“You got me,” I said.
“Fuckin’ A,” clutching my knee, hard. Trent threw back the second half of his martini, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “Don’t you want to know how I found you, sexy?”
“Tell me an elaborate but instructive lie.”
“I followed the buzzards.”
When he passed out on my couch four hours later, a girl from the Googie place draped over him, I walked gingerly out. Wallet in hand.
Fourteen hours later I was in Hilton Head, South Carolina. I couldn’t seem to escape the heat. There, in a gleaming Hyatt bar, I met a legally separated Norwegian, a beautiful woman in the James Bond tradition. She was Sorbonne educated. She had mile-long corkscrew curls, green cat eyes. She spoke five languages, could get dinner or a lawyer in five more. She liked discussing Russian economics, Caribbean religions, Wole Soyinka. Rich men had approached her in night clubs in New York, Rome, Geneva, wanting her to fly with them to Madrid, Colombo, Monterey.
She was 31.
