Flirting With Forever (33 page)

Peter took his first sip and let the hard work of the day slide off his shoulders. If the Guild wanted to make the Afterlife feel like a reward, they should forget the bocce bal and start serving up the cappuccino at Aldo’s instead. He hadn’t expected to like this twenty-first-century world, with its drab clothes, never-ending stream of roaring cars and inhabitants with a prodigious proclivity for talking loudly into their little communication boxes. In fact, given the destruction of his hopes with Cam and his subsequent anger with her over the book, he had ful y expected to hate it. But here at Aldo’s, amid the smel of roasted beans and cinnamon, the gentle hum of the steam machine and the scene of the high street at twilight framed in the wide front windows, he could almost forget the cares that had brought him low.

Without thinking, he flipped the thin leather-bound sketchbook lying open on the table to the back, gazing at the letter from Van Dyck he had placed there. It would be easy to stop her with this, far easier than this feverish painting that had kept him up night after night. And yet he could not bring himself to use it. Was it the ease with which that disreputable deed would be done or the disreputableness itself that stopped him? Mertons had seen his desperation that day in the time lab, but Mertons did not know Peter had found Van Dyck in the Afterlife earlier that day, before he’d come to the lab, in order to arm himself with the tool he would need in case everything else failed.

A child’s laughter made Peter look up. A lad of two or three, clinging to his mother’s leg, had reacted to a jumping dog outside the window. Peter looked at the boy’s wide blue eyes and blond cowlick and felt the same pang he always did. The boy looked at Peter, and Peter smiled.

Immediately the boy stuck a thumb in his mouth and hid his face.

Peter flipped the sketchbook to the page on which he’d been working and looked at his hands. Speckled with white and black paint, the flesh of his knuckles seemed to be growing looser every year. They were the hands of his father. He shook his head, thinking of the man in his army uniform looming over the entry hal in their home. How Peter had enjoyed being lifted in the air and swung in a circle as if he weighed no more than a bag of rags, then being brought tight against his father’s chest, feeling that rough wool against his cheek and struggling for breath.

“Bunny.”

The boy had appeared at Peter’s side and was looking at the latest sketch. Peter had been drawing as he waited for his cappuccino, thinking of the hil s of Westphalia.

“A hare, actual y,” Peter said, smiling, and the boy’s eyes went to Peter’s head, which had been shorn of its weighty locks at Mertons’s insistence, leaving only an inch or two of dark waves. “No, no. Not a hair on your head. A hare is a very large rabbit, with muscles and teeth.” He puffed himself up like a Viking about to attack. “Not nearly as nice as a bunny. What’s your favorite animal?”

The boy’s eyes darted anxiously to his mother, who was talking with an acquaintance in line. He put his finger in his mouth. “Tiger.”

“May I draw one for you?”

The boy chewed for a second, then nodded.

Peter bent over his pad. “Do you like them fierce or gentle?”

The lad’s eyes lit. “Fierce.”

“Ah, a brave one, are we?” Peter quickly sketched a tiger in the middle of a pounce, claws out, teeth bared and body forming a powerful arch.

“Shoes,” the boy said.

“On a tiger?”

He nodded, certain. Peter shrugged and added lace-tied shoes like the boy’s to the tiger’s back feet.

A woman’s voice said, “My goodness, you should rent yourself out to parties.”

Peter jumped to his feet, ful y expecting to greet the lad’s mother, but instead found himself eye to eye with the thin, dark-haired woman who had been Jacket’s model. He hadn’t seen her arrive and wondered how long she’d been in the shop.

“Good afternoon.” He bowed.

“Evening, real y, at this point.” She tilted her head toward the darkening streetscape outside. In her hand was a cup similar to his own, and she sipped it abstractedly, keeping her feline eyes on him. And then it struck him. How could he have missed the resemblance to Cam?

He tore the page out of his book and handed it to the boy, who took it and ran to his mother.

“Peter, right?” the woman said.

He nodded warily. “Yes.”

“I don’t think we were ever formal y introduced. I’m Anastasia.” She gave him a smile as breathtaking and elegantly formed as a horse taking a fence on the fields of Hampton.

Peter took her hand and shook it. “How odd. Cam has a sister named Anastasia.”

The smile caught like a shoe in a stile and nearly unseated its rider. Mertons had been working his information sources nearly as hard as Peter had been working the canvas this last week.

She dropped onto the chair beside him, curled a leg beneath her and gave him a friendly, self-effacing shrug.

“Shit happens.”

He sat down. “Indeed.”

“I like you better in these clothes,” she said. The smile returned.

Peter was wearing what Mertons cal ed dungarees, but Peter had been watching the men each day on his walk between the studio space Mertons had let and Aldo’s, or, more specifical y, he had been watching the women watching the men, and yesterday he’d had Mertons take him to a place where he’d purchased the silk shirt as wel as the tailored aubergine jacket he now wore.

He didn’t answer. He doubted sartorial choice was at the bottom of her appearance here. He wondered how she had found him.

“Jacket tel s me your name is Lely. Peter Lely.”

“Like the painter, yes.”

“You know Cam’s writing a book about Peter Lely?”

“I’ve heard that. Do you think it’s an al egory of some sort?” He gave her a forced smile.

“Were your parents admirers?”

“Of Peter Lely?”

“Yes.”

“I’d like to think so.”

Another long silence.

“Are you a painter as wel ?” She nodded toward the speckles on his hands.

“Aye.” He stole a glance over her shoulder, out into the street in which the first snow of the season swirled in the lamplight of the waiting cars. The day had grown colder—

unexpectedly colder, according to the proprietor here—and the snow seemed to have taken the town by surprise.

Anastasia was here on an expedition of some sort, and he hoped she would get to the point quickly and then be on her way.

“That’s, uh, quite a ring.”

He had been twisting the emerald without even noticing.

“May I?” She held out a palm.

He pul ed off the ring reluctantly and handed it to her. His other choice had been to put his hand in hers, and the notion of touching her did not appeal to him. She was in every way conceivable the opposite of her sister. Cool.

Coiled. Deceptively nonchalant. It was like sharing a table with a cobra.

She examined the ring closely. He thought of the Latin words he’d had engraved in the band at Ursula’s suggestion—
Per varios usus artem experientia fecit,
which translated roughly as “It takes a long time to bring excel ence to maturity”—and shifted. He felt as if Anastasia were perusing his personal diary.

“My Latin’s not great,” she said with a chuckle.

“Nor mine.”

She handed the ring back, letting her fingers brush his palm. “So, you sketch?” She turned the book toward her.

Peter wished he had thought to close it.

“I do. A little.”

“You’re quite good.”

He bowed.

Anastasia curled forward and regarded him closely. “Are you and Cam involved?”

At last, the heart of the matter. Or was it? “If you’re looking out for Cam’s best interests, I might suggest starting your work a little closer to home.” As the cars stopped at the red traffic beacon outside, the high street fil ed with people crossing to the other side. It was the time of day when workers returned from their jobs.

The smile on Anastasia’s smile grew tighter. “Touché.”

He waited for her to ask him to take Cam off Jacket’s hands, for that would mean Jacket’s heart was not committed, but Peter doubted Jacket had the capacity to be committed, let alone recognize that he was, and it was clear Anastasia had no more interest in Jacket than she would have in a piece of squab pie. Jacket was a carnal first course, to be consumed and forgotten.

“I notice you’re stil in Pittsburgh.”

Another burst of travelers. He looked at the shop’s clock.

“I’m finishing a project.”

“Is it one Cam is helping you with?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean by that.”

“You know, putting it in the hands of the right people, bringing it to the attention of critics?”

“Do you think I would use her in that way?”

She took a long sip. “It’s been known to happen.”

“Your concern for your sister is admirable.”

“Look,” she said, “it
is
possible to be concerned about my sister and fucking her boyfriend at the same time. Cam is too nice, too naïve. Men have always used her. It’s the reason I’ve never liked Jacket al that much. I’m just wondering if it’s the reason I shouldn’t like you.”

There she was
. In a dark orange shirt that set off her hair and a pair of formfitting breeks that made him ache with the memory of their joining. The wind blew and she clutched her sides. She hadn’t dressed warmly enough. He watched her stride across the street, looking up at the sky, then stop stride across the street, looking up at the sky, then stop when she reached the corner and open her mouth, catching a snowflake on her tongue. Peter’s breath caught. The last person he had known to do that was Ursula.

“Happy news.” He watched Cam wait for the traffic to clear in order to cross again. “You may choose a different reason for not liking me. That one doesn’t apply.”

But he realized with a start Anastasia wasn’t listening anymore. She had fol owed his gaze and was watching Cam, too. He felt the heat rise above his col ar.

Anastasia wheeled back, mouth agape. “You’re in love with her.”

He didn’t answer, couldn’t. His throat had turned to dust.

“Pardon me.” He stood, eager to remove himself from her gaze. He ventured to the counter and signaled for another cup. When his breathing slowed, he turned back to Anastasia, who was fiddling in her purse. She snapped it closed and gave him a long look. He tried not to let his gaze wander to the orange shirt, stil waiting to cross on the far corner.

“You being in love with my sister,” Anastasia said when he returned. “That doesn’t work for me. Not at al . Jacket is supposed to be taking her to London, leaving me with the museum directorship. For a while there, I wasn’t sure, but Jacket’s a man, and, wel , let’s face it: his ethical system is not exactly sophisticated. Cheating he’s always been able to justify, but cheating with Cam’s sister? That’s a trickier proposition. There’s only one way to make that go down easier in that little pea-sized thing he cal s a conscience, and that’s by marrying her.”

and that’s by marrying her.”

Peter blanched. Anastasia’s machinations sickened him. “And what if I were to let Cam in on your little ruse?”

“Remember what I said about the male ethical system?

You may be the opposite of Jacket, but you’re stil easy to read. You’d cut out your tongue before you’d tel Cam Jacket was sleeping with me. But you’re missing my point.

You’re a diversion I can’t afford.”

The light turned, and Cam began across the road, this time more quickly. Peter wondered why. In an instant he has his answer. Jacket stood on the corner, holding a long camel coat. She slid into it and turned into his arms, almost the movement of two dancers. Then he clasped her shoulder, and they walked slowly toward the entrance to Cam’s building.

Peter said mournful y, “I don’t think you’re going to have to worry.”