Sunburn Read Free Page B

mostly bare. The overwhelming impression, especially after coming out of the cork trees, was of a dazzling whiteness—a Spanish, blinding, pure white which seemed to transform heat into color, so that you felt rather than saw the harsh whiteness of the place. It was the white from which visions arose.
    The house was a U-shaped, two-story structure, made thick-walled for coolness against the Spanish summers. The bottom of the U faced the gate of the courtyard and contained two doors—one to the kitchen, the other to the living room. Behind the kitchen stretched a hall and Sean’s office. Our rooms were upstairs over the kitchen and office, and directly over Sean’s bedroom, on the other leg of the U, were Berta’s rooms. Downstairs, the living and dining rooms abutted the kitchen, and there was a small library down the hall beyond Sean’s bedroom. Alongside the library, outside the house, seemingly carved there, was a stone walkway to the roof. One of the beams here protruded several feet and, according to the legend, had been the site of many hangings. From the roof, the town of Tossa was just visible over the trees.
    There was also a back courtyard, which was mostly a flower garden. An old toolshed stood out beyond the cleared section, and chickens pecked here and there, but it was a pleasant enough spot in the early evenings when the sun had just settled into the foothills behind us.
    One of the peculiarities of the house was the acoustic quirk between Sean’s bedroom and ours. At certain times during the afternoon—just at dusk, most often—we could hear Sean humming or muttering to himself. We could in fact listen to anything he might be doing, all unwittingly. Sometimes, in that hour before dinner, the quiet would become so intense that it was palpable. We would hear his door opening and Kyra’s voice, and then a long, almost nervous silence, broken by a sigh, or by a shutter being hastily drawn.

Two
     
    Denise Hanford grew up in West Orange, New Jersey. She went to a Catholic girls’ high school until she was sixteen, when she became pregnant. She wanted to have the child, not because she loved either the father or the idea of having it, but because she simply couldn’t imagine the alternative. Her parents, however, were more realistic, as they had put it, and the pregnancy was aborted in the third month. Later, Denise told the few friends who had known that she didn’t want to be bothered with the stretch marks.
    She transferred to a public school, then went to college in Maine, where she graduated in 1971. By March of the next year, she had saved enough for a flight to London, where she began calling herself Kyra.
    By degrees she worked her way south—three months as an au pair girl in Paris, four months teaching at Berlitz, again in Paris, a move to Corbière, her first job as a barmaid, a fight with the owner of the bar, who was also her lover, and finally her arrival in Tossa.
    A woman with her looks never had to be out of work or alone, but after Corbière and three years of working and saving, she craved a rest and some solitude. Tony was an attractive and, miraculously, intelligent man who had one night visited some friends at her pensión. Kyra—by now the name was her own—had been invited to share some wine, and had found herself talking to him most of the night. He hadn’t tried to sleep with her, and that had so impressed her that she decided to be his friend.
    In London and Paris she’d had countless lovers, often sleeping with two or three men in a single day. In Corbière, she’d settled down to one man, but it hadn’t lasted, and it had seemed only logical to her to have no one in Tossa. At least it would be worth a try. After meeting Tony, she moved into a different circle, and though she might have appeared promiscuous, she abstained.
    She found herself changing in other ways. Always before, she’d been constantly active, going from bar to party to work to sleep to party again.