Fast & Loose

by Elizabeth Bevarly

  The overall feeling was…happy, Cole decided. And…pleasant. Even though pleasant wasn’t a word that turned up in his vocabulary often. Calm, too, he thought further. Which was a word he used even less frequently. It was the kind of room that just made a person feel better for having entered it.

  Immediately across from the front door was a hallway that led into the rest of the house, and to the right of that, near the fireplace, were French doors opening into another room. Shunning the traditional entry of the hall for the wider one offered by the doors—there was no need to risk breaking anything else—Cole made his way into a dining room with a broad bay window. A massive buffet littered with whimsical, brightly painted wood-carved animals and flamboyant pottery took up virtually the entire wall across from it, dwarfing the small table and two chairs by the window. The colors on the walls in here were a tranquil turquoise blue, offset by countless paintings of lush gardens that hung on the walls.

  Clearly, his hostess was a collector of art who had very eclectic tastes. Cole wasn’t much of a connoisseur himself, but from what he could tell, the house’s owner had good taste. Certainly, she liked things that were colorful.

  Through a door on the other side of this room, Cole found the kitchen, its red walls, retro coffee advertisements, and old-fashioned appliances pulling more reluctant smiles from him. A breakfast nook in the corner was encased on two sides with wide windows that looked out onto a backyard that was surprisingly private, thanks to a veritable jungle of foliage along the outer rim. Through a second kitchen entry, he found himself in a hallway painted yet another bright color—this time something reminiscent of a tropical sunset—looking down into the living room again. There were two more doors on his right, and another on his left, between him and the front door. The room on the left was a bathroom, he discovered as he passed it, while the first room on the right was a home office. The third room was filled with boxes and odd bits of furniture and miscellany that made him think whoever lived here had moved in fairly recently and hadn’t yet decided what the purpose of this room was to be.

  So where was the bedroom? he wondered.

  Turning around, he noticed a door at the other end of the hall that he’d overlooked before. Opening it, he saw stairs and understood there was more to the house than he’d initially realized. Although he’d noted a window above the wide front porch when he was outside, he’d thought it was for decoration or to offer some sparse illumination to the attic. As he climbed the stairs, twisted around a cramped landing, then climbed some more, he discovered that what was once an attic had been turned into a master bedroom. Well, okay, maybe it wasn’t so masterful, since, like the house, it was small and a little crowded, its ceiling low in the center and slanted on both sides. However, like the rest of the house, it made Cole feel comfortable and at ease.

  Until he topped the final step and banged his head on the ceiling. Wow, it was even lower than he’d thought.

  He blew out an exasperated breath as he hunched down enough to keep it from happening again. Another indication that the owner of the house was a woman. Or a jockey. Or a troll. Or all of the above. At six feet three, Cole knew he was taller than the average man. He’d always kind of liked the fact, had even taken advantage of his size from time to time to intimidate some unfortunate slob who tried to challenge him. It had never occurred to him that his size could be a detriment. But the ceiling in this room clearly wasn’t six-three. More like six-two. Which meant he was going to have to remember to duck every time he stood up here. Or else be beaten senseless by the end of his first week in residence. The house would probably enjoy that immensely.

  Carefully crouching, he made his way to the bed and tossed his garment bag atop it, settling his carry-on beside that. As he unpacked, he took in his surroundings, noting how this room was darker than the rest of the house, due to its lack of windows, but how the owner had managed to brighten it up by painting it a sandy color and eschewing curtains on the one small window. The rugs, too, were lighter than in the rest of the house, wool dhurries with buff pastel geometrics. The bed was an antique white wrought-iron number of a size Cole had never seen before, not quite single, but not quite double, with a dresser and writing desk of mottled bird’s-eye maple.

  He switched on a lamp to combat the dusky darkness, sending a rush of pale pink light into the room. Everything was tidy and well-maintained, right down to the computer on the desk that bore only one small Post-it note. Cole was impressed. His computer at home was covered with reminders to himself, and his desk was constantly obscured by dozens of documents and letters that needed attention.

  It wasn’t until he opened his suitcase and began to unpack that he realized the note on the computer wasn’t the only one in the room. Moving toward the closet—and taking care not to straighten up as he did so—he saw one there, as well, on the right side of the set of double doors. In sturdy block letters that were in no way feminine, someone, presumably the owner, had written, “Left is traditionally the route of nonconformists. Right is the route of the traditional. Enjoy the right side of the closet.”

  He grinned. So his hostess was a nonconformist, was she? Opening the right-hand door, he found the inside cleared for his belongings, including the shelf above the hangers and the floor below. The narrow space offered just enough room for the suits, shirts, and shoes he’d brought with him, and the shelf offered space for his carry-on. A perfect fit. It was nice when things worked out that way. Maybe this wouldn’t be such a bad little house after all.

  He started to turn away from the closet, then, for some reason, opened the left-hand door, too. It wasn’t an invasion of privacy, he told himself. The door wasn’t locked, and there was no note saying he couldn’t. He was just curious to see what the clothing of a nonconformist looked like.

  Vivid, he immediately saw. Literally every color of the rainbow, and then some, met his eyes as he scanned the interior of the closet, which was crowded to capacity, doubtless because his hostess had condensed two closets into one to make room for her guest. But where he had anticipated suits and business wear—since what else would anyone have in their closet?—what he found instead were garments that were gauzy, sparkly, and velvety, and in no way suitable for business attire. The floor below them was completely obscured by shoes—all of which, he noted right away, fell into three categories: functional, quirky, and comfortable. The shelf above was filled with hatboxes in a million colors and textures. The interior of the closet was such a stark contrast to the pale furnishings of the room, as if someone had exploded a color bomb inside it whose power they had greatly underestimated.

  There was no telling what was in those boxes, Cole thought as he pushed the door closed again. What was strange was that he actually felt a twinge of curiosity about what their contents might be. What difference did that make? he asked himself. Who cared? The only thing he should be curious about at the moment was where he was going to stow his underwear.

  As he clicked the closet door shut, his gaze lit on the dresser, and he was surprised to realize he was looking for another note. He smiled when he saw it, on the bottom right-hand drawer, and immediately went to see what it said.

  “Right makes might,” it read in the same angular lettering as the one on the closet. Then, in parentheses below, “It also makes room.”

  Pulling the drawer open, Cole found it empty—and perfectly sized for the rest of his belongings, including his underwear. Naturally, that made him think that at least one of the other drawers contained her underwear. But that, he thought, would be a violation of privacy. So he refrained from prying. Nevertheless, he felt another surprising flutter of curiosity about what her underwear might look like. Probably like the things in her closet, full of rich color and lush textures. He was already forming an impression of his hostess as something of a hedonist.

  As he stood again—forgetting about the ceiling and bonking his head again—he noted a framed photograph on the dresser. Five women stood ankle-deep in water a fai
r distance from the camera, water that was clear enough and calm enough that Cole was reasonably certain it was the Caribbean. One of them, he wagered, was his hostess, and he studied each in turn. Four of the five wore swimsuits revealing enough to make him like what he saw. The fifth wore a T-shirt that fell down over her thighs, but it was wet enough to mold some truly luscious curves. All of the women seemed attractive, though the one in the T-shirt was squinting into the sunlight, her face obscured even more than the others’ by the shadow of the baseball cap she wore.

  The blonde in the white string bikini, he would wager, was breathtaking. Cole wondered if she was the owner of the house. Then he wondered why he was wondering that. He should be wondering if Silk Purse had been settled at Susannah’s friends’ farm by now.

  Collecting his toiletry kit, he made his way back downstairs and unpacked his things in the bathroom. A note affixed to the mirror informed him that the hot water sometimes took time to actually be hot water and that cold was sometimes a relative term. It ended with the philosophical observation that “Patience is a virtue—not to mention very cool.”

  Cole smiled as he tugged the Post-it note from the glass and started to wad it up. But he stopped before completing the action and smoothed the scrap of paper out again. Then he stuck it back on the mirror. Hey, he might need to be reminded of the water’s idiosyncrasies later.

  It had nothing to do with the idiosyncrasies of the note writer.

  HE SPENT THE REST OF THE DAY EXPLORING HIS surroundings, trying to get acclimated to his new digs and figure out where everything was. But as familiar as he became with the house during that foray, he got to know his hostess even better. In her linen closet, he found an assortment of lotions with exotic fragrances like Tahitian Gardenia and Moroccan Mint. There were a half-dozen bottles of nail polish with colors like Basque in the Sun and Days of Wine and Roses. A little basket held what looked like hundreds of eye shadows and lip glosses with glitter and sparkles and God knew what else.

  The wine rack in her kitchen held only two bottles of wine—one red, one white—both excellent, inexpensive vintages that told Cole she knew her wine, even if she didn’t drink it much. Her pantry didn’t hold a lot, but what was there told him she didn’t shop at the grocery store, but at boutique delis and health food stores. On one shelf, neatly aligned, was a row of cooking spices like cumin, turmeric, and paprika, the sort of spices used in international cuisine. He knew that, because he liked to eat international cuisine. Her bookcases held a variety of literature, everything from paperback romances to gritty thrillers to historical maritime novels to biographies of world leaders. Her CD collection, too, was varied and extensive, the majority of artists people Cole had never heard of before. As he pulled one CD after another from the shelf, he realized a good many of them were imports from places like India, Algeria, Portugal, and Saudi Arabia.

  And then there was the glass.

  It was in every room in some form or another. The panes of the window over the kitchen sink were each a different color, each poured by hand complete with tiny bubbles. The big bay window in the living room boasted a wide border of stained glass over each section that was decorated with some kind of fat yellow flower. There were coiled plates, braided bowls, and twisted vases. There were abstract pieces he couldn’t begin to identify. All of it wrought from the richest colors he’d ever seen, colors that seemed to transform, shift, and come alive as the sunlight tumbling through the windows changed and stretched. Clearly the house’s owner was not just an art collector, but someone who liked to enjoy on a daily basis the art she amassed.

  Whoever his hostess was, she wasn’t like any other woman Cole knew. The brightly colored clothes and shoes in the closet suggested someone of a Bohemian nature. The cosmetics in the closet were more suited to a girly-girl fashionista. The health foods made him think more of an organic type. The good wine was characteristic of a sophisticate. The world beat music, an aesthete. The literary selections—many of them, anyway—an academic.

  Just who was the owner of this house?

  He remembered the photograph in the bedroom of the five women on the beach. He’d seen the same five women in other photographs around the house, too, in different poses, clearly still on vacation. One magnetted to the refrigerator had them all sitting on the deck of an open-air bar with a different beach behind them, all of them laughing and wearing sunglasses and/or floppy hats. The white string bikini had been wearing shorts and a different bikini top in that photo, the other women shorts and T-shirts.

  The picture on the mantelpiece in the living room showed all five women standing in front of Tiffany’s on Fifth Avenue in New York. Each of them wore a rhinestone tiara and long black gloves, and each struck a Holly Golightly pose. It was that photo that Cole looked at now, studying each of the women in turn as he tried again to guess which was the owner of the house. This photograph, too, had been taken from a distance, so it was hard to make out each of the women’s features. The white string bikini he knew right away, because the long blond hair cascaded over one shoulder. He thought he could make out the baggy T-shirt one, as well, because, as in all the other pictures, she looked slightly uncomfortable. Her hair was pulled severely back in this picture, and she was squinting into the camera again, two facts that only added to her appearance of discontent.

  There was no way she could be the house’s owner, he decided. No way had glitter eye shadow or ruby red nail polish ever touched that woman’s person. His money was still on the string bikini.

  Strangely, though, it was the uncomfortable one to which his gaze kept straying. Why, he couldn’t imagine. But there was something about her…maybe even something kind of familiar….

  His cell phone rang then, scattering his thoughts. He pulled it from his pocket and saw Susannah’s number, so he flipped it open.

  “Hey, Suz,” he said as he settled the photograph back on the mantel.

  “All settled in?” she asked without preamble.

  “As settled as I can be.”

  “You don’t sound very settled. Is the house awful?”

  “No,” he replied quickly. “It’s actually kind of nice. In a Bohemian, girly-girl, organic, sophisticated, aesthete, academic kind of way.”

  There was a slight pause at the other end, then, “Yeah, okay, whatever. Look, I just wanted to let you know that Silk Purse is loving the bluegrass here at the farm and cavorting about with glee. Jason’s already got her back in her routine, so all is well there. Denny and Faye told me to invite you to dinner tonight, so come whenever you’re ready and you can check everything out.”

  “Sounds good.”

  She started to give him directions, but he told her to stop until he could locate a pencil and paper. He moved to a credenza in the corner of the room and opened drawers until he found both in one, alongside an address book, a roll of stamps, and a sketchpad upon which someone had sketched a design of overlapping, amorphous shapes.

  Quickly, he jotted down Susannah’s instructions and folded his phone closed. Then, unable to help himself, he withdrew the sketchpad and flipped through it. There were other designs on other pages, some of them similar to the glass pieces in the house. So his hostess wasn’t just a collector of art, he thought. She was also a creator. These were doubtless her own pieces decorating the place.

  Although he would have thought he’d have pretty conventional taste when it came to art—not that he ever gave that any thought—he liked his hostess’s work. He liked the way the colors blended and melded, and he liked how something as fragile as glass could look so powerful and audacious.

  She was definitely an interesting person, his hostess. It was too bad he’d have to return to California without ever making her acquaintance.

  Four

  BREE’S APARTMENT WAS BARELY A MILE AWAY FROM Lulu’s house, but where Lulu lived on a quiet, tree-lined, seldom-traveled little byway, Bree lived right on Bardstown Road, at the very hub of Highlands action, above a bar—nightclub was just to
o uppity a term for Deke’s—whose claim to fame was launching local bands. As a result, rarely did an evening at Bree’s pass without the steady accompaniment of thumpa-thumpa-thumpa from the drums of whoever was the featured act below. By Monday night, Lulu had been slammed by the all-girl punk ensemble WMD (Women of Mass Destruction), twanged by the southern fried rock band Finger Pickin’ Good, and rapped by the hip-hop group Da Streetz. Never let it be said that Deke’s taste in music was anything but eclectic. Needless to say, her sleep every night had been cluttered by raucous dreams, everything from the banjo-picking mutant in Deliverance to overweening low-riders to marauding giant tampons.

  But Monday night, thankfully, Lulu lucked out, because the band shooting into orbit that night was a jazzy combo called Smuuth, which, Bree told her, was supposed to be pronounced “smooth,” but no one got that and used the short u sound instead, making them, well, Smuth.

  Smuth, however, was indeed a very smooth band, so there was hope for pleasant dreams this evening. In fact, Smuth was so smooth that the two women decided to brush their hair, tuck their T-shirts into their jeans—Lulu’s was white, Bree’s was yellow—slip their bare feet into their sandals and go down to enjoy them live. They took their usual seats at the bar and ordered their usual beer, greeting and/or waving at all the regulars. As always, the television above the bar was turned on with the volume lowered, tuned to a local channel that was, at the moment, airing a network cop show. So Lulu and Bree did what they usually did on such nights out—those when Bree wasn’t pulling a bartending shift at the bar in the Ambassador Hotel—and enjoyed the music, chatted with friends, and danced on the few occasions when the mood took them.

  Until the local news came on as Lulu took the first sip of her recently refreshed beer, and her attention was suddenly snagged by a face that flashed by on the screen above the bar.