CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE
I weigh letting the affair with Nora simply die against my need for closure. The answer leads me back to the tanning salon, hoping to catch her there. The streetlights have just come on in the parking lot as I pull in front of Maui Tan Salon. The dusk casts light the color of clarified butter on the cars in the lot. A breeze, loaded with sesame oil and garlic from the Chinese takeout across the way, pushes leaves along the pavement.
Peering in the window, I can see Nora seated in a row of chairs at the back of the store, waiting for the next available booth. In the blue fluorescent light she looks drawn and grey, the shadows under her eyes purple and brown. Her wrists and ankles jut out of her robe, as knobby and prominent as hawthorn burls.
When I push the door open
