Sunburn Read Online Free PDF

but I was getting to like it. At least it was impossible to emerge drowsy.
    While I spluttered and groaned, Lea came in and sat on the bidet, which was, if possible, colder.
    “How do you do it?” she asked.
    “Clean living,” I said. “Hand me a towel, huh?”
    She shivered. “Still.”
    “Should I shave? Sean tell you who’s coming?”
    “You know anybody with a white Citröen?”
    “No.”
    “Then I don’t know.” She had a towel wrapped around her hips, as a man might, and combed her hair abstractedly. She looked at me in the mirror. “Don’t shave. You look good.”
    We dressed together, husband and wife, talking like it, and went downstairs.

    Of the three guests, I had met Tony before. He was getting a doctorate somewhere in Spanish literature. He’d been up to the house several times before, and I liked him. He wore dark slacks, loafers, an open shirt. A handsome Spaniard, he was olive-skinned, slim, with a woman’s hands, and yet not effeminate, but somehow rugged. His voice was abnormally deep. I remember having been surprised when I’d learned he was a student, so far was he from the scholarly type. The last two times he’d been by, we’d all gotten drunk and told filthy stories. Now, when Lea and I entered the room, he rushed to embrace us both, laughing contagiously.
    “Come,” he said, “meet my friends. Tonight we’ll be more sedate, eh?”
    “He means under sedation,” Sean put in.
    The woman was young, possibly not yet eighteen, and very pretty, dressed in a white shift and sandals, medium-length dark hair surrounding her face.
    “Marianne is just in from France. She studies anthropology. And this,” said Tony, presenting the other guest with a smile, “is Michael Barrett, our chaperon.”
    “He is not that,” said Marianne. “We don’t need a chaperon.”
    Tony winked at us. “Ah, innocence.”
    We all laughed politely and began making small talk, but shortly I noticed that Michael had sat back in his chair, seemingly content to be left out. He was an American, from Seattle originally, who’d been in Europe for several years. Somewhere in his early twenties, I imagined. He was rather tall and well built, with dark hair that was long but not unkempt.
    I thought it odd that someone so young should be so reserved. It might have been shyness, but there was more a brooding quality about him—an inner quietness, maybe even a sense of solitude. When he did speak, he was, to my mind, forcedly polite, and in Sean’s relaxed front room it was out of context, leaving a tension like an unresolved chord.
    Lea must have felt it, too. She was in a positive hurry to help with the drinks.
    Of course we all had gin and tonics. No other drink, even sangría—especially sangría—is so typically Spanish. We drank from tall glasses filled with ice and a wedge of lime. Outside, it still hadn’t completely darkened, and a slight warm breeze came through the open front door.
    Lea was over talking to Sean, Kyra was in the kitchen getting more ice, and Michael, now Mike, sat sipping his drink. Marianne harangued Tony about something in French, then got up from the couch and crossed to where I stood, near the liquor cabinet. She really looked enchanting.
    “Why are you standing over here alone?” she asked.
    “I’m an observer,” I said.
    She turned and looked at Mike, now talking with Tony. “We have too many of them here already. Come over and talk to us.” She reached out her hand to me—cool and very small—and led me over to the sofa.
    “What shall we discuss?”
    “Anything you like,” I said.
    Tony stood next to her and put his arm around her waist.
    “Would you get me another drink?” she said to him. Then, to me, “No one seems to pay much attention to the women here, n’est-ce pas? ”
    At that moment, Kyra came back in from the kitchen with the ice. She was wearing a floral print which fell loosely from her neck to the floor. It was open at the sides, clasped by a pin