Saving Sonny James by Lou Sylvre

Author:Lou Sylvre [Sylvre, Lou]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

SONNY knew something was wrong, had known it all along but had stubbornly ignored it. As he showered in the tiny but sparkling clean and well-appointed bathroom at the hotel, he took a moment of leisure to scoff at himself, imagining Luki saying, as he often did, “You are the most stubborn man I’ve ever met.” Or, as Melvern used to put it, “Son Bly, you’ve got a stubborn streak as wide as the Columbia gorge.”

He leaned his head back under the hot spray, pulling it through his hair to rinse out the shampoo. When his long, heavy hair was free of suds, he leaned forward against the wall and let the heat penetrate the muscles of his back. His mind wandering freely, he shook his head at his own foolishness. He’d known there was something fishy about the way Harold was acting before the plane ever left Sea-Tac.

Way back before the wedding… oh God, the wedding. He’d felt so wonderful then, but now…. Muttering a number of things like “how the hell” and “it’s so screwed up,” he shut off the shower jets, wrung out his hair, and toweled off. Stepping out of the gleaming bathroom onto the plush, faintly patterned carpet, Sonny contemplated his evening, his predicament, and his surroundings. Sonny liked the room, at least. It was quite small, but with the colorful décor, the hotelier had achieved a sort of sunny elegance. Paris weather was every bit as gray as western Washington this time of year—or so it seemed to Sonny—and the room’s bright warmth didn’t go unappreciated.

He didn’t have to be anywhere—no evening lectures or workshops tonight, no show or prearranged hobnobbing with collectors at cocktail parties. He’d told Harold he would have dinner with him at the little café next to the hotel, but he’d realized he shouldn’t have agreed to it as soon as the word “okay” was out of his mouth. Harold Breslin had a transparent face, and he’d taken on such a hopeful, joyful, celebratory look, Sonny realized his own idea of how the occasion would go—him simply eating a meal with his sometime agent—bore no resemblance to what Breslin thought Sonny was agreeing to. Well, Sonny thought, I’ll just cancel it. He truly didn’t want to go anywhere at all. He wanted to sit in his pleasant room, try to warm the no-Luki-nearby chill out of his bones, and think about things.

He had no trouble putting two and two together about Harold. From the very first correspondence about this junket last summer, he’d been overzealous, pestering Sonny and exuding a chumminess they’d never shared. “It’ll be like old times at Western.” No, it wouldn’t.

And those school days Harold seemed to remember never happened—they’d never been close in any way. They’d shared studio space a couple of times, and if Sonny recalled, it seemed once they’d been assigned to work together on an art history paper when they were undergrads. By the time graduate school came around, their studies took

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