The Polka Dot Nude by Joan Smith Page A

probably wasn’t even divorced. And through all this mental abuse, the thought kept popping up, like a helium-filled balloon, bright and beautiful, that he was coming back. A half hour later, it also occurred to me that I hadn’t found out where this wife and son lived. Probably in upstate New York, where he taught—if Hume Mason actually had time to teach between books that appeared with monotonous regularity, flooding book racks and driving out more worthwhile books.
    In any case, he wasn’t abandoning his opus on Rosalie. This was some new scheme to fool me, but I’d outwit him. I’d beat him to print if I had to work night and day. Working was a good way to drive from my mind the image that haunted me: the perfect man. Physically perfect, that is.
    Today should, by rights, have been only a minute or so longer than yesterday. It seemed to have about ninety-eight hours. Nobody could work for ninety-eight hours, so I had plenty of time to fret and fume. The arrival of the postman with a box of books for Mr. O’Malley, bearing the Belton label, didn’t brighten the day much. Simcoe had apparently suggested leaving the box with me. I was surprised Mason had another book ready for release so soon after his Dean Mather story.
    Surely this first day of summer should have been glorious weather-wise. Instead it started with a watery white sky in the morning, darkening to pale gray, and as the sun set, ominous purple-black clouds hung low over the river. A cold wind blew off the water. I imagined it originating in the polar ice caps, blowing across muskeg and prairies, picking up moisture from the river, before whistling in around the edges of door and windows.
    It was downright eerie, being alone at night in a cottage in the middle of nowhere, with the wind battering the tall pines outside, occasionally tearing loose a branch that fell with a crack to the ground. Old Mother Nature was really in an uproar. When the rain began pelting the roof, lashing the windows and trickling in around the edges of the frames, I put on a sweater and wool socks, and was still cold. There wasn’t even a fireplace to take the chill from the air. Who ever heard of a cottage without a fireplace?
    I turned on the TV and watched a celebrity interview show. My interest was piqued when Rosalie Wildewood was one of the guests. She was doing a pitch of Love’s Last Longing. She was as beautiful as any of her own heroines. Clouds of titian hair billowed around her face. “I’m a true romantic,” she said. “Love is the lodestone of my life. A day without love is like a day without orange juice.”
    She looked surprised when the interviewer laughed, and offended when he suggested her love of love was extremely profitable. “It fills a need,” she explained.
    “What is your next book about?” he asked. She held Love’s Last Longing up to the camera and launched into the tale of the ruined young heroine, the Mogul emperor, and the prince. “I mean the one you’re working on now,” he pointed out.
    It was a turn-of-the-century saga featuring a ruined young heroine, a judge, and a prince. The interviewer suggested the trappings changed; the heroine’s trap, and the plot, didn’t. Rosalie looked confused, but not offended. How did that beautiful nitwit write so well? She must be shy in front of the camera, I thought.
    When the interview was over, I got my copy of Love’s Last Longing and settled in to read. Coffee would warm me. I put a small pot on to perk, and rattled in the cupboard for a mug. It was while I had the fridge door open that the cottage was plunged into utter blackness, without any warning. I yelped in surprise, then emitted a howl of dismay as I realized what had happened. The power was gone, due to the storm. And not even a candle in the place! Fear rose insensibly to panic, till I remembered seeing a kerosene lamp in the second bedroom. I twisted a sheet of newspaper into a tight roll, lit it with my lighter, and went into