The muscles beneath Ginger’s black-and-tan coat ripple as she transforms from pet to guard dog. She leaps from the bed and stands at attention by the door, eyes alert. “I had her trained by monks,” Freya says, “but I drew the line at teaching her German. Too intimidating. She knows more commands than my ex-husband. But even the best guard dogs need to pee in the morning.” She kisses me. It’s a kiss I feel all the way down to my toes. “Did you know I was married?” she asks.
Freya eloped with an actor fromScene of the Crime, and they divorced a year later, when he had an affair with a reality star. His character got shot in the groin and was dismembered by a serial killer in the middle of that season. “Why would I know you were married?” I ask.
Freya slips out of bed, opens a wall safe, and retrieves a handgun. I scramble away from her. “Okay, I knew about your divorce. It was all over the internet!”
Freya slides a magazine into place. “That’s better,” she says, unsealing the door.
Sunlight streams into the room. Ginger trots out, nose to the ground, and my heart rate begins to return to normal. “Let me guess,” I say. “A perimeter check?”
“Ginger keeps me safe,” Freya says, nodding at the gun. “And so does this.”
She patters after the dog, and I settle into the bed. As nervous as the gun makes me, Freya’s as attractive as she was last night, and I’m thrilled to have woken up next to her. Plus, the bed is soft, and the sheets have a thread count I’ll probably never experience again for the rest of my life.
When Freya returns, she closes the steel door to keep Ginger on the other side and lays the handgun on the bedside table.
“Get that thing away from me,” I say.
“You must be a city boy.”
“I grew up in Hero.”
“Most people around here are used to guns.”
Freya releases the magazine, returns the gun to the safe, slides into bed beside me, and lights a cigarette, exhaling toward the ceiling. I take the cigarette from her, inhale, and cough.
“It’s a disgusting habit,” Freya says.
“Then quit.”
“I wish it were that easy. I do it to keep thin, to keep from completely disappearing now that I’m trying to get back in the game.” She inhales and lays her head on my chest. “We could stay here all day.”
I picture us lying together into the afternoon, working through the pack of cigarettes as though we’re in some ancient movie. A scene flashes through my mind: a man and a woman in bed after a night of passion, the man delighted by the turn of events. “Have you seenHarold and Maude?” I ask.
Freya grinds out the cigarette. “Do you mean the movie where a teenager sleeps with a seventy-nine-year-old Holocaust survivor?” she asks.
That is the movie I meant. And I suppose, based on Freya’s reaction and our age difference, I shouldn’t have asked the question at this particular moment, especially when she hits me with a pillow. “Harold andfuckingMaude?” she says. “Do I look seventy-nine years old to you?”
I cover my head, and she hits me again. I peek between my fingers as Ginger growls and tries to paw her way around the heavy steel door.Freya straddles me, the pillow raised. And don’t think I’ve forgotten the gun, either. She doesn’t look anywhere close to seventy-nine years old.
“I take it back!” I say.
“You can’t take it back. It’s been said, and now I won’t get the image out of my head. Ever! For the rest of my life.”
“I’m sorry,” I say.
Freya collapses onto the bed beside me and says, “Stay.”
I’m not sure who she’s talking to, but Ginger’s growls stop at once. “I have a thick skin,” Freya adds, getting out of bed, putting on a pink flannel robe, and tying her hair in a turquoise scrunchie. “But you spoiled the mood. Remember that the next time you say something dumb to a beautiful woman, Harold.”
“My name’s Charlie.”
“Not to me, it isn’t,” she says. “And get up. I want something decadent for breakfast. Please tell me you know how to cook.”
Chapter Sixteen
In the bathroom, I try my best to freshen up, smoothing my dark hair and brushing my teeth with an index finger. I’m taken aback by the purple welt on my forehead. I’d forgotten about the wound and the stitches, but seeing them returns me to yesterday’s events. I check my phone for a message from Seton, but nothing’s there. I’ll drive to the hospital as soon as Freya sends me on my way.
I search the medicine cabinet for an aspirin, moving aside a bottle of metallic-blue nail polish before glancing behind me. With Freya’s attention to security, my guess is that every room in this house has a camera—even the bathroom—and I bet she won’t appreciate seeing me searching through her things.
