“I need you to do me a favor,” Hugo petitioned Laura, who was sleepily pouring out coffee for them, her long brown hair down on her shoulders, her slim body wrapped in a white brocade robe. Her sister Susan, who’d quickly dressed herself in jeans, a cream wool turtleneck and ankle boots, was twisting and tying her waist length honey blonde hair into a high ponytail as she came into the room. “I have to go into Boston for the afternoon and I’m expecting a very important call at the shop on my private line. Could you be there today to monitor my calls?”
“Yes,” Laura replied, handing her sister a cup of coffee, with milk and sugar as she liked it. “But what’s it all about?”
“A source of mine in London has located a blue china vase that once belonged to Oscar Wilde. Apparently, there’s enough provenance to prove that the piece was seized from Wilde’s house and sold off during the execution on his goods which followed his conviction.”
“Not The Blue China?” Susan asked, in awe.
“Yes, The Blue China that Wilde always claimed it was harder and harder to live up to,” Hugo replied with excitement. “If I can obtain the vase I’m sure a certain someone at this table’s rich boyfriend will be wanting to buy it and endow it to his alma mater.”
“And you’d get a nice commission,” Laura reflected.
“Enough for us to close the shop for several weeks and take a proper honeymoon, in Italy.”
“I’ll stick by the phone like glue,” Laura promised.
“Good girl!” Hugo said, lifting her hand to kiss the palm.
One hour later, having showered and dressed in a pair of brown cords, a wool polo shirt, walking shoes, a brown tweed coat, tam and gloves, Laura walked down graveyard hill and into the village of Random Point, against the wind all the way. Her umbrella blew inside out immediately and the raw cold stung her cheeks bright pink by the time she got to Hugo’s shop.
The first thing she did after entering, turning up the heat and turning on all the lights was to light the hearth in the main room of the shop. Then she went back to Hugo’s editorial and archival offices behind the shop and started a pot of coffee in the galley. While she was waiting for the coffee to brew she went out to the back garden, which faced the brook that ran alongside almost all of Shadow Lane, and smoked half a joint. Then she was ready to unlock the front door to the public and open the shop. Not that she expected any public off-season and on a morning like this.
Taking her coffee, Laura went to sit behind the large desk in the office where Hugo conducted his correspondence and phone interviews. Almost immediately she sat down, the phone rang.
“Hugo Sands’ Antiques,” Laura said brightly.
“Oh,” said a disappointed female voice on the other end of the line.
“Is Hugo there?”
“No, he isn’t. May I take a message?”
“This is Francesca from Provincetown. He was supposed to call me this morning.”
Laura remembered Hugo mentioning a young woman, one of his readers, who had recently begun to fixate on him because she lived less than five miles from Random Point. The tone of the caller’s voice indicated that this was the person of whom Hugo had spoken. Her lover had many fans and had collected many hearts over the years he had been publishing the Northeast’s most elegant spanking magazine. Some of these women were of such intelligence, charm and physical attractions as to have been invited out to pose for photo spreads, to be wined, dined, spanked and bedded by the man who had only captured Laura for himself within the last few years. (Though he had loved her for six.)
“I’m so sorry, he’s gone to Boston for the day. I don’t expect him back until early evening. Perhaps I could take your number?”
“Oh, he has my number,” the woman, who sounded to be in her late twenties or early thirties, replied crossly.
“Well, I’ll let him know that you called.”
“Who am I speaking to?” the caller demanded.
“This is Laura.”
“Do you work there in the office?”
“Uh, yes. I do drawings for the magazine.”
“Oh! You’re good,” the woman said unhappily.
“Thank you.”
“So, you’ve known Hugo a long time?”
“Yes, I have,” Laura smiled.
“Are you his -”
“I’m his partner,” Laura replied firmly, surprising herself.
“Oh. Well, please tell him I called,” the woman said hastily and hung up.
That voice being as close as Provincetown made Laura uncomfortable. For the first time she realized that other women wanted her man. Not just to play with, as her Random Point girl friends sometimes did, but to keep. It was an odd sensation.
Laura strolled out to the main room with her coffee and sat on an upholstered stool by the hearth for several minutes, remembering the day, several years before, when Hugo had won her for good and all, though she didn’t tell him so at the time.
It was a rapturously balmy early Spring evening, approximately eighteen months after the infamous caning incident, for which Laura had decided never to forgive Hugo, and approximately six months before she officially did forgive him and consent to be his lover. She had been conducting herself in his presence in a most guarded manner, not precisely unfriendly, but certainly not warm and of course, wholly inaccessible. She never came to see him at the shop, never met him for a meal or even stopped to chat in the street. When they met by accident she’d nod and faintly smile but not converse beyond a bland, “How are you?” and that without seeming to care about the answer. It was a way to punish Hugo for the insult of caning her too hard and it had worked wonderfully well. Her comportment towards Hugo pained him deeply. Not that he had given up the thought of eventually possessing her completely, but for a period, he knew he had to back away. After all, they lived in civilized times. He couldn’t carry her kicking and screaming to his house and keep her locked in the attic. At least not for very long. So he bided his time.
But this particular early evening of an April day, they happened to cross paths at the grocery co-op on Brundle Street, where the mother of his recently surfaced, hitherto unknown daughter had once kept a large, splendid head shop and psychic emporium. Laura was in a white cotton a-line dress with cranberry trim and ankle strap platform heels of the same dark red. She was stuffing a string bag full of vegetables and fruit. Their eyes met over the first white peaches of Spring and this time he didn’t let her turn away directly.
“Laura.”
“Oh, hello,” she said, blushing, and started to hurry away. The blush was new and Hugo noticed it at once. Was it that he caught her in a pretty dress for once instead of the perpetual woolen leggings of a New England winter?
“Laura,” he repeated, touching the back of her bare arm with his hand. “Don’t walk away. I want to talk to you.” He didn’t smile but held her gaze.
“Yes?” she felt compelled to stay and listen because he had looked irresistibly handsome.
“When we leave here you’re getting in your car and following me home.”
She paused and looked at him, a smile tugging at the corners of her wide, shapely mouth. “Why would I want to do that?”
“Because I’ve got something for you at my house,” Hugo insisted.
“What?”