“I’m twenty-five.”
“But you’re not Emily.”
“I’m glad we finally agree on that.”
He didn’t remember finishing his wine, but his glass was empty. “No two people, unrelated, could look so alike. You must have an older sister you don’t know about.” He took his smartphone from a jacket pocket. “May I take your picture?”
“That’s all you want of me—a picture?”
That question left him nonplussed.
She said, “What about your younger brother?”
“I don’t have a brother, younger or otherwise.”
“Too bad. He might have taken me home by now.”
“You’re playing with me. Just like she did.”
“‘She’ being the fabled Emily, I suppose.”
“You wouldn’t go home with me if I asked. She wasn’t that easy, and neither are you.”
Maddison shrugged. “As though you know me. If all you want is a picture, go ahead and take it.”
He took three. “What’s your last name?”
“Sutton. Maddison Sutton.” As he put the phone away, she said, “Now what?”
He wasn’t smooth at this, not these days, not since Emily. He said, “There is an age difference.”
“Good grief, you’re just thirtysomething.”
“Thirty-seven.”
“I’ll call you Grandpa, you can call me Lolita.”
“Okay, it’s not a millennium. Will you have dinner with me?”
“I just finished dinner. So did you.”
“Tomorrow night.”
“I’m free,” she said.
“Is this place all right?”
“It’s delightfully expensive.”
“I’ll pick you up at five thirty.”
“Let’s take it slow. I’ll meet you here.”
“A moment ago, you were ready to go home with me.”
“Not with you,” she said. “With your brother.”
Although unnerved by her resemblance to Emily, he nevertheless laughed. “Fortunately for me, I’m an only child.”
“So you say. Most likely, your brother’s cuter.”
“You even talk like her.”
“Which is how?”
“Always half a step ahead of me.”
“Do you like that?”
“I guess I must.”
He wanted no more wine. She nursed the last of hers as if to avoid leaving with him and being mistaken for just another meat-market matchup. He said, “Well, okay then, see you tomorrow,” and departed.
The night was pleasantly cool, the air soft rather than crisp, appealingly scented with the faint, musky odor of the invading sea that rose and fell and rose ceaselessly within the confines of the harbor.
After retrieving his SUV from the valet, David drove across Pacific Coast Highway and parked in the empty lot of a bank. He had a clear view of the restaurant.
Ten minutes passed before she appeared. At the sight of her, the valet hurried to fetch an ivory-white two-seat Mercedes 450 SL that was at least forty years old but impeccably maintained.
As she stood waiting for the car, bathed in the golden glow of the portico, she seemed to be not the subject of the light but the source of it, radiant.
The sight of her gave rise to that certain need in David, but this time also to desire.
Even though she didn’t know what car he drove, he dared to follow her only at a distance. Traffic remained light, and he was never at risk of losing her.
He expected to be led to a house, perhaps one in a gate-guarded community. She went instead to the Island Hotel.
From a distance, he watched her leave the Mercedes with another valet, who stood at the open driver’s door to watch her until she had disappeared into the lobby.
David went home, and for five hours he slept as if drugged. He dreamed of searching the Island Hotel for Emily.
The bellmen wore black and carried automatic carbines and refused to help him with his luggage, which didn’t matter, because he had no luggage; he wasn’t checking in; he was just looking for Emily. The man at the front desk insisted that no one was currently staying in the hotel, and this proved to be true when David went room by room, floor by floor, his sense of urgency growing, seeking someone who might have seen Emily. He thought she must have gone to the bar for a drink. But the bar had been turned into an infirmary, where wounded men were stretched out on rows of cots. Although he didn’t recall having been wounded, he found himself on a cot, being attended to by a nurse in a black uniform. Employing a rubber tube as a tourniquet, she used a needle to tap one of his veins and drew blood into a collection tube. Because her uniform was black rather than white, he worried that she wasn’t a real nurse, but she assured him that she was a nurse and a trained phlebotomist. “I have much experience of blood,” she said. Only then did he realize that she was Emily, and with considerable relief, he said, “At last I’ve found you,” and she said, “You won’t remember this. Sleep and forget. You won’t remember.”