Picture Perfect Read online

  Even Alex, who Cassie figured was as big a star as they came, wasn't as wrapped up in himself as Ophelia. But she looked so serious, holding her hand out and flexing it just so, that Cassie could only smile. "Can I get you something else?" she said, pointing to the empty juice glass.

  Ophelia walked toward a cabinet and stuck her hand inside, rummaging and coming up with an English muffin. "I'll get it. I know my way around."

  "Good," Cassie said. "Maybe you can give me a tour."

  Ophelia turned away from the toaster, anxiety drawing her features tight. "God, Cass, how long is it going to take? It must be awful."

  Cassie shrugged. "I've got Alex here."

  "Fat lot of helphe'll be," Ophelia muttered.

  Cassie faced the counter and began to cut a strawberry into eight tiny slices. She cut methodically, listening for the click of the blade against the marble with each slice. "Why do you hate each other?" she asked.

  Cassie couldn't be sure if Ophelia didn't want to answer the question, or if she hadn't heard it. "Butter?" Ophelia said. She closed her eyes as if divining its location, and then opened a compartment of the refrigerator. "Ah," she said. She tried to hold the muffin with her bad arm while she spread the butter with the other hand, but the muffin kept slipping out of her grasp.

  "Here," Cassie said. "Let me do it."

  She handed half to Ophelia, who was staring at her forearm as if it were a foreign object. "I can't put any pressure on it yet. It's driving me up the wall. And it itches like hell."

  "How did you get hurt?"

  She shrugged. "It was the end of a perfectly horrible day. I was at this photo shoot forParents magazine, and I'd spent the afternoon holding a series of naked three-month-olds in the air--" She reached her arms in front of her as a demonstration. "Anyway, they were zeroing in on the baby's ass and my hands under its armpits. So this one kid--a boy--starts peeing on me. And I'm wearing that washed silk shirt I got at Versace last month--remember? I showed it to you--and I justknow the stain isn't going to come out." She paused, taking a bite of her muffin. "And then they tell me before I leave that they'll let me know if--if--they decide to use the picture for the next issue. So I step outside and it's raining cats and dogs and I have no umbrella, and next thing I know, I'm lying on the ground in the middle of a mudslide, and my arm is caught underneath me and I'm dying from the pain." She grinned. "I did, however, make a date with the doctor in the emergency room." She turned to Cassie. "Did you know that they don't just make white casts anymore? You have a choice of anything--pink, green, even fuchsia. I thought I'd go with black, you know, because it matches most of my night outfits."

  Cassie leaned against the counter, exhausted from Ophelia's explanation. "Enough about me," Ophelia said. She smiled, and Cassie could see what she meant--her nose was a little bit off center. "How are your bones holding up?"

  "Bones?"

  "God, Cass, all you've been talking about is your field class this semester. I figured it was lodged so deep in your mind that a coma couldn't make you forget. You're going to...let me think...Kenya, I believe, in May, with the seniors."

  "I haven't been to UCLA yet. Alex has to get back toMacbeth , so we decided I'd take a leave of absence and go with him."

  "We decided?" Ophelia shook her head. "You meanhe decided. Younever go on location with Alex. Not during the school year, anyway. You must have knocked out more than your memory, because the Cassie I know couldn't stand to miss two lectures in a row without having apoplexy." Ophelia smiled. "Maybe I should take you to the university today. Lock you in your dusty old office for an hour or two with your research, and then let Alex drag you kicking and screaming to Scotland."

  Cassie felt her hand tighten around the knife she was holding. She had no more reason to believe Alex than she had to believe Ophelia, but she did. Cassie swallowed and placed the knife on the kitchen counter beside the cut strawberry. She ran her finger over a red puddle of juice and seeds; the heart of the fruit, the blood. "Why do you and Alex hate each other?" she asked again.

  Ophelia sighed. "Because Alex and I are too similar to get along. We're at different levels, but we're in the same business. We're both obsessed with work. And we both want you to ourselves."

  Cassie laughed, but the sound seemed to shatter the air around her. "That's ludicrous," she said. "You're my friend. He's my husband. There's plenty of room in my life for both of you."

  Ophelia leaned back against the center island, lifting her face to the skylight overhead. "Tell that to Alex," she said. "From day one, he's been trying to swallow you whole."

  AS IF HE HAD BEEN EAVESDROPPING, ALEX CAME BACK FROM AN ERRAND later that morning with a box full of bones. He pretended to stagger under its weight, walking toward Cassie. She sat at the kitchen table, leafing through photo albums, her eyes riveted to a faded picture of a blond boy. He was lean and sinewy, just at the edge of growing up, and his arm was looped over Cassie's neck. She was thirteen, but there was none of that awkward teenage break between boys and girls distancing them. In fact, from the way the picture had been taken, it was difficult to tell where one of them stopped and the other began.

  Cassie did not look up, did not notice the wooden box with its scientific packing labels. "Alex," she said, "where does Connor live now? Why don't I keep in touch with him?"

  "I don't know. He's the only thing you've ever refused to talk about."

  Cassie touched her finger to a fine line of flyaway hair coming off Connor's cheek. "It must have been a fight. One of those stupid kids' fights that you feel rotten about for years, but are still too embarrassed about to make right."

  Alex pried open the box. "I doubt that. You're a fanatic for picking up the pieces." He tossed several small bone chips into the air, heavy and yellowed, and Cassie caught them like a practiced juggler. "And here," he said, "are some pieces for you to pick up."

  Alex spilled the contents of the box onto the dining room table, obliterating the facing pages of the open photo album. "Don't say I never bring you anything," he said, grinning.

  Cassie brushed away the soft cotton wool and newspaper used for transport, running her fingertips over the fifty or so fragments of bone. Each was labeled with India ink, left-sloping European handwriting marking the grave, the site, the date of discovery. "Oh, Alex," she murmured. "Where did you get this?"

  "Cambridge, England," he said. "By way of Cornwall, according to the laboratory I bought it from."

  "Youbought me a skull?"

  Alex ran a hand through his hair. "You don't know what I had to go through to get them to let me take it home. I had to tell this Dr. Bother--"

  "Dr.Botner ?"

  "Whoever--I had to make a huge 'contribution,' tell him who you were, and convince him that I was certain you'd wind up sending it back as a museum exhibit, instead of keeping it as a conversation piece in some actor's home." He absently picked up a piece of cotton wool and strung it apart like taffy. "And to keep it asecret , I had to negotiate this over the telephone in the six minutes you weren't at my side."

  Cassie stared at him. "You did this yesterday?"

  Alex shrugged. "I bought it when I was in Scotland. But I rushed the shipment yesterday. I didn't know how long it would take you to feel like yourself again, and I wanted it to seem like home."

  Cassie smiled, and as always, he wondered why photographers always rushed to capture his image rather than hers. If his features reflected anything, it was the light given off by Cassie. "Of course," she pointed out, "any other woman would have been satisfied with roses."

  Alex watched Cassie's hands automatically begin to sort the pieces of the skull in size order. "I wouldn't trade you for the world," he said.

  Cassie had been unwrapping the mandible. She paused, staring down at her hands. Then she stood and leaned forward to kiss Alex. "I must be the luckiest person in California," she said.

  Alex let himself fall into her, grasping at her words and the electric feel of her skin against his. He did not know