What Nora Knew by Linda Yellin Read Free Book Online

air-kissed, and I said, “Hello, Oliver, nice to see you again.”
    “We’ve met?” he said.
    “I believe so,” I said.
    His expression went from puzzled to blank. “Oh, yes, I recall. Didn’t you purchase Nude on a Window Ledge ?”
    “I believe not.”
    “Oliver, how’s your ex-wife?” Heike interrupted.
    I ducked away. Bruce was shaking hands with the Cincinnati Reds guy, and Russell was giving his card to the entrepreneur guy. I waited until Pamela was done talking to a server guy, then pulled her to the side.
    “Are you having fun?” she asked.
    “The funnest,” I said. “Who’s that man talking with Bruce and Marya?”
    “She spells it with a y, you know. Isn’t that peculiar?”
    “The peculiar-est. What’s with that guy in the Reds cap?”
    “Cameron Duncan. Heike Vogel brought him,” Pammiesaid. “She’s optioned the rights to his last two books. Crime crap. Aimed at women. Nothing we’d read.”
    “We’re women.”
    “He’s got this ongoing detective character, Mike Bing, who’s sensitive and caring and never kills the bad guys; he just sends them to jail.”
    “Crime crap,” I said.
    “Detective Bing falls madly in love in each book but the girlfriend always dies. One on the tower of a nuclear power plant. Another on top of the Washington Monument. The women are always in these high-up locations and he can’t save them.”
    “You read these books, don’t you?”
    “Busted,” Pammie said with a good-natured smile. “Hey, why’d Russell need to borrow salt this morning?”
    “He’s a gargler.” I blew bubbles in the back of my throat, but stopped when I realized I was making fun of my boyfriend. “Pammie, how’d you know Bruce was the man for you?”
    She looked around at her big, snazzy house, and out at her sweep of lush landscaping, and said, “I just knew.”
    I wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “You were always perceptive.”
    Pammie was glaring toward the far end of the lawn. “Unbelievable!” she said. Marya Aschbacher and another woman were rearranging the place cards. “I hate when people do that!” Pammie turned to me. “You should talk to Cameron. You’re both writers. Time for lunch!” she announced, and circulated through the guests encouraging everyone to head down to the afternoon meal.
    I found Russell and interrupted his speaking to a guy wearing madras Bermuda shorts and suspenders—not the grandfather kind of suspenders, the Wall Street kind. Russell was handing the man his business card. “This is my girlfriend, Molly,” Russell said. “Molly, Thatcher Kamin.”
    “Mergers and acquisitions,” Thatcher said to me, shaking my hand.
    “Great!” I said. “Pamela wants us to acquire lunch.”
    “Ah,” Thatcher said. “I must find my wife.” He wandered off.
    I linked my arm through Russell’s as we promenaded with the other guests to the back forty of the lawn. “That’s Oliver West, the artist,” I told Russell, nodding my head in Oliver’s direction. Oliver was walking with Heike, who was shaking her finger in his face. “I posed nude in front of him for over two years and he didn’t recognize me.”
    “Maybe he doesn’t recognize you in clothes,” Russell said.
    “Should I show him my tits?”
    At which point Cameron Duncan, who must have sonic hearing, was walking past with half the couple staying in the Tulip Room—the female half—and grinned at me. For all the estrogen-laced fussing over him, he wasn’t handsome. He had this high forehead and short, dark curls. I couldn’t tell if his forehead was high because it was high, or if his forehead was high because his hairline was receding, but one eyebrow was straight and the other angled up as if he were constantly amused. His mouth also tilted to the right. That was what made him attractive, even though he wasn’t attractive—his crooked, twinkly smile.
    I leaned in closer to Russell and sped up my walk.
    A white-clothed table with white china place settings