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The leash broke. She bounded away down the sand. As though that were not release enough, she flung herself into a succession of cartwheels and forward flips. She went around a curve of the beach and out of sight, still cartwheeling. By the time I reached the curve, she had disappeared.
At noon Amanda was waiting for me out on her deck. She came down the steps toward the runabout with a regal grace so unlike Selene's bridled energy it was hard to believe they possessed the same body.
"Good morning, Mr. Gordon." She smiled, leaving me breathless. "Where are we going?"
"To a cafe called The Gallery."
Its main attraction, aside from being one of the two cafes open this month, was that while we waited for our order we could walk around
the cafe looking at the paintings and sculpture on exhibition by local artists.
"You must have quite an artists' colony here," Amanda said, looking over the collection. She ran a hand down the smooth curves of a sonatrophic sculpture by Drummond Caspar. The trope leaned toward the sound of her voice.
"We do. Between them and our celebrity citizens, shopkeepers and simple businessmen like me are a minority group. Aventine is really a village with a large population."
"Then what are the sights you mentioned?"
"The most unique collection of architecture ra the world."
Her goldstone eyes widened in disbelief. "Architecture?"
I grinned. "I, somewhat naturally, am a connoisseur of buildings, and I promise you, Miss Gail, that nowhere else will you find such a free exercise of idiosyncrasies in home design."
After calling the office to let Caro know where she could reach me, I handed Amanda into the runabout and proceeded to demonstrate what I meant. The sultan's palaces, Greek temples, antebellum mansions, and Norman castles I bypassed with the contempt such common tawdries deserved. Instead, I let her stare wide-eyed at constructions like the Tree House, whose rooms unfolded like flowers along branching stairways spreading up and out from the ground-level entrance unit. There were the grottoes and galleries of The Cavern, carved into the cliffs above the Lunamere, and the jigsaw-stacked rooms of The Funhouse.
"It's marvelous," Amanda said. "And people actually live in them?"
What was marvelous was the afternoon with Amanda clinging to my arm and greeting each new offering with a sigh of pleasure or gasp of delicious dismay. In the course of it she stopped calling me Mr. Gordon, too, and began saying Matthew. I would have preferred Matt, but when I brought that up she dropped her eyes and said:
"If you don't mind, I prefer some formality. As my father says, this modern rush to intimacy promotes sex but prevents conversation and understanding."
I did not feel ready to dispute Senator Gail. "Then I take it you don't want me to call you Mandy?"
"No!" Her vehemence startled me. She quickly lowered her voice and went on: "My friends call me Amanda,"
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Lee KUiough
A House Divided
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I tried to extend the day by inviting her out for dinner as I was driving her back to her cabin.
She declined with a smile. "I really should finish unpacking."
"I can help."
She shook her head. "Thank you, anyway."
I did extract a promise that she would let me show her more houses another day; then I made myself leave. I drove home reflecting what pleasant and restful company she was. A man could do far worse than her for a companion. I wondered, too, when I might see Selene again.
There was a note from her on my door the next morning.
Gordy,
You should have insisted on dinner last night. Playing hostess for the Senator never included kitchen duty. Help Mandy get a meal subscription.
It was unsigned and the writing was more careful than I would have expected of Selene, but I could not imagine anyone else writing it
I called Amanda at noon. Without mentioning the note, I asked about her cooking.
After a short pause she said, "I just throw things together."
I shuddered. "You need more than that I'm going to call a food service in Gateside and take out a subscription for you; then I insist you have your meals with me, either out or cooked by me, until your first week's supply of meals is delivered."
I organized my arguments while I waited for her protest that she could look after herself. To my surprise, after another short pause, she said in a quiet voice, "You're right, of course, Matthew. Thank you for taking so much trouble for me."
Nothing was trouble which guaranteed me the chance to see her twice a day. When I met Selene on the beach several days later, I thanked her.
She shrugged, running in place while she talked to me. "Someone has to let you know when things need to be done."
She started off up the beach.
"May I run with you?" I called after her.
She looked back without stopping. "If you like. I'd like having
someone besides myself to talk to. It's only fair to warn you, though. I'm harder to get along with than Mandy."
She was nothing if not honest. In the succeeding mornings, if I ran too slowly, she simply left me behind. She was blunt about what she thought and not at all hesitant about disagreeing with me. Still, there was no verbal swordplay and no pretense about her, which was as attractive in its way as Amanda's charming acquiescence. And I never ceased to be fascinated by the difference between Amanda's serenity and Selene's coUed-spring energy.
Selene also kept me informed on what needed to be done, either around the cabin or for Amanda. Morning after morning, she would hand me a note when I met her. I was always glad of an excuse to see more of Amanda, but I was puzzled by the notes.
"Why write?" I asked Selene.
That particular morning she was working through a set of torturous-looking exercises that made my muscles protest to watch. She never broke the rhythm of them and her voice came in gasps between stretches and bends. "Habit, I guess. I always left ... notes for Mandy."
"Like these?"
"Basically. In the beginning ... it was to tell her . . . about me, then . . . to let her know . . . who I met and what... I learned in school ... my half the ... year so people wouldn't . . . know about. . . us."
"When did you become two people?"
She rolled to her feet Swinging up onto the deck, she began using the railing as a bar for ballet exercises. She shot me an amused glance. "Ever curious, aren't you, Gordy?" But before I could protest, she grinned. "We split when we were six. I told Mandy about it when we were seven, after we'd learned to read and write. Any more questions?"
"Yes. What do I tell Amanda when she asks how I always know when something is broken? You don't want me to say anything about you, but I don't want to lie to her."