Locked rooms - Laurie R. King [122]
“Yes,” I said with a grin. “Half my friends in England assume that San Francisco collapses on a yearly basis.”
“Flo said you're in London?”
“I do have a flat there, but we live on the south coast. I also spend a lot of time in Oxford.”
“That's right, she said you were a, whatchamacallit, bluestocking.”
“She probably said I spent my life with my nose in a book.”
“Something like that. Can't manage it, myself. Books, I mean. Ever since I graduated, anything but a novel brings me all out in hives.”
He had a nice laugh, pleasantly crooked white teeth, and—although he'd taken a minute to make the razor-sharp part down the middle of his hair and slick it into place—a nicely rakish blond stubble on his square cheekbones. He might not be much of a one for books, but in addition to being restful on the eyes, he was intelligent, thoughtful, and seemed to care a great deal for Flo. I was, theoretically, a member of the same “jazz generation” as the rest of Friday night's party, but in truth I hadn't known many of this sort of social animal with any intimacy, and hadn't expected to find a solid foundation beneath the self-consciously blasé pleasure-seeker. Maybe it was because Donny was a little older; maybe he was just made of stronger stuff.
Hearing our voices, Flo re-appeared. “Morning,” she said, taking the chair between us. “Is there any more coffee?”
Donny reached for her cup and stood up; as he went past, he mussed her already on-end hair affectionately. “Not a morning girl, my Flossie.”
“Hell, I'm full of pep,” she protested, then yawned.
He poured her coffee, placed it in front of her, then started opening various cupboards and taking things out. “How do you like what my old man calls ‘cackle berries'?” He held up a pair of eggs.
I placed a half-hearted objection, saying that I really ought to be doing the cooking for them, but Flo said, “Donny loves to mess around in the kitchen. It's going to drive the cook bananas, when we're married.”
“I didn't know,” I said. “Congratulations.”
“Oh, we haven't set a date or got a ring or any of that hooey,” she told me. “When we do, Mummy will take over, and it'll be just another rotten bore. We'll probably elope, but right now we're having too much fun. Plenty of time to be respectable when our livers give out.”
I shot a quick glance at Donny; he was breaking the eggs into a bowl, but from the side of his face, I thought perhaps the wild boy of the Blue Tiger might be more ready for the ring than his girl-friend was.
“Well, in any case,” I said, “it's a good thing he likes to cook, because otherwise you'd be eating burnt food chipped from the pan. I am no chef.”
Donny scrambled the eggs with some herbs that I hadn't noticed growing along the outer wall of the cabin—at least I assumed they were herbs and not some poisonous weed. The eggs tasted good, whatever the herbs' Latin names, eaten with sausages from the ice-box and toast heaped with Mrs Gordimer's jam. We ate on the terrace, which gathered the morning sun nicely. When our plates were polished and the toast basket was empty (Flo having pressed the last pieces on me) I cleared the table and made more coffee, returning to find Flo stretched out on one of the deck-chairs with her face to the sun, eyes closed like a cat.
“I'm gonna bake in the sun all day,” she declared.
“You'll get horribly red and sore,” Donny warned her.
“Oh, don't be wet, Donny. I don't care. I think I'll just move down here to the sticks and turn into a turnip.”
“A red turnip,” he commented.
“There should be a couple of beach umbrellas in the boat shed,” I offered. “If they haven't fallen to pieces. And canoes, a badminton net, and lawn bowls, if you're interested.”
The umbrellas hadn't fallen to pieces, not quite, and when Donny came across the lawn with a pair of them across his shoulder, he said that the shed's other forms of entertainment seemed in decent shape as well. He drove the pole of the most promising umbrella into a place in the lawn chosen by Flo,