Page 70 of Swan Song

Leslee slides a golden-brown crepe onto Lamont’s plate. “Cancel?” she says. “Why would you do that?”

Coco hopes this doesn’t mean what she thinks it means. She tries to catch Lamont’s eye but he’s intent on the bowl of sugared peach slices and ignores her, just as they agreed to do.

Coco puts the groceries away with military precision; she tucks the sourdough into the bread box, folds the reusable shopping bags, and takes the vodka into the party room. Who is Coco kidding? Of course it means what she thinks it means. Bull is away; Lamont will slide into his place. Did Lamont know Bull was leaving? He made love to her earlier that morning; he ran his thumbs over her eyelids, nibbled her earlobe, fell asleep for a few precious minutes spooning her. He’d been extra-sweet, she noted, extra-attentive. He knew he was about to be called in from the bullpen. Or maybe, Coco thinks, he just walked into a full-on champagne-and-crepes ambush.

Coco needs to vent her anger. Should she do a shot from the bottle of vodka? Two shots? Should she take the cue ball off the pool table and hurl it through the plate-glass window?

She wanders over to the jukebox, searches the selections. One song jumps out at her. She presses J12 and after the record drops, it’s as though Linda Ronstadt is there in the room. You’re no good, you’re no good, you’re no good, baby, you’re no good. Coco sits on the curvy white sofa and belts out the lyrics; in her mind, she’s a karaoke queen, perfectly in tune. Can Lamont and Leslee hear her, and if they can, do they care? When the song is over, Coco goes back out into the hall and hears Lamont and Leslee’s easy banter and Leslee’s laugh, extra-girlish today.

Coco hurries down the stairs and enters Bull’s study. Where is her screenplay? It’s not on his desk. Is she brave enough to venture behind his desk? Yes. She checks the piles on either side of Bull’s desktop computer—financial documents, loads of them. Taped to the top of Bull’s keyboard is a slip of paper that says Email password: SweetH2O888. What kind of idiot leaves the password to his email taped to the computer? No, it’s not stupidity, Coco thinks. It’s that he feels safe here. It’s his home, his office. He trusts anyone who might see it—Leslee, the cleaning staff, Coco.

She’s almost chastened enough to leave without checking his desk drawers. Almost. She rifles through them but doesn’t find her manuscript. She checks the trash. It’s (thankfully) not there either.

She sneaks into the primary suite. Her manuscript isn’t on Bull’s nightstand or on his dresser or in his closet. The library? She looks, but it’s not on the escritoire, the chaise, or any of the shelves; it’s not in the hidden bourbon bar.

He took it with him, she thinks.

Coco imagines Bull at that very moment, tucked into his luxurious pod on Singapore Airlines. He’s got a glass of Dom Pérignon, a tiny bowl of warm, salted nuts. The flight attendant has hung up his sports coat; he’s removed his loafers and put on his slippers. He peruses the menu, chooses the black cod in ginger sauce, then scrolls through the movies on offer. Does he want to watch Oppenheimer again? What about Caddyshack? Both feel like a waste of time. He reaches into his briefcase and pulls out Coco’s script.

He begins to read.

Coco keeps track of how much time Leslee and Lamont spend together. The crepes and champagne are followed by a ride on Decadence. Coco watches them zip off as she washes the frying pan and their whipped-cream-smeared plates; she is Cinderella before the fairy godmother shows up. When they return in the late afternoon, Leslee is golden from the sun; her hair is piled on top of her head in a messy bun. She strolls past Coco, who is in one of the beach chaises reading Life After Life by Kate Atkinson, and says, “We had such a magnificent day. Lamont took me to a place called Whale Island over on Tuckernuck.”

Coco, who has been visiting the English manor of Fox Corner in her mind—thank god for books!—opens her mouth, but no sound comes out.

“Did you confirm at Proprietors?” Leslee asks. “I’d like a table for two tonight, not the bar, and not that communal table, please. Something tucked away.”

“Confirmed,” Coco says, though she feels a snarky satisfaction because she did confirm for two at the bar and she won’t change it. “Who’s joining you?” She holds out a filament of hope that it’s Benton Coe, though Benton hasn’t shown his face around Triple Eight since the Fourth of July sail.

“Who do you think?” Leslee says. She gazes back at Decadence, where Lamont is wiping down the upholstery.

My boyfriend, Coco thinks. You’re taking my boyfriend out for dinner.

Later, after she watches Lamont and Leslee drive away in the G-Wagon—Lamont in a striped button-down and jeans and his boat shoes, Leslee in a long lavender jersey dress that shows off her smoking body—Coco is tempted to text him: Bull is gone, so now you’re the husband? She wants to call him a gigolo. But then she thinks about his mother, how Glynnie has to feel her way from the kitchen to the living room, how she has to listen to books rather than read them, how Lamont makes her lunch. He needs this job, and Leslee is his boss; this is work, there’s nothing going on. Coco needs to take the high road, conduct herself with quiet dignity.

But the next morning at a quarter to five when Coco hears Lamont’s tapping, she doesn’t rise from bed. She hears him trying the knob; for the first time, she has locked the door.

He texts: You awake?

He texts: Coco?

Leslee and Lamont go out on Decadence every day; Leslee even skips her pickleball game. At night, they go to Languedoc, to Oran Mor, to the freaking Galley, where Leslee asked Coco to reserve them a table out in the sand. They go to the White Heron Theatre to see a production of The Bald Soprano.

A dozen roses are delivered to Triple Eight from Flowers on Chestnut. Coco assumes they’re from Bull for Leslee—but the name written on the envelope is Colleen Coyle. Coco blinks. For me? She reads the card, which says, I miss you. It’s unsigned.

Coco hasn’t texted Lamont or left her door unlocked all week, but as she carries the roses up to her apartment, she considers relenting. This is the first time a man has sent her flowers (Carnation Day in high school, she decides, does not count). The roses are the color of ripe apricots or, more relevantly, of the sunrises that normally accompany her and Lamont’s lovemaking.

But when Coco returns to the kitchen for a vase, she finds Lamont and Leslee preparing to go out on the boat—only this time, they both have overnight bags.

“Coco!” Leslee says. “We’ll need you to hold down the fort until tomorrow.”

High road, Coco thinks. Quiet dignity. Princess Diana, Grace Kelly, Sidney Poitier. “Are you taking a trip?”

“We’re sailing Hedonism over to the Vineyard,” Leslee says. “I’ve never been!”

“And you’re spending the night?” Coco asks. She feels her coffee threatening to come back up in a hot, stinky stream.

“Leslee is staying at the Charlotte Inn,” Lamont says. “I’ll stay on the boat.”

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