Page 204 of Smooth Sailing

Regardless of the smell, when we hit the dining room, the table was covered with food, and none of it looked burnt.

After a brief search, we found Annie out by the pool.

She was talking to someone, so we stood just a bit away, waiting for the moment to greet her.

We were doing this even though the person with her glanced at us five times, all of them smiling, and he did it to try to get Annie to cotton on she had new guests.

And we continued to stand there until she finally turned to us (on the dude’s glance number six), she blinked and said, “Oh, you’re here.”

“Yeah, we are,” I replied, and offered her the bottle of Veuve we bought her.

She took it, gazing down at it distractedly like she’d never seen a bottle of Champagne before.

“How lovely,” she mumbled.

“Thanks for asking us for brunch,” I said.

She nodded and turned to Hugger, looking him up and down.

“You clean up nice,” she remarked.

He was back in his caramel button down.

“Thanks,” he muttered.

“I prefer the T-shirts,” Annie said.

Hugger’s lips twitched. “Right.”

“They have more personality,” she explained (and I agreed, though he looked fab in his button down).

“Right,” Hugger repeated.

“And there’s great art put on T-shirts,” she went on. “Album and rock art are forms of that medium that are often overlooked. Annie Leibowitz, Robert Mapplethorpe and Andy Warhol have all done cover art for rock albums. But Storm Thorgerson and Audrey Powell of Hipgnosis were pioneers of album art and created iconic images that are even better known than Warhol’s Campbell Soup pieces.”

“Can’t argue with you on that,” Hugger said. “Dark Side of the Moon. Zepplin’s Houses of the Holy. 10cc’s Look Hear? The Wings’ Band on the Run.”

I stared at my man, because I was impressed.

Annie was too. “You know your album art.”

“Yup.”

“Can I talk to you a moment?” she asked.

Although her gaze was aimed at Hugger, as was her conversation (so why she was asking was a mystery, since she was already talking to him), and considering she shouldn’t have anything to talk to Hugger about, except album art, I queried, “Me?”

“No, your young man.” She tucked her arm in his. “Come along.”

And off they went, leaving me behind, with them rounding her pool to the other side while I watched.

I continued to watch as, surprisingly, Annie did most of the talking.

Hugger, unsurprisingly, said nothing. He just listened while looking serious.

In the end, he nodded. Annie tucked her arm in his again and returned him to me.

“You can have him back now,” she declared.

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