It is well into morning when I hear sounds from the apartment, the terrace door open and then clicking heels on tile. I lift my cheek from Alan’s head, and open my eyes to find Jeanette hovering in front of me, setting a breakfast tray on the foot of the chaise. One plate. One setting. One cup of coffee. Message received, as if I couldn’t read the look she’s giving: Jeanette hates me.

“He needs to wake,” she says, imperatively. “He needs to eat, shower, dress and leave here by ten. Do you think yourself capable of communicating that to him?”

“Yes, I think I can manage that.”

She doesn’t offer me breakfast. I watch her leave and I don’t give her the satisfaction of seeing me wake him. The perfect lines of Alan’s face look so peaceful when he sleeps, his breathing is so shallow as if he still needs sleep, and I hate the thought of waking him.

I touch my lips to his forehead. “Alan, you need to wake up.”

He straightens up, from dead asleep to wide awake in a blink, those penetrating black eyes fixed on me. “Are you OK?”

I nod. “It’s just your breakfast is here and I have a message to communicate, and I wish to communicate before I forget it and make a mistake: You need to eat, shower, dress and leave here by ten.”

Alan laughs, stabbing his omelet with a fork. “Ah, you don’t like Jeanette. She’s supposed to be a slave driver, Chrissie. She keeps me organized and on track with where I need to be and what I need to do. She is very good at it.”

I take a sip of his coffee. She is also very beautiful. I smile. “I’m sure she is.”

We eat, taking alternating bites, until his plate is completely clean.

“Are you really OK, Chrissie? You wouldn’t lie to me would you?”

“Yes, I’m fine today.”

I change the subject. “How did you guys come up with the name Blackpoll?”

Alan laughs, a lazy, sort of quiet laugh. “I can tell by how you say that, that you are one of the three Americans under thirty who know what a Blackpoll is.”

I make a face at him.

“Len has a thing about birds,” he explains, smiling. “Blackpoll is what you get when you don’t have a name for a band and Len answers the phone drunk, holding an Audubon book. There is symmetry to it, so I kept it.”

“A small songbird surrounded by needles and cones?”

Alan laughs. “I didn’t say good symmetry.”

I hug my legs with my arms, pressing my cheek against knees, following him with my eyes as he returns to the kitchen for more coffee.

When he settles beside me, I decide to ask the question I’ve turned in my head since we settled on the terrace last night.

“Why do you keep the box in the bathroom?”

“I told you, I don’t believe in that total sobriety bullshit. It’s no big deal, Chrissie.”

“But the smack, Alan. Why keep the heroin if it’s a good thing you’ve kicked it?”

He hands me the cup of coffee. “Tossing it won’t change a thing if I decide to use again. It would be a meaningless gesture. Christ, I’m surrounded by it all the time. Tossing it would be as pointless as me taking your bracelet away.”

I stare at my toes and I can feel him watching me.

“Jeanette, bring me my book!” Alan bellows.

Clicking heels on the tile close in on us. To Alan, she smiles and sets the book in front of him before taking away the breakfast tray. Alan rummages through the pages.

“There isn’t anything here I can’t cancel if you want me to stay today.”

He gives me a smile and what’s in my center is nearly a happy sensation.

I shake my head. “No, you don’t have to stay. I’m all right. Really, I am.”

“Only if you’re sure.”

The tone of his voice tells me he means it, and it still amazes me that out of nowhere there is this guy who worries about me. “I’m sure.”

His lips touch mine in such a sweetly gentle kiss that I instantly regret that I am sending him on his way. The tender kisses and touches are always the most potent, they light a fuse that makes me desperate for the rest of him.

I don’t know if my impulses are normal, they are too new and fresh, but right now it feels as if it would be desperately right to make love with him.

“My day isn’t long. I’ll be back late afternoon. Jeanette knows how to reach me.” His eyes fix on me sternly. “Call, Chrissie. If you need me, if you need anything, call me. You have to promise me or I won’t go. If something happens again, baby, you will call me first.”

I nod and watch Alan disappear through the doors.

After Alan leaves, I put on my one-piece and sit on the terrace, letting the sunshine soothe me and put me nearly to sleep.

I hear sound from the apartment and I jump.

“Shut the fuck up, Jeanette!” I hear from the great room. “Go back into your coffin or something. I’m not leaving and you are not keeping us away any longer.”

The voice is loud, female, and edgy.

“You really need to leave, Linda,” says Jeanette.

Linda? The girl from the letters in the cabinet? I’m wide awake now, I haven’t a clue who Linda is, but by how she handles Jeanette I know she is someone to worry about.

“And you really need to get your fucking face out of my face before I toss you over the patio railing. Len! Get your witless, wetback, limey ass in here and dispose of Cruella.”

She comes through the terrace doors like a hurricane. Linda’s severely beautiful face turns toward me, locking me in an absolutely diminishing stare.

“Aha,” she says. She sinks on the chaise beside me. “So that’s it. Manny has a new house cat. Who the fuck are you?”

I don’t have a chance to answer.

“Len, get the fuck out here!” she screams. “We’ve been worrying about nothing. He is fine. The band is not breaking up. He is ignoring everyone because he has a new house cat.”

Her eyes shift back to me. “Well, pretty little kitty, I’m Linda Rowan. Who are you?”

“I’m nobody.” Oh crap, why did I blurt out the first thing that came into my head?

Linda laughs. “Is that your name or your vocation? One can never tell with Manny’s girls.” She grabs a cigarette and lights it. She studies me over the smoke. “You’re a smart girl, aren’t you? You keep your mouth shut. That’s good. Don’t trust anyone, that’s my motto.”

She fixes her intense stare at the terrace doors. Even sitting silently, it feels as if the entire terrace is electrically charged from her.

I would have considered Linda Rowan a flawless beauty like Rene, if not for the ring through her nose, the ring through her eyebrow, and the ring through her lower lip. The stud in her tongue is something particularly irritating since it clicks against the back of her teeth whenever she speaks. It’s hard to tell how old she is. Anywhere between twenty and thirty. The eyes look a lot older, but her face is fresh and young.

I focus on the large pansy tattooed on her wrist, as she reaches to pour herself a hefty glass of whiskey.

“Well, fuck! Don’t just sit there staring at me. Say something.”

“I have nothing to say to you.”

Linda laughs a husky laugh that tells me she laughs often. “I like you, little house cat. I’m never wrong about these things. And I like you.”

I’m really getting irritated at being called the “little house cat” and I’m about to say something when Len Rowan decides to join us. He is a tall, swaggering, and good-humored Britisher. I’d recognize Alan’s bass player anywhere. He is not good looking, but he has an interesting face. Very English features framed by a mane of wavy reddish-blond hair.

“Len, meet the house cat,” Linda announces. “I can’t give you her name because she won’t tell me. This one is a clam. House kitty, this in my husband, Len Rowan.”

Len sinks too close to me on the chaise after grabbing a full bottle of Jack Daniels. He’s reclined on one side of me, Linda in front, so I feel surrounded.

“You’re a pretty little thing, aren’t you? All fresh and cute like he plucked you from an Iowa corn field. Where do you imagine he picked up this one, Linda?”