I want to grab her and pull her close. I want her fingers back in my hair, her hands all over me. But she’s a neighbor. So much could go wrong, and if it does, we’d still have to see each other every day.
So instead, I stand and hold out my hand for a formal shake. Even after all that champagne, I can trust my own self-discipline.
The dusk darkens to magenta and exits, and I must do the same.
“Excellent sunset you put on for me,” I say, attempting banter. It’s not very good.
“I expect you’d have seen it too,” she counters. “Or are you on the sunrise side?”
“Sunrise,” I say.
Her eyes dance over my face, her smile a question I won’t ask. I’m not offering anyone a sunrise. Not yet.
I place my empty glass on her windowsill. I stayed for just one – one bottle, I see – and it is high time I left. I’ve already leaned far too close to this flame. I won’t mention it to Jill.
“Take some blinis, Dirk,” she insists, and presses another full tray into my hands. “Can’t let them spoil.”
It’s only when I’m back in my own place that I realize what she’s done. I’ll have to return her silver tray. This Lucy is exactly the kind of woman Jill warned me about, a predator. But maybe I want to be caught.
Back inside my own apartment, it is too quiet, too neat; my furniture too perfect. Imagine Lucy remembering me from way back then, from that television interview, when my soccer career collapsed. I shake my head and touch my scar, flat now, and practically invisible.
Lucy already knows too much about me. What I regret is not asking her more about herself.
Chapter 18
Lucy
When I let Dirk out, he’s apologetic. His eyes duck back to me, as if he fears he’s offending me, as if he’s reluctant to leave. Perhaps he’s uncomfortable alone with me. Does he think I tricked him into attending, and only invited him?
It’s not the first time I’ve hosted parties when most invitees fail to show, so I don’t mind. Bart’s colleagues, the journalists, were notoriously fickle. They’d either be too busy filing their next story, or out elsewhere, at some media event or free show, downing more free alcohol.
I’m just about to turn off my lamps when there’s a quiet knock at my front door.
Did Dirk have a change of heart, or leave something behind? I open it with a smile, to a tiny woman with long white hair and pale purple glasses, the lenses thick as coke bottles.
She pushes one pale hand out to me, tentatively. In her other, she cradles an ornate bottle of something the color of lemonade.
