Page 115 of Our Last Resort
“I’m sorry,” he says.
He doesn’t know where to look.
With a smile, Sabrina puts him out of his misery.
“It’s okay,” she says. “Thank you.”
She puts away her phone.
“Anyway,” she says, “he’s a nice man. Just a bit…difficult, sometimes.” She pauses. “We came here to work through things. It was my idea. Do you know what I thought, when we arrived? We got assigned suite number six. And I thought, ‘Six, that’s my lucky number.’ It really is. But, you know. There’s only so much a lucky number can do.”
Gabriel wonders, but doesn’t ask:How difficult?
Does he hit you?
Are you afraid of him?
He thinks but doesn’t say:I would be so much better, if you gave me a real chance.
Instead, he asks: “So, what have you been reading?”
She tells him about the book he saw her with at the pool, which turns out to have beenMadame Bovary. “It’s about this terribly romantic woman,” she says. “She marries this complete bore of a guy. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with dreaming of romance, but the world will punish you for it.”
“What happens to her?” Gabriel asks. “The woman?”
“I don’t know yet,” she says. “The book was published in 1857, but somehow I’ve avoided spoilers for two centuries.”
She thinks.
“I don’t think it’s going to be good, though.”
A shadow falls over her face. Gabriel feels a vital need to change the subject.
“Do you read a lot of classics?”
Sabrina becomes animated again.
“I used to, when I was a kid. Then I stopped when I was a teenager.”
Around the time the stepfathers entered her life.
“I got back into it after I married William,” she says. “I quit my job at the bar when we got engaged. He said I didn’t need to work anymore. So I had a lot of free time. He has a wonderful library.”
Gabriel realizes he could sit here for hours, listening to her talk.Watchingher talk. He’s not in love, exactly. You can’t be in love with a woman you’ve only spoken to three times. But he is mesmerized. In thrall.
Sabrina checks her watch—a shiny gold thing with the name of a French brand Gabriel would recognize if he watched the mob show as assiduously as I do—and gets up.
“I should go,” she says.
Gabriel follows her back inside the suite. She puts a hand on his arm again.
“Thank you,” she says. “For your kindness.”
In this moment, Gabriel realizes what’s so special about her.
Sabrina Brenner is one of the most beautiful women he’s ever seen. Yet she acts as though his attention were a gift. Like she’s been starved for it, and she’s grateful for this man finally turning his eyes to her.
It is an absolute miracle.
