Girl in the Moonlight Read Online Free Page B

on much as it had before given Ugo’s long absences. They remained friends. He would still return to his wife’s houses, still cook for his children, even occasionally still make love to his now ex-wife, assuming her latest boyfriend didn’t object too strenuously, and he would still depart without warning.
    BEFORE THE DIVORCE, EVERY SUMMER FOR FIVE OR SIX years when the children were very young they would all accompany Ugo back home to Catalonia, to the village on the Ebro where he had been born and where he still had much family. There he would be welcomed like a returning celebrity, bringing presents of duty-free whisky and American cigarettes bought with Kitty’s money. Donkeys and chickens wandered in theyard, where lunch was eaten outside underneath an arbor, the scent of lemon trees perfumed the air. The tables were rough, wooden. Cesca and Carmen, as girls, helped to cook and serve while the men sat and joked and played botifarra, Kitty insisting on sitting with them.
    There were always picnics, expeditions to the ruins of a nearby castle sacked during the Peninsular War, and fishing trips for mackerel and bonito. Later, they would spend a few days in Barcelona. A visit to a favorite restaurant, where one of Ugo’s paintings hung on the wall. A tour of the galleries. Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia. Drinks along the Ramblas. Once, a bullfight, but never again because it made Aurelio throw up, and Kitty forbade it. Late nights with the children in tow, Carmen asleep on Cesca’s lap in a nightclub while their parents danced.
    Ugo knew people everywhere. Once he led them up in the hills above Nice to visit friends who owned a restaurant in Saint Paul-de-Vence where another of his paintings hung next to a Léger. Trips to Paris, where they would stay with other friends of his who lived in the Marais. Another time they visited London, where he took them to the Tate to look at the Turners. Many trips to the Prado, the Louvre, the Uffizi. They all agreed Spanish painters were the best, followed by the Italians. Miró, also a Catalan, was the greatest of them all.
    Every winter Kitty took the children skiing in Gstaad while Ugo, who did not ski and had no interest in learning, remained in the house on Perry Street to paint. He continued to use the studio even after the marriage was over. It was a relationship that may have puzzled other people in a similar situation, but there was very little that was conventional about any of their lives. They enjoyed the kind of freedom that only the very rich, very creative, or very selfish can ever know.

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    A FTER THE DIVORCE UGO CONTINUED TO TAKE HIS CHILDREN on trips, but, as they were growing older, he took only one at a time. Cesca went first because she was the eldest. She was fifteen but looked older, ripe for experience. She had an irresistible face, a rock against which ships would be dashed, drowning all who came too close.
    Ugo took her to the Costa Brava. It was summer. They stayed for a month with a woman he knew who had a villa overlooking the bay in Cadaqués. The woman was one of his many lovers. Cesca could hear them behind the door, where they often slept in past noon.
    She was free to wander about the town. Exploring Cap de Creus and its rock pools, walking to the lighthouse, watching the hippies who congregated along the waterfront. She wanted to meet Dalí at his home in Port Lligat, but he was never there. Every morning she fetched the bread and in the evening wine from the local shops, often eating alone. After breakfast she took her scooter to the beach and spread her towel out over thesmooth white pebbles and lay in her bikini in the sun. Her skin became the color of caramel, darker. In her bag she carried a bottle of water, money, a copy of Rodoreda’s The Time of the Doves, and a pack of cigarettes.
    Staring out at the water, she became aware of a group of local teenagers, a little older than she, that she had seen before. She sat there and lit a cigarette—she