had loved Martine immediately. Now Monks was the one who felt their cold stares, particularly after he had been gone working for a night. He remembered that the first emotion he had felt about her was an urge to protect. Maybe it was the same with the cats.
Three or four drinks would be okay, he decided. But not five or six.
By the time the steaks were done, the knots in his brain were dissolving. He went into the kitchen to fill his glass one last time. Martine was putting together linguine with Parmesan and garlic.
âTell me the truth,â Monks said. âAre you getting bored with me?â
She looked surprised. âDonât be silly.â Then she glanced at his glass. âHow many of those have you had?â
This irritated Monks. âIâm doing fine,â he said, careful to enunciate the words precisely.
âOn an empty stomach, with no sleep?â
âIf you want to play nurse, why donât you put on a uniform?â
She turned away stiffly. He had meant it as a joke, or at least he thought he had. He had been told that sometimes there was an edge to his voice that he himself did not hear. The edge tended to sharpen, and his hearing to dim, with alcohol.
âWhat makes you think Iâm getting bored?â she said.
âThe way youâve been talking about getting back into practice.â
âWhatâs the matter with that? I spend half my life becoming a doctor, and Iâm not supposed to practice?â
âOf course you are,â he said. âIâm just wondering, you know, where. When. All that.â
She turned to face him full on, holding a long wooden spoon like a fencing sword. âWhyâs this coming up now?â
âWell, it has to sooner or later. Donât you think I deserve to know?â
âKnow what ? I havenât decided anything yet.â
âKnow what you havenât decided, then.â
âYouâre a little drunk, Carroll. This isnât funny.â
ââDrunkâ is a relative term, Martine. Strictly speaking, you have never seen me drunk. Drunk is a fifth or two of liquor in a day, and thatâs really only the beginning of drunk, because it can be sustained indefinitely.â
âDo you turn into a different person?â
In his brain flared a dizzy, fragmented memory of a night when he had looped a black silk scarf around the slender neck of Alison Chapleyâa sexual game, one that she had initiatedâand barely caught himself before she had stopped breathing for good.
âIn vino, veritas,â he said.
âMy lowbrow education didnât include Latin.â
ââThere is truth in wine.â Are you moving out?â
There was a longish hesitation before she answered. âI never really moved in.â
Monks nodded. âItâs been seeming more and more like that.â
He walked back outside and leaned his forearms on the deck railing. The creek at the bottom of his sloping property was silent now, the last sluggish rivulets from the winter rains dried into a few scattered pools. They would be gone, too, soon. Evening came early up here in the woods, and jays flitted through the thick madrone foliage on their last errands, big birds that crashed around like vandals, flashes of iridescent blue that appeared with jarring swiftness at the corners of your vision and left again by the time you turned your head. They usually woke him at first light, seeming to take malicious pleasure in perching outside his window and screeching until he hauled himself to his feet.
Martine Rostanov had been with him for more than a yearâsince the two of them had nearly been killed together. She had uncovered the fact that a giant software corporation, getting into the business of genetic manipulation, was using fetuses that were deliberately aborted for the purpose. Monks had gotten caught up with her in exposing this. When it was over, on a foggy March dawn, they
Rebecca Hamilton, Conner Kressley