2 Landscape in Scarlet Read Free Page B

without all the fire. ”
    Raphael nodded.
    “Summer’s last, lov e liest smile,” he agree d, slightly mis quoting William Cullen Bryant .
     
     

Chapter 2
     
    The rain came hard around sunset and flung spatters of fiery leaves against her windows. Juliet hoped the plastic at the tent kept everything dry and thieves would be as reluctant to be out in the weather as the rent-a-cop would be , otherwise her merchandise was there for the taking .
    She wasn’t going to worry about it though. Her sweatshirts w ere washable and she was insured . Creatures were prowling around in the dark outside her cabin , but they wouldn’t bother her. She had a fire in the stove , some ginger tea , and Marley for company. And bed was waiting. She would huddle gladly with her cat, made small and unnoticeable by the storm.
    Sleep was hard to come by though once the lights were out . She kept thinking of the gaunt figure with the balloons and felt uneasy though she couldn’t guess why .
    Carrie had left her a stack of fashion magazines the month before, only one of which she had read. From it she had learned that a) she didn’t care for the new style of low - cut jeans, and b) that you could pay an indecent amount of money for a mascara that still looked fake and clumped just like the cheaper brands at the drug store , and c) that Carrie Simmons would go completely nuts if she kept trying to emulate the teenage stick insects the magazines held up as the highest standards of beauty .
    Grumbling, she turned on the light and picked up the next magazine in the stack. And abandoned it only minutes later.
    At midnight , with sleep f u r ther away than ever, she began to consider the bottle of brandy in the cupboard, but rejected the idea immediately. Sleeping pills, alcohol, sex — any of them would stroke your brow and tell you everything would be fine. But they lied. None of those things could make anything “ fine. ” Juliet had developed a ritualized relationship with them from her years on the job . She had rules about when, where , and why to indulge. Being awake at midnight wasn’t one of the okay reasons to use them .
    With that decided, she turned off the lamp and fell instantly asleep . She didn’t waken until dawn.
    Juliet didn’t usually care for company before her brain was operational, but her cat was the exception, which was fortunate because Marley was not to be denied. He knew there were special cans in the cupboard meant only for his pleasure and wished her to be up and opening the m once there was any sign of the sky lightening.
    “Okay, you pushy beast,” she muttered, feeling for her slippers.
    The cat ’s breakfast came first and then some black tea for herself . She stood at her windows admiring the fallen leaves as she sipped from her mug and gradually reached full wake fulness . Her yard was a landscape in s carlet and gold. The last of the clouds, hanging around like ghosts on the top of the ridge , were slowly burning off in the light of full day. Encouraged by Raphael’s quote, s he thought of that poem by Tennyson, the one about looking over the happy autumn fields and thinking of the days that are no more , then decided it was too sad . Bryant had said it better. Let summer have her last smile.
    Juliet allowed herself two minutes more of meditation over her tea and then went to dress. She had made a special haunted house sweatshirt for the occasion , a gray silhouette on a black shirt . It was time to start trawling for the tourists’ dollars which were less plentiful these days. Most of their visitors worked for computer firms who encouraged their employees to take their spare dollars and invest them in stock programs to keep the company “ strong ” and to protect their jobs. But then when the CEOs fold ed up shop the employees were left with worthless e-bonds and securities . It wasn’t a fair exchange, but it was the norm. And people kept investing because sometimes it paid off in a big way. They