we’ve got that straight.”
“I love you.”
“Love you.”
Jane hung up, stretched thin by the leagues separating her from Ian, the oceans. She sat upright, hands folded in her lap. One of Marta’s questions replayed itself in her head, over and over. What is he really like? She couldn’t remember what she’d said. It seemed important, and she couldn’t remember, and not remembering made her wonder if she knew the answer.
Ian sat with headphones over his ears, watching people scurry around the set. They would slow down before the day ended, the heat would see to that. Grips struggled with equipment, wrestling black boxes up the stone steps of the courtyard. It was as if he were seeing it all from a great distance. The columns of the fine temple presented a diminishing line of perspective, echoed by the narrow Cypress trees pointing to the sky. Their pots lined the outer courtyard, giving Ian a line of focus as he studied where his ship’s crew would walk to their doom, transformed by the witch-goddess Circe into swine. In an apparition enhanced by the shimmer of the rising heat, he thought he could see his future self, striding into Circe’s palace to intercede for his mens’ lives. Her bargain would lead him to her bed, to breed deep trust, as she put it. Before he consented, he would exact a promise that she’d not plot against him anew. Wily Odysseus, Ian thought, always suspicious, and so often rightly so.
That night, lying on his back on a stack of woven blankets, head resting on a folded blanket and one bent arm, he stared up into the sky, wondering at this beauty powerless to touch him. With civilization’s sequined cloak pushed back, he was a habitant of darkness, privileged witness to the stars adorning the shoulders of deep night. He felt empty as an abandoned conch.
CHAPTER TEN
E VELYN K ENNY . J ANE remembered Ian telling her weeks earlier that Evelyn was under a lot of strain coming off her last project. She needed peace and quiet in a place where she wouldn’t be bothered. Would Jane mind if she came to visit? Of course, if it made her uncomfortable since she didn’t really know Evelyn, he understood, but she needed something short of a mental hospital and less public than a spa, and he knew what being home always did for him. She suspected him of trying to matchmake her a friend. Thoughtful of him. But Evelyn Kenny? At the house for a week, and no Ian to bridge the gap?
They had met once. Had a ten minute conversation about bedding. Good kinds of sheets and duvet covers and quilts. What kind of pillow was the next best if you were allergic to down. Whether the European idea of having one sheet and one duvet on the bed summer and winter was a more efficient solution than sheet, blanket, quilt. It had been an interesting conversation to Jane, who had developed a fondness for good bedding. And Evelyn knew her thread counts. Jane had even confided in Evelyn that one of the few ways someone might know the people in the Reilly house really had money was by feeling their sheets. There were other ways, like looking in the converted barn, but Jane hadn’t mentioned that. However, one conversation about down did not a friendship make.
Evelyn would bring her own set of issues with her. How many people would she want to bring along? Some of the people Ian worked with traveled with attendants: some one or two, others had even more, all the little tugboats necessary to get a ship out of harbor. For those who felt they needed a personal assistant, makeup artist, hair stylist, trainer to keep the body in shape, security, the body count could get high.
In response to her questions, he said he thought she might possibly bring one person and that was it. She sometimes had a personal protection agent who traveled with her. A bodyguard. It sounded ridiculous to Jane to bring such a person to the farm. What was she afraid of here? All he said was, “Honey, we don’t get her
“I love you.”
“Love you.”
Jane hung up, stretched thin by the leagues separating her from Ian, the oceans. She sat upright, hands folded in her lap. One of Marta’s questions replayed itself in her head, over and over. What is he really like? She couldn’t remember what she’d said. It seemed important, and she couldn’t remember, and not remembering made her wonder if she knew the answer.
Ian sat with headphones over his ears, watching people scurry around the set. They would slow down before the day ended, the heat would see to that. Grips struggled with equipment, wrestling black boxes up the stone steps of the courtyard. It was as if he were seeing it all from a great distance. The columns of the fine temple presented a diminishing line of perspective, echoed by the narrow Cypress trees pointing to the sky. Their pots lined the outer courtyard, giving Ian a line of focus as he studied where his ship’s crew would walk to their doom, transformed by the witch-goddess Circe into swine. In an apparition enhanced by the shimmer of the rising heat, he thought he could see his future self, striding into Circe’s palace to intercede for his mens’ lives. Her bargain would lead him to her bed, to breed deep trust, as she put it. Before he consented, he would exact a promise that she’d not plot against him anew. Wily Odysseus, Ian thought, always suspicious, and so often rightly so.
That night, lying on his back on a stack of woven blankets, head resting on a folded blanket and one bent arm, he stared up into the sky, wondering at this beauty powerless to touch him. With civilization’s sequined cloak pushed back, he was a habitant of darkness, privileged witness to the stars adorning the shoulders of deep night. He felt empty as an abandoned conch.
CHAPTER TEN
E VELYN K ENNY . J ANE remembered Ian telling her weeks earlier that Evelyn was under a lot of strain coming off her last project. She needed peace and quiet in a place where she wouldn’t be bothered. Would Jane mind if she came to visit? Of course, if it made her uncomfortable since she didn’t really know Evelyn, he understood, but she needed something short of a mental hospital and less public than a spa, and he knew what being home always did for him. She suspected him of trying to matchmake her a friend. Thoughtful of him. But Evelyn Kenny? At the house for a week, and no Ian to bridge the gap?
They had met once. Had a ten minute conversation about bedding. Good kinds of sheets and duvet covers and quilts. What kind of pillow was the next best if you were allergic to down. Whether the European idea of having one sheet and one duvet on the bed summer and winter was a more efficient solution than sheet, blanket, quilt. It had been an interesting conversation to Jane, who had developed a fondness for good bedding. And Evelyn knew her thread counts. Jane had even confided in Evelyn that one of the few ways someone might know the people in the Reilly house really had money was by feeling their sheets. There were other ways, like looking in the converted barn, but Jane hadn’t mentioned that. However, one conversation about down did not a friendship make.
Evelyn would bring her own set of issues with her. How many people would she want to bring along? Some of the people Ian worked with traveled with attendants: some one or two, others had even more, all the little tugboats necessary to get a ship out of harbor. For those who felt they needed a personal assistant, makeup artist, hair stylist, trainer to keep the body in shape, security, the body count could get high.
In response to her questions, he said he thought she might possibly bring one person and that was it. She sometimes had a personal protection agent who traveled with her. A bodyguard. It sounded ridiculous to Jane to bring such a person to the farm. What was she afraid of here? All he said was, “Honey, we don’t get her
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