As we turned the corner to the elevator banks, Robin changed the subject. “I stopped by your place before I left town and talked to Suzie and Vinnie.”
My neighbors had been indispensable to me when Abraham’s killer made a shambles of my studio and apartment. Suzie and Vinnie were wood artists, specializing in redwood burl. Burl was a growth or deformation of a trunk or root of a tree. I hadn’t known this, of course, until Vinnie had taken a long night and two bottles of wine to tell me all about it. Anyway, depending on the tree, the hunk of burl could be huge, weighing hundreds of pounds. The girls worked only on trees that had fallen by nature’s hand, as they liked to put it. They billed themselves as the all-natural chain-saw-wielding lesbian artists, and it seemed to be paying off for them.
“How are they doing?”
She smiled. “They insisted on feeding me, so I totally get your devotion to them.”
“Aren’t they great?” Suzie and Vinnie didn’t cook, so they were always eating out and always bringing me their leftovers. They knew I would eat anything. Really, anything. Apparently, I had been malnourished as a child.
“Yeah, they are,” she said, grinning. “I’m supposed to tell you that Pookie’s fine but Splinters hurt his front leg and had to get four stitches.”
“Poor Splinters! What happened?” Pookie and Splinters were the girls’ beloved cats. I was proud to be their designated cat sitter, a fact that had brought Robin to near fits of laughter when she first heard. Not that it was my fault, but despite my love of animals, I’d never been very good with pets. I hadn’t mentioned that to Suzie and Vinnie, and I didn’t want them finding out the hard way.
Robin grimaced. “He lost the battle trying to take down the vacuum cleaner.”
“Ouch, I thought Splinters was the smart cat.”
“I guess not. And Suzie said you received some certified letter from France.”
“It’s probably my contract,” I said. “I’m scheduled to teach another class at Lyon this summer.”
Lyon, France, was considered by many to be the heart and soul of bookbinding and all things book related. The city had an entire museum dedicated to book art, and the Institut d’Histoire du Livre in Lyon was a top school for advanced study in book history, conservation and restoration. It was the same place I’d last spent any time with Helen.
“Cool,” Robin said as we rode the elevator down. “You’ll get to see Ariel and Pascal again.”
Years ago, Ariel Hodges had come to Sonoma to work with Abraham on some big book restoration projects, and we all became her surrogate family. Then she moved to Lyon to run the institute, where she met Pascal, a curator at the Musée de l’Imprimerie, the printing museum.
“I can’t wait,” I said. “Maybe you should plan a trip while I’m there.”
“I’ll do it,” Robin said. “I suppose Pascal is still as sexy and annoyingly French as ever.”
“I imagine so.” I laughed. Pascal was totally hot but completely in love with our friend Ariel, which naturally made him even more adorable in our eyes.
We walked outside and I breathed in the crisp, clean Scottish air and admired the odd shadows of the Old Town rooftops as the sun set behind the castle. Was it silly to think that air and light were different depending on the part of the world you were in? If so, call me silly, but the northern lights and the arctic air that passed over Scotland seemed to transform me. Everything was different here. I loved San Francisco, but as I took in the sights and sounds and views from the top of the Royal Mile, I knew I could be happy living here for the next few years.
As we passed St. Giles’ Cathedral, Robin pointed across the street at Mary King’s Close. “Isn’t that where you found Kyle’s body?”
At the unwelcome memory, I felt a chill and tugged my jacket tighter. “Yeah. In one of the tenement rooms.”
“Ugh.”
“Yeah.”
“Whoa.” She stopped to stare at a store window filled with every kind of tartan pattern imaginable. It was dizzying.
“Looks like Brigadoon on acid,” Robin muttered.
I snickered. Not that either of us had ever dropped acid before. Looking at this place now, I was assured we never would.
Dozens of people passed us on the street, their conversations rising and falling around us like music. There was something spectacular about a rolling Scottish burr. And speaking of rolling, the sidewalks were a little uneven, so we had to watch our step or that was what we would be doing. The cold wind kept pushing at us, as if determined to drive us back to the hotel.
We continued walking, but stopped again to look at another wondrous storefront filled with lace items: doll clothes, a wedding gown, a little girl’s starched, high-collared dress that looked horribly uncomfortable, napkins and doilies and petticoats and curtains and all sorts of table runners strewn like crepe-paper ribbons across the ceiling.
“God, that’s bizarre,” Robin said, but she couldn’t look away. The store window was practically hypnotic.