For three miserable weeks, she heard nothing from him. In that time, Lotte got married, and Vivien dutifully danced with the dentist from Boise and even let the neighboring vintner kiss her outside as the band played the last dance of the evening. He kissed her too roughly, and groped at her, and invited her to come to Napa soon. She’d agreed, anything to keep David out of her thoughts. Then Lotte and Robert left for their honeymoon in Yosemite, and for the first time in her life, Vivien was alone. She had other friends, of course. But there was only one Lotte, who had been by her side from the start.
When finally David’s calling card arrived in her mailbox, Vivien almost cried with relief. The way he’d buttoned her jacket that night, so tenderly, had made her feel safe. With Lotte ensconced at Robert’s family’s vineyard in Napa, Vivien needed to build a new life for herself, to create a new family.
I will find a way. Trust me, he’d written.
Don’t trust him, Lotte had warned her.
That very night she had hurried to meet him at Coppa’s, and she had decided that, yes, she would trust him.
She could imagine what Lotte would say, that this was a coincidence. The fact that Vivien and David spent their first night together—a night that turned into an entire weekend—at the Hotel Majestic, and that this amnesiac who happened to be the age David would be had he survived had a key to a room there, all of it Lotte would write off to coincidence.
But how could Vivien dismiss it so easily? She went to the atlas that lay open on a table behind her, and flipped first to the United States, and then to the western United States. There was Colorado, a big square state roughly a thousand miles, Vivien guessed, from where she stood. She allowed herself to believe for a moment that the only thing between her and David was one thousand miles. That she could be on a train this very afternoon, heading eastward. That she might walk into the hospital where he was held for observation and that his memory would return when he saw her. Thinking these things made her breathless, and Vivien gulped air, trying to breathe normally again.
She had barely known him when she’d agreed to go with him to the Hotel Majestic that spring night. They had gone to Coppa’s in North Beach for dinner and Vivien had recognized the writer Jack London there, sitting at a big table in the middle of the restaurant.
David was telling her about the case he was preparing for trial, and Vivien had put her hand on his—the first time they had touched, really—and whispered, “I can’t hear a word you’re saying. All I can do is stare at Jack London.”
David took her hand in his, closing his fingers over it, and followed her gaze to the crowded table. “Which one is Jack London?” he asked her. “So I know which one to beat up.”
“He’s the handsomest one at that table,” Vivien said.
“I’m going to have to break that perfect nose of his,” David said, leaning into her. His mouth on her ear made her shiver, and Vivien leaned her head back, allowing his lips to graze first her ear, then her neck. “Would you find me too forward if I invited you to come with me to the Hotel Majestic for the night?” he whispered.
She did not look at Jack London again as she placed her stole around her shoulders and left hurriedly with David.
Lotte would tell her to be sensible. She would tell her that rather than get on a train and travel a thousand miles, she should contact the hospital in Denver. Vivien’s breathing slowed. Yes. That would be the sensible thing to do. More than anyone, she could tell them about the thin white scar beneath his chin. She could even tell them how he got that scar as a young boy, trying to jump a fence. She could describe the constellation of freckles on his back, and the distance one would have to travel to reach his thighs from his toes.
The sharp smell of earth and spice brought her out of her reverie. That Italian man, the one who knew Lotte and her husband, who always asked her to dinner, stood in front of her, a worried look on his face.
“Miss Lowe,” he said in his halting English, “you need to sit? You need some water?”
“No,” Vivien said. “I’m fine.”
He peered at her. “Your face,” he said, “it’s very . . .” She watched him struggle for the word. “White,” he said finally, defeated.
“You mean pale,” she said.
“Pale,” he repeated, giving the simple word too many syllables.
“Well,” Vivien said. “Nice to see you again.”
“Sebastian,” he said.
She had started to walk away from him, but she turned. “What?”
“I am Sebastian,” he said. Se-bah-sti-ahn. He held a black hat in his hand, and worried the brim as he spoke.
Vivien nodded. “Yes. Of course. Sebastian.”
The light was changing, morning becoming noontime, and here she did not even have her books yet. She left the Reference Room and went into the smaller room where Kay sat at the circulation desk, immersed in a book.
“Is the new Zane Grey in?” Vivien asked her.
“I put it aside for you,” Kay said. She retrieved it from the Reserved shelf behind the desk.
“How’s that one?” Vivien said, motioning to The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse opened in front of Kay.
Kay hesitated. “I have no idea,” she admitted, blushing.
Vivien laughed. “I knew you were listening.”
“Guilty,” Kay said. She lowered his voice. “Poor guy. He comes in here every Friday morning, just hoping to have a few words with you.”