Page 10 of Old Flames

“We put you in the Royal Suite,” Daphne said. “Not that royalty would stay here, but one can dream.”

Leo followed her up a grand staircase to the second floor, then down a narrow hall. She used a skeleton key to unlock the carved wooden door. He paused at the threshold of a sitting room, set up like a proper English parlor. He half expected the lady of the house to step out of the shadows and offer tea. She ventured inside and checked the thermostat. “The bathroom is the door to your left,” she said. “This is the only room with a tub.”

Leo took in the polished antiques, new handwoven rugs spread over old wood floors, the lace drapes that framed the windows, and the oil paintings that covered the walls. “This is a lot for just one person.”

“This is what Mr. Fox requested,” Daphne said.

“Yeah, but . . . it’s isolated from the others, isn’t it?”

“That’s exactly what Mr. Fox wanted.”

“I see.”

“If you’re uncomfortable, I can arrange—”

“No,” he said. “I’m good.”

She took a breath. “Want to see the best part?”

“Better than the curio cabinet?”

“Yes, you idiot,” she teased. “You have your own personal study.”

“Where?”

She pointed to a winding staircase with a wood spindle balustrade that he’d somehow missed. “This is the only room that leads up to the turret.”

“To the . . . what?”

“Your private tower.”

“Nothing good ever happens in a tower.”

“Let’s hope you’re the exception.”

Daphne led him up the staircase. Any reservations Leo had about the Royal Suite left him. The rounded walls were fitted with floor to ceiling bookcases stuffed with old books. A rolling ladder helped make the rounds. A mahogany desk anchored the space. A pair of worn leather chairs faced it. The morning light poured in through the round windows, not a lace curtain in sight.

“You could get a lot of work done here,” she said. “What are you working on, anyway?”

“Nothing much,” he admitted.

“Really?”

He shrugged. “How about you?”

“Besides herding cats?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Do you like it down here?”

She was a Miami native—that much he knew. In her twenties, she rose to fame with prize-winning stories in The New Yorker and The Paris Review. She held a teaching position at UM because, as she put it, “short stories don’t pay the bills.”

“It’s a summer appointment,” she said. “It gets me out of the city and looks good on the résumé.”

“There are worse ways to go about it,” he said.

Leo had narrowly avoided the teaching track most writers opted for out of necessity. When his third novel was optioned for a movie, he was twenty-six and accustomed to poverty. Then his backlist picked up, selling like hotcakes at every major airport, and his financial advisor assured him that if he played his cards right, invested and saved, he’d never have to worry about money again. He could write, travel, and generally fuck around to his heart’s content. Life was too short, and he’d watched more talented people piss it away on work that didn’t matter to them to pay those damn bills.

“What do you think?” Daphne said, asking about the space. “You like?”