Picture Perfect by Jodi Picoult Page A

took a step closer to her and laid his palm against her cheek, his eyes darkening. “Well, I don’t give a damn,” he said. “You’ve got to rest.”
    He lifted the telephone to his ear. “No, Herb,” he said. “Five minutes is too long. No—”
    Cassie stood up and put her hand on his arm. It was the first time she had actually reached out to touch Alex, instead of him touching her. He turned to her, the telephone forgotten, his eyes locked onto her own. “It’s okay,” she said quietly. “Tell him to come over. I’ll be fine. I don’t want to rest.”
    He murmured something into the telephone and she watched the way his lips formed the words. She waited for him to hang up, but he didn’t. He cupped his hand over the receiver again and moved closer, until they were separated by the space of a breath.
    Cassie did not close her eyes as Alex kissed her. Her hand fell away from his arm to hang at her side, and she tasted faint traces of coffee and vanilla. When he pulled away, she was still leaning toward him, her eyes wide and waiting for the flood of memories she was certain would come.
    But before that could happen, Alex gestured helplessly at the phone. “I have to talk to him. I left Macbeth mid-scene, you know, to get you. Poor Herb has to clean up the mess I made.” He ran his hand over her hair. “Why don’t you poke around a little? I promise, no more than five minutes.”
    As Alex turned away and started rattling questions into the telephone, Cassie moved downstairs to the middle level of the apartment. She wondered if she should change her clothes before Herb arrived. She wondered who Herb was.
    She started toward the master bedroom, where Alex had showed her, earlier, a closet full of silks and rainbow cottons that belonged to her. She reached the arched hallway Alex had pulled her through before. This time, she stopped to look at the pictures that hung against the stark white walls. There was one of Alex on the beach outside the apartment, buried up to his chest in sand. Of Cassie herself, grinning, her arm thrown casually around the shoulders of a skeleton. There was a picture of a dog she did not recognize, and one of Alex on a rearing horse. Finally came a photo of Cassie in bed, white sheets pulled just up to her breasts, a lazy smile across her flushed face.
    She thought of the pressure of Alex’s kiss. She tried to imagine his hands tracing their way down her spine.
    She looked at the picture again, and she wondered if Alex had taken it.
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    H ERB S ILVER WAS FIVE FEET TALL , BALD , WITH A HANDLEBAR MUS tache and pointed ears that made Cassie think of a Munchkin. He met Alex at the door of the apartment and shoved a greasy brown paper bag into his arms. “So, I figure it’s lunch and what’s a goy like you going to have in his kitchen?” His eyes darted behind Alex’s substantial height, searching for Cassie, pushing Alex aside as he began to rummage in the bag. “There’s pastrami on rye with sauerkraut for you, and three knishes and for God’s sake, don’t eat all the forshpeis by yourself this time. Ah!” He held out his arms to Cassie. “You were trying to give me my third heart attack?”
    Herb Silver was Alex’s agent at CAA. He had moved to L.A. over twenty years earlier, but he told everyone that even though you could take Herb Silver out of Brooklyn, you couldn’t take Brooklyn out of Herb Silver. Cassie reached out and hugged him, his head coming under her chin.
    Herb kissed her on the mouth. He ran his hands lightly down her arms as if he were checking for broken bones. “So, you’re fine?”
    Cassie nodded, and Alex stepped forward, offering her half of a paper-wrapped knish. “She’s perfect,” he said with a full mouth.
    Herb raised an eyebrow. “Does the girl have a voice of her own?”
    â€œI’m fine,”