It was Thursday, but Brielle didn’t know it. Rays shone through the picture window where she stood, shoulders and legs in gentle warmth. Patent-leather heels stood gleaming, upright and proper next to the door.

Brielle wore a libertine smile. Out the window, evergreens cascaded to cliffs and the ocean beyond. Vignettes of last night flashed strobe-like through her mind. Snapshots of bar tops and whiskey and melodrama. Of cackling laughs and smoky white pendant lights and cigarettes with long ashes.

Whose tan chelseas were next to her pumps on the doormat? And where was Paul… Paul? Paul Paul Paul.

Brielle squinted at the distant surf, teeth clenched, and “lalalalalala”.

She slid a cig from a pack on the table and went to the deck to smoke it. In a switch, Brielle cataloged positives first: Woke wearing a white tank top and denim skirt. Relief. Then again, sleeping fully clothed is rife with blackout potential.

The “good” column exhausted, Brielle snuffed the cigarette on the underside of a small picnic table and went inside. She flushed the butt in the toilet of the master bath. Avoiding the mirror, she pulled her hair into a messy bun.

Her cashmere wrap was neatly folded on the nightstand. She put it on, gathered her shoes in the fingers of her left hand, and exhaled.

The bedroom door opened without a squeak. Barefoot, Brielle tiptoed down the carpeted hall. At the front door, she stole a look out the sidelights. Her white jeep was pulling up the driveway, a strange man behind the wheel.

Brielle stood on the porch as the car door opened.

“Are you Paul?” she asked.

“Not exactly,” the man said.

“What does that mean?”

“What’s with all the questions, I thought we were pals.”

“So who’s Paul?”

“Paul is what you were calling me last night at Stoop’s,” the man said. “We were singing Band On The Run. Repeatedly. You actually played it on the jukebox three straight times. That’s how I became Paul.”

“And you brought my car to me. Thanks Paul!”

Brielle’s tongue poked through the teeth of her smile. She descended the porch steps and slid into her shoes, heel-clicks echoing off the brickwork as she strode down the driveway.

An ocean breeze wisped through her calves and knees, sending an upward chill through everything. Brielle fastened a frowning grin at Paul as she brushed past him and into the driver’s seat.

He stood in front of the jeep, holding two coffees and a bag of scones.

“Don’t you want to know my real name, April?”

“Aww, you’re sweet. Bye Paul!”

Brielle put the jeep in gear, backed down the long driveway and into the street. “April and Paul”. She giggled, donned a pair of cat-eye sunglasses and turned up the stereo.