Eye of Flame Read Online Free PDF Page B

a faint, golden tan, just enough to make her glow without turning her skin leathery. “Patti said you were writing a book.”
    “A monograph on Plato’s Philebus. I figured I’d pick a dialogue people hadn’t written that much about. That’s hard to find when scholars have had over two thousand years to mess around with Plato.”
    Louise stared at her blankly. “I saw Clint Eastwood in the airport last month,” Patti said, “just from a distance. He looked emaciated.”
    “If they look thin on the screen,” Dena said, “they look absolutely anorexic in person.” She nibbled at a shrimp. “Didn’t David Lee Roth make a video around here?”
    Jacqueline stood up. “I think we need some air.” The others didn’t seem to hear her. The topics of real estate and celebrity-spotting could probably keep them occupied for hours, and Louise had been married to a celebrity of sorts herself.
    She crossed the room, opened the sliding glass door, and stepped out onto the terrace. The condo was on the second floor; the Strand and the beach beyond it were less than a block away. The wind had grown warmer. The sun was a bright red disk just above the gray water; she had watched it set last evening, surprised at how suddenly it dropped below the horizon. To the south, Catalina was a misty gray form, barely a suggestion of an island. Cyclers and runners moved along the Strand; other people were entering a restaurant across the street.
    She reached into her shirt pocket for her cigarettes and lit one. She would call Jerome later; he had told her not to waste the money, but she needed to hear his voice. Her eyes narrowed. The blond man she had seen by the pier was sitting on the low wall between the Strand and the beach; he stood up and began to walk toward her.
    “—very eastern habit,” Louise said behind Jacqueline.
    “What?”
    “Smoking. The only time anyone smoked in my house was when somebody from back East was visiting.” Louise moved toward the railing as the other two women came outside, then lifted a hand to the collar of her blue silk shirt. “Will you look at that.” She lowered her gaze to the blond man.
    Dena moved closer to Louise. “Do you know him?”
    Louise shook her head. “But I saw him just this morning, near my driveway. He was definitely flirting.”
    “That’s funny,” Dena said, sounding annoyed. “I saw him last night at Orville and Wilbur’s, at the bar. He smiled at me, but when I looked back, he was gone.”
    “Sure it was the same guy?”
    “I don’t forget men who look like that.”
    “He gets around, then.” Patti’s thick, pale hair swayed as she leaned over the railing. “He was outside my house when I left for work. I thought he was casing the place.”
    “Hello,” the man said then. The sound of a passing car and the music coming from the nearby restaurant seemed to fade as he spoke. The sun disappeared; he moved closer to the light over the sidewalk below. “So you’re all together again.”
    Louise’s hands fluttered. “Do we know you?”
    “I know you,” he replied. “Couldn’t forget you, Louise, or Dena there, or Patti, and especially not Jackie.”
    Jacqueline swallowed. “Who are you?” she managed to say.
    “An old classmate.” He thrust his hands into the pockets of his windbreaker. “Maybe you don’t remember me—I wasn’t exactly part of your crowd. I’m Tad Braun.”
    Patti started. “You’re Tad Braun?”
    He nodded. Jacqueline now recalled the last time she had seen those grayish green eyes, but they had looked out at her from the flaccid, pimply face of a fat, awkward boy. Tad Braun had transformed himself. The awkwardness was gone, the oily hair golden, the fat turned into muscle; perhaps a plastic surgeon had chiseled his face and smoothed his skin.
    “You sure have changed,” Dena said.
    Tad shrugged. “So have all of you. You were attractive then, but you look even better now.” That might be true of the others, Jacqueline