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I was scuffing at the dirt, trying to conceal it among the ornate blue and gold pattern of one of the rugs, when the man cleared his throat on the stairs behind me.
I swiveled. My sweaty hair spun. My shoes flaked. I said, “Hi.”
He was familiar but I couldn’t place him. His hair was dirty-blond, his eyes dirty-blue—and they held a glint of mischief. He stood on the stairs, hand on the railing, looking self-confident and regal—the master of this ancient decrepit domain. He wore gray flannel trousers and a soft blue dress shirt, a thick cotton oxford that looked like it had been worn and washed into perfect comfort. He looked hot. I looked overripe. If I’d been between boyfriends, I would have felt self-conscious. Good thing I had Rip.
“See anything you like?” he asked, walking down the stairs toward me.
Oh, yeah. One thing I wouldn’t mind taking home. “I, um—my sister saw an old pot—I mean, an old box. A lacquer box—”
He smiled at my words, and I realized who he was. Ian.
Oh, my God. Not in my loose gray tee and baggy soccer shorts. I crammed my hair behind my ears in a desperate attempt to tidy myself, and toed the ground. Knocking more mud to the floor, of course.
“Anne Olsen!” he said. “How are you? I haven’t seen you in years.”
“Oh, um—years,” I said, thinking: don’t invite him anywhere, don’t invite him anywhere.
Ian hugged me, manfully unafraid of my pig-sweatiness. “You look great,” he said, fudging the facts.
“Oh, um,” I said. He smelled good, too.
“You don’t remember me, do you?”
“Of course I do.” What I didn’t know—after all this time—was why he’d rejected me when I’d propositioned him eight years ago. I may not be Charlotte, but I’m not repulsive. And he was a man—he wasn’t supposed to have standards. Especially not so high that I didn’t meet them. “How are you?”
“You don’t,” he said. “You have no idea who I am.”
“I know exactly who you are.”
“What’s my name, then?”
He looked so pleased with my faulty memory that I couldn’t help saying, “Does it start with a D?”
“Sort of,” he said. “I can’t believe you don’t remember.”
“Oh, c’mon. How could I forget?” I smiled vaguely. “We had such…great times together.”
“Sure did,” he said, growing thoughtful. “Remember that time we went skinny-dipping at the reservoir?”
“When we what?”
“What a crazy summer that was.”
We had never gone skinny-dipping, and he knew it. I tilted my head and said, “How could I forget?”
He nodded, eyes twinkling dangerously. “We’d been downtown for Fiesta, dancing to one of the bands. Back when the lambada was big, remember?” He curled his hands around an imaginary dance partner and rocked his hips—his leg between her imaginary thighs, his hand on her imaginary waist. “Dancing until dark. Midnight in August, one of those hot, steamy nights…”
I steadied myself against a worm-eaten coatrack.
“That’s right,” he said. “The full moon and the clear sky. We were hanging out on the hood of my car, edge of the water, and you suddenly said, ‘That’s it! I’m going in.’”
Well, two can play that game. I smiled wistfully, as if remembering. “We were high on Tecate and churro sugar. All sweaty from dancing. The air was sticky and warm and I needed to cool down.”
“You took off your shirt….”
“I never! I mean, I never take my top off first. Bottoms up, for me. I took off my skirt, then my panties—”
His eyebrow twitched at panties. Men. “That’s right,” he said. “Bottoms up.”
“Then you started stripping down….” Because I refused to be the only imaginary naked person in the game.
“Top down,” he said. “Unbuttoned my shirt and tossed it on the hood. Then my jeans and underwear.”
“Boxer briefs,” I said, in a reverie. “You remember how I prefer boxer briefs.”
“The breeze picked up and we walked toward the water and—”
The bell jingled and a middle-aged woman with her teenage daughter entered. Ian and I sprang apart—I was surprised to discover that I didn’t need to straighten my clothes or search for an errant bra. I halfheartedly smoothed my T-shirt anyway and remembered I looked like shit. Hair in ponytail, no makeup, and soccer shorts. Is there anything designed to make a woman’s ass look bigger than a pair of soccer shorts? Yeah: an inner tube.
I resolved to keep my front to Ian. Not that I cared. And I mean, who has this kind of conversation with a relative stranger? I hadn’t seen the guy in eight years. I couldn’t even blame it on alcohol. Must be Wren’s influence, awkward flirting. Except it hadn’t felt awkward…
“Let me know if there’s anything I can help you with,” Ian said, looking at the customers but definitely talking to me.
The woman said she was looking for creamwear pitchers. Ian murmured something about Wedgwood Queen’s Ware, and escorted the woman to a rubbish heap in the corner. I didn’t tell the poor woman that there was a Macy’s down the block, if she was looking for a pitcher.
The teenage daughter and I rolled our eyes at each other, and I looked around for the lacquer pot Emily said Charlotte liked. There were a lot of pots. None were new. Beyond that, I had no idea.
I glanced at Ian. He’d grown. I mean, he wasn’t taller or anything, but he’d grown—he was a man. Nothing boyish about him, except for the glint in his eye. And his voice, talking about skinny-dipping. God, that was embarrassing. How could I have let this happen? With Ian! He was undoubtedly still in love with Charlotte, too. He was just…used goods. Definitely incestuous. Disgusting. I can’t believe I—Okay, calm down. It was only words. No fluids were exchanged.
Still. Can’t believe I had virtual fake memory sex with my sister’s ex-boyfriend.
Evidently the woman found what she was looking for, because Ian quickly rang up the sale and came back to me.
“Still don’t remember me?” he asked.
“You’re starting to ring a distant bell,” I said.
“I’ll give you a hint. You asked me to your school—”
“I know who you are, Ian! Last I heard, you’d moved to New York.”
“Small-town boy lost in the big city. And did you know—” he tried to look horrified “—they have no beach there?”
“Get out!”
“Yeah, and all their malls are inside. It’s no Santa Barbara, I’ll tell you that.”
“But it’s the place to be if you want to learn—” I waved a hand at the moldering goods he had on display “—all this?”
“Took a couple years, but I finally wandered into Sotheby’s training. What’ve you been up to? What has it been—six years?”
“Eight,” I said, then was sorry I’d let him know I’d been counting. “This and that.”
“Married?” he asked.
“Divorced.”
He eyed me. “Liar.”
“Well, I could’ve married. I had offers. How did you know?” He was probably still following Charlotte’s career, like a cyber-stalker or something. Probably knew her birthstone and exactly how many centimeters she dilated when she had her kids.
“You’re not the marrying type,” he said.
“I am too. I just never—”
“Met the right man?”
“Found the right dress. How about you?”
“I don’t wear dresses.”
“So not married?”
“Nope. I’m engaged, though.”
“Engaged? Now? Currently?”
He nodded. “All of the above.”
“You can’t be flirting like that when you’re engaged! Where is she? Who is she? What are you thinking? Skinny-dipping at the reservoir. You oughta be ashamed, flirting like that.”
He laughed. “It’s harmless. I dated your sister, so we’re like siblings.”
That stopped me. “Yuck.”
“Well, I wouldn’t flirt with my actual sister, Anne.”
“Uh-huh. Anyway, Charlotte’s why I’m here. I’m supposed to buy some old pot for her birthday.”
“Some old pot?”
“Yeah, and if I don’t get it Emily will kill me.”
“So Emily hasn’t changed?”
“No, she’s mellowed. These days, she’d kill me painlessly.”
“We can’t have that. When’s Charlotte’s birthday? Wait, I should know this—must be this weekend.”
I nodded. He still knew her birthday. Pathetic.
“How is she?”
“Good. Three kids. Happily married.” I looked at him. “Very happily.”
“Mmm. Pity I missed her. She came into the store? My assistant must’ve been here—I’m surprised she didn’t mention seeing Charlotte Olsen.”
“Maybe she was wearing a scarf and sunglasses. It’s some kind of lacquer pot. Asian or something.”
“The Japanese Three Friends teapot?” He moved toward a display of Zen-looking kitchenware in a bright nook under the stairs. “The bamboo, pine, and plum design represents the Confucian virtue of integrity under—”
“No, no,” I said. “Not a teapot. No virtues. It’s a box, I think.”
“Oh! The lacquerware cosmetic box?” He moved the teapot aside. “An interesting piece. Made from bamboo which is coated with layers of lacquer—twenty-five, thirty layers. The lacquer’s a resin secreted by a plant at points of injuries—so they cut channels in the bark of the Rhus verniciflua, the sumac trees which…” He babbled on as he searched for the box—then suddenly stopped. “Oh, I forgot—it’s gone.”
“You sold it?!” I said. “I’m dead. I was supposed to come in two days ago.”
“It’s not sold. It’s on loan to a decorator. When do you need it?”
“Tonight.”
“Yikes. Well, I’ll give him a call. What time?”
“Dinner’s at six.” Charlotte insisted on an early dinner, for the kids. And I’d promised her I’d bathe the little monsters before the party. I didn’t have time to swing back here after work. “Do you think…it’s asking a lot, but could you drop it by Charlotte’s?”
“You want your antique delivered? Like it’s a pizza?”
“Think of it more as a house call—like a doctor.” It certainly wasn’t an invitation. I’d meet him, grab the gift, and disappear. This was a delivery only.
He shook his head. “You’re impossible.”
“To resist?” I asked.
He made a noncommittal noise. “Okay, I’ll deliver it.”
“Thank you!” I said. “You saved my life.”
I paid the extortionate sum for the old relic, sight unseen. Gave Ian Charlotte’s address, pretending that I didn’t know he’d memorized it from his cyber-stalking, and thanked him profusely.
He told me he’d see me a little before six. “Oh, and don’t worry about the rug,” he said, eyeing the mud.
I glanced down. “I won’t.”
CHAPTER 08
I jogged muddily uptown a few blocks to Element and I slipped into Wren’s office before the sleek and nonsweaty salesgirls could bar the door. Wren hit Enter a few times, pretending she hadn’t been playing solitaire, and looked up at me. “You’re a walking Fashion Don’t.”
“Oh yeah? Well, you’re a—” She was impeccable. Wearing a deep V-neck black cashmere sweater, knee-length black skirt, a jade necklace and red heels. “You’re a—okay, I’m a disaster. I need a new everything.”
