A Summer Affair: A Novel - By Elin Hilderbrand Page 0,54

said. Her English was perfect, with very little accent.

Her name was Ace (probably not spelled that way, but the Americanized version of the name suited her; she was cool like a tightrope walker, a pool shark). She walked in, allowed Matthew to pour her a glass of champagne, and made herself comfy on the sofa. He poured himself a glass; then, seeing that this would not be enough to slake his greedy thirst for the stuff, he poked his head outside and asked the butler for two more bottles. He understood that what he was doing was wrong, everything about it was wrong, but he was on his way now, growing warm on the inside, jonesing for the weed and the dose of amnesia it would bring, wondering about the girl. Who was she? What was she doing here? Where had she learned English?

Matthew was, technically, married. His wife, Bess, was back in California, living in their glass castle in Malibu with their two border collies, Pollux and Castor. Bess had been a substance-abuse counselor at the place in Pennsylvania that Matthew had tried in between stints at Hazelden. She had not wanted to marry a rock star, and especially not one with the seemingly incurable addictions that Matthew had, but she had been undone by her desire to save him. After six years of marriage, she was now operating on a zero-tolerance rule, and she had announced—upon hearing his slurred voice on a call from Irian Jaya—that if he was indeed drinking on this tour (which is what it sounds like, Max), then she was finished with him. Professional credentials aside, she could not take another go-round with the booze. Detox didn’t help, twenty-eight days didn’t help (there had been eighty-four days sum total), because the problem was hardwired, it was connected to what Bess called his “deep-seated unhappiness,” which she suspected had been caused in childhood by his father’s desertion.

Bess had developed a strong friendship with Matthew’s accountant, a man named Bob Jones, and Matthew assumed the avenue Bess would now pursue was one that would lead her to Bob Jones’s house. She would be an accountant’s wife; she would live a life opposite from the one she currently led. Instead of spending 90 percent of her time alone, walking on the beach, preparing elaborate meals for the dogs, and eating only hummus herself, she would live a life with constant companionship. She would cook nourishing things for Bob Jones, they would do everything together: watch TV, have sex, sleep until they were wakened by the gentle California sun. The nice thing about Bess was that she wouldn’t take Matthew’s money. She didn’t want money. It was useless, she liked to say, in getting the things that really mattered.

Matthew had to admit, he didn’t feel any deep-seated unhappiness about the impending breakup of his marriage. Except, of course, that he and Bess had been trying to have a baby, an endeavor that would now go out the window; Bess would, instead, have a baby with Bob Jones. A baby that could count and add, rather than a baby genetically predisposed to drinking gin. Matthew wouldn’t even mind it if Bess was pregnant now. He liked the idea of having a son or a daughter in the world, and Bess would be a wonderful mother. Her priorities were straight, and drinking, drugs, and rock and roll were all at the bottom of the list.

These, of course, were the thoughts of a man on his way to getting drunk. The butler appeared with two more bottles of very cold Veuve Clicquot, and as Matthew submerged them in ice, he studied himself in the mirror. There were pictures of Max West all over the room, on CD covers, on posters, in newspapers and magazines, but none of these photographs showed what Matthew really looked like. He looked puffy in the face, he thought, and sort of gray-skinned, despite all this tropical sun. His hair was still deep brown, though greasy, and it stuck up in spikes. He had brown eyes that had been described as “soulful” and “deep,” but the whites around them were red, tired, sore-looking. In the skin on the end of his nose he had a pockmark, which he had acquired at age seven with the measles; his stylist usually covered it up with makeup, but it always comforted Matthew to see this little divot, this small imperfection that announced his authentic self. Matthew heard a rustling sound