beautifully crafted mahogany cabinets in the study. He stopped the music and searched two drawers that were filled with compact discs. Still in the mood for the Beatles, he selected
A Hard Day’s Night
because none of the songs on that album were downbeat.
Singing along to the title track, Roy returned to the kitchen, where he lifted Mrs. Bettonfield off the floor. She was more petite than she had seemed when he’d been talking with her through the car window. She weighed no more than a hundred and five pounds, with slender wrists, a swan neck, and delicate features. Roy was deeply touched by the woman’s fragility, and he bore her in his arms with more than mere care and respect, almost with reverence.
Nudging light switches with his shoulder, he carried Penelope Bettonfield to the front of the house, upstairs, along the hallway, checking door by door until he found the master bedroom. There, he placed her gently on a chaise lounge.
He folded back the quilted bedspread and then the bedclothes, revealing the bottom sheet. He plumped the pillows, which were in Egyptian-cotton shams trimmed with cut-work lace as lovely as any he had ever seen.
He took off Mrs. Bettonfield’s shoes and put them in her closet. Her feet were as small as those of a girl.
Leaving her fully dressed, he carried Penelope to the bed and put her down on her back, with her head elevated on two pillows. He left the spread folded at the bottom of the bed, but he drew the blanket cover, blanket, and top sheet over her breasts. Her arms remained free.
With a brush that he found in the master bathroom, he smoothed her hair. The Beatles were singing “If I Fell” when he began to groom her, but they were well into “I’m Happy Just to Dance with You” by the time her lustrous auburn locks were perfectly arranged around her lovely face.
After switching on the bronze floor lamp that stood beside the chaise lounge, he turned off the harsher ceiling light. Soft shadows fell across the recumbent woman, like the enfolding wings of angels who had come to carry her away from this vale of tears and into a higher land of eternal peace.
He went to the Louis XVI vanity, removed its matching chair, and put it beside the bed. He sat next to Mrs. Bettonfield, stripped off his gloves, and took one of her hands in both of his. Her flesh was cooling but still somewhat warm.
He couldn’t linger for long. There was much yet to do and not a lot of time in which to do it. Nevertheless, he wanted to spend a few minutes of quality time with Mrs. Bettonfield.
While the Beatles sang “And I Love Her” and “Tell Me Why,” Roy Miro tenderly held his late friend’s hand and took a moment to appreciate the exquisite furniture, the paintings, the art objects, the warm color scheme, and the array of fabrics in different but wonderfully complementary patterns and textures.
“It’s so very unfair that you had to close your shop,” he told Penelope. “You were a fine interior designer. You really were, dear lady. You really were.”
The Beatles sang.
Rain beat upon the windows.
Roy’s heart swelled with emotion.
THREE
Rocky recognized the route home. Periodically, as they passed one landmark or another, he chuffed softly with pleasure.
Spencer lived in a part of Malibu that was without glamour but that had its own wild beauty.
All the forty-room Mediterranean and French mansions, the ultra-modern cliff-side dwellings of tinted glass and redwood and steel, the Cape Cod cottages as large as ocean liners, the twenty-thousand-square-foot Southwest adobes with authentic lodgepole ceilings and authentic twenty-seat personal screening rooms with THX sound, were on the beaches, on the bluffs above the beaches—and inland of the Pacific Coast Highway, on hills with a view of the sea.
Spencer’s place was east of any home that
Architectural Digest
would choose to photograph, halfway up an unfashionable and sparsely populated canyon. The two-lane blacktop was
A Hard Day’s Night
because none of the songs on that album were downbeat.
Singing along to the title track, Roy returned to the kitchen, where he lifted Mrs. Bettonfield off the floor. She was more petite than she had seemed when he’d been talking with her through the car window. She weighed no more than a hundred and five pounds, with slender wrists, a swan neck, and delicate features. Roy was deeply touched by the woman’s fragility, and he bore her in his arms with more than mere care and respect, almost with reverence.
Nudging light switches with his shoulder, he carried Penelope Bettonfield to the front of the house, upstairs, along the hallway, checking door by door until he found the master bedroom. There, he placed her gently on a chaise lounge.
He folded back the quilted bedspread and then the bedclothes, revealing the bottom sheet. He plumped the pillows, which were in Egyptian-cotton shams trimmed with cut-work lace as lovely as any he had ever seen.
He took off Mrs. Bettonfield’s shoes and put them in her closet. Her feet were as small as those of a girl.
Leaving her fully dressed, he carried Penelope to the bed and put her down on her back, with her head elevated on two pillows. He left the spread folded at the bottom of the bed, but he drew the blanket cover, blanket, and top sheet over her breasts. Her arms remained free.
With a brush that he found in the master bathroom, he smoothed her hair. The Beatles were singing “If I Fell” when he began to groom her, but they were well into “I’m Happy Just to Dance with You” by the time her lustrous auburn locks were perfectly arranged around her lovely face.
After switching on the bronze floor lamp that stood beside the chaise lounge, he turned off the harsher ceiling light. Soft shadows fell across the recumbent woman, like the enfolding wings of angels who had come to carry her away from this vale of tears and into a higher land of eternal peace.
He went to the Louis XVI vanity, removed its matching chair, and put it beside the bed. He sat next to Mrs. Bettonfield, stripped off his gloves, and took one of her hands in both of his. Her flesh was cooling but still somewhat warm.
He couldn’t linger for long. There was much yet to do and not a lot of time in which to do it. Nevertheless, he wanted to spend a few minutes of quality time with Mrs. Bettonfield.
While the Beatles sang “And I Love Her” and “Tell Me Why,” Roy Miro tenderly held his late friend’s hand and took a moment to appreciate the exquisite furniture, the paintings, the art objects, the warm color scheme, and the array of fabrics in different but wonderfully complementary patterns and textures.
“It’s so very unfair that you had to close your shop,” he told Penelope. “You were a fine interior designer. You really were, dear lady. You really were.”
The Beatles sang.
Rain beat upon the windows.
Roy’s heart swelled with emotion.
THREE
Rocky recognized the route home. Periodically, as they passed one landmark or another, he chuffed softly with pleasure.
Spencer lived in a part of Malibu that was without glamour but that had its own wild beauty.
All the forty-room Mediterranean and French mansions, the ultra-modern cliff-side dwellings of tinted glass and redwood and steel, the Cape Cod cottages as large as ocean liners, the twenty-thousand-square-foot Southwest adobes with authentic lodgepole ceilings and authentic twenty-seat personal screening rooms with THX sound, were on the beaches, on the bluffs above the beaches—and inland of the Pacific Coast Highway, on hills with a view of the sea.
Spencer’s place was east of any home that
Architectural Digest
would choose to photograph, halfway up an unfashionable and sparsely populated canyon. The two-lane blacktop was
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