,” Troy, the receptionist/junior editor, greeted me.

“Mornin’,” I mumbled.

“You look a fright.”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. Coffee?”

“Intravenous.”

“You got it.” He held out a mug. “Start with this cup, and I’ll bring a fresh one in as soon as it’s brewed.”

I opened the door to Lou’s office without knocking.

“This better be worth it. I’m feeling very bitchy today,” I said, putting the mug down on a mahogany coffee table covered with books West Side had published, and flopping onto a long, buttercream leather couch.

“And how is this different from any other day?”

“If I wanted insults, I would call my mother.”

“Guess who called me in the middle of the night?”

“What is it with authors and the middle of the night, Lou?”

“Indulge me.”

“John Updike?”

“Bigger.”

“I have no clue,” I leaned up on one elbow and took a swig of coffee.

He took the unlit cigar he had in his mouth and set it in his Waterford ashtray.

“Roland Riggs.”

“Holy shit!” I said, as hot coffee sprayed out of my mouth.

2

L ou smiled at me. “I thought that would grab ya!”

The shock hit me as I mopped at coffee dribbling down my chin. I managed to sputter, “What’d he want?”

“You do know my famous Roland Riggs story, right?”

“Do I know it? I’ve been subjected to your Roland Riggs story at every cocktail party you and I have ever attended together. Worse, I’ve been subjected to it secondhand from people who have heard the story and feel the need to tell me. They usually embellish it.”

Troy came in with my second cup of coffee.

“Thanks.” I sucked down a long swig, burning my tongue.

After Troy shut the door, Lou feigned hurt feelings, “All right. So you’ve heard the story. Well…Roland Riggs calls me up in the middle of the night and says—get this— ‘Lou, I guess I was wrong about the computer.’”

Lou’s Roland Riggs story was this: In 1968, Lou was on a fishing trip in Key West. He caught not a single tuna after two days of deep-sea fishing with Key West’s best captain, and he decided to forget the mahi-mahi and settle in for a nice, long beer binge. Lou was sitting at an outdoor patio bar downing a bottle of imported German beer when a disheveled guy about Lou’s age sat down next to him and said, “The Germans are the only ones who can brew beer that doesn’t taste like piss.”

Lou was already a publishing hotshot back then. He knew it was Riggs, even though the author had grown a full beard since his back jacket photo was taken. Roland Riggs, even then, was considered the voice of a generation. He was notoriously moody with his publisher, but he wrote Simple Simon and the world had been waiting to see what he would do next. The book sold out of every printing and still does a brisk business. It’s required reading in nearly every high school English course. Roland Riggs hit the lottery with his tale of lonesome angst and war and the end of the 1950s and all its innocence and conformity and fumbled sex in the back of Dad’s borrowed car.

The two of them started talking. They began with Riggs’s dissertation on German brew-making skills. They moved on to discuss women (discovering they both preferred moody brunettes), music (they both despised anything pseudo-folkish with a tambourine in it), books (no one but Riggs, Faulkner, and Hemingway was worth a damn), society’s ills (marijuana should be legalized), the price of fame (people like Riggs needed to grow ridiculous beards to avoid strangers accosting them) and the cost of the Vietnam war (the soul of the United States). They started talking on a Friday night at ten o’clock and didn’t stop until lunch on Sunday. The last words of their conversation were about the future of technology.

Lou said, “Mark my word, Riggs, one day everyone is going to have a computer—even you. It’s gonna change the way we do everything. Even publish books.”

Riggs had stared out at the ocean, his blue eyes mirroring its color. “I’ll never give up my typewriter, Lou. You’ve had too much German beer.”

With that, the brilliant Roland Riggs stood up, bowed to Lou, and walked down to the turquoise, smooth ocean. He took off his shirt and dove into the water. After splashing about for ten minutes or so, he came out, shook himself like a shaggy dog, and walked, bare-chested, down the beach and out of sight.

“After thirty-some-odd years, Roland Riggs remembered the last words of your conversation?”

“It was a life-changing weekend, Cassie. I remember it.”

“You remember it because it was Roland Riggs. But if he was some faceless beachcomber, you wouldn’t remember a word of it.”

“You underestimate me.” Lou stood and crossed the room, barefoot, to his bookshelf. When Lou moved to Florida, he gave up suits. And shoes. He wore flip-flops to the office and then took them off once inside West Side’s plush, royal-purple-carpeted suite. He encouraged bare-footedness in all his employees: “It’s good for the sole…get it?”

He pulled down his worn copy of Simple Simon.

“This book changed people’s lives.”

“Lou, where’s your cynicism? One call from this guy and you’re misty-eyed. A generation of child-men went through a war, and he gave them a voice. But life-changing? This from the man who gave a contract to Eliza James because she claimed to have sucked Lyndon Johnson’s dick.”

“You’re too young to appreciate what this book meant. I remember people weeping over this damn book. Let Stephen King do that.”

“Danielle Steel makes people weep.”

“Danielle Steel, even with a brain transplant, could never win the Pulitzer.”

“Fine. I concede the book was important. Brilliant. But when I read news stories about Riggs I feel sorry for him. He hated the attention.”

Young men, legless and haunted after Vietnam, camped out in front of the Manhattan apartment where Riggs lived. Their pictures, in their wheelchairs lined up outside his Upper Eastside address, made Life magazine. They wrote him bags of mail. But Riggs seemed spooked by the attention his book garnered. He had his glamorous young wife, Maxine, and she was all he needed. Or wanted. They pulled up stakes and moved to rural Maine. He was working on his next book. That would be how he communicated with his public. Through his words. And he would have kept communicating if Maxine hadn’t been killed.

Maxine was the literary world’s equivalent of Jackie Kennedy. An eighteen-year-old free spirit when they met, she married the handsome, long-haired Riggs when she was nineteen and he was thirty. With long black hair and eyes described as emerald-colored, she dressed with grace and style, and beguiled the rare interviewer with witty comments and an infectious laugh. But after the veterans started seeking them out, Maxine and Riggs retreated to their home and sightings of them became gossip column fodder.

The papers reported it as a tragic accident. She had been standing outside the back door of their white clapboard house, when a trespassing deer hunter shot her. One minute she had smiled at Roland, saying she would go pick them some tomatoes for their dinner salad. The next she was a bloody heap a few feet from her carefully tended garden. Deer bullets leave gaping holes. The hunter never came forward. No one was ever charged.

Roland Riggs’s hair had turned completely white by her funeral. He aged ten years in four days. Within a week, he closed up his house in Maine and took off for parts unknown. He never published his next book. He never spoke to the press. He was never heard from again by anyone but his editor. Then his editor died of old age, and no one heard from him except his publisher’s royalty department.

“He said I’d understand,” Lou looked down at the dust cover to Simple Simon. “He read the article in Publisher’s Weekly about West Side. How I came here after Helen died. Cassie, he wants me…us…to publish his next book.”

I thought, briefly, of falling off the couch for effect, but I stayed in my seat and struggled to sound intelligent. “Why you? Because you’re a widower?”

I stared at Lou. What little hair he had left was silver, and he wore gold wire-rimmed glasses. Short, with a slender build, he would be thought of as elegant. Until someone heard him open his mouth. Then “New Yawkese” came flying out. “Fuck if I know, really, kid. He talked about that night in Key West. How we had a connection. He talked about finding his wife by their garden. He said, ‘I’ve been living with her ghost for over twenty years. She never leaves me. And it never gets better.’” Lou looked up at me. “That’s how I feel about Helen.”

“I know,” I whispered.

“So he doesn’t want some faceless schlub somewhere handling his book. He wants me. West Side. Us. If he reads PW, he knows how publishers just gobble each other up. Soon, there’s just going to be one giant God damn publishing house, and every book will be owned by the same fucking conglomerate. In this day and age, no one will give him the kind of attention he deserves.”

“Bullshit. This is Riggs. This is the encore to Simple Simon. Publishers would sign their souls over to Satan for a chance to publish it. Just show ’em the dotted line.”

“That would imply that they have souls.”

“They’d give him a two-million-dollar advance. They would. What kind of advance can you give him? Our standard fifteen thousand?”

“Well…actually, he doesn’t want an advance. He just wants a lot of control.”

“Control?”

“Specifically?” He raised his eyebrows, something he does when he’s about to tell me news I may not like. Raised eyebrows, edit this book in two weeks.

“He wants you to edit his book.”

My heart stopped beating, I think, and in the silence I heard the clock on Lou’s shelf ticking.

“Me?” I started breathing again. “He’s heard of me?”

“You were in the article in PW.”

“I’m flattered, but it’s not as if I’d let you give his book to anyone else.”

“Glad you feel that way.” Pause. Raised eyebrows. “Because he wants you to go stay with him while you do it.”

“What?” I put my mug of coffee down.

“Yeah. He wants you to move in for a month. Really hash it out.”

“Hash it out?”

Lou shrugged.

“Hash it out with Roland Riggs? You don’t hash things out with a Pulitzer-prize-winning genius.”

“A minute ago you were griping that Simple Simon meant nothing. That it didn’t change people. That they’d weep over my laundry list.”

“A minute ago, I wasn’t Roland Riggs’s new editor. A minute ago, I wasn’t leaving my beachfront condo for who knows where to go live with this recluse, who, for all I know, is certifiable after all these years. Christ, he called you up in the middle of the night mid-stream in a thirty-year-old conversation.”

“Cass, even if he is certifiable, you’d chew him up and spit him out with your first cup of coffee. Besides, you’ve handled Michael Pearton. He’s not exactly small potatoes. He’s hit the New York Times bestseller list. Albeit infrequently. God, he takes a long time to write a book. Anyway, Pearton’s kind of weird. How bad could Riggs be?”

“Michael’s different.”

“Yeah. You give him phone sex.”

“You know, I told you that over a pitcher of margaritas, and you insist on throwing it in my face every chance you can slip it into a conversation.”

“I think it’s funny.”

“Funny? The guy calls me at three in the morning. He won’t let me be. He hounds me with e-mail.”

“And he’s made you and me rich.”

“Technically, you’re a lot richer than I am.”

“But for thirty-three years old, you ain’t doing so bad. And that’s nothing compared to what Roland Riggs can do for you.”

“And you.”

“Sure. But it’s not about the money. It’s about Simple Simon. It’s about closure for an entire generation of people who read his book and can’t forget it.”

“Maybe an encore isn’t so smart.”

“Maybe it is.”

“Lou, what did Simple Simon mean to you? Maybe that’s what some of this is about.”

He looked away.

“Okay, Lou. You don’t want to look at that, fine. But it’s not like I can just leave all my other authors and books for a month.”

“We have e-mail. Take your laptop. You’re not in the office all that much anyway. The guy has a phone.”

“I don’t know. It just sounds…weird.”

“It’s not like you’ll be living in a shack somewhere.”

“Well, where will I be going?”

“He has a big house over on Sanibel Island.”

“Sanibel? I’ll die there.”

Sanibel is a tiny spit of an island off the West Coast of Florida in the Gulf of Mexico. The Old Guard are strict about development. No high-level condos. No good rye bread. No NY-style cheesecake. No nightlife. Lord knows what kind of coffee I could get there.

“He has a housekeeper who doubles as his personal chef. He’s right on the beach. You’ll have your own guest suite. He has a pool.”

“You make it sound like I’m going to the Hilton.”

“Look, Cassie, we haven’t had a mega-hit in a while. I field calls every month from publishers who want to gobble us up. I’m getting old. I’m not sure I can keep up this independent thing forever. I need this book. We need this book.”

“You couldn’t sell West Side. You wouldn’t sell. This is your baby.”

“Baby or not, things are tight. We’ve had a couple of bombs. That damn actress’s book—why’d I buy it? So we’re in trouble, and I need you to pretend you’re going to Vegas. You’re going to Vegas, and you’re taking all our chips and you’re putting them all down on black. In the big roulette wheel of publishing, this is our chance to create a legacy. To leave our mark.”

“I need another cup of coffee. I need to talk to Grace about handling my shit while I’m gone. I have to make a dozen phone calls. I’ve had no sleep. I haven’t eaten. And I’m really cranky.”

Lou cocked a smile at me. “Just another day at the office.” When he smiled, which was much rarer than when Helen was alive, he was still that good-looking kid from Doubleday who made a name for himself by working longer and harder and smarter than anyone else. His blue eyes shone.

I winked at him and went to my office. I slipped off my shoes. Lou’s habits had become remarkably enmeshed with my own. I started my personal coffeemaker—I don’t work and play well with others, and I don’t share my pots of coffee. As I heard the sounds of brewing ecstasy, I leaned back in my chair and put my perfectly pedicured feet up on my desk—“Cherry Poppin’ Red” nail polish on my toes. What do you pack to go see a Pulitzer-prize-winner? Do you let him see you before your first morning cup of coffee?

I stared out the window at the Atlantic Ocean that a few hours ago I had described to Michael. Now, everything was different. I was taking all our chips and betting on black.

3

M ichael took it rather badly.

“What do you mean you are jetting off somewhere for a month. A bloody month! We’re in the middle of my novel, Cassie.”

“Michael, as I’ve already explained, I have e-mail. Use it. I am taking my laptop. You can leave messages for me at the office, and I can call you whenever you need me. You have written seven books. Aces High sold out of three printings and is still doing well. You can handle this little, teensy-weensy inconvenience.”

“No, I can’t.”

“Michael, we’re already an ocean apart.”

“Precisely why I am so upset with you, Cassie Hayes.”

“I don’t quite see where we’re going with this. You live in London. I live in Florida. We’ve worked together for five years. What’s another three hundred miles’ difference?”

“Cassie, some author calls Lou in the middle of the night, and you’re running off to live in this man’s house for a month, when you’ve never even agreed to come to London.”

“Well, you’ve never come to Florida.”

“I have. You were in L. A., remember?”

“A poorly timed trip, Michael.”

“Why won’t you even tell me who this chap is?”

“I can’t. I really can’t. He’s very famous but very protective about his privacy. Lou would kill me. I just can’t.”

As we talked, I threw the entire contents of my closet on my bed and started picking through my clothes and placing them in pack/don’t pack but keep/Goodwill piles.

“You could bloody fall in love with this man. A month! A month in the tropics.”

“Michael…” I spoke soothingly, as one might speak to a man about to jump from London Bridge. “I live in the tropics all the time. The warm, balmy breezes are not going to make me take leave of my senses.”

“A month in his home, Cassie.”

“Trust me on this one. I am not going to fall in love with him. Michael, this is ludicrous. And if I did fall in love with him, which I won’t because he’s too old for me anyway—it’s not like I’d ever stop working or stop being your editor. I’m not exactly the stay-at-home wifey type. Believe me. So this entire conversation is predicated on a fear that will never happen.”

“I could care less if you stopped being my editor. I want you to come to London.”

“Why? So you can feel like you’re just as important to me as this author? You know you are.”

“No.”

A long silence followed.

“Michael? Are you still there? Or have you been drinking, because you are acting totally off the wall.”

“For such a brilliant girl, Cassie, you can be impossibly thick as a plank.”

More silence.

“Are you so bloody stubborn that you are going to make me say it?”

“Say what?”

“That I am hopelessly besotted with you.”

My breath left me. I sat down on the Goodwill pile, and a belt dug into my ass. I moved over to the keep-but-don’t-pack pile. More silence.

“So I want you to promise me you won’t go doing anything stupid like falling in love with this decrepit old author you’re racing off to see—if he really is as old as you say he is.”

“I promise,” I whispered.

“And I want you to come to London when you return. Even if it’s just for a few days. A weekend.”

“Michael, what time is it there?”

“Seven o’clock.”

“You have been drinking. You’re slurring your speech.”

“Not a drop.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Yes, you do.”

“But…but we have a perfectly good working relationship. I’ll grant you that we have phone sex that, well, quite frankly, is more of a relationship than I have with anyone else. But why would we ruin this all by meeting?”

“Because you can’t love someone over the phone and over your bloody e-mail. I want to meet you. This has been the longest pre-coital relationship in history.”

“I don’t know about that. I think one of the Brontë sisters corresponded with her future husband for seventeen years or something drawn out and Victorian like that.”

“You’re not a Brontë.”

“No, I suppose not.”

“Promise me you’ll think about it.”

“I promise. But you think about it, too. We have the perfect relationship.”

“Long distance?”

“Yes. You know how grumpy I am. How I don’t rise before noon. How I need my coffee and have horrible eating habits. I have a two-bedroom condo and live alone, and I need a weekly housekeeper just to keep the place decent. I laugh too loudly. I drink too much. I play my music at decibels designed to rupture the human eardrum. I really am horrible at relationships. ‘We,’ whatever ‘we’ are, are perfect.”

“I’d rather have imperfection, Cassie. Think about it.”

“I will.”

“Call me.”

“I will.”

“Write me.”

“I will.”

“And no falling in love.”

“Okay.”

“Talk to you soon.”

“Sure.”

“I do adore you.”

“Michael…”

“Ciao.”

I held the phone, listening to dead transatlantic air until the operator informed me it was time to make a call. What had just happened? A perfectly good editor-author relationship had gone up in flames. How could he love me? We’d never met, as he so stubbornly kept pointing out.

In the past, I’d stared at his cover photos feeling mildly like a jellyfish and woozy inside. He was sexy. But he was there, and I was here. It was perfect. No morning chit-chat. No fighting over toilet seat lid etiquette. No one badgering me about my weird hours, my caffeine addiction, my overindulgence in tequila sunrises. No one yelling at me when my gut screamed out over my combined poor habits and I was writhing on the bathroom floor—no “I wish you’d see someone about that.” Michael was my ideal non-lover. And if he thought about it long enough, he’d realize it, too. I’d just let it all sink in to him. Maybe he was having a post-writer’s block orgasm from our most recent phone call.

I turned my attention to the serious pile of Goodwill clothes amassing on my bed. I hated to shop but realized I didn’t have a month’s worth of clothes to take. Time to hit the mall, then visit my father.

In a place where pink palaces reign, the malls are enough to make a practical woman don a burlap sack. Overpriced is a mantra, and over-the-top is a Boca staple. I pulled up to Bloomingdale’s and forced myself to go through the doors. I am seriously mall-phobic. I think it’s those faintly Night of the Living Dead-like makeup counter women. I’m fond of my slightly flawed face the way it is—crooked smile, full lips, and freckled nose included. I even like the tiny scar by my right eyebrow where Billy Monroe stabbed me with a pencil during a second-grade fight. Billy ended up with a black eye. I called it even.

My shopping technique is simple. I head to Ann Taylor and find a shirt I like. Then I buy it in seven colors. Next I find pants I like. I buy three of the exact same pair in the same size, eight. I do the same with shorts. I toss a scarf and a new purse on the pile. Buy two pairs of size-nine shoes that look comfortable. I don’t try anything on. I have them ring it all up. I am out the door in less than fifteen minutes. The Ann Taylor girls see me coming from three stores away and sound some sort of “Bitch alarm.” They steer clear of me ever since I told the manager, “Look, I am about to spend seven or eight hundred dollars. I don’t want any help. I don’t want anyone to talk to me. If you stay out of my way, then I will return several times a year to spend roughly the same amount of money. Deal?” She had nodded, and I’ve been shopping there for four years.

After damaging my credit card, I left the mall and drove to Stratford Oaks Assisted Living Facility.

“Mornin’, Charlie.” I smiled at the security guard in the fern-filled lobby.

“Mornin’, Ms. Hayes.”

I had hoped to be able to really talk to my father, but today wasn’t going to be one of those days.

“Sophie!” He smiled broadly at me and called me by my mother’s name. I hate that I look like her.

“Jack.” I smiled warmly, approaching him, this half-stranger who no longer knew me by my real name most of the time. He looked thinner by the day. They told me he resisted all foods but pie. Why pie? They used to go to some place down in Greenwich Village and order pieces of it after the theater.

“Come here, Sophie. I have to tell you the funniest story.”

I listened to his tales of authors and editors in New York’s 1940s literary circles. My father had worked for Simon & Schuster. I laughed where I was supposed to laugh and feigned shock where I was supposed to feign shock. I had heard all these stories many times before. “Sophie” patted his bony hand and smiled and went along with the whole charade. I waited patiently for a moment when lucidity would peek through like a ray of sunshine streaming down from behind a cumulus cloud. Sometimes I was rewarded, feeling like some people do when they see a magnificent beam filtering down—that perhaps there is a God in heaven after all. Other times, the clouds stubbornly shut out the sun, leaving both Dad and me in dreary grayness.

“Well, Jack, I really must be going.”

“So soon, Sophie? So soon? Our time together is always so brief. I wish your divorce was final.”

“It will be soon, Jack. Then we can be together always.”

The doctors tell me not to go along with his fantasies. “Bring him back to the present,” they say. But I refuse to deny him these afternoons of happiness. He always remembers the same years. My mother and he were dating. It was before I came along. Before she abandoned us both. Before all the heartache.

“I love you, Sophie.”

“I love you, too, Jack.”

The clouds parted.

“For heaven’s sake, Cassie, how long have you been standing there?”

“Only a minute or two, Daddy.”

“Come give your Dad a big old hug.”

I grabbed him tightly, smelling his Royal Copenhagen cologne, rubbing my face against the soft terry-cloth of his blue robe.

“How’s my genius daughter?”

“Just fine, Dad. Guess what?” I said, sitting down on the hassock by his slippered feet.

“What?”

“I’m going to work with Roland Riggs.”

He leaned back in his chintz chair and smiled.

“As if you hadn’t before…but, my God, Cassie, you’ve hit the big time.”

“I know. And I’m going away for a few weeks. To stay with him while we work on his new novel. He lives on Sanibel Island.”

“Bring me back a conch shell.”

I laughed. “I will. Can you believe it? Roland Riggs!”

We talked for about a half hour. I held on to every clear word. Then I could see him growing tired.

“I really need to get going, Dad.”

I leaned over and hugged him again.

“I love you.”

“I love you, too. And I’m very proud of you.”

“I know, Dad. I know.”

I fought to keep the tears from coming and stood.

“Tell me everything when you return.”

“I will.”

“Don’t forget a thing.”

“I won’t, Dad.” I smoothed the hand-knitted afghan over his legs and held onto his hand one last time.

Then I walked down the linoleum floors of the hallway. Royal Copenhagen was replaced by antiseptic hospitalish clean. “I won’t forget a thing, Daddy,” I whispered. I wished he wouldn’t either.

4

“L aptop?”

“Check.”

“Bathing suit?”

“Lou, this really isn’t necessary.”

“Bathing suit?” he said, his voice a little more insistent.

“Check.” Lou was going to send me off with the precision of a military operation. We stood in the parking garage of my building, his black Jaguar next to my yellow monstrosity. Looking like we’d just completed a mob hit, we stared into my trunk.

“Pajamas?”

“I brought a kimono.”

“No can do. Pajamas, Cassie. You cannot sleep naked in Roland Riggs’s house. What if there’s a fire?”

“You’ve become a freakish version of a Jewish grandmother.”

“Pajamas?”

“Robe.”

“Well, I knew this would happen. So hold on…” He went to his car and fumbled in the front seat. “Here.” He smiled, shoving a Victoria’s Secret pink-and-white shopping bag at me. Inside was a very tasteful and elegant set of lounging pajamas.

“What? No oversize South Park sleepshirt?”

Ignoring me, he continued. “Cell phone?”

“Check.”

“Daytimer?”

“Check.”

“Coffeemaker?”

“Check.” We had decided I should have my own coffeemaker in my room so I wouldn’t have to greet Roland Riggs in the mornings pre-caffeine.

“Coffee beans.”

“Check.”

“Grinder.”

“Check.”

“Double latte with two sugars for the road?”

“No…I figured I’d stop on the way.”

“If you stop, you’ll be late. Can you this once be punctual? Hold on.” Again he bent into the Jag and emerged with a tall double latte from my favorite coffee bar.

“You happen to have a tall, dark, and handsome guy in there who also cooks?” I took the latte and set it on the roof of my Caddy.

“No. But I thought of everything else. That’s why we’re a good team.”

He smiled at me, and we had another one of our awkward moments. I knew he thought of me as a daughter. He and Helen never had children. But she had always been the one with the easy, affectionate gestures. A tall, graceful blonde, with the aura of Grace Kelly, she was the one who bought my Christmas gifts—always something truly personal and perfect. A first-edition copy of The Sun Also Rises. An antique cameo pin for my blazer lapel. A tortoiseshell-and-silver brush-and-comb set engraved with my monogram. Helen gave sentimental gifts chosen to show how much she and Lou loved me. Without Helen, Lou faced the daunting prospect of conveying his emotions without her. Since her death, he hugged me clumsily. Mumbled when it felt right. Nursed me through self-pitying moments with visits to our favorite dive bar. But Helen had humanized Lou; they were a perfect pair, and without her he was totally adrift.

“The best team in publishing.” I hugged him. We were about the same height. He patted my back.

“Call me.”

“I will. You’re going to miss me.” I pulled away.

“Oh sure. You after two pots of coffee barking at me over the schedules and covers. Hell, I might actually get some work done with you gone.” He cleared his throat. “You better get going.”

I threw my pajamas in the trunk, donned my Ray-Bans, and took my latte.

“Admit it.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll miss you. Now get going.”

I eased my car out of its tight parking space, waved and was on my way, trying not to think of Michael Pearton. But the mind, even my caffeine-hyped mind, doesn’t work that way. I drove across the Florida Everglades, heading to ward Sanibel Island, and tried—hard—not to think of his voice. But the harder I tried, the more vividly his face and disembodied voice drifted toward me, like a phantom passenger on my soft leather front seat.

I forced myself to think of Lou and Simple Simon, which he made me re-read three times. Lou had been impossible since Roland Riggs’s call. Every day he had new instructions. “Hook up your e-mail if you can. Right away. Call me the second you finish reading the manuscript. Tell me what he looks like. See if you can find out if he’ll do publicity for the book. Is he willing to do interviews?” I hadn’t seen him so hyped up by the possibility of a book since he courted movie legend Joan Fontaine to write her memoirs. (She declined.)

“Lou, shut up,” I had said. “You’re making me nervous. He’s just a guy. He pisses standing up like all the rest of you.”

“Sometimes I piss sitting down.”

“You know, Lou, that’s a little more information than I need to know.”

“Christ, I get to hear about every time you have your period. We brace for your PMS like it’s a hurricane crossing the Caribbean and heading dead-on towards Boca. You can hear about how I sit.”

I smiled to myself as I drove. Think of Lou and Roland Riggs—was I talking to myself already?—not Pearton. I flipped on my stereo, popped in my Elvis Costello CD and steered toward Alligator Alley while listening to “Indoor Fireworks.”

Alligator Alley is a lonesome, flat expanse of highway stretching from one coast of Florida to the other. As far as the eye can see in any direction is Everglades. Reeds and swamp, the occasional scruffy tree. I presume alligators. And dead bodies. Mafia hits take place in the ’glades. At least that’s what Joe “Boom-Boom” Grasso told me. We published his book about life in the Gambino crime family.

Empty mile after mile of swamp ate at my nerves. I gave up and allowed Michael to invade my thoughts. The mark of a good editor is an anal-retentive mind that never forgets a detail. With my typical obsessiveness, I replayed every conversation I’d had with Michael over the last five years.

So much of what passed between us was banter at first. Indoor fireworks. But somehow, over the years, we had progressed to intimate all-nighters about God (he tried to persuade me to give up my agnosticism), writing, dreams, Freud (we both concurred—sometimes a cigar is just a cigar), and even my father and mother. I forced his face from my mind by singing along with Elvis. Every time I tried too hard to make Michael vanish, he returned to my thoughts, his enigmatic smile staring up from his jacket photo. I felt my stomach tighten slightly.

Two hours after my departure from Boca, my banana-mobile and I emerged from the ’glades and proceeded toward the island. If you’re into the beach and the sun and palm trees and sand—which I am not—then Sanibel is indeed a paradise. I hadn’t yet spoken to Roland Riggs, but he had given Lou explicit directions to his house. For a New Yorker, any directions that start, “Make a right onto Periwinkle Way” bodes ill.

Driving along Periwinkle, one lane in either direction, I cursed the blue-haired in front of me, steering her Caprice with all the agility and speed of an Indy racer on thorazine. At this pace, I took in Sanibel Island. Dairy Queen. A pizza place. A real estate agency. A shell shop. Not a coffeehouse in sight. No bar I’d consider calling my home away from home. I’d never survive a month.

I followed the directions, winding my way to the water, finally arriving at an immense wrought-iron gate. I couldn’t even make out a house. Grasses and dune-like mounds of sand blocked my view. Climbing out of my car, I approached an intercom mounted on the gate. I pressed a button and waited. I pressed again.

“Hello?” A female voice answered.

“Hello. This is Cassie Hayes. Is this the home of Roland Riggs?”

“Sí. Hold on.”

The gate buzzed and swung open. I got back in my car and drove through. The driveway—if you could call it that—was gravel and sand and meandered its way to an immense house that stood on top of a dune but was perched on stilts like a heron.

I parked at another iron-filigree gate that led into a garden. Leaving everything in my car, I pushed on the gate, surprised at how nervous I felt. I was coming face-to-face with one of the literary giants of the century. Barbara Walters would have coldcocked Katie Couric and Diane Sawyer for this moment.

5

A bove the surf noise of the Gulf of Mexico rippling toward shore, I heard a bubbling, gurgling sound. Glancing around the garden, I spotted a fish pond filled with koi. Flashes of gold-and-white-speckled fish lazily swam, flicks of their tails catching beams of sun. A cat perched on the stone ledge surrounding the pond. All white, with green eyes, it licked its paws and stared at me.

“Hey cat,” I said, offering it a nod. Then I noticed at least ten other cats sprawled throughout the garden. Orchids hung from tree branches—white and hot pink and purple, all in full bloom and thriving. Other flowers and bushes exploded with a blend of scents—citrus and jasmine. Fruit trees and avocado trees grew, limes and oranges and nectarines ripe for the plucking. Azaleas and gardenias grew—not an easy feat in Florida. Cedar benches and a glider nestled near particularly restful spots. Someone clearly loved gardening. It was a monumental task to coax these flowers to grow in the brutal Florida sun…and the sandy soil. Riggs must have trucked in a farm-full of real soil.

I approached the house, for the first time really noticing its size. Made of glass and stone and wood, it offered views of the water on three sides. A frosted glass-and-wood door, surrounded by hanging orchids, stood atop a narrow slate and rock staircase. I climbed the stairs, rang the bell, and waited.

Finally, the door swung open, and there stood America’s greatest living author. Roland Riggs was white-haired and tall. I’d forgotten no one had seen a picture of him since 1977. He wore round silver spectacles that accentuated his clear, blue eyes. His skin was tanned but wrinkled and he smiled, revealing pure white teeth and a pair of craggy dimples. He looked like a vision of America’s perfect grandfather.

“Cassie Hayes.” He extended a liver-spotted, wrinkly hand and firmly shook mine.

“Yes, sir.”

“Call me Roland…where’s your stuff?” He craned his neck.

“In my car, down by the garden gate.”

“We’ll get it later. How’s lunch sound? Maria has cooked a plate of enchiladas.”

“Terrific.”

“Splendid.” He turned and led me into his house. He had a slight shuffle to his gait, and his shoulders stooped a bit. His white hair stood up on its ends, a bit of an Einstein-do. I couldn’t help but notice he was barefoot. He was wearing a pookah shell necklace. Checkered boxer shorts peeked beneath a pair of crisply ironed tan shorts. The Bee Gees were playing on his stereo. As “Staying Alive” pulsed in the background, I watched him sway back and forth a time or two, involuntarily I think, as people do when lost in a song. He had terrible rhythm. As I followed the man whose words had changed the way America talked about war, I smiled to myself. He wasn’t like any grandfather I’d ever known.

Stepping inside Roland Riggs’s kitchen was like walking into something out of a Creature-Feature show. Plants didn’t just grow in the windowsill, where sunlight streamed in through triple panes of glass. They grew everywhere. In fact, I wondered if a kitchen counter even existed beneath all the plants. It was like The Day of the Trifids. Only no Trifids, just plants.

“What are all these things?”

“Potato bonsai.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Potato bonsai.”

“I’ve never heard of that.”

“Most people haven’t. It’s an art form. When you were a little girl, did you ever try to grow a potato? Stick one in water with the toothpicks and all that?”

I tried to think back to my childhood. My mother would never have touched a food item that needed cooking. Our housekeeper believed the kitchen was her own territory and threatened death to all who did not respect her domain. My father? He helped me write a 130-page paper on misogyny in literature for my fifth-grade end-of-year English project. Growing potatoes and other simple child pleasures were not in his repertoire. But I was meeting the famous Roland Riggs for the first time. So I did what I do so well with all my authors.

“Of course,” I lied.

“Well, Maria takes it one step further. She tends to these little potatoes here until she can make bonsai out of them. And then she tends to those. See, over there?”

Sure enough, little bonsai plants sat on a corner of the counter in beautiful glazed Japanese pots. Of course, most bonsai plants I have ever seen—which admittedly is not many—created little scenes of Japanese men fishing or sitting on a bench. Or perhaps no scene at all, just the bonsai curving gracefully. These bonsai each had a unique scene of tiny troll dolls—nude—sitting on high chairs or hugging each other, with their trademark Don King fright hairdos sticking straight up in an array of colors from green and yellow to a blinding hot pink.

“This is an art form I have never seen before,” I commented. Truthfully.

“She’s quite amazing. And now…” He smiled and led me to a beautiful oak-plank table in the dining room. “You get to partake of her other art form. Cooking. Maria is from Mexico, and she is unparalleled in her cooking skills. More evidence of her artistry,” he said, with a flourish of his hand.

Ten minutes later, I was tasting the enchiladas. My mouth was burning. Maria, his housekeeper, apparently cooked with a bottle of hot sauce in her belt like a Mexican gunslinger. Only she was slinging fire.

“You like them?” Roland asked from across the dining-room table, polished to a sheen. We could have fit sixteen around it.

“Like them?” My eyes watered, and my voice was hoarse with tears. “I need cold liquid. Ice.”

I hadn’t yet seen Maria. I assumed she was cleaning in some other part of the house. Perhaps she was trying to kill me. And Roland Riggs.

Genially, he rose and walked over to the refrigerator, one of those blend-into-the-cabinetry custom-made types. Simple Simon apparently provided quite an income to Riggs.

“Beer? Cold soda? Ice water? Juice?”

The moment of truth. Let on that I was a coffee-slugging, tequila-loving hedonist? Well, there was no way I was going to hide all my bad habits for a month.

“Beer.”

He came over to the table with two Coronas and two lime wedges.

“How’s Lou?”

“Good. He sends his best. I actually need to call him and set up my laptop and e-mail if that’s okay.”

“I never thought the computer would be so big. The Internet…do you know they have over a hundred Web sites devoted to me? That puzzles me.”

“You’re an enigma. You disappeared.”

“Yes, but they post fuzzy photos of me…supposedly me. Someone who vaguely looks like me. One hundred sites…” he shook his head from side to side.

“Anytime someone pulls a disappearing act, seems like people can’t handle it. For God’s sake, how many idiots out there think Elvis is still alive?”

“You mean he’s dead?”

I choked on my enchilada but then spotted a twinkle in his eye.

“You know what I do sometimes?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“I invent a name for myself, and I bash myself on the Web sites.”

“Really?”

“Sure. I make up a chat room name like ‘Simonsucks’ and I visit the Web sites and post how I think Simple Simon is a load of crap.”

“What happens?”

“I get flamed, of course. People send me all kinds of terrible e-mail. No one has ever caught on that it’s me.”

He looked quite pleased with himself. I took in a breath. “God, these enchiladas are hot. Aren’t you having some?”

“Shh. No, I’m not hungry. Maria is a blessing, but this hot food is all she cooks. I can’t cook at all, so I…make do. But Maria makes a fuss when I don’t eat what she puts in front of me. A mother hen kind of thing. So keep a secret and say I ate a few.” With that he went into the kitchen and took a clean plate from the cabinet and started rinsing it under the faucet. “I put it in the drying rack, and she thinks I ate.”

Next he took two enchiladas from the casserole dish they had been baked in and dumped them down the garbage disposal, running it swiftly while looking over his shoulder.

“You know that night a long time ago when you met Lou?”

He nodded and walked back to the table.

“Did it really last a weekend? A three-day bender?”

“Near as I can recall. I do remember thinking Lou was very smart and if I ever wrote a sequel to Simple Simon I’d want to work with him. Of course, I didn’t think it would take me this long.”

“Have you been working on it this whole time?”

“God no. I’m not that pathetic.”

“Can I see it?”

“The manuscript?”

I nodded and washed down another burning bite of food.

“How fast do you work?”

“Very.”

“Well, then I think we should wait. I want you to understand why I wrote the book first. Otherwise you won’t understand it.”

“Post-modern?”

“Uh…not exactly.”

I lifted my fork, about to subject myself to another bite, when two rabbits appeared from behind a living room chair. They hopped toward the table. I put down my fork and squinted. I blinked. I blinked again. One of the rabbits sat up on its haunches and licked its paws. For a moment, I thought I was hallucinating. Roland turned around to see what I was looking at.

“Oh…those two fellows are Pedro and José. They’re Norwegian dwarf bunnies. Siamese. See how they kind of resemble a Siamese cat around their noses?”

I nodded. “And they just hop around the house? Like that? Loose all the time.”

“Don’t worry. They’re not vicious or anything.”

I looked at his face, trying to discern how serious he was. Apparently very. His eyes registered concern about my fear of loose rabbits, so I tried to put him at ease.

“I wasn’t worried that they’re vicious. I…I just never knew anyone who had them just…hopping around like that.”

“Later you might see Cecelia. She’s a white one. More shy. We think she might be pregnant. They’re housebroken, you know.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Most of the time. I occasionally find rabbit poop on the bathroom carpet. I keep telling Maria it’s because the carpet is green and they think it’s grass.”

I stood and slowly approached Pedro, who wisely saw I was not an animal lover and hopped away.

“So you like rabbits?”

“I never thought about it, actually.”

With that, Maria burst through the door carrying an armload of fresh cucumbers from an as-yet-unseen vegetable garden.

“Maria, this is our houseguest, Cassie Hayes.”

“Hello,” she smiled, her black eyes open wide.

“Hi.” I was struck by how beautiful she was. She was probably my age. Her dark eyes were framed by jet-black lashes, and her raven hair trailed halfway down her back in a braid. She didn’t wear a trace of makeup, and her skin was a deep yellow-brown. Wide cheekbones and a classic nose made her look like an Incan sculpture. At the same time, her hands were rough and chapped as they clutched her vegetables, and she wore ripped jeans and a T-shirt. She was chubby by the standards of Vogue. But then again any woman who has actually gone through puberty and grown breasts and hips is fat according to Vogue.

“Maria lives in the guesthouse on the other side of the pool.”

“Did you eat lunch yet, Mr. Riggs?”

“Sí, Maria.”

“You, too?” She looked at me.

“Yes.”

“You like it?”

More lies. “Delicious.” Anxious to change the subject, I asked about Cecilia. “So how many babies do rabbits have at once?”

Maria answered as she started washing and chopping vegetables, “I’m not sure. This is my first bunny birth.”

As she chopped vegetables, she set aside a little pile of cut-up pieces. She saw me look at them.

“For my birds.”

“Birds?”

“Yes. Sweet birds. Sing beautifully.”

I looked at Roland. He silently shook his head. In a moment I knew why. The loudest squawk I ever heard emanated from a sunroom off of the kitchen. It was a cross between a shriek and a banshee howl.

“One minute, Pepito!” Maria glowed. “My babies. Them and Mr. Riggs. Now shoo, I must start cooking dinner. If you liked my lunch, wait until supper. Very hot!”

“Great,” I smiled, completely lacking enthusiasm. A month of this and my ulcer would be the size of a crater.

“Let’s get you settled in.” Roland stood. We went through the gardens to my car and took out my suitcase and bags. Between the two of us, we carried everything in one trip.

Walking back to the house, I forced myself not to stare at him. I was staying with an icon, and part of me remembered when I was a little girl. There were three Christmases I remembered when my mother hadn’t yet left, and my father hadn’t yet broken down and everything was perfect. The tree was decorated like something out of a Fifth Avenue store window; a toy train chugging beneath it. Our apartment smelled of cider and mulling spices. It was a damn Currier and Ives card. And I remember pinching myself to see if it was real. And when I knew for sure it was real, I tried to remember every detail. I stared and absorbed and thought to myself, even then, that perfect doesn’t come along too often. I would remember everything about those Christmases forever. Well, for an editor, Roland Riggs was better than Christmas. He was history, and I was in his house, and when I was old and gray, I wanted to be able to remember everything about my stay. Every painting on the wall. Every word he said. Of course, I needed to remember it all for my nightly reports to Lou. He’d never forgive me if original galleys from Simple Simon sat on the bookshelf, and I didn’t tell him. Of course, neither one of us expected I’d be staying with Dr. Doolittle.

My room was better than the Four Seasons. It had its own private balcony overlooking the Gulf of Mexico and was decorated in French country, painted in a shade of blue to rival the sea’s. I felt almost serene when I stepped inside, though my eyes instinctively darted around, looking for a discreet place to plug in my coffeemaker.

“Over here is a desk…and you can plug in your laptop here.”

“Won’t I tie up your phone line?”

Roland Riggs leaned his head back and laughed loudly like a drunk in a bar whose bartender has just one-upped him in the joke department. I arched one eyebrow.

“Except for Lou, I haven’t called anyone in fifteen years. Maybe my old editor a couple of times. Then he died. But you get the picture.”

“Okay fine. So the computer won’t bother you.”

“No. I surf the Net myself some mornings. Do you get on your computer much before six a.m.?”

“No offense, but I don’t breathe much before six.”

He roared with laughter again. I realized the unseen parrot was merely mimicking its landlord. “Splendid. Well then, I will let you get unpacked. Take a nap if you want. Stroll the beach. I’ll expect you for dinner at six-thirty. Oh…hold on.” He withdrew a small roll of Tums from his pocket. “If you thought lunch was hot, you may want to keep a pack of these in your pocket at all times. I have a six-month supply of these little rolls in the linen closet at the end of the hall, behind the big stack of blue guest towels that I never use because I’ve never had any guests. Until you.”

I couldn’t help myself. “Wouldn’t it be easier to just tell your housekeeper you don’t like the food so hot?”

His eyes snapped wide open as if he’d just experienced a moment of sudden enlightenment. He appeared to think for a moment. Then he just shook his head.

“Well, then, I’ll see you for dinner.” He turned and shut the door behind himself.

I opened the French doors leading to my balcony, and then turned around and raced to the phone. I found my Daytimer, pulled out my calling card and dialed. Lou answered on the first ring.

“Well?”

“Lou, how much money do you think Simple Simon brings in?”

“I don’t know. A lot. It’s required reading in every high school in America. Why?”

“You wouldn’t believe this house, Lou. I was sort of expecting some rundown place inhabited by a hermit. But it’s sunny and beautiful and huge! Right now, I am looking out on my own private balcony. The Gulf of Mexico is rolling in. And he has gardens. Beautiful gardens with orchids and ponds and waterfalls and jasmine. It reminds me of Turkey. The scent of jasmine in the air. And everything is custom-built. The staircase is made of teak. The closet—” I walked over and smelled “—I was right, is cedar. The kitchen—not that I cook—but if I did, I would love it. All restaurant-quality stuff. The stove had eight burners.”

“What is he expecting? An army? The guy doesn’t see anyone. What’s he need eight burners for?”

“What does anybody need excess for? Why do you have seven fishing rods and three sets of custom golf clubs? To have it.”

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“How does he seem after all these years?”

“Nice. Kind of odd. The other half of the story is he’s got more pets and plants than a zoo and botanical garden put together.”

“Pets?”

“Loose rabbits hopping through the house.”

“Just so long as you don’t tell me he has a Push-Me-Pull-You or whatever that thing is called.”

“He has cats. And a parrot. And potato bonsai.”

“Potato what?”

“Don’t ask.”

“Have you seen the book?”

“No.”

“Have you talked about it?” I heard the anxiety in his voice.

“Only to have him say he’d like us to spend a few days getting to know each other first.”

“Jesus Christ!”

“What?”

“No offense, Cassie, but you are hardly the poster child for Miss Congeniality. What if he’s expecting someone different?”

“Well, he’s got me. And except for that prick Jack Holloway, I’ve gotten along with every author I have ever had.”

“What about Gussbaum?”

“Okay. Except for Holloway and Gussbaum—”

“And Daisy Jones…”

“Look, trust me, he’s nice enough. I can get along with Roland Riggs.”

“Let’s hope so.”

“You want to hear something else weird?”

“Of course.”

“His housekeeper is from Mexico. She cooks all this food. I mean for lunch she cooked enough enchiladas to feed Mazatlan. And spicy. Burn your mouth out, eyes water, nose-running spicy. I was afraid my nose was going to drip right in my food, for God’s sake.”

“A little less detail, please.”

“But get this. Roland Riggs hates hot food. He carries Tums with him around the house. Isn’t that weird? Why not tell her to cook something else?”

“Maybe he doesn’t want to hurt her feelings. Remember how your dad used to hate those German dishes what’s-her-name cooked?”

“Mrs. Honish?”

“Yeah. He hated all that shit.”

“Me, too.”

“But she was a good housekeeper except for the food.”

“Yeah. Maybe. She’s beautiful by the way. The housekeeper. She is take-your-breath-away beautiful. Anyway, let me get going. I have to check my e-mail. Anything earth-shattering on your end?”

“Nothing. It’s Saturday. I didn’t even go in to the office.”

“Okay. Well, I’m just going to take in my view here. Make some coffee.”

“Call me tomorrow.”

“Or later if I have something to tell you.”

“Later, kid.”

“Later.”

I hung up and unzipped my huge carry-on bag, pulling out my coffeemaker. I plugged it in and set it on my desk and went about preparing a pot. My chest burned. I unwrapped a Tums and chewed on it. Next I plugged in my laptop and dialed up my e-mail.

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