Marcia Talley - Dark Passage

‘Your dance card is getting full, Hannah.’

‘So, what are you going to do today, Ruth, other than twist your body into strange and unnatural positions?’

‘Well, I’m not going to waste my time knitting, that’s for sure.’ She dabbed her lips dry with a towel. ‘Wonder what Georgina feels like doing?’

I tapped quietly on the connecting door in case Julie was still asleep. Georgina opened it almost immediately. ‘What’s up?’

‘Is Julie awake?’

‘Finally! She’s in the shower.’

‘What’s she going to do today, Georgina?’

‘Julie’s signed up for a teen barbecue and some sort of organized scavenger hunt. I’ll hardly ever see her.’

‘Does that worry you?’

Georgina raised one pale, well-shaped eyebrow. ‘Do I look worried? So, I’m up for just about anything. Except knitting,’ she added, with an accusatory glance at me.

Clearly, in the knitting department, I was outnumbered. ‘I never promised we’d be joined at the hip, Georgina.’

Thirty minutes later, after Julie was safely delivered to one of the Tidal Wave youth counselors, my sisters and I found ourselves marinating in one of three hot tubs in the adults-only solarium. When we were pink and medium-well boiled, we wrapped ourselves in oversized Turkish towels and arranged ourselves on adjoining deck chairs with our reading – a Kindle for Georgina and actual books for Ruth and me – while solicitous uniformed attendants made sure we had everything our hearts desired. After ordering a bloody Mary, I did.

Georgina powered on her Kindle, considered my well-worn paperback. ‘Don’t you have a Kindle, Hannah?’

‘I do, back home, but I figured reading it in a hot tub would be a bad idea. And what if I lose the charger? I’d be up the creek if my battery ran out in the middle of the latest P.D. James.’

‘I like my Kindle because you can’t really lend books,’ Georgina said, kicking off her flip flops. ‘Saves me the social embarrassment of having to remember who I lent that hardback to that I hadn’t gotten around to reading yet.’

As we considered the people sprawled in the deck chairs around us, we decided that you could tell a lot about a stranger by what he or she is reading. Final Sail by Elaine Viets? I think I might like that person, while – not being snobbish or anything – I’d be unlikely to initiate a conversation with someone engrossed in a Jackie Collins novel. ‘See that guy over there?’ I asked, nodding my head in the direction of the Surf’s Up Café. ‘The blond in the red bathing trunks, with the hardback propped up on his gut?’

‘What about him?’ Ruth muttered from behind her ancient copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance .

‘Well, he’s reading Harlen Coben. If he were reading an iPad, Nook or Kindle we wouldn’t be able to see the cover, so we wouldn’t have the slightest clue what he’s reading.’

‘So?’ Ruth wanted to know.

‘Serious disadvantage, Ruth, if you’re on the prowl for guys. Hot or not? With a Kindle, it’d be hard to tell. Dude could be reading Danielle Steele, for all you know. Or a self-help book on overcoming addiction. But, if you can see he’s reading Robert Crais, you’ve got your opening. ‘ “Oh, hi,” you say. “I like Crais, too. Is that as good as his last one?” ’

‘I’m not on the prowl for guys, Hannah.’

‘Neither am I. I just think it’s interesting.’

Georgina studied the guy reading Coben thoughtfully for a few seconds. ‘You think he’s hot, Hannah?’

I tended to be attracted to tall men – my husband, Paul, towered over me – and although Red Bathing Suit was certainly tall, he was a little too, how shall I say, fleshy for my taste. ‘Not really. Besides, I think he’s married. See that skinny blonde standing in the buffet line? In the teeny-weeny black bikini? They came in together.’

‘Where?’ Georgina asked.

‘She’s fixing a hot dog,’ I said.

Ruth sniffed. ‘Looks like a Stepford wife. Or married to a Republican candidate for President. I’m sure it’s a character flaw on my part, but I simply can’t tell those women apart.’

As I watched Black Bikini cross the solarium to rejoin her husband, I had to agree with Ruth. The woman looked as if she’d been stamped out of a template: five foot five or six, fit and trim, aggressively-styled bottle-blonde hair, makeup applied with the skill of an artist. She handed the hot dog to her husband, but apparently she had failed the hot dog fixings test because he said something, then shoved the plate back into her hands so suddenly that the potato chips she’d heaped on the side of it went flying. She yelled something in response, spun around and stomped out of the solarium as elegantly as one can while wearing flip flops, dumping the hot dog, plate and all, into the trash can nearest the door.

‘ “The course of true love never did run smooth,” ’ Ruth quoted, bard-like.

‘If he wanted a damn hot dog, he should have gotten it his damn self,’ Georgina sputtered, staring after the woman. After she’d disappeared into the main pool area, Georgina flipped over on her stomach, stretched out full-length on the deck chair and returned to whatever she had been reading on her Kindle. The sun blazed through the glass canopy of the solarium, its rays catching the damp tendrils of her hair, turning it to burnished copper.

The Belgian waffles with fresh fruit I’d had at breakfast were taking their toll. Bathed in the warmth of the sun, I slept easily, until a stranger’s voice suddenly roused me from my nap.

‘Excuse me?’ The voice was deeply male and melodious, like a late-night host on the Oldies But Goodies station.

My eyes snapped open. I blinked.

A man carrying a big-ass camera stood like a pillar at the foot of Georgina’s lounger. Tall and sturdy, dark hair speckled his head like new growth on a Chia Pet. He wore a white polo shirt tucked into a pair of navy chinos, and deck shoes with no socks.

‘Can I help you?’ I asked, thinking how extraordinary his eyes were. They had been bleached to a pale amber, like the 3.2 beer we used to drink in college.

The question seemed to fluster him. ‘Sorry. I just wanted to ask your friend here…’ His hands full of camera, he nodded toward Georgina. ‘… if she’d mind if I took her picture.’

My sister was clearly asleep, Kindle flung to one side, head turned, her cheek resting on her folded arms.

‘She’s asleep,’ I said, stating the obvious. ‘What’s it for?’

The man shifted his camera to one side and dug into his breast pocket with a thumb and index finger like fat sausages. ‘Buck Carney,’ he said, handing me his business card. ‘I’m a photographer.’

‘I never would have guessed,’ I said, indicating the fancy camera with a corner of his card which read, when I glanced at it a few seconds later, LeRoy ‘Buck’ Carney, Freelance Photographer , with an address and telephone number in Atlanta, Georgia. ‘LeRoy,’ I said. ‘No wonder they call you “Buck.” ’

‘Yeah, well…’ he began.

I squinted up at him. ‘Didn’t I see you taking pictures last night in the disco?’

‘Yeah, it’s a dirty job, but somebody’s gotta…’

‘You were going to tell me what you wanted my sister’s picture for,’ I cut in. ‘Do you work for the cruise line?’

‘In a way. C.L.I.A? It’s the cruise line association. They’re doing a coffee table book to hand out to VIPs – senators, congressmen and the like. They hired me to take the pictures.’ His eyes flicked toward Georgina, still blissfully unaware we were talking about her. ‘The sun lighting her hair? The white bathing suit? Irresistible to an old shutterbug like me.’