Sea Glass_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [7]
“Which corner would that be?”
Vivian suppresses a sigh. “The southeast corner, fourth floor,” she says.
“Yes, of course,” the desk clerk says, catching her eye. And she is certain that he is smiling.
The insolence. As if she’d just stepped off the street. As if she hadn’t been coming to the Highland for twenty years, ever since she was a girl. She turns, searching the lobby for a familiar face, and sees Asa Whitlock, who’s been summering at the hotel at least as long as Vivian has, huddled under a tartan blanket in a wicker wheelchair by the window. In the corner a woman in a frost green suit is standing next to a man in a panama hat and natty pants. The woman has smart town welts on her feet. The couple, like Vivian, seems to have just gotten off the train.
Vivian takes in the old horsehair sofas, the oil portraits on the walls, the carved pillars around which velvet banquettes have been placed for the guests, and she thinks how tired and dowdy the lobby looks, which, she supposes, is the point. Upstairs in her rooms there will be the old iron bed with the lilac sateen coverlet, the bureau with thin slats at the bottoms of the drawers that loosen on dry days, the sage tin ceiling she’s been known to stare at for hours at a time. Over the bureau will be the spotted mirror in which she will be able to make out only a partial image of herself (just as well at twenty-eight, she thinks) and on a low table by the window will be a chamber set — for show, thank God, and not for use.
Through the window over that low table, Vivian will be able to look at the ocean from her bed. Her favorite time of the day is shortly after her tea has been brought in the morning, when she props herself up against the pillows and the rattling iron head-board and gazes out to sea and empties her mind. Follies of the night before can be erased. The day to come not yet imagined.
“Vivian.”
A tall man bends and kisses her ear. “Dickie Peets,” she says.
“You just got here?” he asks.
“They’re being very rude about my room,” she says.
An exotic combination of lime and coconut lifts from Dickie’s skin. He holds a skimmer like a plate under his arm. Beyond him, through large double doors, the dining room is already set for lunch. Starched linen, polished silver, white crockery. It hasn’t changed a whit in twenty years, Vivian thinks. Dickie draws a silver case from the pocket of his linen jacket and offers her a cigarette.
“Who’s here?” she asks.
“John Sevens,” he says. “And Sylvia.” Dickie thinks a minute. “That makes a tennis party. You on?”
“I’ve got to unpack,” she says.
“You’re looking very well,” he says.
“Since when have you had specs?” she asks.
“Got them around Christmas. Blind as a bat, actually. Smashed my car.”
“Not the Freschetti.”
“The Isotta Fraschini. ‘Fraid so.”
“How awful,” Vivian says. “Were you hurt?”
“A knee thing,” Dickie says with perfect nonchalance. “Spent most of the winter in Havana, recuperating. You should try it. Havana, I mean.”
“I’m not very good on boats.”
“Fly,” he says. “Only forty-three hours from Boston — train and plane.”
“Really.”
“Jai alai. The casino. Rooftop dancing. Just your thing, Viv.”
She takes a long pull on her cigarette. Is he mocking her?
“How long are you here for?” he asks.
“The usual. Until September. How about you?”
“Bought a house here,” he says.
“You’re not serious,” Vivian says, aware of the desk clerk needing her attention. She deliberately ignores him. “Where?”
“The coast road. The Cote place. Had to fix it up and so forth. They’re nearly finished, though. I’ve got rooms here in the meantime,” Dickie says, stubbing his cigarette out in the glass ashtray on the reception desk.
“Miss Burton?” says the desk clerk.
“Got the makings of a sidecar in my room if you want a cocktail before lunch,” Dickie says.
Vivian thinks of icy drops of water sliding down the outside of an aluminum cocktail shaker.
“Make it very, very cold,” she says.
Vivian walks through pale azure hallways to her rooms. The porter opens the door