“What kind of car?”
“A white convertible with a man and a woman inside.”
“That would have been Evan Keating and his girlfriend, Gigi Jones.”
“The man you’re looking for?”
5 4
L o i t e r i n g w i t h I n t e n t
“Yes. I had approached him at the bar in the Marquesa and asked to speak with him. He suggested we go outside.”
“Isn’t that what American men do when they wish to fi ght? Go outside?”
Stone laughed. “Sometimes. I wasn’t expecting a fight on that occasion, though.”
“She must have hit you with something heavy,” Annika said.
“Why do you think the girl hit me?”
“She was with the man. Was there any other man present?”
“No.”
“Then it must have been the girl. You should not turn your back on strange women.”
“That’s good advice,” Stone admitted. They were called to their table, where they ordered another mojito and dinner. AF T ER D I N N ER , they returned to Annika’s house, as previously discussed, and she led him upstairs to her bedroom. She undressed and hung up her clothes, and Stone draped his over a chair. She pulled the bedcover off the bed and onto the fl oor.
“You’re very beautiful,” Stone said.
“You’re beautiful, too,” she said. “I think we will be good lovers together.”
They lay on the bed and came into each other’s arms. “First, we will do the missionary position,” Annika said, pulling him on top of her. “I love that name. Then we will rest and we will do it a different way.”
“All right,” Stone said. “Should we discuss which way now?”
“You are laughing at me,” she said, taking his penis in her hand and sliding it inside her. She did not need a lubricant.
“Only a little,” Stone said. “And suddenly I can’t remember why.”
“Good,” she said. “You must think only of now.”
She was right, he decided.
5 5
13
ST O N E WA S WA K E N E D by a buzzing noise that he did not immediately recognize. It took him a moment to see that his cell phone, vibrating, was doing a little dance on the glass top of Annika’s dressing table. He gently removed Annika’s blonde head from his shoulder, tiptoed naked across the room and picked up the phone. “Yes?” he whispered.
“Where the hell are you?” Dino asked. “As if I didn’t know.”
“I’m at Annika’s. What do you want?”
“That figures. This whole thing is blowing wide open, and you’re in the sack with a blonde.”
“What do you mean, it’s blowing wide open?”