Perfect Strangers

4

But when our gazes meet this time, I’m unprepared for the force of it.

I stepped on a live wire once. I was eight years old. A utility pole had been damaged in a storm and came down in our backyard. I ran outside to investigate before my father’s warning shout could stop me, and the power of the voltage that surged through my body when my bare foot touched the wire threw me halfway across the yard.

Looking into this stranger’s beautiful blue eyes feels exactly like that.

“I’m James.”

His voice has turned husky. There’s a new tension in his body, as if he’s restraining himself from reaching out and touching me.

Or maybe that’s my imagination, which excels in running wild.

“Olivia,” I manage.

In the silence that follows, the sounds of the café seem unbearably loud. Silverware clatters against plates. Chattering voices become nerve-scraping shrieks. The flush on my cheeks spreads down my neck, and my pulse goes haywire.

I’ve never been looked at like this by a man, with such raw, unapologetic intensity.

I feel naked.

I feel seen.

When the waiter appears beside me, I nearly jump out of my skin.

“Madame.” Dripping condescension, he holds out the dessert menu and offers me a mocking bow.

“I’ve changed my mind. I’ll just take care of the check and be on my way, thanks.” I yank my handbag off the arm of my chair and dig through it for my wallet.

“You said you were waiting for someone,” James reminds me.

“I lied.”

James leans back in his chair and considers me, his intense gaze unwavering. The waiter looks back and forth between us, arching an eyebrow, then says something in French to James, who shakes his head.

I get the feeling they know each other, that James is a regular, and decide I’m never coming back.

I toss a few bills onto the small black plastic tray that holds my check and stand, bumping the table and knocking over a glass in my haste, trying unsuccessfully not to notice how the three young women at a nearby table are looking me up and down and whispering to each other behind their hands.

Those catty giggles. Those snide, mocking smiles.

One day they’ll be like me, hurtling toward forty with stretch marks and wrinkles and a new compassion for others that only the decay of your own body and the weight of all your crushed dreams will bring, but for now they’re beautiful and smug, certain of their superiority to the awkward tourist lurching away in terror from the first real feeling she’s felt in ages.

I don’t look back on my way out, but I feel James’s burning gaze follow me all the way to the door.

Somehow, this time I know it isn’t my imagination.

2

E

stelle’s apartment

is the love child of Buckingham Palace and a nineteenth-century Moroccan bordello.

A neoclassical breakfront displays commemorative bone china plates from the 80’s royal wedding of Charles and Diana. Tufted red velvet sofas are strewn with purple silk pillows. Gold tassels draw back burgundy brocade drapes from soaring windows, the master bathroom is a riot of inlaid indigo-and-green mosaics, and imposing gilt-framed oils of grim ancestors and hunting parties on horseback garnish the living room walls. The ceilings bristle with a hodgepodge of lighting fixtures varying from ornate crystal chandeliers to carved bronze lanterns inset with colored glass.

The decorator was clearly schizophrenic, but by some miracle all the clashing elements come together to make the place feel homey.

I’m not surprised that I like its eccentricity. The older I get, the more rational weirdness seems.

I’m yawning and stretching my legs under the Egyptian cotton sheets of Estelle’s massive four-poster bed when I hear the moan. It drifts in through the window, which is cracked open to the courtyard outside.

I freeze, listening.

The moan comes again, louder this time. I flip the sheets over my face and sigh deeply as the moans continue to increase in volume and length. A quick check of my watch confirms it’s not yet six a.m.

I can’t be human at this hour without half a pot of coffee and something to eat with enough sugar that could induce a diabetic coma, and those two across the way are going at it like rabbits. Who has that kind of energy?

“Gotta be drugs,” I say to the empty room as the blonde nears orgasm. Hopefully the leaded glass windows will survive her ear-piercing screams.

Abruptly, I’m angry. Who the hell do these people think they are, disturbing my first night’s sleep in what Estelle promised would be a “soothing” and “healing” space? That racket is definitely not soothing or healing, I’ll tell you what!

For me, anyway. By the sound of it, the blonde is being healed from the inside out by some pretty spectacular d**k.

Flinging off the sheets, I glare at the ceiling. I’m contemplating whether to throw open the windows and shout obscenities at them or leave a strongly-worded letter taped to their door, when I realize that my brain is the only part of my body annoyed by my neighbor’s frisky antics.

The rest of me is aroused.

Within seconds, I’m engaged in a mental argument with myself and another voice that’s Kelly’s, because she knows all my darkest secrets and is always showing up unannounced in my head.

Go ahead, girl. Rub one out. You deserve it.

Please. I’m not going to masturbate to the sound of my neighbors getting it on.

Why the hell not? They’re sexy as all get-out!

Because it’s pervy, that’s why not. And they’re not sexy, they’re showoffs.

Uh-huh. That’s why your lady garden just burst into flames, because they’re not sexy.

“Lady garden?” What are you, ninety? And I can’t help it if my v****a has a mind of her own! That doesn’t mean I have to listen to her!

Right. You’re not listening. Then I wonder why your hand’s between your legs?