Picture Perfect Read online

  She looked away before I'd even finished my sentence, and I turned to see Alex nodding at her. "Just the person I wanted to find," he said, and Jennifer scurried to his side. He put his hand on the small of her back and pushed her a few feet away from me. "Sorry," he said to me, grinning, "but if you listen in, you'll spoil the surprise."

  I watched Jennifer whip a notebook out of nowhere and extract a pencil from the folds of her long, dark hair. She scribbled furiously as Alex counted off points I could not hear from this distance. Once, when she asked him a question, Alex glanced at me and ran his eyes over me from head to toe, then turned back. I tried to watch them but people milled between us, pumping my hand up and down and speaking platitudes that could have been a foreign language. I lost my view of Alex in a sea of suntanned faces. I thought I might actually faint, although I'd never done that in my life, and then out of nowhere Alex stood at my side again and I realized that I hadn't been ill at all; it was just that half of me had been missing.

  SEVERAL NIGHTS BEFORE THE WEDDING I DREAMED THAT CONNOR met me on the Serengeti at dusk and told me I was making the biggest mistake of my life.

  "It's not like you think," I told Connor in my dream. "I'm not just infatuated with him because he's an actor--"

  "Iknow ," Connor interrupted. "That's what's worse. It's like you don't even notice the things the rest of the world does because you're so busy seeing him as a little wounded bird whose broken wing you can fix--"

  "Whatare you talking about?" I exploded. "He's not some charity case." I concentrated on seeing things as Connor would. I wasn't trying to replace him, but there were enough similarities between my relationship with him as a child and my relationship with Alex now to make me realize that I couldn't help but compare the two. Like Connor, Alex protected me--and he was the only person I let close enough to do it. Like Connor, Alex could finish my sentences before I did. But unlike Connor, for whom I had ultimately come too late, I was just in time to take care of Alex.

  In the dream, a run of zebras skirted the edge of the plain, and when they distracted me Connor leaned forward to press his suit. "You're just the one to make it all better, Cassie, don't you see that? That's what you do best. You took care of your mother and your father and me and Ophelia. You collect other people's problems the way some people collect rare coins."

  At this point in the dream, I tried to wake up. I didn't want to believe Connor; I didn't want to listen.

  "There's a problem with wounded birds, Cassie," Connor said. "Either they fly away from you one day, or else they never get better. They stay hurt no matter what you do."

  After that, I could feel myself drifting toward consciousness. I kept my gaze on Connor as he began to fade. I looked him square in the eye. "I love Alex," I said.

  Connor stepped back as if he'd taken a blow. He stretched out a hand toward me, but as things often are in dreams, he could not quite reach, and I realized that it had been that way between us for a while. "God help us," he said.

  THREE DAYS BEFORE OUR WEDDING, ALEX AND I DROVE TO ONE OF the many small lakes dotting the area to camp out overnight. In our jeep we'd packed two sleeping bags, a nylon tent, various pots and pans. I didn't question Alex about how he'd gotten these supplies--I was coming to see that Alex could draw blood from a stone if he wanted to. He unpacked beneath the embrace of a low, flat-leafed tree and began to set up the two-man tent with the grace of a practiced outdoorsman. I sat on the soft ground, shocked. "You know how to do that?" I said.

  Alex smiled at me. "You forget I grew up on the bayou. I've been running around outdoors all my life."

  Ihad forgotten. But it was easy to forget, when the polished, urbane Alex Rivers was what the world saw most of the time. It was difficult to reconcile the man who brought evening attire to Olduvai Gorge with the man who crouched before me arranging a tripod over a Sterno. "You're a study in contrasts, Mr. Rivers," I said.

  "Good," Alex murmured. He came up behind me and strummed his fingers down my ribs. "Then you won't be getting tired of me too soon."

  I smiled at the thought of it. When I turned around to help with the rest of the things in the jeep, Alex gently pushed me down to sit in the shade. "Rest,pichouette ," he said. "I can do it."

  Alex called mepichouette , a word I did not understand, but I liked the way it sounded, rolling from his lips like a trio of smooth pebbles. He spoke his Cajun French sometimes in bed, which I liked. For one thing, it meant he was forgetting himself, since the language came only when he let down his guard. And I liked the rhythm and honey of the words. I'd listen to the whispers against my neck and I would pretend that he was telling me how lovely my skin was, how beautiful my eyes, how he could never let me go.

  When Alex finished making camp, I patted the ground beside me. But instead of sitting down, he rummaged through a backpack and extracted a three-piece fishing rod, which he fitted together, threaded, and baited. For another half hour I watched him stand knee-deep in the water, reeling and then casting again, the neon line whizzing through the air like a missile's trajectory. "Incredible," I mused. "You seem so at home here. How do you ever suffer Los Angeles?"

  Alex laughed. "Marginally,chere ," he said. "But I'm not there when I can help it. The ranch in Colorado is three hundred acres of heaven and I can fish and ride and whatever. Hell, I could run around naked if I wanted to, and not come in contact with another soul." He cursed his bad luck, and threw down the fishing pole. "Never got the hang of these things," he said. He turned to me, a slow smile spreading across his face. "I'm much better with my hands."

  He stepped out of the lake, stalking toward me with his fingers outstretched, but ducked to my side at the last minute to disappear into the woods at the edge of the shore. When he returned he was holding a long, thin branch and a sharp fillet knife. He crouched and laid the branch over one knee, whittling one end to a point. Then he waded back into the water.

  Alex stood perfectly still, his shadow rippling on the surface, his arm poised with his makeshift spear. In the time it took for me to draw a breath, he plunged the branch through the water, lifting it to reveal a skewered fish still thrashing on the end. Triumphant, Alex turned to me. "When in Tanzania," he said, "do as the Tanzanians do."

  I was amazed. "How--how did you know how to do that?"

  Alex shrugged. "It's all patience and reflexes," he said. "I'm used to doing it without a stick." He walked away from me so that I could not see his face, and tossed the fish into a canvas bag. "You could say my papa taught me."

  We ate several pan-fried fish for dinner and later made love and wrapped up in the blanket, my back pressed to Alex's chest. When he fell asleep I turned toward him, studying his face in the shadow of a silver moon.

  A piercing cry made Alex bolt upright, throwing me back onto the ground. He shook himself free of sleep and reached for me, making sure I was all right. "It's far away," I told him. "It just sounds like it's next door."

  Alex lay down again, but his heart was pounding against my shoulder like a jackhammer. "Don't even think about it," I soothed, remembering the first times I'd slept outside in the African night. "Listen to the wind. Count the stars."

  "Do you know," Alex said quietly, "how much I hate camping?"

  I sat up and blinked at him. "Then why are we here?"

  Alex reached up his hands and pillowed his head upon them. "I thought you'd like it," he said. "I wanted to do it for you."

  I rolled my eyes. "I spend enough time in makeshift huts to appreciate clean sheets and a sturdy bed," I said. "You should have told me." When I looked down at Alex, his face was turned up to the sky, but his eyes were staring past the moon. I wondered what I had said to upset him. I touched my hand to the smooth white inside of his upper arm. "For someone who hates camping, you're quite a pro," I said softly.

  Alex snorted. "I had a lot of unwanted practice," he said. "You ever been to Louisiana in the summertime?" I shook my head. "Well, it's hell on earth," he said. "It's so hot the air sweats all over