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Coltrane didn’t comment.

Jennifer finished her drink.

“Time for a refill?”

“You bet. It’s New Year’s Eve, after all.”

“And if we’re not going to starve, I’d better start the marinara sauce.” Coltrane walked with her through the dining room and into the kitchen.

A smaller version of the glass-topped, steel-rimmed dining table was against a wall.

“I guess I shouldn’t be too hard on Duncan about possibly lying to me. I wasn’t exactly honest with him, either.”

“Oh?”

Coltrane refilled Jennifer’s glass, adding a lime wedge and ice cubes. “I told him I knew how the furniture was supposed to be arranged because I had seen the layout in an old architectural magazine. Not true.”

“Then if you didn’t find out from a magazine . . .”

“The photographs we found in the vault. By now, I’ve had a chance to go through all of them. It turns out that several of the pictures of Rebecca Chance were taken in this house, and as you might expect from anything Packard did, those photographs are as clear and crisp as can be. I had no trouble using them as a guide to arrange the tables and chairs and things.”

Jennifer studied him.

“I also found some interesting photos of a different sort,” Coltrane said.

Jennifer studied him harder.

“Nudes.”

The moment Coltrane said it, he wished that he hadn’t.

“Nudes,” Jennifer said flatly.

“You know, the type of thing Stieglitz took of Georgia O’Keeffe.”

“Yes, I know exactly the type you mean. Show them to me.”

CROSSING THE VAULT, Jennifer said, “No shivers anymore?”

Coltrane furrowed his brow in puzzlement.

“This vault used to give you the creeps,” Jennifer said. “It made you claustrophobic.”

“Oh, that. Well, I guess I’ve been coming down here enough that I got used to it.”

“Yes, you definitely did get used to it. It’s cool enough in here to give
me
the shivers.” Jennifer rubbed her bare arms.

“Here.” Coltrane took off his sport coat and draped it around her shoulders.

“Thanks.”

“Better?” His hands lingered on her shoulders.

“Much.”

Jennifer turned to him, spreading her palms against his shirt. His nipples reacted. A gentle kiss lengthened, becoming forceful.

They held each other.

“So where are these nude photographs?” Jennifer asked.

“You haven’t changed your mind?”

“Maybe I’ve got a kinky streak.”

Taking his arms from around her, Coltrane released the catches that held the wall in place.

When he pulled the section free, Jennifer stared at Rebecca Chance’s life-size features. The harsh light from the vault dispelled the darkness of the chamber. The photograph’s eyes reflected the illumination.

“She’s much more beautiful here than in the movie I saw,” Jennifer said.

Coltrane had left the box containing the nude photographs on top of the others. He carried it out to one of the shelves and took off the lid.

Stepping forward, Jennifer stared down at the image of Rebecca Chance in the dining room upstairs, the strings of chromium beads draped over her naked body.

Slowly, she turned to the next photograph, and the next. The room was so still that the only sounds Coltrane heard were the subtle scrape of the photographs and Jennifer’s tense breathing. She kept turning the pictures.

At last, she was finished.

“Well?”

“Her nipples,” Jennifer said.

Coltrane had no idea what reaction to have expected from her, but this certainly was not one that he could have predicted.

“The nipples and the aureoles around them,” Jennifer said.

“I don’t understand.”

“Mine are different from hers.”

Coltrane found himself blushing. “I wasn’t trying to imply that . . .”

“That hers are more attractive than mine? They are. Rebecca Chance was an astonishingly beautiful woman. She was blessed by nature. But that’s not what I’m getting at. My nipples are small, the width of the tip of my little finger. Rebecca Chance’s are as wide as the tip of my index finger. The aureoles around
my
breasts aren’t pronounced the way Rebecca Chance’s are.”

“And?”

“I could get my nipples and aureoles to start looking like hers, however.”

“You’re talking about surgery?”

“If I got pregnant.”

Coltrane’s heartbeat lurched. “You think she was pregnant?”

“I suspect it was her first time. I don’t see any stretch marks to indicate that she previously had had a baby. I’d say she was about three months along, still able to keep her stomach flat. But she couldn’t keep her breasts from getting fuller and the nipples larger as the photographs progressed. The glow on her face and the luster on her skin make me think that some powerful hormones had started to kick in.”

“Pregnant,” Coltrane said with wonder, then looked with new eyes at the photographs.

“So the obvious questions are: Who was the father? Was he Packard? And, assuming that the child was born, whatever happened to it?”

COLTRANE ARCHED HIS BACK AND TILTED HIS HEAD UPWARD, a surge of pleasure seizing his body. Moving slowly, he tried not to disrupt the delicate balance between immediate need and exquisite postponement. Jennifer kissed him, thrusting against him: “Don’t hold back.” Moving faster, he felt her urgent rhythm match his own. Climaxing, he felt as if the present stretched on forever. Too soon, time became separate moments, and he eased out of Jennifer, settling next to her. Neither moved. Streetlights glinted through the bedroom’s open blinds. A breeze made tree branches sway, casting wavering shadows across the darkened room.

She turned onto her side, facing him. “It’s been a long time.”

“
Too
long.”

“We’ll have to catch up.”

“The spirit is willing, but the flesh might be weak.”

“I’ll see what I can do to put some strength back into it.”

“Some food might help, too. If I don’t start making that marinara sauce pretty soon . . .”

“No.” Jennifer touched his cheek. “Lie there awhile longer.”

“It’s a great way to end what in other respects was an awfully bad year,” Coltrane said.

“In one respect, it wasn’t such a bad year. You took some wonderful photographs. You found a new direction for your work.”

Coltrane shrugged.

“Your work still doesn’t seem important to you?”

“Not compared to everything that happened.”

They lapsed into silence.

Jennifer was the first to speak. “When you were making love to me, did it occur to you that Rebecca Chance and Randolph Packard might have made love in this bed?”

“. . . No.”

“It did to me. I imagined that she and I had changed places. Did the nude photographs of her excite you?”

“A little.”

“Did they make you more eager to have sex?”

“I suppose.”

Jennifer lowered her hand from his face and drew it along his body, fondling him.

“Like
this
excites you?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

When Jennifer kissed him, he tasted the salt of a tear on her cheek.

“Because I can’t compete with her, Mitch. I’m not a goddess. I’m only a woman.”

ALTHOUGH THE MORNING WAS BRIGHT AND THE SKY CLEAR, a cold breeze, at least by Southern California standards, made Coltrane retreat from the patio outside his bedroom. “Brrr,” he said, cinching his robe tighter, turning toward Jennifer, who still lay in his bed. “I was hoping we could have coffee out there, but I’m afraid it would have to be
iced
coffee.”

“It’s nicer in here anyhow,” Jennifer said. She raised the covers, giving him a glimpse of her breasts, her inward-curved tummy, and her light-colored pubic hair, gesturing for him to crawl under and join her.

“That’s the best offer I’ve had all day.”

“And the day’s young yet,” Jennifer said.

“You’re going to wear me out.”

“As long as I didn’t wear
this
guy out.”

She pointed toward the erection that he showed when he slipped off his robe.

“Since when did you like talking dirty?” He eased under the covers, feeling her warmth.

“You call that talking dirty?”

“At the very least, I’d call it suggestive.”

“And what do you call this?”

“I’m a little distracted at the moment. Maybe the word will come to me if you do it again.”

“
Something
better come.”

“And the day’s young yet,” Jennifer had said. But she was wrong about implying that there would be more opportunities in the day for them to make love, for after they collapsed into each other’s arms, after they nestled against each other, got up to take turns showering, and finally dressed, Jennifer told him that she was expected at her parents’ house around one o’clock. “You remember from last year,” Jennifer said, “it’s a tradition. I always go over and help Dad watch his marathon of New Year’s Day football games. You want to come with me? He and Mom will be glad to see you, and there’ll be more than enough food. You seemed to enjoy yourself last time.”

“I did. It was fun. But I’m afraid I’m going to have to beg off.”

“Oh?” Jennifer’s voice was frail with disappointment.

“Yes. I promised Greg’s widow that I’d come over and spend some time with her and the kids.”

“Oh.” The inflection was now one of understanding. “I didn’t know you’d spoken with her.”

“I guess it slipped my mind.”

“I’ve never met her, but please tell her I’m very sorry about her husband.”

“I will.”

“That coffee you mentioned would sure taste good right now.”

The kitchen was a mess from the marinara and meatball dinner that Coltrane had made, the dishes having been left in the sink while they finished a bottle of champagne and watched a TV celebrity narrate the countdown in Times Square. Coltrane had only a dim memory of the two of them stumbling up to his bedroom.

“Ouch,” Jennifer said, surveying the damage. “I’m going to need that coffee to brace myself to help with this.”

“Forget it,” Coltrane said. “Come on. We’ll go out for breakfast.”

When they got back at twelve-thirty, they lingered in front of the house.

“If your visit with Greg’s widow ends early, come over to my parents,” Jennifer said.

“I will,” Coltrane said. “Wish them a happy New Year for me.”

Jennifer looked uncertain about something. “Would you do me a favor?”

“What?”

“Get a camera and take my picture?”

“Take your picture?”

“It’s a new year,” Jennifer said. “A new beginning. It would make me happy to see you taking photographs again.”

“If it would make
you
happy, it would make
me
happy.”

A minute later, he was back with his Nikon, positioning Jennifer against the ivy-looking greenish blue copper trim on the corner of the house.

“The background makes you look even more blond,” Coltrane said. “In fact, you look radiant.”

As her eyes brightened the way he had hoped they would in response to his compliment, Coltrane snapped the picture.

GREG’ S WIDOW TURNED OUT TO HAVE A HOUSE FULL OF company: her parents, her sister, friends from where she worked at an insurance company, friends from the police department, not to mention neighbors. Paying their respects, they came and went. Although Greg’s widow looked as if she hadn’t been getting much sleep, she was making an effort to cook a turkey for the holiday, but it was clear that there wouldn’t be enough to feed everyone, and Coltrane stayed only an hour, leaving well before dinner.

Hollow, he decided not to return to Packard’s house but instead to take Jennifer up on her offer and go over to her parents’ historic Victorian near Echo Park. The quickest way to get there from Venice was to take the Santa Monica Freeway east until it merged with the Golden State Freeway, eventually reaching the east end of Sunset Boulevard, which wasn’t far from Echo Park. He was surprised, then, when he went in the opposite direction, taking the Santa Monica Freeway
west
to the Pacific Coast Highway. He finally admitted to himself that his destination was Malibu.

WHEN COLTRANE HAD FIRST ARRIVED IN LOS ANGELES seventeen years earlier, feeling a compulsion to learn as much as he could about the area, he had been intrigued to learn that Malibu — for him, the name had mythic overtones — was actually many different places: the Commune, where upper-echelon show-business personalities lived within a guarded, gated community; the beachfront, where narrow two-story town houses abutted one another for what seemed miles, a narrow road in front, the ocean in back; a long string of gas stations, motels, and quick-food restaurants along the PCH; and, farther north, where the ocean and the highway diverged, a rustic community of expensive homes on large wooded lots reached by mazelike meandering roads that for the most part did not have an ocean view. Coltrane could smell the salt breeze. He had the sensation of being near water. Apart from that, he could have been in an exclusive section of the San Fernando Valley.

It was along one of these meandering roads that Coltrane now drove. Pausing occasionally to check a map that he had bought at a service station on the Pacific Coast Highway before turning off it, he continued west, or as much as he could in that general direction, sometimes having to retreat because of errors he made due to unmarked streets, other times reaching a dead end where the map made it seem that the road he was on connected with another. In frustration, he finally stopped where a wall of scrub brush blocked his way. A path led through it. As much as he could tell, the road he wanted lay beyond it.

Glancing at his watch, seeing that the time was already almost three o’clock and that he was close to wasting the day, he calculated that it might take him another twenty minutes to backtrack and get over to the road he wanted. That was assuming the road would be marked and he wouldn’t have more difficulty finding it. Why bother when his destination was practically before him? Jennifer’s request that he take her photograph had produced the effect she intended. Responding to old habits, he had brought his camera with him. Now he slung it around his neck. After getting out of his car and locking it, he buttoned his sport coat against the increasing chill of the day and pushed his way through the crackling branches of the scrub brush.