The Four Corners of the Sky_ A Novel - Michael Malone [160]
Brad was defensive. “I just cut a deal. And she checked the jet in fine, so that’s no problem. What’s wrong with saving a marriage? Marriage is a sacrament.” He paused. “I think. I’m not really a churchgoer anymore.”
Now ready with an alibi, Georgette said Annie was spending the night in Palm Beach at a friend’s home, a female friend, someone she had met recently in Chesapeake Cove, someone whose name Georgette couldn’t recall just now. Annie had phoned her earlier tonight and had mentioned how she was going to stay with this friend and how she’d be back in Miami early in the morning to talk with her father’s doctor at Golden Days. Annie always did what she said she was going to do, right? She was undoubtedly asleep right now, with her phone charging overnight. So Brad should just stop worrying; he should check into his own room at the Dorado, go to bed, and call Annie in the morning.
Brad was accustomed to taking women’s advice. He decided to do exactly as Georgette suggested. “Thanks, Georgia. You’re a peach.” Brad had long made “Georgia” into a seductive intimacy. He added, “I don’t know what this Atlanta boy would do without you. Night night.”
“Night night.”
“Tell Annie to call me if she calls you.”
“I’ll tell her.”
“You’re the best. I love you.”
Georgette had to remind herself (as she headed down to her kitchen where the birthday cake Sam had given her probably hadn’t been too damaged by being thrown in the trash bin), she had definitely to remind herself, that getting involved even in the most peripheral way with Brad Hopper would be less like eating a healthy peach and more like eating a gallon of Häagen-Dazs Triple Chocolate with a Sara Lee pound cake on the side. She would regret it.
Georgette wheeled around in the hallway and returned to bed.
***
At the Dorado, on his way to the elevator, Brad was drawn into the bar by the murmur of women’s voices and the chinkle of a cocktail shaker. He decided to have a nightcap. Gliding onto a blue bar stool, he fell quickly into a conversation with a tall silvery blonde who was drinking vodka martinis with a less-attractive brunette. They both wore low-cut pullovers and very high heels whose toes looked lethal. Brad offered to buy “the ladies” another round. The brunette said that unfortunately she was just leaving and was going to catch hell for getting home so late. She tottered away, dangerously tacking. The blonde, however, accepted the drink offer, explaining immediately to Brad that she’d had a very annoying day. On top of annoying problems at work, there had been an annoying run-in with her ex-husband, and an annoying quarrel with her brand-new fiancé with whom she had planned to celebrate her engagement tonight here at the Dorado, her favorite restaurant.
Brad made a comic and appealing show of searching under the barstools. So, where was her fiancé? He wasn’t here, he wasn’t there, where was he?
The blonde laughed. Her laugh wasn’t a good one and she seemed to know it and shut it off. She said that her fiancé, a financial planner, had been forced to fly out tonight with his boss, all the way to Japan, leaving her to eat dinner here at the Dorado with her friend, who wasn’t even really her friend but her future sister-in-law, who’d just left. It was all extremely annoying.
Brad couldn’t have been more sympathetic.
***
A few miles away, on a starlit beach, Dan and Annie were slow dancing in the surf. From the open door of the blue pickup truck, parked beside them, Etta James sang, accompanied by lush violins.
At last
My love has come along.
My lonely days are over
And life is like a song…
It was such easy dancing for Annie, for whom pleasure had never come easily. Such slow, easy dancing. Who would have thought you could kiss, be kissed like this, while you danced? Not Annie, not until now.
Overhead, a meteor shower fanned out to the east and west. They watched the faint shooting stars.
She said,