I didn’t feel the way with Redwood I’d felt with Alexei, but I felt something, some zing or zip. Was the lack of wormlight reason enough not to embark on something? What if I never had the wormlight ever again? I didn’t think the answer was becoming a nun, married to the memory of a brief affair with a married dude. Was it stupid to sleep with The Money? Was it stupid not to?
Maybe I wanted him to kiss me just so I could confirm he wanted to. Maybe I wanted him to fall in love with me so I could decide whether or not I wanted to be in love with him. You get used to people falling in love with the idea of being with you. You think you should always have their feelings in hand like a down payment.
“How are things with Oliver?” he asked from behind his sunglasses.
“I haven’t heard from him.”
“Nothing.”
“Nada.”
“And how do you feel about that?”
“I guess I’m surprised he could walk away without needing to yell at me. Most people want you to witness how much you’ve hurt them, but not him, apparently. I don’t know if that means I didn’t really hurt him or that he has more dignity than I thought.” I made my face a study in neutrality. “And you? Anyone special?”
“No one at all.”
When I’d googled Redwood, I’d clicked through watermarked society shots of him with an array of beautiful, serious-seeming women. “I’m not sure I believe you.”
“It’s the truth.”
A pause. I said, “I have a question.”
“Shoot.”
“Why do you have a grand piano?”
“It came with the house, but I do play. The piano is part of the reason I picked this place.”
“Will you play for me?”
“Yes.”
“Most people at least pretend to be reluctant.”
“I like to show off. But stay out here.”
I don’t know what he played. It was slow and sad. The notes drifted out the open mouth of his bunker house, settled on my skin. I looked over the valley through the sound as though through mist. Then he stopped, and I was myself again.
“Could have been worse,” I told him, but he heard what I was really saying.
“It’s my party trick.”
I thought of Jones Cohen removing my earring with his tongue, diamonds hanging from his lips.
* * *
—
In the evening, pink light submerged the city. I said I wanted to swim, thinking of skinny-dipping, but Redwood went into the house and came back with a one-piece bathing suit for me that smelled faintly of chlorine. I didn’t ask whose it was. The cool water felt sharp and shivery on my sunburned skin. I leaned back against the infinity edge, and Redwood waded toward me, rosy light reflected in the droplets on his beard. I thought he was going to kiss me, but he just leaned against the edge, too, facing the other way, looking out.
After dark, when the city was lit up orange as a flat field of poppies and we were back on the chaises, wrapped in towels, he asked if I felt like eating some ’shrooms.
I said sure.
He went inside and came out with a foil-wrapped bar of chocolate.
“Sir Hugo’s boyfriend gave this to me. I have no idea how strong it is.”
“If it’s from Rudy, probably really strong.”
We each ate a square.
Redwood got to his feet. “I’m going to turn off those lights.”
He went inside. The lights in the pool went off, and then the indoor lights. Piano music emanated from the house again, something dissonant and tattered-sounding, full of holes and gaps. I didn’t know if it was supposed to sound that way or if this was now a song in the key of ’shroom. The mauve light of the city pulsed in the sky and on the pool’s surface. The music started to draw together, to become something that made sense, and I felt like I could pull it toward me, shape it into a mass I would hurl out over the valley like a storm.
Marian had written: The world unfurls and unfurls, and there is always more. A line, a circle, is insufficient. I look forward, and there is the horizon. I look back. Horizon. What’s past is lost. I am already lost to my future.
Listening to Redwood play, I thought about how the medium of music is time, how if time stopped, a painting would exist unchanged but music would vanish, like a wave without an ocean. I wanted to tell him this, but when he came back, I got distracted by how his aura was gray and wispy like smoke. “I can see your aura,” I said.
“What does it look like?”
“Like smoke.”
The city sparkled and revolved like a galaxy.