Part 56 (2/2)

”The whole sentence.” She lowered her chin, caught me in the full impact of her gaze.

I s.h.i.+fted in my chair, tried to wish my way out of this situation. When that didn't work, I just said it, flat and cold.

”I'm not interested in you, Vanessa.”

The loneliness of another can be shocking when it lays itself bare without warning.

A dire abandonment broke Vanessa's features into pieces, and I could feel the hollow chill of her beautiful apartment, the ache of her sitting alone at 3 A.M A.M., lover gone, law books and yellow legal pads spread before her at her dining room table, pen in hand, the pictures of a much younger Vanessa that adorned her mantel staring down at her like ghosts of a life unlived. I could see a tiny flicker of hungry light in her chest, and not the hunger of her s.e.xual appet.i.te, but the conflicted hunger of her other selves.

In that moment, her features went skeletal, and her beauty vanished, and she looked like she'd fallen to sc.r.a.ped knees under the weight of the rain.

”f.u.c.k you too, Patrick.” She smiled as she said it. Smiled with lips that twitched at the corners. ”Okay?”

”Okay,” I said.

”Just...” She stood, a fist clenched around her bag strap. ”Just...f.u.c.k you.”

She left the restuarant, and I stayed where I was, turned my chair and watched her walk up the street through the drizzle, bag swinging back and forth against her hip, her steps stripped of grace.

Why, I wondered, does it all have to be so messy?

My cell phone rang, and I pulled it from my s.h.i.+rt pocket, wiped the condensation from its surface as I lost Vanessa in a crowd.

”h.e.l.lo.”

”h.e.l.lo,” the man's voice said. ”Can I a.s.sume that chair's free now?”

21.

I turned in my chair, looked into the restaurant for the sandy-haired man. He wasn't at a table. He wasn't at the bar as far as I could see.

”Who is this?” I said.

”What a tearful breakup scene, Pat. For a minute, I was pretty sure she'd toss a drink in your face.”

He knew my name.

I turned again in the chair, looked along the sidewalk for him, for anyone with a cellular phone.

”You're right,” I said. ”The chair's free. Come on back and get it.”

His voice was the same gentle monotone I'd heard on the patio when he'd tried to take the chair. ”She has incredible lips, that attorney. Incredible. I don't think they're implants either. Do you?”

”Yeah,” I said, scanning the other side of the street, ”they're nice lips. Come on back for the chair.”

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