The Book of other People Part 9

'There's food in the kitchen,' Gabrielle offered. 'My parents won't be home for another couple hours.'

'Are you kidding?' Soleil said.

Gabrielle didn't know what she would be kidding about.

'I'm not going to waste a night in Santa Cruz waiting in a kitchen. Let's go and get a drink. Is there an Italian restaurant nearby?'

They sat at the bar. Gabrielle had never been so aware of her posture and her age. She was eleven. She wore a lavender corduroy dress with a long-ribboned bow at the collar. Soleil wore a camisole under a burgundy velvet blazer, a small electronic heart pinned to her left lapel. The heart blinked its red light twice in rapid succession, and then paused before blinking twice again.

Within minutes, two men were standing near their bar stools. Gabrielle went to the bathroom and returned to find one of them had taken her seat. She tapped Soleil on the shoulder. 'The hostess said because I'm underage we have to sit at a table,' she lied. She pointed to one by the window with room for only two.

'Nice meeting you gentlemen,' Soleil said, and inexplicably saluted them before following Gabrielle to the table. Soleil ordered appetizers as main courses, and over dinner she talked to Gabrielle about marriage (she had been married at twenty-four, for three months), the merits of reading Ayn Rand ( just by p.r.o.nouncing her first name correctly you could intimidate people, Soleil claimed), and the serious decision as to whether or not a woman should ever start using deodorant.

'I never use it and smell me,' Soleil instructed.

'Now?'

'No,' she said, rolling her eyes, 'ten years from now.'

Gabrielle leaned in toward her.

'What do I smell like?'

'Sweet, like strawberries,' Gabrielle said. It was true, she did smell like strawberries, but she also smelled like sweat. Not in a bad way, and not in a French way - there was just a trace of something fermenting.

'You're sweet, too, Bree,' Soleil said. Over dinner, Soleil had started calling her Bree without ever asking if she liked it. She did like it.

'Thank you, you're too kind,' Gabrielle said, sounding like someone else.

'That took longer than I thought it would,' Soleil said, as they walked hurriedly back to Gabrielle's house. 'How mad will your parents be?'

'Beats me,' Gabrielle said. 'We don't have guests that often.'

Gabrielle's parents were sitting in the kitchen, facing each other. Her mother's foot was propped on her father's lap. He was ma.s.saging it.

'Oh, there you are,' Gabrielle's mother said, as though she was addressing a pair of misplaced sungla.s.ses that had turned up.

'Long day on her feet,' Gabrielle's father explained, replacing the shoe on his wife's foot.

'Look at you,' Soleil said. 'Cinderella.'

Gabrielle's mother smiled and stood and Soleil hugged her. Then Soleil hugged Gabrielle's father for several seconds longer, until he broke away.

'Welcome,' her father rasped.

Gabrielle's mother looked Soleil up and down. 'You look great,' she said.

'Thank you, Dorothy,' Soleil said. Everyone waited a moment for Soleil to return the compliment. She didn't.

In the living room, Gabrielle's father and mother sat in the loveseat, like they always did, side by side and facing the same direction, as though riding in a bus. Gabrielle and Soleil sat in arm-less chairs. Gabrielle's father was wearing a blazer, and Gabrielle could not understand why; he owned a furniture store and never dressed up for work. He poured each of the women a large gla.s.s of wine.

Gabrielle's father called the Thai restaurant and announced his order so loudly no one else could talk. Soleil adjusted her rings so their stones were centered on her long fingers.

Gabrielle's father hung up the phone and looked at Gabrielle: 'I got the rice you like.'

'I heard,' Gabrielle wanted to say, but didn't. Things already seemed tense.

'Can I ask you a favor?' Gabrielle's mother said to Soleil.

'Anything,' Soleil said, discouragingly.

'Can you turn off that pin?'

'This? It's my heartlight.'

There was a pulsating silence.

'Turn off your heartlight,' Gabrielle's father sang. He was p.r.o.ne to quick bouts of song.

'I just get panic attacks sometimes from blinking lights,' Gabrielle's mother said.

'It happened last week,' Gabrielle added. 'With an ambulance.'

Soleil didn't turn off the light. Instead she removed her blazer. Her camisole was thin, the pattern of her lace bra easy to see. Her oddly triangular b.r.e.a.s.t.s were medium sized, and her arms, Gabrielle noticed, were hairless, waxed. Gabrielle's father's eyes stayed fixed on Soleil's forehead.

The adults talked about Hawaii but they didn't talk about what everyone had been doing in the years after they left Hawaii. When Gabrielle's father disappeared into the kitchen to get more wine, Gabrielle's mother leaned forward. 'I don't want to embarra.s.s you, Sol, but how did you get rid of your stutter?'

The edges of Soleil's wide lips trembled for a second, and then were still. 'What stutter?' she said.

'You used to complain about it. You used to say you were going to go to an inst.i.tute in Minnesota where they worked with people with your - '

'I think you're confusing me with someone else,' Soleil said.

Gabrielle's father returned to the room with a bottle of wine in each hand. 'Red or white?' he asked, holding them up like trophy fish.

'Red,' said both women simultaneously, and then laughed.

'See, Gabrielle,' Soleil said. 'Your mother and I aren't that that different.' different.'

Gabrielle's mother looked as though she was about to disagree, but instead she took a final sip of her wine, and held her gla.s.s up to her husband for a refill.

'Do you think they're natural around each other?' Soleil asked, later that night. Soleil was staying in Gabrielle's room, in her bed, while Gabrielle slept on the trundle below. There was no guest bedroom in Gabrielle's house - further proof, she thought, that they weren't rich.

'What do you mean?' Gabrielle asked.

'I mean, do you think they're putting on a show?'

'For who?' Gabrielle asked. Then corrected herself. 'For whom?'

'For me. Trying to show how in love in love they are.' Soleil said 'in love' like a boy in Gabrielle's cla.s.s did, with a guttural emphasis on 'love'. they are.' Soleil said 'in love' like a boy in Gabrielle's cla.s.s did, with a guttural emphasis on 'love'.

'No,' Gabrielle said truthfully. 'They're acting the way they always do.'

Soleil fell asleep a few seconds later, as if only the whiff of scandal or deception could keep her awake. Gabrielle sat up watching her, the light of the moon sliding through the blinds, striping their bodies. Soleil slept on her stomach with one leg falling off the side of the bed, like she had been poisoned.

By Thursday it was clear Soleil was bored. She walked around the house balancing water gla.s.ses on her head and turning the flowers in vases upside down. 'I learned this from a florist in Denmark,' she said. She had learned everything - candle-making, Tai Chi, Portuguese - somewhere else.

That afternoon, Soleil decided she and Gabrielle and Gabrielle's mother should go to Lake Tahoe for the weekend, for what she called a 'girls' getaway.' She had a friend there, a woman named Katy, who owned a cafe on the water.

'You'll like Katy,' Soleil said, now sunning herself in the back yard. 'She's a free spirit. Very s.e.xy.'

Gabrielle was sitting on the gra.s.s next to her. 'So all your friends are pretty then? My mom, Katy . . .' Gabrielle was testing. She knew her mother was attractive. 'Your mother's a good-looking woman,' her father was fond of saying. Then he would break into song.

But Soleil hesitated. Gabrielle immediately regretted saying anything. 'Your mother's cute,' she said, wrinkling her nose, 'but she's not s.e.xy s.e.xy. She just doesn't have that vibe about her.'

'I can't leave Jack alone for the weekend,' Gabrielle's mother said flatly that evening. They were sitting in the living room and Soleil had laid out her Lake Tahoe plan.

'Well, he can come too,' Soleil said.

'I don't think he can,' Gabrielle's mother said, without offering an explanation. She appeared beleaguered by Soleil's visit, and had gone to bed early every night since Soleil had arrived.

The plan seemed dead to both Soleil and Gabrielle's mother, but Gabrielle found herself desperate to save it.

'Can I go with Soleil even if you don't come?' she said.

'Let me think about it,' said her mother.

Her father entered the room, waltzing with an imaginary partner. 'What's going on?' he said, looking at their faces. He stopped waltzing. 'A summit meeting?'

Gabrielle told him about the trip, and appealed to him to let her go. 'I want to see how self-sufficient a single woman has to be,' Gabrielle said. She had picked this up from Mrs Terwilliger, her history teacher, who was newly divorced.

'Sounds like a good plan,' her father said.

Gabrielle smiled at him, and forced herself not to look at her mother. She stared at her father even as she heard her mother stand up and walk out of the room, the sound of her practical heels heavy on the hardwood floor.

'Dorothy?' Gabrielle's father called after her.

'I'm just checking the fridge to see what I'm going to make us for dinner,' her mother replied, but Gabrielle could tell by her footsteps that she was in the study, not the kitchen.

On Friday, Soleil dressed in a snug white shirt and white pants, no panty lines visible. Or maybe, Gabrielle thought, she wasn't wearing any. Soleil was big-boned and tall, and the whiteness of her outfit highlighted her size. She looked like a small ship.

Soleil's van was also white. 'I hate this car,' Soleil said, as they pulled out onto the road. 'But I need it for my job.'

Gabrielle realized she didn't know what Soleil did for a living. She didn't seem like someone with a job.

'What is your profession?' Gabrielle asked.

Soleil laughed. 'Why so formal? Do you work at pa.s.sport control?'

Gabrielle shook her head. Soleil laughed again.

'I'm an antique collector,' Soleil said. 'I specialize in Coca-Cola merchandise.'

'Oh, like old bottles,' Gabrielle said, too quickly.

'Not bottles bottles,' said Soleil, and Gabrielle saw the skin around her eyes tighten. 'I collect beautiful mirrors and old vending machines from the twenties and sell them at Coca-Cola conventions. You wouldn't believe how many people are into that stuff. When I lived in Minnesota I made a really good living.'

'You lived in Minnesota?' Gabrielle asked.

'Yes,' Soleil said, and Gabrielle detected a slight stutter, a repet.i.tive 'Y'.

A billboard advertised an upcoming refreshment center called the Nut House. 'I think I have a few ex-lovers who live there,' Soleil said. Then she turned to Gabrielle and grew very serious. 'If anyone ever invites you to Belgium, please promise me you won't go.'

'Did something bad happen there?' Gabrielle asked.

'No, nothing happens there. That's the point. It's Belgium.'

'Oh s.h.i.t,' Soleil called out, waking Gabrielle.

'What?'

'We're almost at Katy's house, and we didn't go grocery shopping. That's what you do when you stay with someone - you stock their fridge.'

'Oh,' Gabrielle said, though Soleil hadn't brought anything into her mother's kitchen.

They stopped at a grocery store designed to look like a log cabin. Soleil pulled out a shopping cart.

'Do we need a cart?' Gabrielle said.

'We're buying for the whole weekend,' Soleil said. 'The wine alone would break your arm.'

In the far corner of the cart, Gabrielle saw something brown. Square. A wallet. She gave it to Soleil, who quickly flipped through it. 'Henry Sam Stewart,' she read. 'Blue eyes, overweight. Lives on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe.' She looked at Gabrielle. 'You know what that means?'

'He's a gambler.'

'No,' Soleil said. 'It means you'll get a big reward.'

'Because he's a gambler.'

'No, stop with that. Because, Bree, he lives far away. He'll be really grateful we made the effort.'