The Hollow Girl Read Online Free PDF Page B

had been mostly just big, a lovely red brick colonial with a cobblestone driveway, nothing that was going to give Gropius or Gehry the hives. That was no longer the case. The new house was something out of the Hollywood Hills. Three stories high, it was all angles and beautifully sculpted concrete. The concrete was perfectly smooth, painted a flat black, and the interior, obvious through the miles of glass, was almost completely white. Some of the interior seemed to flow directly out into the exterior. The four-car garage, made of the same materials, was set off to one side, but more traditional in shape and function.
    I pulled up next to the brushed steel front door, which swung open even before I got out of my car. I wasn’t exactly shocked that my presence had been noted. Since 9/11, it felt like the whole world had surveillance cameras. In Manhattan, it was safe to assume that every step you took was being recorded somewhere by someone. And when you had a house in the fancy-schmancy part of Long Island that seemed like it was built mostly of glass and open spaces, you needed security cameras, a lot of them.
    Nancy greeted me just inside the door. She was dressed in a silky white robe that accentuated her breasts and curves and revealed a lot of the tanned skin of her still-muscular legs. She was barefoot, I suppose to give me the impression that she had only recently gotten up and was just lounging about.
Yeah, sure
. I wasn’t buying it. No one who had sculpted herself out of the unremarkable clay she had begun with would come to the door freshly out of bed.
    She was perfectly made up, her hair falling just so: this much in front of her shoulders, that much behind. And her brown legs fairly glowed with the skin cream she had probably rubbed on them not a half-hour before I arrived. At least she had been wise enough not to load on the jewelry. That really would have murdered the illusion. Still, I had to confess that Nancy had turned herself into a very attractive woman. It was difficult to reconcile old Nancy with the new. And as she had the previous day, she smelled awfully good, like a hint of honey mixed with raw, freshly crushed herbs.
    She caught me off guard, leaning in and kissing me on the cheek. God damn me if I didn’t flutter some. I tried not to show it. I’m not sure how successful I was at that. Now the urge to drink, which I had pretty much battled to a draw on my way here, was reasserting itself.
    “You look like you could use a drink,” she offered, turning, walking straight ahead.
    Maybe she really could read my mind. “Nothing for me. Thank you. I’m fine,” I lied, and tried deflection. “This is an amazing house. Awfully white in here.”
    “Thank you. I helped design it. Come on out to the pool.”
    I followed her out through one of those interior/exterior spaces. Here, though, the white concrete flooring not only flowed outside, it flowed directly into the heated pool, wispy clouds of steam rising off the water as it blended with the crisp fall air. The pool was one of those multitiered infinity edged designs with a cascade feature. It was constructed of a dark gray slate, or what looked to be slate. It was hard to know what was real and what was make-believe around Nancy. Beyond the pool, the rear yard was a blend of styles, none of them native to Long Island. I could see a Japanese rock garden, koi pond, and a lone bonsai tree. On the opposite side of the pool, where the table, grill, wet bar, and cabana were, the design was vaguely Southwestern. Somehow it all seemed to blend well together.
    When we got out by the pool, Nancy stopped. She half-turned to me and said, “There’s coffee, tea, and scones on the table and a full bar over by the cabana. Help yourself.”
    With that, she undid her robe, letting it fall to the floor at her feet. She hesitated a beat before walking slowly into the pool. The beat of hesitation was purposeful. She wanted to make certain I noticed her, noticed