Even moving slowly, I was finished with the afternoon pet visits in plenty of time to get ready for the evening with Ethan. I decided it would be better to put off taking Ella to a shelter until the next day. No sense in rushing it. I looked toward the Kurtz house again as I drove home, but there was nothing to see except a thin column of smoke rising from his chimney. I wondered how many times Jessica had driven past and looked toward the hedge. If what she’d said was true, her time was running out before she had to make a decision between the man she loved and the law she’d sworn to uphold.
My own time had run out too. I had to go to Ethan’s. I was a mature woman and it was time to act like one.
When I got home, I took one of the packets of emergency kitten food that I keep in the Bronco upstairs for Ella. She was waiting at the door for me, as if she’d known all along that I was coming home exactly at that time. She really was an exceptionally smart kitten.
I left her eating in the kitchen and took a quick shower to get rid of all the clinging pet hairs. I had left the bathroom door open, and Ella came in and watched me blow my hair.
I said, “I guess I’ll just let my hair hang straight. What do you think?”
She blinked at me in what seemed a female-to-female sign of approval.
I sprayed perfume on the backs of my knees and on my navel. I said, “Don’t get any ideas about that. It doesn’t mean anything. This is just a date. You remember I told you what a date is.”
Her ears twitched. She knew what the perfume meant. It was embarrassing to be so transparent.
She followed me into the office-closet, where I put on a black lace bra and bikini. I figured she knew what that meant too, but I was a grown woman and she was just a kitten, so who cared what she thought?
I put on a short black skirt with a white cotton turtleneck. I took off the white turtleneck and put on a black turtleneck. I took off the skirt and the turtleneck and got myself into an old dress that zipped up the back. I nearly broke my arm zipping it up, and when I stood in front of the mirror I remembered wearing it with Todd, and nearly broke my arm unzipping it. I stuffed my feet into high-heeled sandals for inspiration and stood in my underwear surveying my pathetic wardrobe. I hated everything I owned, and what I didn’t hate was either out of style or worn bald.
I said, “Everything I have is shit.”
Ella turned and gnawed on her back ankle, a sure sign that she thought humans were incredibly stupid.
My lower lip was beginning to push out in a little-girl sulk at the whole business of gift-wrapping myself to go eat dinner with a man. The kitten was right, it was too dumb to credit, especially when I wasn’t sure I even wanted the dinner or the man. I kicked off the sandals and pulled on a pair of clean jeans and the black turtleneck, then climbed back onto the heels because it was a date after all. Now that I felt more normal, I slicked my lips with pink gloss and grabbed my purse. I would eat Ethan’s food, but I would not go gooey just because he was gorgeous and I hadn’t had sex in four years.
I picked Ella up and pressed my nose to her nose. I said, “Don’t pee on anything. I don’t know when I’ll be home.”
On the way to Ethan’s place, I passed the Kurtz house again. The marchers hadn’t returned, and smoke was still curling from the chimney. Maybe Ken Kurtz was in his living room sitting in front of a roaring fire. Maybe Jessica was with him. Maybe they were discussing how they could escape both the FBI and BiZogen and ZIGI and run off to Argentina and take tango lessons and live happily ever after. Or maybe Gilda had come back and was administering the antidote to whatever Kurtz had, and maybe the two of them were planning to run away together.
Personally, I wasn’t going to run away with anybody to anywhere. I was simply going to have a quiet dinner with a man and come home. Maybe I would make out a little bit. Kiss some, touch some, but that was it. I ignored the proven fact that I had never wanted to stop if the kissing and touching were good. I was older, now, and wiser. At least older.
Ethan’s house turned out to be an ultra-modern cypress hidden behind a thick tangle of oaks and sea grape and palms on Fiddler’s Bayou, where John D. MacDonald used to live. When I eased the Bronco down Ethan’s shelled driveway, he was outside with a gray-muzzled bloodhound on a lead. The bloodhound was on the scent of something, with his head so low his eyes were hidden under drooped folds of skin and his ears were sweeping the ground. Ethan waved at me and then was jerked forward by the bloodhound.
I slid out of the Bronco and yelled, “What’s he trailing?”
Ethan grinned. “Ghosts, I think. I’ve seen him go hard on a trail that ended up at a rock.”
I went over and stood beside Ethan and watched the hound sniff the ground. With his liver-and-tan coat, he cut a fine figure. The hound, not Ethan. Except for my high heels, Ethan was dressed in pretty much the same clothes I wore.
I said, “I didn’t know you had a dog.”
“Something else I inherited from my grandfather. He always had bloodhounds, wouldn’t even think of any other dog. Sam is the last. He actually did a little bit of police tracking when he was young, but he’s ten now.”
He didn’t need to add that a ten-year-old bloodhound won’t be around much longer.
I said, “He looks healthy and happy.”
“Yeah. I think he misses my granddad, though.”
And right then I decided that I might not leave after dinner after all.
We went inside after Sam found his quarry, which was a rotted knot of oak buried in dead leaves. Ethan praised him liberally and gave him plenty of time to climb the curving steps to the front porch, then held the door for Sam and me. We went into a large round room with a dark wood floor and mostly glass walls. With the exception of a couple of curved walls that I assumed hid bathroom and closets, the entire house was one big room. With soft uplights illuminating the green foliage against the glass, it was like being in a snug tree house.
I said, “Wow. This is fantastic.”
“Thanks. My brother built it. He’s a genius.”
The kitchen was marked by curved cabinets and black polished countertops, and a bed with tall pilasters draped with sheer white linen announced the bedroom. A grouping of white linen chairs and sofas sat around a white shaggy rug. A glass-topped dining table flanked by Japanese benches sat on another white shaggy rug. A clear glass vase of paperwhite narcissus was in the middle of the table—not a poinsettia plant like ordinary people all over the country had, but paperwhite narcissus. I mean, how cool is that?
Leaving a discreet trail of drool on the dark floor, Sam drooped over to an elevated dog bed and crawled into it with a contented sigh.
Ethan tossed a paper towel on the floor and skated it along Sam’s drool trail.
“Want some wine?”
Of course I wanted wine. I wanted to sit on the white linen sofa and drink wine in that enchanted room for the rest of my life. Ethan flipped on soft music and poured two glasses of red wine without even asking if I’d rather have white, which was somehow very satisfying. We sat on the white linen furniture and talked about bloodhounds and cypress houses and genius brothers, and I forgot that I was on a date.
After a while, Ethan went in the kitchen and clattered around for a while, and I carried my empty wineglass to the curved counter and watched him dish out steaming lasagna onto plates. A salad bowl of oil-coated greens sat on the counter next to salad plates, so I showed my domesticity by putting salad on the plates and carrying them to the table.