The Gentlemen's Hour

63

The women finally come out of the restaurant. Kisses on the cheek all around, promises to do this again “sooner,” and then Donna starts walking back toward the parking lot. Boone gives her a good head start, then catches up, passes her, and is in his van waiting when she pulls out of the lot. He gives her a lot of time, watching her progress on the screen as she drives west on Laurel Street through the park, down toward the airport, then gets on the 5 north.

She could be heading home, but she takes the exit for Solana Beach and parks on Cedros Street. Boone is just a couple of minutes behind her as she parks and then walks from store to store on this block of expensive furniture stores. Then she goes into a clothing boutique and spends forty-five minutes. And some money, apparently, because she comes out with a couple of dresses on hangers and goes back to her car.

Now she drives home and pulls into the garage.

Boone sits a block away. Ten minutes later, a car pulls into the driveway. A young man in a tight-fitting black T-shirt, bicycling shorts, and

muscles

gets out and rings the bell. Donna lets him in.

She wouldn’t, Boone thinks. She wouldn’t have the nerve or the bad taste to do this right in her own home. Doesn’t happen. He takes his binoculars, scopes the license plate, and calls Dan.

“That’s Tony,” Dan says. “Personal trainer.”

“Uhhh, Dan, I know this would be really cliché, but—”

“Tony also dances in an all-boy nude dance review in Hillcrest,” Dan says, naming San Diego’s preeminent gay neighborhood. “Unless he’s swapped jerseys—”

“Okay, then.”

Tony comes out an hour later. Donna, red-faced and sweating, waves good-bye and goes back in.

So it’s good being Donna Nichols, Boone decides. A little spa treatment, a nice lunch, some high-end shopping, a customized workout, hopefully a quiet dinner at home. And, just as hopefully, Dan is wrong about his wife’s infidelity. Just a little premature midlife insecurity on his part. Has probably happened to half the guys on the Gentlemen’s Hour.

Yeah, no.

Because it’s August, and August blows.

There’s no surf, K2 is gone because some stupid kid has to belong to something, women reach into your insides and rip them out, and Donna Nichols comes out of her house dressed to kill.