Collectors. Paul Griner

she approached another usher in his swallowtail coat and offered the coffee to him.

      A man came and stood beside Jean.

      “Pitiful, isn’t it?” he said.

      Jean could not make out his face, as the sun was just above his shoulder, but she gathered he was speaking about the bridesmaid. She wished she hadn’t laid her hat beside her on the grass; putting it on now would be too obvious. As it was, she could look no higher than his chest.

      “It is rather sad,” she said, glancing back across the lawn. The usher held up his hand in refusal of the coffee, and without a word the bridesmaid spun away. A third usher, balding and ponytailed, was making his slow way toward the porch, and the bridesmaid moved to overtake him.

      “I suppose if I wore a swallowtail coat, I’d be more popular,” the man said to Jean.

      “Would you really want to be?”

      The man laughed. “No. I think not. That coffee’s got to be cold by now, and I can’t imagine the conversation is much better. Have you heard her voice?”

      Jean said she hadn’t.

      “She sounds like Gomer Pyle’s sister.”

      Jean shielded her eyes, trying to see his face, and when he shifted, the long straight line of his nose became distinguishable. She had the odd, passing sensation that he enjoyed watching her struggle, which irritated and intrigued her, and she was about to ask him to move when he crouched beside her, steadying himself with one hand on her knee. She still couldn’t see his face. When he ducked she’d been left staring into the sun, and now she had to close her eyes and turn away.

      “You’re Jean, Claudia’s cousin.” It was not a question. “Steven.”

      “Steven.” On her closed eyelids she saw a single burning sun, yellow against a black background, which after a few seconds bisected into two black balls, the area around them turning orange. She squeezed her eyes to clear her vision.

      “Steven Cain.”

      She opened her eyes and looked at him. The name meant nothing to her, of course, though she didn’t let on. He held his hand out, shook hers firmly, then dropped it back on her knee, and she liked that, the ease of his affection. His hand was warm and dry and lighter than she would have guessed, as if it were stuffed with feathers, but his touch felt vital and electric.

      “Claudia’s told me quite a bit about you. I hope you won’t think me too forward. You’re the one person I hoped to meet from the entire party.”

      “How flattering.” She meant it, pleased that Claudia had spoken of her, and she became aware of her dress clinging to her chest and thighs in the heat, as if the day had suddenly grown hotter. She breathed deeply to calm herself, taking in the smell of crushed grass and the scent of his cologne, which was unusual, a blend of smells and colors, cinnamon and sienna and burnt amber, she thought, something ancient and earthy and enduring. The exoticism made it attractive. His shoes were tightly woven flats, made of buttery leather.

      “Good thing you found me now,” she said. “I’m afraid I was getting ready to leave.”

      “Yes, I thought you might be. I let it go rather too long, didn’t I?” He shook his head at his own foolishness. “I knew if I didn’t come over now I’d lose my chance.”

      “You don’t seem the shy type.”

      “Oh.” He waved dismissively. “I’m not.”

      When he lifted his hand from her knee it was as if her skin had been peeled away, she felt suddenly exposed, and she wished he’d put it back.

      “To be honest,” he said, shifting his weight from one leg to the other, “I was watching you for a while.”

      “Oh really?” She slid her hands down her calves and grasped her ankles, folding herself in half. Her cheek rested on her knee, where the smooth skin was still warm from his touch.

      “To be sure.” He nodded, looking out over the lake, the bright plane of copper-colored water. “Claudia said you were unusual, but one never knows.”

      “You mean, I might have been like that bridesmaid.”

      “Exactly.”

      Now it was her turn to laugh. She leaned back on her palms, wondering how long he’d been watching, and what exactly he’d seen. “And I passed?” She worked her fingers into the warm grass until they reached dirt.

      “Certainly. I should have trusted Claudia.”

      From beside him he produced a glass of champagne, strings of thin bubbles rising to its surface.

      “I’d offer to get you one,” he said.

      “But you’re afraid I’d leave?”

      “No.” He sipped the champagne, and she watched his throat move as he swallowed, and then he pressed the glass into the grass near her feet. He seemed to inspect her shoes, the complicated straps enveloping her arches and ankles, the scrape across the right one. “I’m sure you wouldn’t. I believe everything Claudia’s told me is true. You’re an only child, like Claudia, and you two share the same birthday, don’t you, like twins?”

      Jean nodded.

      “So you’re not a flirt. She said you wouldn’t be. But you will be leaving the party soon, and you don’t want to get hurt. You have to drive.”

      “And you don’t?”

      “I’m an overnight guest.”

      “A slumber party. I didn’t know. I’d have wangled an invitation.”

      He pulled back a bit, as if offended, and tensed his jaw, but she wasn’t sure what she’d said wrong; beginnings were always so rocky. Of course, she’d found that endings could be even worse: Oliver Brisbane had called her for five or six months after she’d broken up with him, discovering her number each time though she changed it continually and had it unlisted, and always he left the same message, “Brisbane calling. I’ll try again.” Eventually he’d given up, but by then she’d met Pavel Hammond, whom she thought might be the one, until the night she’d awoken to find him sitting on the floor beside her bed, watching her sleep, the planes of his angular Slavic face distinct, pale wedges in the dark. He’d climbed the fire escape to reach her.

      She shivered at the memory, those tiny, dark eyes, then touched Steven’s arm. “You must live a long way off.”

      He drank the rest of his champagne, observing her hand on his arm, and put the glass down beside her calf. She realized she’d been watching him closely, studying him, really, because she sensed that she could not afford to make a mistake this time. At last he stood, and from his face he seemed to have reached a decision.

      She shielded her eyes again, looking up at him, her pulse throbbing at her temples and throat. His hair was short and very black, but she couldn’t see his eyes, and she still didn’t have a good mental picture of his face. She did not want him to leave.

      “I live nearer the city.” He produced a small pair of nickel-plated binoculars from a jacket pocket, turned them over in his hands, and pocketed them again. “I have a boat.”

      She looked toward the docks, the swaying, forested masts, where halyards were clanking against the aluminum and a few gulls sat perched high up among the flapping pennants and flags.

      “Not here. On the ocean, just north of Boston. I’d like you to come out on it with me. Do you sail? That’s the one thing Claudia didn’t tell me.”

      Her stomach hollowed at the thought, just a few boards between her and all that water, but she did not allow herself to contemplate it, or why her desire for his presence reminded her—vaguely, but insistently—of other desires she could not at the moment name.

      “I haven’t sailed,” she said. The briefest of pauses, she barely knew him, yet Claudia had spoken to him