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  She lay on her back and stared up at the ceiling of her bedroom. She had a vague recollection of Clarissa bringing her home, and an even vaguer recollection that she’d done some drunken groping on the stairs. She closed her eyes in mortification.

  The longer she lay there, the more she remembered. One nightmare succeeded another until they were too numerous to count.

  Oh, Jesus Christ. She undressed me.

  Diz lifted the blanket and gazed down at her scantily clad form. Thank god. At least she still had her underwear on.

  But there was something else. Clarissa had been on the bed with her. She was sure of it. And they kissed. She raised a shaky hand to her lips. She was sure of that, too.

  Wasn’t she?

  Shit, who even knew? The whole thing could just be some kind of drunken wish fulfillment. It wouldn’t be the first time for that. She was so damn pathetic.

  She gingerly rolled over to test her equilibrium. Not too bad, considering.

  She caught a trace of something on the pillow. Red violets. Holy shit. It was then that she saw the shoes . . . Jimmy Choo’s . . . on the floor next to the nightstand. Clarissa’s shoes.

  Oh my god. She was here. She’s still here.

  Either that, or she left without her fucking shoes . . .

  “You’re awake.”

  Diz looked up at the doorway. Clarissa stood there, holding a tall glass of something. She walked to the bed.

  “Can you sit up? How’s your head?”

  “Which one?” Diz pushed herself up into a sitting position and tugged the blanket up to cover her chest.

  “Here.” Clarissa held out the glass. “Drink this.”

  Diz eyed her with suspicion. “What is it?”

  “Don’t ask. It’s a home remedy. My father swears by it.”

  Diz recalled being amazed by the number of single malt Scotches Bernard Wiley blew through during the ninety minutes he tarried at the party last night. She supposed he probably knew some things about hangovers. She took the glass and sniffed at its contents, then recoiled in disgust.

  “Jesus Christ. What is this? It smells like sweat and dirty feet.”

  “Just hold your nose and drink it. Then hop in the shower. I’ve got a nice, hot breakfast waiting for you downstairs.”

  Diz looked up at her. How was it possible for anyone to look so goddamn gorgeous in the morning? She’d shed her jacket, and was standing there in her skirt and un-tucked silk blouse.

  “What are you still doing here?”

  Clarissa shrugged. “I fell asleep. By the time I woke up, it didn’t make sense to leave. Besides,” she folded her arms, “I was worried about you.”

  “You were worried about me?”

  Clarissa rolled her eyes. “Yes. I was afraid you might fall out of bed and drown in a pool of your own vomit.”

  Diz had to smile at that. “I can be pretty charming.”

  “I’m starting to figure that out,” Clarissa said, drily.

  Diz tried to wink at her, but the action made her head hurt. She raised a hand and rubbed the back of her neck.

  “Just kill me now and get it over with,” she said.

  “You’ll be fine.” Clarissa nodded at the beverage. “Drink up.”

  Diz took a deep breath. “Bottoms up,” she said, and drained the glass. Five seconds later, she wasn’t sure if she wanted to die, or vomit, and then die.

  “What the fuck was in that?” she rasped when she could find her voice. “Tar?”

  Clarissa just smiled at her. “Shower now. Then come downstairs and eat something.” She took the empty glass from Diz, turned around, picked up her shoes, and left the room.

  Diz watched her go in amazement. Was any of this really happening? Clarissa actually seemed to be enjoying her little June Cleaver routine.

  Of course, June Cleaver never looked quite that hot . . .

  Whatever. Diz pushed the blanket aside and slowly got to her feet. So far so good. At least the room wasn’t spinning. She made her way to the bathroom and looked at her reflection in the mirror.

  Oh, god, she thought. Her eyes looked like a page from Google Maps, and her hair made Don King’s look tame. Rachel Maddow could sue her for character defamation and win in a walk. Maybe Clarissa was right, and a shower would help.

  She sure as shit hoped so.

  In fact, the shower helped a lot. So did putting on some clean clothes. By the time Diz ventured back downstairs, she felt almost human again.

  Clarissa had plugged in the lights on the Christmas tree. Diz always got a live tree, and this one was a beauty—a big Frasier Fir, trucked all the way in from the mountains of North Carolina. It was an eight-footer, and it proudly monopolized one corner of the big living room. The tree was decorated with blue and white lights, and hundreds of tiny paper ravens. It had taken her years to fold all the origami birds. It was something she started doing one late night in the stacks of the graduate library—a simple diversion to keep her awake while she drank from her thermos of coffee and tried to ignore the fact that she’d somehow have to show up for work in a few more hours. Year after year, her flock of ravens grew larger, and Diz bought bigger and bigger trees to accommodate them all. She vowed that when she finally finished her Ph.D., she’d stop folding ravens and add a cardinal to the mix—a bright and colorful period to end the longest, run-on sentence of her adult life.

  Diz loved Christmas. Not a lot of people knew that about her.

  There was music playing. Jazz. It sounded like Sophie Millman. Diz was impressed that Clarissa had figured out how to turn on her sound system. Usually she had to ferret out the goddamn instruction manual whenever she wanted to play it. Diz wasn’t all that great with machines. She really belonged in another century. Well. All except for that whole wardrobe thing. Her friends all liked to tease her about how technically savvy she wasn’t. She didn’t even have an iPod. And shit . . . these days, most people had more iPods than they had chromosomes.

  That was probably a good essay topic. Maybe she’d tackle that one after she finished writing her dissertation? Why not? Her company published Wired magazine. Maybe Clarissa could help her get an article placed?

  Clarissa.

  Diz still couldn’t believe that she was here. She couldn’t believe that any of last night had actually happened. She really wanted to ask Clarissa about how much of what she thought she recalled was real, but she felt ridiculous about doing so. Besides, if any of it had really happened, Clarissa probably just wanted to forget about it. Diz would only make it worse for both of them if she brought it up.

  It was typical, she thought. She’d had the greatest night of her life with the woman who fueled most of her fantasies, and she was too drunk to be able to remember any it with certainty.

  Of course, she thought, if she’d been sober, none of it would have happened in the first place.

  It was a paradox. Like the rest of her life.

  She crossed her living room and went into the kitchen. Clarissa was nowhere in evidence, but her small pub table was neatly set for two. And something smelled great. So. It appeared that Clarissa could cook, too. Diz smiled. The cranky redhead was now two-for-two in the June Cleaver Derby.

  But where in the hell was she?

  There were a finite number of places to look. She was either out back in the small courtyard that passed for a yard, or she was in Diz’s study.

  Nothing much doing in there, Diz thought. Unless, of course, you were into perusing your weight in extant primary source documents related to the rise of ratiocinative fiction. Somehow she doubted that Clarissa would find that very appealing. It even made her ass drag, and she was passionate about the stuff.

  There was fresh coffee in the pot on the countertop. Diz poured herself a cup.

  “I’m in here,” Clarissa called out.

  The voice was coming from her study—a small room adjacent to the kitchen.

  Diz went in search of her.

  Clarissa was sprawled out in her leat
her chair, reading something. She had a stack of loose-leaf pages piled up on the ottoman at her feet. Diz recognized the open document box on the floor next to her chair.

  Oh, god. It was her fucking dissertation.

  She sighed and crossed the room. “I see you discovered nature’s cure for insomnia?”

  Clarissa held up the pages. “You mean this? I don’t think so.”

  “No?” Diz perched on an old oak three-legged stool that sat near her chair.

  Clarissa shook her head. “It’s mesmerizing. I hope you don’t mind?”

  Diz shrugged. “If you were bored, you could’ve just watched The Home Shopping Network.” Or gone home, she thought. Why was Clarissa still here?

  “I wasn’t bored. I was curious.”

  “Curious?” Diz asked. “About what?”

  “Climate change,” Clarissa said dryly. She added the pages she had been reading to the stack at her feet, then dropped them all into the box on the floor. She looked up at Diz with those smoky gray eyes that always spelled trouble. “What do you think I mean?”

  Diz set her cup of coffee down on an end table. “To tell the truth, I don’t know what to think about any of this.”

  “This?” Clarissa asked.

  “Yeah.” Diz was growing exasperated. “This.” She wagged a finger back and forth between them. “Any of it. All of it.”

  Clarissa slid forward on her chair. “You’re such a nimrod.”

  “I’m a nimrod?”

  “Yes.”

  Diz felt like her head was starting to swim again, but it wasn’t from her hangover. “Do me a favor, Clar. Don’t make me work to figure anything out today. I’m only firing on about half of my cylinders right now.”

  Clarissa grabbed her by the shirtfront. “Come over here and sit down.” She pulled her over to the ottoman.

  Diz was afraid to look at her. She had a sneaking suspicion that if she did, she’d give too much away. Either that, or she’d turn into a pillar of salt.

  It was pretty much even money.

  “I’m sorry about what happened last night,” she said.

  Clarissa was quiet for a minute. “Which part?”

  Diz looked up at her. “Take your pick.”

  In the background, Sophie Millman wrapped up her set, and the next CD in the changer started to play. Strains from “Orinoco Flow” filled up the quiet space between them.

  Clarissa turned her head toward the sound. “Is that Enya?”

  Diz nodded.

  “You’re certainly full of surprises,” she said.

  “Is that good or bad?”

  “Does it have to be one or the other?”

  Diz shrugged.

  “What’s the matter?” Clarissa asked.

  “I feel ridiculous.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?” Diz repeated. “Because I acted like an idiot.”

  Clarissa looked like she was trying hard not to smile. “You always act like an idiot.”

  Diz narrowed her eyes. “You were here last night, right? I mean, I didn’t imagine that part, did I?”

  “Oh, no,” Clarissa agreed. “I was here, all right.”

  “And did I or did I not . . . well . . . you know?”

  Clarissa looked confused. “Did you or did you not what?”

  “Jesus, Clar.” Diz’s mortification was increasing with every second that passed. “Did I or did I not kiss you?”

  Clarissa gazed up at the ceiling as she pondered her answer. “No. I remember a fair amount of clumsy, drunken groping on your part, and a few vague murmurings about finding my sweater meat, but I don’t remember that happening.”

  Diz felt her heart sink. She looked away to hide the blush she knew was on its way.

  So it had all been a drunken fantasy. And she had just added insult to injury by being stupid enough to confess it. How in the hell would she ever recover from this one?

  She felt a warm hand on her thigh. She looked back at Clarissa, who was regarding her with a strange little smile on her face.

  “You know, you’re actually kind of cute when you’re riddled with self doubt.”

  “Gee. Thanks.”

  Clarissa sighed. “For someone who’s such an expert on detective fiction, you sure manage to miss a lot of big clues.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Seriously? You can’t figure it out? I thought you were some kind of Rhodes Scholar?”

  Diz rolled her eyes. “That wasn’t me, that was Rachel Maddow.”

  Clarissa just looked amused.

  Diz was now on the other side of exasperated. “You really enjoy fucking with me, don’t you?”

  Clarissa was studying her with those hypnotic eyes. “I’ll admit it’s an idea that’s been gaining some traction lately.”

  Diz looked at her in surprise.

  A timer went off in the kitchen.

  “Come on.” Clarissa got to her feet. “Let’s get you something to eat.”

  She left the study and headed into the kitchen.

  Diz allowed herself to sit there another minute, marinating in her misery, before she stood up, adjusted her hair shirt, and followed the faint but hopeless trail of red violets that led to the world’s most unattainable woman.

  Clarissa left right after breakfast.

  She said she had some “things to take care of,” and that she was meeting Lord Nelson at two o’clock.

  But Clarissa had been right, and the food really did make Diz feel better. The bacon and Gruyere quiche with leeks and sun-dried tomatoes was sumptuous. Diz ate two large pieces.

  “I didn’t know you could cook,” she said after her first bite.

  Clarissa shrugged. “I do all right.”

  “All right? This is fabulous.”

  “Don’t give me too much credit. You had all the ingredients.”

  That was true. Diz liked to cook, too.

  Clarissa looked around her kitchen. “This really is a beautiful place.”

  “I was lucky to find it,” Diz said. “The former owners get most of the credit for the improvements.”

  Clarissa looked at her. “Did they sell it to you furnished, too?”

  “Well . . . no.”

  “I’ve actually been thinking about moving to a new place.”

  Diz was surprised. Clarissa lived in one of the most desirable, waterfront areas of Baltimore. Condos in her building went for over a million dollars, easy.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” Clarissa said. “Maybe because I spend my days below street level and my nights in the clouds.” She shrugged. “I think I’d prefer to live my life someplace in the middle.”

  Diz smiled at her. “It does have its advantages.”

  “In your case? I can only imagine.”

  Diz narrowed her eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Well,” Clarissa explained, “I’m sure it’s a real benefit to only have to stumble down a couple of steps when you feel compelled to vomit on someone’s expensive, German sedan. I’d have to take a ten minute elevator ride to enjoy that privilege.”

  Diz sighed. “Remind me to include that feature in the ad if I ever decide to put this place on the market.”

  Clarissa smiled and finished her coffee. Then she glanced at her watch.

  “I really do have to go.” She gestured at their dishes. “Help me clear this away?”

  Diz waved a hand over it. “No. I’ve got this. Go ahead and take off.”

  “You sure?”

  Diz nodded.

  Clarissa stood up, and Diz followed suit. “I’ll see you out.”

  They walked to the front door. Diz helped Clarissa into her jacket.

  “I really don’t know how to thank you,” she said. “Believe it or not, this doesn’t really happen very often.”

  “Really?” Clarissa grabbed hold of her mane of red hair and pulled it free from the collar of her jacket—a cascade of red violets filled up the tiny foyer w
ere they stood. “You don’t often have overnight guests?”

  Diz was embarrassed. “Well . . . no. But that isn’t really what I meant.”

  “Relax, Casanova. I know what you meant.”

  “Well.” Diz stood there stupidly, staring at her shoes and not really knowing what to say. She felt ridiculous and exposed—like she was trying to get up the nerve to ask the prom queen if she could carry her books to homeroom.

  Clarissa sighed.

  Diz raised her eyes and looked at her.

  Clarissa’s expression was unreadable. “I’m sure I’ll regret this.”

  Diz was confused. “Regret what?”

  “You wanted to know if you kissed me last night?”

  Diz nodded.

  “And I told you I didn’t remember that happening?”

  Diz felt her misery compounding. Why was Clarissa bringing this up again? It was like grinding salt into an open wound.

  “But,” Clarissa took a step closer—the cloud of red violets moving with her, “what I didn’t tell you is that I do remember this happening.”

  Clarissa pushed Diz up against the wall and laid one on her. And it wasn’t any kind of tentative, you’re-drunk-and-won’t-remember-this, experimental kind of kiss, either. It was a full-out, head-on, hands-down, hang-ten, hail Mary, all-over-but-the-shoutin’ kind of kiss that left nothing to the imagination. And if Clarissa hadn’t had such a good handhold on her forearms, Diz would’ve slid to the floor and ended up in a pool of red violets on the rug.

  “Holy shit,” Diz said when she finally came up for air.

  “Now I’m really going to be late,” Clarissa said. She seemed out of breath, too. “See you tomorrow?”

  Tomorrow was Christmas Eve. Diz nodded stupidly.

  Clarissa kissed her again—quickly this time—then turned toward the door. She was halfway out, then stopped and faced Diz. “What the hell is your real name, anyway?”

  Diz smiled sheepishly. “Maryann.”

  Clarissa raised an eyebrow. “Maryann?”

  Diz nodded.

  “Christ. Clarissa and Maryann. We sound like a lost episode of Little House on the Prairie.”

  Diz gave her a cocky grin. “Strange bedfellows?”