Page 53 of Old Flames

“I’m screwing with you, Leo. Thanks.”

They laughed together, comrades in the struggle.

“Is that it?” she asked.

“That’s it.”

“Good talk,” she said. “Carry on, soldier.”

She dismissed him and returned to Matty’s side. He pinned her close to him and they continued in lockstep. “What was that about?” Leo heard him ask.

Their easy intimacy pierced him.

Jules marched ahead of the pack with Daphne, her back straight, unreachable.

The Williams exhibit featured a collection of the Pulitzer Prize–winning writer’s playbills, first and foreign editions of his published works, a collection of photographs and paintings, and his upright typewriter, as striking as Hemingway’s. A faithful replica of the playwriter’s former Key West residence was displayed under glass. The simple white house with traditional red shutters had all the trimmings of a party house, including a gazebo, deck, and pool. Williams’s photos and drawings suggested that he and his partner hosted the best parties in town.

From the cottage the poet Elizabeth Bishop shared with her partner to this careful re-creation of Tennessee Williams’s party house, Leo was tempted to believe that his journey might end here, at Mile Marker Zero.

Sebastien paused before a portrait of Williams, reclined in the buff in a yard chair. “Hemingway’s home didn’t do it for me,” he said wistfully. “Too many displays of bravery and machismo. But, man, this is my scene.”

“It’s everybody’s scene,” Matty said. “I’d win a couple Pulitzers, too, if I could hang out here to write all day.”

“Maybe the true legacy of Bishop, Williams, and Hemingway is that leisure can lead to greatness,” Ayesha said, fanning herself with a copy of The Glass Menagerie that she’d picked up at the gift shop. “For that alone, I’d extend my stay.”

The crushing awareness that this night was their last hit them at once.

“We can’t lose this,” Vicky said, panicked. “What if we pooled our resources and purchased a bungalow? We could come to hang out together or alone to write.”

“Or when we want some peace and quiet,” Ayesha said with a sigh.

“Or when we don’t know where to go,” Leo added.

Jules gazed longingly at the case-enclosed mini paradise. “We’d need a pool.”

Leo wanted to give her that exact pool and anything else she might need to be happy in this world.

“Too bad I can’t afford to chip in,” Matty said. “Otherwise, it’s a fantastic idea.”

“What about the Operon money?” Leo asked.

His friend made a face. “I might have to pass on that.”

That statement earned him a collective gasp.

“I’m not saying no or never,” he assured them. “It depends on how flexible they are. I want time to pursue the doll thing. I know! You think it’s dumb, and overdone, but I have an idea and it’s itching the brain.”

“I don’t think it’s dumb.” Vicky went to him and circled her arms around his waist. “Even if every horror writer of our generation writes a stupid doll story, yours will be unique. It may be the work of your life, or it may not amount to anything. Either way, you’d have put it out there. We’ll treasure it because it’ll always bring us back to this time.”

Well, damn, Leo thought. If love wasn’t in the air, it had to be weed.

“Beautifully said!” Ayesha cheered.

Sebastien looked crestfallen.

Jules turned away.

To lighten the mood, Leo clasped Matty’s shoulder. “Now you better write it,” he said. “And don’t be a dick. Mention us in the acknowledgments.”