“You sound like my friend Lotte. Just have coffee with him, she says. What could it hurt?”
The two women watched as Sebastian studied a copy of National Geographic, frowning over it.
“I think he’s handsome,” Kay whispered.
He was short and well-built, with dark wavy hair and a voluminous mustache. No matter what time of day Vivien saw him, he appeared to need a shave, his cheeks always covered in five o’clock shadow. His eyes were large and deep brown, and gave him an air of sadness somehow.
“I suppose,” Vivien said. “I . . .” She considered explaining to Kay Pendleton how she was in love with a ghost, but stopped herself. Vivien knew too well how easy it was to open your heart to strangers.
Kay waited, but Vivien just shook her head.
“I’m not interested,” she said finally.
Kay held up her book. “You can have this one if you’d like.”
Relieved for the change of subject, Vivien agreed.
Kay stamped the books in red and handed them to Vivien. “I would remind you when they’re due,” she said, “but I know you’ll have them back next week.”
Vivien tucked them into her bag, beside her scrapbook. “I wonder,” she began.
“You want that newspaper?” Kay said.
“I know the rule is not to let them leave the library—”
Kay leveled her gaze at her. “I’ve never followed a rule in my life,” she said. “And I suspect you’ve broken a few yourself.”
Vivien looked away from her.
“Go on,” Kay said. “Take it.”
“Thank you,” Vivien said.
She went back to the Reference Room and carefully folded The Denver Post, sliding it too into her bag. When she looked up, Sebastian was watching her. He was handsome, in a way, Vivien thought.
Sebastian smiled at her, and she noticed that his front teeth were slightly crooked, which made him even more attractive.
“Vivien,” he said, “tonight I will see you perhaps?”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” she said as she hurried past him.
“Ciao,” he said.
She murmured a goodbye.
Outside, Vivian paused on the sidewalk. The rain yesterday seemed to have washed everything clean—the sky was a bluer blue than it had been, the morning glories climbing the fence a more vivid pink. The air itself smelled of spring and new beginnings. Vivien breathed in a deep lungful. It was almost April. In just a few weeks it would be thirteen years since she had last seen David.
She remembered how only a few nights before the earthquake they had gone to Coppa’s for dinner and David noticed that someone had written on the wall: Something terrible is going to happen. Vivien had feared it was prophetic, but David had laughed. “Probably your friend Jack London,” he’d said. “Afraid that I’m going to marry you sometime very soon.” He’d asked his wife for a divorce, and even though Vivien was afraid to hope she would grant him one, David had been full of optimism.
Vivien closed her eyes against the memory and thought instead of that man in Denver. The room they had stayed in at the Hotel Majestic was number 208. She imagined that key held in David’s pocket all these years, waiting for her to find it.
“This is crazy,” Lotte said. “You know that, don’t you?”
“But that key,” Vivien said for what seemed like the hundredth time. “To the Majestic.”
Lotte sighed and went back to attending the large pot of beans on the stove.
What if it was Robert? Vivien wanted to say. Wouldn’t you try anything to find him? But maybe Lotte wouldn’t try anything. Her friend had always been practical, the one to worry over consequences and risks. As children, she’d kept Vivien out of danger many times. Lotte had warned Vivien not to get involved with David in the first place. He’s married, Viv, she’d said, horrified and concerned. You just don’t do that.
Lotte lifted the long wooden spoon to her mouth and tasted, frowning. She took a hefty pinch of salt from the canister and tossed it in, stirring. Lotte’s life had a rhythm, a predictability that Vivien sometimes envied. The tending to Robert and their three children, feeding her family and all of the workers at the vineyard. In September, when it came time to harvest the grapes, Lotte was out there with all the men, from first light until it grew too dark to work. Her once-smooth ivory complexion had grown ruddy from years in the sun, and lined enough to make her look her age, or more. Although her long legs were muscled and her arms strong from the physical labor of having babies and working the vineyard and doing the laundry and cooking for so many people, Lotte had gone thick around the middle.
“You probably won’t hear till Monday at the earliest,” Lotte said, hoisting a ceramic platter of chicken. The chicken had been sitting in oil and lemon and garlic all day, and pressed flat under heavy bricks.