The car slowed before making a U-turn to pull up at the front door of the Norfolk Hotel.
“Oh, no,” Barbara said.
“Oh, no, what? It’s beautiful.”
The hotel looked like a Tudor hunting lodge in tropical sunlight. In front, a deep, covered veranda, a bar/restaurant, ran half the length of the building.
“Look at all those people.”
“So what?”
“Oh, nothing,” Barbara said. “I don’t mind pulling up in front of all those people, getting out of the car with a ghostly young man who clearly has been sick all over himself, putting my snow skis on my shoulder, and walking into a tropical hotel. Why should I mind?”
“Okay.” Fletch started to get out of the taxi. “Stay here. I’ll send you out a poached egg.”
“Either we’re going to end up in a Kenyan jail,” Barbara said, following him, “or an asylum for the insane.”
“Pay the driver, Barbara. You’ve got the money.”
“I’ll tip him,” Barbara said, “asking him to forgive us and forget us.”
In fact, the big doorman took the skis out of the trunk, brought them into the lobby, and stood them up against the wall as if this were something he did hourly.
A few people on the veranda looked up and nodded at Fletch and Barbara.
In the people’s eyes was little more than mild curiosity.
“Hello?”
There was a hesitation. “Is this Mr. Fletcher?”
“Is this Mr. Fletcher, too?” Fletch answered.
There was another pause. “My name’s Carr. I’m a friend of your father’s. Are you all up there?”
“All who?” Fletch asked. “Up where?”
“Is your father with you? With you and your wife, in your room?”
“I haven’t seen him,” Fletch said. “Ever.”
“Oh. He told me we’d all meet here, on Lord Delamere’s Terrace. For a drink. Rather think the old boy wanted me along for moral support, don’t you know. I understand the situation. Father and son meeting for the first time.”
Barbara was in the shower.
“More than I do, I expect.”
Fletch had opened the knapsacks, gotten his shaving kit out.
“Well, I’ve got a table on the terrace. He’ll turn up.”
Slanted along the wall, propped against the windows, were the two pairs of snow skis. Outside the window, brilliant flowers were everywhere.
“I’ll come down,” Fletch said. “How will I know you?”
“Well, we’ll be two proper-looking gentlemen, I trust, with drinks in front of our faces, all eyes on the front door of the hotel.”
Fletch chuckled. “Okay. But I’ll be a few minutes. We’ve spent the last several months on airplanes and you won’t want to recognize me if I don’t shave and shower.”
“Right,” Carr said. “We’ll look for someone clean.”
“Did I hear the phone?” Barbara came out of the bathroom. Her head and torso were wrapped in towels.
“Yes.” Shirt off, Fletch was going into the bathroom with his shaving kit.
“Was it your father?”
“No.”
“Was it the police?”
“Why would it be? A friend of my father’s, someone I guess my father wants present at the meeting for moral support. They’ll be waiting for us downstairs on that veranda.”
“Why didn’t your father make the call?”
“He’s not here yet. Barbara!”
“Yes, darling?”
“If we’re to be married—”
“We were married. We are married.”
“— either I’ll have to grow a beard or be able to see in the mirror so I can shave.”
“You told me I had first dibs on the shower.”
“Why steam up the room? Why shower with the door closed?” There was a phone extension in the bathroom. “What century do you belong to, anyway? Why ever shower with the door closed?”
“The air’s very dry here. See?” She reached her hand into the bathroom, closed her fingers, and threw the steam out. “All gone.”
“I look lousy,” he said, shaving.
“Yes,” she said solemnly. “I was trying to spare you that view of yourself.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“How do you feel?”
“I’m no more jet-lagged than you are. Well live through the day.”
“I can go down and say you’re sick. You can meet these … your father, tomorrow.”
“Why do that?”
“One shock to your system at a time. Isn’t that what Aristotle said?”
“Aristotle said, The roast lamb is very good today.”
“You’re so contemporary.”
When he came out of the shower, Barbara was still in her towels but there were clothes all over the room. Ski clothes. Sweaters. Ski boots. Ski goggles. Gloves. A kit of ski wax.
Barbara looked perplexed.
“Where are my clothes?” Fletch asked.
“In the laundry.”
“What laundry?”
“A man came to the door and said he wanted clothes for the laundry so I gave him yours.”
“Very generous of you.”
“Mine, too. Everything we were wearing on the plane.”
“Do I have any other clothes? I mean, to wear?”
“No,” she said. “Neither do I. Apparently not.” She waved her hand around the room. “Ski clothes.”
“Not even jeans?”
“I told Alston I wasn’t going to see you in jeans on our honeymoon. Or sneakers. Just ski clothes.”
“Great.”
He sat on the edge of the bed. Feet still on the floor, he lowered his back onto the bed. He was completely surrounded by ski clothes.
“You are still wet,” she said.
“I won’t catch cold.”
She took off her torso towel. She wiped him down lightly, just once, from his shoulders to his ankles.
“You missed the soles of my feet.”
“Raise your legs,” she said. “Seeing everything else is up.”
She knelt. He put his knees over her shoulders.
“Maypole,” she said. “Flagpole. Tower of London.” She was waving it back and forth. “There’s nothing quite like it. Rigid, yet flexible.”
