Read Claire Marvel for Free Online Page B

France and has nothing to do with the Italians. Well, the fifteenth, then. We return on the fifth.”
    “Sixth,” said Gus.
    “The sixth of August. It’s a Palladian trip. I’ve always wanted to see the villas. And now we will. Won’t we, Gus? Not that you particularly care about Palladio. But we’re not getting any younger.”
    “Speak for yourself,” Gus said.
    “All right. I’m not getting any younger. Soon Gus will be hitting puberty. He’ll find Misha’s lost testicles and dance till the cows come home. Forgive me, Misha! Anyway, Julian, you won’t mind taking care of him while we’re away?”
    “Who, Gus?”
    Gus began to chuckle.
    “Misha,” Mary said sternly.
    I grinned. “I won’t mind, Mary.”
    “Thank you. I know I’m biased but he really is the best company. I’ve always found it impossible to be lonely with Misha around. I hope he’ll be the same comfort to you.”
    “Julian isn’t lonely,” Gus objected.
    Mary didn’t say anything. She just patted my arm and asked Gus to mix another shaker of martinis.

    As scheduled, they left on the fifteenth. Mary had written out a detailed explication of Misha’s daily regimen. Included were afternoon walks on the leash around the neighborhood, fifteen-minute “play sessions” with a catnip-filled mouse, and the addition of a special gravy to his Tender Vittles.
    So it happened that late one July afternoon I was once again sitting in the garden, this time with a copy of Karl M. Schmidt’s Henry A. Wallace: Quixotic Crusade, 1948 on my lap. Much of my summer had already passed like this. For it seemed better, or at any rate less worse, to sit alone in an old woman’s garden than to sit with sunbathing couples on the grassy banks of the Charles.
    The day had not gone well with Misha. First he’d managed to lose his catnip mouse—I suspected him of eating it—which meant that I was going to have to locate another before Mary’s return. Then he’d refused either to walk or be carried on his afternoon constitutional around the neighborhood, forcing me to drag him by the leash the entire way.
    He sat now, in the listless heat and fading light of late afternoon, on the lawn chair as on a throne, cleaning himself. Every pass of his paw over his fat pushed-in face represented a little sneer of disdain in my direction.
    “Misha,” I told him calmly, “you are a pampered piece of shit.”
    Glancing up at that moment, I felt the breath freeze in my throat. Claire was standing on the other side of the low wall in a blue dress patterned with flowers, her skin tanned, her dark hair streaked auburn by the sun.
    “Quite a beauty,” she said. “That cat.”
    “Actually, he’s Himmler with fur. How’s your father?”
    She didn’t reply. There was a gate but she ignored it; I watched her step over the wall. The dress rose to the tops of her thighs before slipping back again to touch the thumb-sized indentations of muscle just above her knees. Her hair tumbled across her face. Her skin wasn’t pale as I remembered except where two narrow strap marks strayed across her shoulders and the delicate bones of her clavicle. Then she was over. Reaching Misha’s chair, she began to scratch him between the ears, and in no time had him purring like an opium junkie.
    “What’ve you been up to?” she asked.
    There was a breeziness to her tone that I didn’t believe, given the circumstances. You’ve been away seven weeks and four days without calling, I wanted to say. Do you have any idea what that feels like? Instead, I held up my library book on Wallace.
    “The usual?” she said.
    “What else? Now tell me how your father is.”
    “Not very well.” Her gaze settled past me, onto the front of the house. “Though his weight’s started to come back. He says he’s returning to work by the end of next week and damn anybody who tries to stop him. That means me.” She paused, holding her head very still. Tears had appeared from nowhere,floating in her