Travelers Rest Read Free Page A

she felt as if she were in a boat moving on waves. Down and down it came, more and more, the wind whisking it along in what seemed like prearranged patterns, as if it were a show prepared just for her. In fact it all felt that way, everything, from the time they’d turned off the interstate. The discovery of the quaint hotel, the snow flying down while they trudged up the walk, the sign on the door, the dusty, dim light of the lobby, the strangely arresting voice of the proprietor, the voices and music she had heard and almost felt she remembered—all of it seemed as if it were a story being told to her and her alone, in a high whisper. She loved this old hotel. She wouldn’t mind staying another night, and another, if the storm continued.
    It would be better, maybe, if Tonio weren’t here, because Tonio had a way of interfering. But definitely not if Robbie weren’t here, in which case it would feel like nothing important was happening. This was a horrible way to think, a horrible thing to realize, downright awful in a karmic sense, a feeling for which you’d have to do a lot of atoning, but she knew that and was prepared for it. She had a peculiar ability to be honest with herself.
    The feeling about Robbie wasn’t sexual, or not so much, or at least it wasn’t the main thing. She wasn’t afraid of it, and she knew that, if it ever surfaced, that feeling, in a sexual way, it wouldn’t necessarily be better than what she had with Tonio, which was at least comfortable and uninhibited. And the sex thing with Robbie didn’t matter because she wouldn’t let it happen anyway.
    So it wasn’t that, not really. So what was it? What made her want to defend him?
    The first time she met Robbie was after she’d already married Tonio. They’d driven up the coast to visit Tonio’s parents in Seattle. And it wasn’t that Tonio’s parents weren’t nice and gracious and hospitable, etc., because they were, and it wasn’t that Tonio was boring, because he wasn’t, he was one of the smartest people she’d ever known, and she’d known a lot of people, and a whole lot of them thought they were pretty smart. No, it was just the color and movement that caught her eye, there through the window, out past the garden with all the pretty rosebushes.
    She had known somehow that he was the brother, even though no one had said a word about him or paid any attention to him out there. She excused herself to go roam around—they were talking about politics, probably, it was an election year, Bush versus Gore. Tonio’s father was an appellate court judge. She walked out past the rosebushes, beyond the unruly dandelions and clover that cropped up by the property’s edge. The Addisons lived in one of the more desirable areas of Madison Park, and off behind the house you could look across Lake Union toward Mount Rainier. Robbie was busy building a fence, carefully hammering one slat at a time, standing and hammering, kneeling and hammering, grab a new slat, stand and hammer, kneel and hammer, the movements rapid and graceful in a way she’d never seen Tonio move, with his dangling arms and hunched shoulders.
    “Why would you put a fence here?” she asked. Each new slat further obstructed the view across the water.
    He wore a red T-shirt and a pair of long khaki shorts frayed at the ends and he was working barefoot. He stopped and examined her for a second. “Why?” he said. He turned around and swept his hair away from his eyes and looked down the hill and hitched up his shorts. “I guess because they care more about the stray dogs that come in the garden than they do about the view.” He stood there with his mouth open looking at her until she started wondering if he was stupid, if Tonio had gotten whatever brains there were to be had in the gene pool and poor Robbie had just gotten handyman skills. And then she realized what was happening—he had no idea who she was or why she was there in the yard talking to him.
    It made her