The Violet Hour: A Novel Read Online Free

grandfather’s eightieth birthdayparty. Labor Day weekend they would take off for some cabin in Connecticut that Kyle had found online. Her plans couldn’t have been tamer, but maybe this year tame would be okay.
    Kyle showed up at her apartment that afternoon carrying a hiker’s pack and a garment bag and smelling, almost magically through his sweat, of grassy, spring-scented soap. His face was angular, football handsome, and he looked so much like a dozen different celebrities that it seemed inevitable he’d be famous one day, too. An actor, he was constantly in plays, both in New York and on the road. For a long time, his biggest break had been playing a first-time home buyer in a national ad for life insurance, but in a few weeks, he’d be auditioning for a handful of guest roles, most of them cops, on a long-running network crime series. He’d been fired up about it for days.
    “Ready for our little adventure?” he asked, dumping his things on the floor.
    “Oh, let’s see. I’m half-packed, unshowered, and I have no idea what I’m wearing.”
    “I thought you bought a new dress.”
    “I did, but the fabric’s a little heavy and with the humidity I’m worried I’ll be miserable.”
    “Let me see.” He settled into the couch.
    She brought it out, a dusky blue sheath with an embellished bust that shriveled into itself on the hanger. “You have to see it on,” she explained, hurrying out of her shorts and T-shirt. The crisp, shimmery fabric stretched across her body, ruching at the waist and along her thighs. She’d gotten it at a sample sale and had since seen photos of a television actress who was attempting to transition into movies wearing it at a major premiere. It was amusing to think of herself in the same pool with people who lived in the public eye, and yet, why not? After Harvard and all its dead presidents, the center of the world didn’t feel so out of reach. She swam through it every day in New York.
    “You can walk in that?”
    “That’s the beauty of it, it stretches.” She lunged at him to prove it.
    He whistled, and launched into an Appalachian drawl. “Wull awl be !” Kyle was a constant actor, regularly answering her in character.
    “Don’t tell me: Deliverance: The Musical .”
    “I wish! Someone is doing a musical of Caligula, though. That’s one workshop I would’ve loved to have been in on.”
    He spoke with his usual male confidence—as though he’d just catch the next train that came along—and yet in her chest she experienced a little wing flap of despair. In his profession, the missed opportunities were so endless it was almost unbearable. What would work out, what wouldn’t—you could never really tell. She pressed a hand to her breast; she would rather talk about anything else.
    “See what I mean, though, about the fabric?” she said. “I don’t think it’s going to breathe. Stupid Lucie and her outdoor wedding.”
    All of a sudden, he stood. He’d alternated between wide receiver and free safety on his college team, and he tackled her now, in that performance-minded way that he had: expressive face, explosive body, a target always in mind. She howled and clutched at the dress.
    “Lizzie,” he said, after they’d landed on the couch. “You’re crazy. You have to wear it. You look unbelievably hot.”
    He was strong, and he was so certain. He had told her, early on, that he’d always known he wouldn’t play professional football, even before he’d chosen a liberal arts college in Minnesota with thoughtful seminars and Division III sports. It was too much work, and too much punishment for something that was only a game. She believed in him. Of course she did. But she also wondered what he thought acting was.
    T HE AIR-CONDITIONING wasn’t working in their cab, a defect their driver didn’t admit until they were already moving, when it would’ve been awkward and rude and a waste of time and money to get out. Resigned, they opened their windows,