Tribute

pictured the glass holding her mother’s preferred nighttime Ketel One on the rocks hitting the nearest wall. Then the weeping began. “How can you say such a horrible thing to me!”
    Lying on her back, Cilla swung her arm over her eyes and let the ranting, the sobbing play out. “You should go to bed, Mom. You shouldn’t make these calls when you’ve been drinking.”
    “A lot you care. Maybe I’ll do what she did. Maybe I’ll just end it.”
    “Don’t say that. You’ll feel better in the morning.” Possibly. “You need to get a good night’s sleep. You’ve got your show to plan.”
    “Everyone wants me to be her.”
    “No, they don’t.” Mostly, that’s just you. “Go on to bed now, Mom.”
    “Mario. I want Mario.”
    “Go on to bed. I’ll take care of it. He’ll be there. Promise me you’ll go up to bed.”
    “All right, all right. I don’t want to talk to you anyway.”
    When the phone clicked in her ear, Cilla lay as she was a moment. The whining snub at the end signaled that Dilly was done, would go to bed or simply lie down on the handiest surface and pass out. But they’d passed through the danger zone.
    Cilla pushed the speed-dial button she’d designated as Number Five. “Mario,” she said when he answered. “Where are you?”
    It took less than a minute to recap the situation, so she cut off Mario’s distress and hung up. Cilla had no doubt he’d rush home and provide Dilly with the sympathy, the attention and the comfort she wanted.
    Wide awake and irritated, she climbed out of her sleeping bag. Carting her flashlight, she used the bathroom, then trudged downstairs for a fresh bottle of water. Before going back to the kitchen, she opened the front door and stepped out onto the short section of porch that remained.
    All the pretty sparkling lights were gone now, she noted, and the hills were utterly, utterly dark. Even with the thin scatter of stars piercing through the clouds overhead, she thought it was like stepping into a tomb. Black and silent and cold. The mountains seemed to have folded in for the night, and the air was so still, so absolutely still, she thought she could hear the house breathing behind her.
    “Friend or foe?” she asked aloud.
    Mario would rush into the house in Bel Air, murmur and stroke, flatter and cajole, and ultimately sweep his drunken wreck of a wife into his toned (and younger) Italian arms to carry her up to their bed.
    Dilly would say—and say often—that she was alone, always so alone. But she didn’t know the meaning of it, Cilla thought. She didn’t know the depths of it.
    “Did you?” she asked Janet. “I think you knew what it was to be alone. To be surrounded, and completely, miserably alone. Well, hey, me too. And this is better.”
    Better, Cilla thought, to be alone on a quiet night than to be alone in a crowd. Much better.
    She stepped back inside, closed and locked the door.
    And let the house sigh around her.

THREE
    F ord spent two full hours watching Cilla through his binoculars, sketching her from various angles. After all, the way she moved jump-started the concept every bit as much as the way she looked. The lines, the curves, the shape, the coloring—all part of it. But movement, that was key. Grace and athleticism. Not balletic, no, not that. More . . . the sort of grace of a sprinter. Strength and purpose rather than art and flow.
    A warrior’s grace, he thought. Economical and deadly.
    He wished he could get a look at her with her hair down and loose instead of pulled back in a tail. A good look at her arms would help and her legs. And hell, any other parts of her that might pop into view wouldn’t hurt his feelings any.
    He’d Googled her, and studied several photographs, and he’d NetFlixed her movies, so he’d have those to study. But the last movie she’d done— I’m Watching,Too! —was about eight years old.
    He wanted the woman, not the girl.
    He already had the story line in his head, crammed in there and shoving to get out. He’d cheated the night before, taking a couple hours away from his latest Seeker novel to draft the outline. And maybe he was cheating just a little bit more today, but he wanted to do a couple of pencils, and he didn’t want to do those until he had more detailed sketches.
    The trouble was, his model had too many damn clothes on.
    “I’d really like to see her naked,” he said, and Spock gave a kind of smart-assed snort. “Not that way. Well, yeah, that way,