wall, her weight on one bare foot. The other foot she held poised, toe daintily pointed, an Ace bandage binding the swollen ankle.
She was wearing her short hot-pink bathrobe with the white pom-poms at the belt ends. At the moment the pom-poms grazed the floor: she had slipped the robe on but had neglected to belt it. The robe hung open, the weight of the pom-poms pulling it open, dragging it half off her shoulders.
Maybe it was from hitting her head when she fell down yesterday. Maybe it was all the pills PW had made her swallow. Until she smiled at him Cole wasn’t sure she even knew who he was. The sight of Clem clearly perplexed her. She stared at him as if she had never seen him before. And maybe this was not so strange, because in that moment Clem was utterly transformed. Cole himself might not have known him. A person thrown from a high window or a cliff might have looked as Clem looked now, his mouth an O, his black-button eyes ready to burst right off.
And the next instant he was gone.
Cole barely had time to take this in. It was as if a tornado had blown through the kitchen and whisked Clem out the back door—before the spatula he’d dropped to the floor had ceased clattering.
The commotion upset Tracy. She swayed precariously in the doorway, still balancing on one foot but looking as if she would not be able to hold herself upright much longer. The robe had slipped a little farther down her shoulders. Another move and it would be on the floor, and then she’d be totally naked.
He simply could not look away. And strangely, he did not feel guilty or ashamed—or rather, these feelings were there, but he had other feelings as well. More clamorous ones—ones he would have found hard to put into words—drowning out guilt and shame.
He said, “Tracy?” And again, “Tracy? You okay? Can you walk?”
She smiled at him without answering. She’s going to fall, he thought, and as he stepped gingerly toward her, he flashed on PW’s story about his father stealing so close to a fox he was tracking that he could touch it.
Cole noticed the scar. It must have been from the cancer surgery, he thought. He would have expected to find the scar ugly but he didn’t, though somehow it made her seem even more naked and vulnerable. Her battered face, her limp, her lost and frightened air, made him think of a fallen angel.
She swayed, and when she swayed her breasts swayed. How was it he had thought big breasts were gross? They—she was apocalyptic.
He wanted to say something nice and reassuring to her, but when he tried to speak he could not. In the smell rising from her flesh he thought he caught whiffs of bourbon and vanilla. When he took hold of the robe to pull it back onto her shoulders, a thrill passed through him, making his hands shake. She looked at him and smiled again, but with the absent expression of someone not exactly sure why she was smiling. Her eyes were like PW’s when he was at his drunkest. Would she be like him and remember nothing about any of this later? God, Cole hoped so.
When he picked up the ends of the belt, she let go of the wall and rested her palms on his shoulders. He had stopped breathing and his heart was wild. Gently he tightened the belt around her waist. There: she was decent.
She leaned her weight against him as he helped her hobble to a chair. Without her asking, he knew she must want water. He brought her a glass, which she gulped down noisily, water dribbling down her chin. He brought her another glass, which she also gulped down, and a third, which she drank more slowly.
The water seemed to clear her head. She sat up straight, belching softly. She glanced around the kitchen, her eyes lighting up at the sight of the French toast sitting on the platter on the counter. Cole remembered that in all the hysteria of the day before she hadn’t eaten anything except breakfast.
He wet a dish towel at the sink, and as he wiped it over her face she closed her eyes and made a pleased, grateful-sounding gurgle deep in her throat, which made him turn red. When he stopped she kept her eyes closed for a moment and then blinked rapidly several times before popping