Beach Trip Read Free Page B

tray.
    “Good morning, Meesis Furman,” she said, smiling and setting the tray down on a table beside the bed.
    “Good morning, Rosa.” The girl’s aura was lovely, all pink and golden and standing out around her head like a halo, like a painting of some fifteenth-century saint. She had a Madonna’s face and an aura to match. “Did you sleep well?”
    The girl blushed but her eyes met Lola’s steadily. “Yes,” she said. “And I lock the door like you tell me to.”
    “Good.” Lola smiled faintly and poured herself a cup of coffee. Briggs had a bad habit of abusing the help, especially those as young and pretty as Rosa, and Lola had given her a can of mace and had the deadbolt changed on her door the day she hired her. She had warned Briggs, too, and he had laughed and said, “What are you implying, my dear?”
    Lola had thought it was pretty clear what she was implying.
    She lay back on her pillows with the coffee cup and saucer resting on her chest. Rosa went around the bed and began to smooth the sheets where Briggs had slept. “Meester Henry, he looked good,” she said.
    “Yes,” Lola said, thinking of her only son with pleasure. He had come home from Cornell last week and brought with him the girl he planned to marry. Neither one had said a word but she had seen it in their faces, in the way their auras flared and flickered toward each other, drawn like smoke through a window. It had made her feel peaceful knowing that he loved someone else, that he no longer needed her.
    She sipped her coffee and watched Rosa work. “You have a lovely aura,”she said. Rosa frowned slightly but kept working. She was used to Lola’s ways. It was the oxazepam that had first given Lola the ability to see auras, but now she could see them without the drugs. It was how she read people, how she knew whether their characters and intentions were good or bad. She wished she’d been able to do this as a young woman. It would have saved her a lot of heartache.
    “Carmen thought she would make a shrimp salad for lunch,” Rosa said. “Okay?”
    “Yes. Shrimp salad will be fine.” Briggs’s aura was dark. His whole energy field was dotted with thick black masses like tumors.
    “Your husband, did you ever love him?” he’d asked her a few weeks ago.
    She’d looked up into his face and smiled. “It’s complicated,” she’d said.
    “It shouldn’t be.”
    Thinking of him, she was suddenly cheerful. Too cheerful to contain what she felt. Joy bubbled up from her toes to her fingertips, and she put her coffee cup down and flung open her arms exuberantly, wiggling her fingers. “Oh, Rosa,” she cried. “I’m so happy!”
    Rosa, who was accustomed to Lola’s dramatic mood swings, came around the edge of the bed and hugged her. She patted Lola on the back. “Good,” she said.
    Lola hugged her fiercely. She was deliriously happy. In another week she would see her friends and everything would be wonderful, the four of them laughing and carrying on like crazy women, like they had in college, together again for one last time.
    “Meester Furman, he say he’ll be back in a few days. He flew to the island to make sure the house and the boat are ready for your trip.”
    Lola pulled away. She smoothed her hair off her brow and stared at Rosa. “What?” she asked.
    “He say for you not to worry. He say he’ll take care of everything. Just like always.”
    The day, which had seemed so joyous just a few short minutes ago, became suddenly ominous. Shadows moved across the ceiling like rain. Lola put her hand to her face and lay back against the pillows. Rosa rose and tucked the bedclothes around her.
    “You want to get up now, Meesis Furman?” Rosa’s aura flared around her head like a corona. Lola closed her eyes against its brightness.
    “No.” The joy had gone, leaving in its place a dull feeling of dread. Lola tried to decide what to do but her head felt heavy. She couldn’t thinkclearly. They had agreed not to use