Beatriz Williams - Along the Infinite Sea - Love, friendship and heartbreak, the perfect summer read

“Are you serious?”

“Of course. I’d love the company. To tell the truth, it’s a bit lonely, now that my husband’s gone and the children are grown. And you need me.”

Pepper opens her mouth to say that she doesn’t need anyone.

“Yes, you do,” says Mrs. Dommerich, before the words come out.

“You’re just nuts, do you know that?”

“No, you’re nuts. You think—what? That I’m involved in some vast conspiracy to keep all this out of the public notice?” She waves her hand at Pepper’s belly. “That I’m in cahoots with the great man himself?”

“I’d be crazy not to consider it.”

Mrs. Dommerich narrows her eyes to consider Pepper’s point of view. “I suppose that’s fair enough,” she says. “But you’re already here. You’ve trusted me this far.”

“I haven’t trusted you a bit. I’m just trying to figure out your game.”

“Figure it out at my place, then.” Mrs. Dommerich walks around the left fender and opens the door. “It’s a hell of a lot more comfortable, for one thing. What have you got to lose?”

“My luggage. For one thing.”

Mrs. Dommerich swings into her seat and starts the engine. She calls out, over the throaty roar: “We’ll ring up the Breakers in the morning and have it sent over.”

Pepper stands there in the beam of the headlights, arms still crossed, trying to find Mrs. Dommerich’s heart-shaped face in the middle of all that glare. Mrs. Dommerich gives the horn an impatient little toot.

“All right,” Pepper says at last, walking back to her door and climbing inside. The leather seat takes her in like an old friend. “After all, I don’t suppose I have any choice.”

Mrs. Dommerich turns the car around and starts back down the dirt track to the highway, chased by the moon.

“Honey, you always have a choice,” she says. “The trick is making the right one.”

“I suppose you can call me Pepper now,” she says, as they bounce elegantly back down through the parting in the reeds, “since I’m going to be your houseguest, and not a very good one.”

Mrs. Dommerich changes gears and accelerates down the dirt track.

“You’ll be a wonderful houseguest, Pepper. Better than you think. And you can call me Annabelle.”

They are back on the highway, roaring north under the moon. The landscape passes by, dark and anonymous. Pepper yawns in the passenger seat. “Tell me about this lover of yours.”

“I thought you weren’t interested in romance.”

“I’m just being polite. And I don’t like silence.”

Annabelle shakes her head. “Tell me something. What do you believe in, Miss Pepper Schuyler?”

“Me? I believe in independence. I believe in calling the shots and keeping your eyes wide open. Because in the end, you know, he just wants to get into bed with you. That’s what they’re after. They’ll kiss you in the sunset, they’ll carry you upstairs, they’ll gaze into your eyes like you might disappear if they stop. They might even tell you they’re in love. But the point is to seduce you.”

Annabelle taps her thumbs on the steering wheel and considers this. “Do you know, though, I think I was the one who seduced him, in the end.”

“Well, that’s how they do it, the best of them. They make you think it was your idea.”

The draft whistles around them. Pepper checks her watch. It’s half past eleven o’clock, and she’s getting sleepy, except that the baby is pressing on a nerve that tracks all the way down her foot and turns her toes numb. She shifts her weight from one leg to the other.

“Do you know what I think, Miss Schuyler?”

“Call me Pepper, I said.”

“Is that your real name?”

“Pepper will do. But really. Tell me what you think about me, Annabelle. I’m dying to know.”

“I think you really are a romantic. You’re longing for true love with all your tough little heart. It’s just that you’re too beautiful, and it’s made you cynical.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Yes, it does. Any unearned gift makes you cynical, unless you’re a psychopath.”

“Beauty hasn’t made you cynical.”

“But I’m not beautiful. I suppose I’m attractive, and I have a few nice features. My eyes and skin. My figure, if you like your women petite. But I was never beautiful, certainly not compared to someone like you.”

“Don’t sell yourself short. Look at those cheekbones of yours.”

“Not like yours . I could hang my hat on yours. No, there were just two men in my life who thought I was beautiful, and I think they thought I was beautiful because they loved me, because they were attracted to something inside me, and not the other way around.”

Pepper laughs. “Trust me, it was the other way around.”

“How can you say that? You don’t know either man.”

“I know men.”

“You think you know men, but you only know cads, because the cads are the only ones brash enough to take you on. You don’t know the first thing about a man capable of a great love.”

“Because there’s no such thing. It’s just the sex instinct, the need for reproduction, and the more attractive the man, the more women he wants to reproduce with.”

“All right, Miss Schuyler. That’s quite enough. You just shut that steely old mouth of yours and hear me out.”

“So you’re feisty, after all!”

“When I have to be. So be quiet and listen up, and you might actually learn something, my so-wise friend with the prize-winning cheekbones and the knocked-up belly.” Annabelle taps her long fingers against the steering wheel. “In fact, I’ll make you a bet.”

A bet. Pepper’s heart does the old flutter.

“I don’t know,” she says, poker-faced. “What’re the stakes?”

“Stakes?”

Pepper shrugs. “It’s got to be interesting, that’s what my mother says. The only true crime is boredom.”

Annabelle laughs. “My, my. The apple doesn’t fall far. Well, then. Let’s see. You’re an unwed mother on the run, in need of a little extra insurance. I’ll bet my black pearl necklace to your gold Cartier watch that I’ll have you believing in true love by the time that baby of yours sees daylight.”

“I don’t know.” Pepper brushes her lap. “I haven’t seen this pearl necklace of yours.”

“My husband gave me that necklace as a Christmas present in 1937, from the Cartier shop on rue de la Paix, because he could not find another jeweler in Paris who was skilled enough to satisfy him.”

Pepper makes a few rapid calculations, carries the eight, adds a zero or two. The old heart flutters again.

“True love, you said?”

“True blue, faithful and everlasting.”

“In that case,” Pepper says, “you’re on.”

Annabelle asks if there is any more coffee. Pepper reaches for the thermos and gives it a jiggle.

“Not much.” She pours what’s left into the plastic cup and hands it to Annabelle.

“Thank you.”

“You’re not getting sleepy, are you? I can always take a turn at the wheel.”

“Not on your life.” Annabelle hands back the empty cup. “Not that you’re not perfectly capable, I’m sure. But I’d like to drive her myself.”

Pepper tucks the thermos back into the glove compartment and latches the polished wooden door. “Because you have history, don’t you?”

“Yes, we do.” Annabelle pats the dashboard.

“I’d ask how it happened, but I’d rather stay awake.”

“I can’t really tell you, anyway. Too many lives involved.”

“My God, what a relief. I bore so easily, you understand.”