pivoted toward the doorway, stuffing the camera back into my purse as I went.
Outside, the air reeked of the sea. I made for the beach, which belonged to the hotel and in daylight hours would be spangled with cabanas and umbrellas. Now it was empty and sort of mysterious, the sand unraked, forming cool hollows in which to lose your foot. I took off my shoes and stepped carefully, carefully, until I found just the spot and settled there, in my dress of wine-colored silk, and lit a cigarette while the waves lapped nearby. In the western sky, a half-moon glowed above the horizon, gilding the length of Hog Island before me. The lighthouse put out a faithful beam to the left. The universe beat its slow, thirsty pulse.
I heard the footsteps in the sand an instant before the voice called out, closer than I expected.
“Abandoning hope so soon?”
I closed my eyes.
“Just the same old, wasn’t it? Daddy throws a party for his poor little rich girl, society swoons.”
He dropped into the sand. Not so close as to touch me but close enough that I felt his warmth and smelled his skin. I held out the cigarette. He took it from my fingers and returned it a moment later. I opened my eyes. In my other hand lay the cigarette lighter, clenched in my palm. I curled the fingers outward, and the metal caught some light from the moon.
“Handsome object,” said Thorpe.
“This?” I held up the lighter. “My father gave it to me when I was sixteen.”
“Sixteen?”
“He’s not your ordinary kind of father.”
A solemn pause. “I see.”
From behind us came a crash of splintering glass. We flinched at exactly the same instant, to exactly the same degree, while a roar of laughter followed. I looked over my shoulder just as he looked over his shoulder, and our eyes met, a flash, a jolt. I turned back to the harbor.
“Aren’t you going to ask?” I said.
“Ask what?”
“About my father. The lighter. It’s a good story.”
“I wouldn’t dream of prying.”
“Naturally. You’re English, aren’t you?”
“Half English. Well, a quarter, really. My grandmother’s a resolute Scot.”
“What’s the other half?”
“German.”
“Is that so?”
“That’s so.”
“Well, your secret’s safe with me.” I toed a little sand. “Still, it’s a good story, if you want to hear it.”
“I daresay it must be.”
I blew out a ribbon of smoke. “The magazine, the one I write for? And that’s a secret, by the way. Nobody’s supposed to know the identity of the Lady of Nassau.”
“Madam, I am the soul of discretion.”
“I know you are. That’s why I’m blabbing to you now. I mean, a girl’s got to confess once in a while, and you’re the nearest thing I know to a priest.”
“Honored, I’m sure.”
“You should be. That’s the highest praise I can give a fellow. Anyway, my father’s the publisher.”
“Of the Metropolitan?”
“That’s the one. My mother was his second wife, sort of sandwiched, if that’s the word, between the Fifth Avenue debutante and the Austrian countess.”
Thorpe took my cigarette again. “How cosmopolitan.”
“Well, you’ve got a right, haven’t you, when you’re S. Barnard Lightfoot Junior, publishing scion and man-about-Manhattan. You’ve got the wherewithal to meet and marry whatever girl takes your fancy. Whatever girl suits you at any particular moment in your life.”
There was this silence, delicate and smoke scented, while the noise of the party went on behind us. I waited for Thorpe to shift in his seat, to edge away, to make some excuse and rise and leave me alone.
Instead, he made another pull on the cigarette and said, “Well, go on.”
“Are you sure you want to hear it?”
“Only if you want to tell me.”
“Mind you, it’s common knowledge. Dear old Daddy and his unsavory adventures. My mother was a coat check girl at the Ziegfeld. She had aspirations to the chorus line. I mean, she could dance, and boy, could she sing. I was born about a month after they married. I don’t mean to shock you.”
Thorpe waved his hand and returned the cigarette.
“Then my brother and sister, twins, two years later,” I continued. “You can read all about us in the New York Post, dateline September 1925. That was about the time my father was caught in flagrante, as they say, with the wife of the Count von Enzenberg. Right there inside the count’s own box at La Fenice, in fact, so you can’t say they didn’t have moxie.”
“Ah, this happened in Venice, then?”
“Yes. Have you been there?”
“Once, a few years ago. Spent the usual disreputable year abroad,