The Romance Reader's Guide to Life

She hadn’t mentioned this part of the contract, but it was Lilly all over. Trapeze salesgirls: a sure bet for a picture in at least the Boston papers, maybe the AP wires, clear evidence to anybody with a lick of gumption that selling cosmetics at Be Your Best was the most interesting job in the United States.

We waited. Days passed. We filed a missing persons report with lots of photos of her. I went to work and pretended things were going to be fine. Jane asked me to move in with her and Todd because, she said, she thought I might want the company. I refused the offer. She pressed for visits—just dinner, she’d say. That was all. She’d call Snyder and we could all have dinner together, Jane and Todd, Snyder, Annie, and me. I tried to imagine the effect of putting all of our feelings around the same dinner table and refused again.

Snyder called. “Just do it,” he said. “Do it for Jane. She acts like she’s bravely optimistic, but I’ve been spending a little time with her and she’s not feeling so optimistic or brave no matter what she says. If she wants us around her at dinner, I don’t see why we can’t give her that.”

So I agreed to let him pick me up and we went, together, to Jane’s house. Dinner was stiff and halting. Jane, a wonderful cook, had burned half the meal and forgotten the rest. We could feel the something evil out there, feel it pressing against us at a chillingly close range; feel the urge to huddle and eat out of the same pot. For dessert Jane had made Jell-O Surprise. I pushed a spoon into the wriggling green cubes and shoved it around a little. We put Annie to bed and sat together on the couch and I imagined what we might have looked like as characters in one of Snyder’s comics, three stricken figures in a barren alien landscape with the indifferent universe glowing all around us—monsters approaching from the upper left corner.

Lilly would be ashamed of me, I thought. I would be damned if I was not only going to cower in my little sister’s dining room but eat her Jell-O Surprise.

Annie got so quiet we sometimes were unaware of her sitting in the corner of a room. I did what I could to approximate my real life, but even though I was moving around at work looking exactly like I normally did, a part of my mind was closed down around the idea of Lilly. The dark feeling was like a wall around me. I’d peer out at the salesperson or accountant across the desk from me and wonder if they’d noticed I wasn’t really there. They didn’t seem to.

Finally there was some actual news. The police had found someone who had seen Lilly, identified from a company photograph, arguing with a man in front of a doughnut shop in Wenham, first on the sidewalk and then in their car: a Buick Skylark. Lilly’s car. The witness remembered Lilly in particular because of her turquoise Chanel suit. The witness loved Chanel, she’d said, which is why she’d taken special notice. And something about the man made her feel strange. The man and the woman seemed to be disagreeing about something but no, they weren’t yelling. No, there was no physical violence, though things between them looked very tense. The man. I don’t know what it was about him, the witness said.

Then, nothing.

The fact that a witness said they seemed to be willingly in each other’s company made the police interest lessen. “Ma’am,” said the burly cop who’d told Ricky to get lost and cool off the night he came to my apartment, “women run away with guys—all kinds of guys. It’s a fact of life. If you had my job you’d see it every day.”

I tried on the idea that Lilly had been mesmerized, forced out of her sane mind, and hypno-controlled into running off with Ricky Luhrmann. Possible, I thought. Then, no.

No.

I had stopped talking to Charles about Ricky Luhrmann until now. Now I needed any trustworthy support or advice I could get, so I talked to him, leaving out any mention of Max Luhrmann. I discovered that I didn’t want Charles offering any opinions touching on Max.

Charles had no advice about finding Lilly to offer. He said he didn’t know why I lived alone, and I said I was a single adult and they tended to live alone, exactly like he did. But a woman, he said, should not live alone. See what it’s exposed you to! See what happens when a woman is alone? His tone suggested concern about reputation as much as practicality or safety, and that took the conversation into an area that Charles and I weren’t good at—disagreement. Angry disagreement, in fact. It turned out that, just as I guess I already knew, he loved my practicality, my independence, and my business experience, but he would actually be more comfortable if my independent, practical life were lived with a sister or some girl pal. Some arrangement that kept me less vulnerable. Because that, he concluded, was what I was: alone. Women should not live alone, he concluded again.

Should? What does that mean, “should”? I demanded.

You should be married, he finished. I should marry you.





THE PIRATE LOVER


Under My Protection

Women at sea on a ship of war were unusual but not unknown. Some captains took their wives or mistresses for comfort and diversion. Pirate vessels had been known to be crewed and even led by women. If there were squeakers aboard, a comfortable matron might be signed on to the logbook to see to the boys’ manners and whooping coughs and home sicknesses—a mature someone with a figure that could be confused at a distance with a pork barrel. But a young, vibrant creature in skirts—she created tensions that could divide the tamest crew, and Basil Le Cherche’s crew had come from the more distant edges of civilization. Electra Gates was not only young and vibrant, she was a woman in the throes of overwhelming passion, and this energy radiated from her. She had but to descend or ascend a ladder, cross the quarterdeck and lean upon a rail, lift a drink to her full lips before witnesses, for Basil Le Cherche to feel the masculine attention around her vibrate. He called the ships’ company together.

“Mademoiselle Electra Gates is under my personal protection. I assume you understand me.”

Silence greeted this short speech, but its effects were felt. Eyes were averted when Electra came on deck. Even Trotter, most unmannerly of personal servants, ducked and bowed and crept in her presence.

“What did you do?” she demanded.

“I protected you.”

“From what? If a man on this ship did anything untoward, where could he run? I am safe here. Perfectly safe.” She coiled herself around him, parting her legs and drawing a delicate line from his temple to his lips. He trembled in her hands but pulled away for a moment.

“Electra, do you know Joe Bent? Upper yardsman? A scar from cheek to nose on the left side?”

She nodded.

“Do you know why he’s on board?”

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