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“Some fall by the wayside early. They give up, or take another course, or simply decide that what they’re after isn’t worth the risks or the costs involved in getting it. But others…”
He paused and focused on a spot in near space. “To get what they want, others are willing to go to any lengths. Any lengths. They’ll go beyond what’s lawful, or decent, or moral so long as they come out ahead.”
Mike seemed about to remark on that bit of philosophizing, when he changed his mind and asked a question that Parker guessed was less incendiary. “Do you want to assign that much importance to a secondary character?”
“Hadley, you mean? He’s important to the plot.”
“He is?”
“Integral. I have to set that up.”
Mike nodded, seemingly distracted by another thought. Half a minute passed. Finally Parker asked him what was on his mind. “The pacing? The dialogue? Too much narrative about the Key West apartment, or not enough?”
“The brunette stripper on the roof—”
“Mary Catherine.”
“Is the girl—”
“In the prologue who accompanies them on the boat. Remember, one of the boys removes her bikini top and waves it above his head before they’re even out of the harbor. So it’s important that I establish in the reader’s mind that she’s a friendly, playful sort. There’s more about her in an upcoming scene.”
“She’s a nice girl, Parker.”
“The stripper with the heart-shaped ass?”
Mike gave him a sour look.
Parker cursed beneath his breath. Mike was determined to talk about Maris, and when Mike got something into his head to talk about, he would continue dredging it up until it was talked about.
Parker returned his notes to the worktable, knowing that he might just as well get this conversation out of the way so he could get on with the rest of his afternoon. “First of all, Maris is a woman, not a girl. And whoever said she wasn’t nice? Not me. Did you ever hear me say she wasn’t nice? She says ‘please’ and ‘thank you,’ keeps her napkin in her lap, and covers her mouth when she yawns.”
Mike fixed an admonishing glare on him. “Admit it. She’s not what you expected.”
“No. She’s taller by a couple inches.” He was on the receiving end of another baleful look. He spread his arms wide. “What do you want me to say? That she’s not the snob I thought she’d be? Okay, she’s not.”
“You expected a spoiled rich girl.”
“A total bitch.”
“An aggressive and abrasive—”
“Ball-buster.”
“Who would blow in here, disrupting the peace and trying to intimidate us with her New York sophistication and superiority. Instead, Maris was… well, you know better than I what she was like.” As an afterthought, the old man said, “All the same, she did make an impact, didn’t she?”
Yes, she had. Just a much softer, more feminine impact than Parker had expected. He glanced at the vase on the coffee table. Maris had gathered sprigs of honeysuckle during a morning stroll and had asked if he would object to her putting them in water. “Just to brighten the room up a bit,” she’d said.
Mike, infatuated with her to the point of idiocy, had turned the kitchen upside down until he found a suitable container. For days, the wild bouquet had filled the solarium with a heady fragrance. Now it was an eyesore. The blossoms were shriveled, the water swampy and smelly. But Parker hadn’t asked Mike to remove it, and Mike hadn’t taken it upon himself to empty the vase. It was a reminder of her they weren’t quite ready to relinquish.
The shells she had collected on the beach were still spread out on the end table where she’d proudly displayed them. When she carried them in, her feet had been bare and dusted with sand. They’d left footprints on the tile floor, which she had insisted on sweeping up herself.
His dying houseplant was rallying because she had moved it to a better spot and had watered it just enough, not too much.
Two fashion magazines that she’d browsed through while he worked on his novel were still lying in the chair she’d last occupied.
It was that throw pillow there, the one with the fringe around it, that she had hugged to her breasts while she listened to him reading a passage from his manuscript.
Everywhere he looked, there was evidence of her.
