Bliss Read Free

their last few years together.
Sinclair put that camera away years ago, stuck it in the back
of a storage closet along with a few other things that she didn't
want to see anymore.
    Even though Gram had been long past her youth, her
death still took Sinclair by surprise. The elderly woman had
left the apartment to indulge in one of her favorite thingsnocturnal shopping-but hadn't gotten very far. A stroke laid
her out in the middle of the sidewalk while Sinclair slept.
Less than an hour later she was dead. There was so much
more that Sinclair had to share with her, so much that they
still had to do together. Mavis's granddaughter hadn't been
able to sleep through the night since.
    Her robe whispered against her legs in the dim morning
quiet as she moved by habit from room to room. A morning
ritual. With all the lights still off and the glow of approaching dawn stretching equal parts light and shadow across her
apartment, she could feel the night's change to day, and welcomed it. If she closed her eyes long enough, she could imagine being home again, standing in the kitchen of her father's
old house in Jamaica, the one where she'd spent her first thirteen years, waiting for her mother to come down the hall and
begin making breakfast. She opened her eyes and resumed
her walk through the apartment.
    Sinclair took pride in the order of her space, in the certainty that she knew where everything was and why. It was
the way her Gram raised her. Even her habits now were still
influenced by the fifteen years she'd lived with her grandmother. Gram loved tea. She used to drink it all the time.
They'd shared countless mornings with their heads bent over the first cup of Darjeeling-lots of milk, lots of sugar-just
talking.

    "What are you going to study?" Gram had asked a fifteenyear-old Sinclair, smiling but perfectly serious.
    "Accounting," Sinclair had answered. Not because that was
what she wanted for herself, but because that was what she
overheard her grandmother say was best.
    With a sigh that no one else heard, Sinclair slipped into the
kitchen to make herself a cup of tea before getting ready for
work.
    At five o' clock that afternoon she closed her office door
behind her and prepared to leave. "Miss Sinclair," Shelly
stopped her. "A woman came by and dropped these off for
you earlier. She was a cutie."
    Shelly handed her two neatly bound hardcover books.
Between the crisp white pages of the top one lay a card.
Regina Velasquez. Writer. Her phone number and uptown
address were neatly written below that. Sinclair's eyebrow
rose.
    "Thanks, Shelly." She ignored her secretary's curious look
and slid the books into her briefcase. "See you tomorrow."
    At home, Sinclair propped the card up on the edge of the
tub while she took her bath. Earlier, she'd sniffed the card,
brushed it under her nose, and found the light scent of mint
that clung to it. She stretched out under the bubbles and
leaned back against the inflatable pillow propped up against
the back of the tub. Irresistibly, her eyes wandered to the card
again. Regina Velasquez. At the book release party, Regina
had been polite yet mischievous, especially after Yuen came
back with Linnet. She flirted shamelessly with Sinclair as if
putting on a show for Yuen, touching the small of his girlfriend's back, refilling her drinks, even kissing her lingeringly
on the cheek when they said their goodbyes. At first Yuen seemed titillated, then annoyed. By the end of the evening he
and Regina both seemed to be in competition over who could
be the most solicitous to Sinclair's needs. Sinclair had been
content to sit back and enjoy their attentions. She hoped that
neither of them had known just how much Regina had intrigued her.

    Fresh from her bath, her body still steaming from its heat,
Sinclair slid naked into bed to read Regina's first book. It was
a collection of essays on sex and love. Making Sex, Having
Love. Nice title.
    The first time