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She watched him scratch the back of his head, reach down to hike up his oversized jeans. He said something to the TV, mumbling no doubt, then swung round so she could read him. “I don't know,” he said, making a half-hearted attempt to sign under his words. “I don't know, I hate this.”

“You hate it? How do you think I feel?”

“I've got to get back. Got to call Radko.”

She gave it a minute. “You don't have to do anything,” she said finally, and she was angry suddenly. Her voice might have risen, she couldn't say. “You claim you love me, you'll stand by me, but it's just words, because if you do--if you did--you wouldn't hesitate.”

And now his face flared with his own anger, a deep gouge slicing into the furrow between his eyes, his lips pulling back from his teeth, the scene brightening to an orangey yellow on the TV and imparting the color to his skin so that he looked jaundiced. “Yeah?” he said. “If it wasn't for you,” he said, but she dropped her eyes to the screen and shut him out.

The yellow there darkened to gold, to honey, to a deep hungering sepia as the killer in his mask flailed the too-white blade at his victim, the heroine in her midnight-blue teddy, who could only run and crouch and hide, bare-legged, her painted toenails gathering in every particle of light as if to shut the camera down. “Dog barking,” the caption read.

“Glass breaking.”

A quick close-up of the victim, her makeup smeared, eyes dilated with terror.

“Sobbing continues.”

AS SOON AS he laid eyes on the house, he knew he had to have it. Even when he'd been living with Gina and making out pretty well, king of his own domain, envious of no one, he'd be going one place or another--running errands, dodging between the two restaurants--and glance out the car window and see a house like this and feel something move in him. Awe. A kind of awe. To think about the people who lived there, doctors, lawyers, old money, the real class acts with blue-chip investments handed down through the generations and the Jag and the SLK280 sitting side by side in the garage. They came into Lugano sometimes, people in their forties, fifties, even sixties, and they knew their wines and never needed help with the menu or the pronunciation of anything, whether it was Italian, French or German. Then they went home to a house like this, the slate roof, the mullioned windows, shrubs a hundred years old clipped and tamed as if they were an extension of the walls, flower beds, ivy, wisteria--and always a hill studded with trees. To look down from.

And here it was, right before him. The real deal. This was no development house thrown together with two-by-fours and plasterboard, no condo, no rambling Peterskill Victorian that had been divided up two generations ago into dark stinking run-down rat warrens inhabited by welfare mothers and crackheads, this was where the rich people lived, where they'd always lived. And rich people built their houses out of stone. That was the first thing he saw, the stone--a sun-striped bank of silvered gray stone glimpsed through the trees as they followed Sandman and the real estate lady up the gravel drive--and then the poured water of the windows, the slate roof that shone as if it were eternally wet, the ancient copper downspouts with their tarnish of green.

Natalia said, “It is a nice set, yes?”

The sunlight pooled in the drive where Sandman and the real estate lady--Janice Levy, short, bush-haired, expansive--were just getting out of the car. “Setting, you mean,” he said. “And look at that--look at that view.” He was pointing now, as the lawn unscrolled to a line of trees that dipped away to give up the river and the mountains beyond.

“I hate it.” Madison was leaning forward, her face intent, eyes roaming over everything. “Mommy, I hate it. It looks like a witch's house. And there's nobody to play with.”

For once, Natalia ignored her, and then they were climbing out of the car, Sandman grinning and Janice Levy watching them with the keen eyes of a behaviorist, watching for nuance, the slipup, anything that would give him away. “Wait'll you see inside,” Sandman was saying. “This place is you, man, I told you.”

Sandman was right. It “was” him, sure it was, no doubt about it. Even if the inside was as vacant as a barn or redecorated in motel revival with cottage cheese ceilings and lime-green paint he would have taken it on sight, the deal already done and awaiting only his approval. And Janice Levy's approval of them, on behalf of the Walter Meisters, who were already in West Palm Beach because Mrs. Meister, at seventy-two, could no longer take the winters and didn't care how muggy and buggy Florida got, it couldn't be any worse than a New York summer, even with the breeze off the river. Muggy was muggy. At least that was what Janice Levy told them, pinching her voice just this side of caricature to impersonate the old lady as she showed them through the place, pointing out the amenities and spewing away non-stop.

Sandman--he looked good, looked respectable, his tattoos covered up under a long-sleeved button-down shirt in a pale banker's blue that brought out the color of his eyes and his facial hair reduced to a single strip of dirty blond soul beard depending from his lower lip--grinned and tugged at his sleeves and dropped his baritone down to its most soothing pitch as they shuffled through the rooms and Janice Levy waved and jabbered and professionally ingratiated herself. “And the bar,” he said. “Look at the bar.”

They were in the main room, with its fireplace and views out to the river, oak floors, golden with age, the bar--sink and mini-fridge beneath it--tucked in against one white-plastered wall. “Yeah,” he heard himself say, “nice.” He was wearing his expressionless expression beneath the new mirror shades he'd picked up in a mall someplace in Utah, give nothing away, though the price had already been set and there was no reason or room for bargaining, sign the papers or walk. But this was how he did business: never let them know what you're thinking.

Natalia ran a hand over the burnished surface of the bartop and turned to Janice Levy to ask about storage space. “Are there not closets?”

Balancing one elbow in a cupped palm and tilting her head in what was meant to be an ingenuous way, Janice Levy assured her that the closets were more than adequate, though, of course, in an old house--a classic house--you did have to be creative. And didn't she know just the antique dealer to find her some real period pieces, wardrobes, chiffoniers, breakfronts, but really, a house like this-- That sold Natalia right there--that and the kitchen, which, as Sandman had promised, had been upgraded to the highest haute bourgeois standard (the Meisters were real foodies, Janice Levy confided, with over five hundred cookbooks alone). The kitchen pleased him too--granite countertops, a prep island, hooks for the saucepans, the big Viking range every bit the equal of the one they'd left behind--and he made the mistake of saying so.

“Oh, are you a foodie, then, Mr. Martin?”

He gave her a stare, then removed the shades to fix his eyes on her, to show her he was sympathetic, handsome, dashing, a ladies' man, nobody to fear. “I wouldn't go that far,” he said. “I like to cook. And I like a good restaurant too.”

Natalia was fully warmed up at this point--he could see the let's-go-shopping look settling into her pretty dark whiskey-colored eyes, a whole new house to fill, a real house, a country estate surrounded by antique dealers and Manhattan just over an hour away. “He is the best. A cook to dream for. And wine. His own sommelier.”

Janice Levy was watching him. So was Sandman. The time had come to sign the papers, two-year lease with an option to buy, break open the Perrier-Jouët and get the real estate lady out the door so she could drive overfed couples around in her white Land Cruiser and sell, sell, sell. She knew all about him. Knew the amount he kept in his bank accounts, knew how much equity he had in the condo in Mill Valley, knew he was clean, debt-free, and that he was twenty-nine years old and had a degree from the USC film school and money to burn. “So,” she said, laying her briefcase on the bar and snapping the latches with a practiced flip of both thumbs, “what is it you said you did? For a living, I mean?”

“Investments.”

“Oh,” she said, “of course. Yes, I knew that.” She was marshaling the papers for his signature, the handing over of the check, the first six months paid in advance, Sandman to get his deposit back, when she mused: “You're in the film business?” In the background he could hear Madison's piping skirl of a voice, “Mommy, Mommy, there's a swing set!”

“No,” he said, moving up to stand beside her and run his gaze over the first page of the agreement, “that's an amateur's game. It's like gambling, know what I mean?”

Her eyes--they were green, sharp, attractive, definitely interested--shifted to him. He could smell her perfume. Like all real estate women she had terrific legs, which she showed off in a skirt that fell just below the knee. “No, not really. But I do have a client looking for a house now who works in TV, in Manhattan, and he--”

“Investments,” he repeated. “Keep it real.”

“Yes,” she said, nodding vigorously. “Oh, yes. Definitely.”

The trip cross-country wasn't exactly what he'd envisioned--they'd stretched it out to two weeks and a day, and they did manage to see the Great Salt Lake, an Amish village and the world's biggest longhorn steer, all for Madison's benefit, but there was no Tahoe and no Vegas. Once he'd got back on I-80 he just kept going, his mind working round the sharp edges of what had happened back there outside of Sacramento, and after he crossed the state line he began to rethink things. For one, there was no real reason to dawdle--a little R & R, sure, please the kid and Natalia too--but the sooner he got settled in New York and started making some real money again, the better. And the car. He'd been in panic mode there for a while, the adrenaline scouring his veins and seriously impairing his judgment. He had ID. He had papers for the car. It was his, no question about it, and once he was out of California he didn't have to worry about the cops either--if that was even a worry to begin with--and plus he had money in the thing. He'd paid ten thousand down, cash, on Natalia's Z4 and had better than a year's payments in it too, and so no, he wasn't going to unload the Mercedes. Dealer plates were nothing--he'd just toss them, make up a phony pink slip and register the thing in New York. And when Bob Almond of Bob Almond Mercedes/BMW wanted to know where his payments were, well, he could go on down to San Roque and try to shake them out of Bridger Martin, the asshole.

And so he'd kept going, Natalia dozing, Madison awake now in back and playing her videos over and over, the maddening rupture of the kiddie soundtrack better than the claws-bared assault of Natalia's nagging, and that wasn't over yet--she was just giving her vocal cords a rest. Scenery--or lack of it--fled by the windows. He kept his foot on the gas and his eyes on the rearview. It must have been four or so before Madison started whining and Natalia lifted her head to give him a stare that burned right through him, Winnemucca bleak, Elko bleaker, and in a withering voice wondered if he intended to drive all day and all night without stopping even to perform their natural functions or consume--that was the word she used--anything of nourishment. “Are you planning to stop,” she said, and he wouldn't look at her, his eyes on the road, “or are you still running?”

“I'm not running.”

“Then what are you doing?”

“Driving.”

“Driving, yes. I see that.” She looked out the window on high desert scrub, the world bleached of color, the sun as persistent as a nightmare. “But this is not Tahoe.”

“No,” he said, “no, it's not. Change of plan.”

“This is not Vegas.” He stole a glance at her and her face was set, angry, all the soft opalescent beauty drained out of it. “What is this? This is nothing.”

An exit blew by, trucks drawn up in a steel ridge, a hundred cars and milling stupid people like stick figures in an artist's rendering of the ultimate truck stop, gas, food, lodging, condoms, pigs in a blanket, tequila. A sign for Indian jewelry, ONLY 20 MILES. And then scrub, more scrub, and the long dwindling slash of the road.

“You stop,” she said, and she turned her wrathful face to him. “At the next place you stop and I don't care what it is, you stop.”

“A pool,” Madison chimed in. “I want a place with a pool. Can I go swimming, Mommy, can I?”

He heard himself say, “Sure, no problem. Next place. Next place with a pool.”

For a moment, all three of them fixed their gaze on the road ahead, the gleaming chain-link of cars and trucks vanishing into the horizon, cartoon characters whinnying and chortling in the background, the tires faintly humming. “Something is wrong,” Natalia said then.

“Nothing's wrong.”

“Then why not Tahoe. You promised Tahoe.”

“I told you, I changed my mind.”

“Those people--”

“Fuck those people.”

She drilled him with her eyes. She didn't want him cursing around Madison, and he knew that--that was one of the rules. No cursing around Madison. “Those people--” she repeated.

“Fuck those people.”

And so it went, ad nauseam, for two weeks and one day.

Their first night in the house, after four in the local motel and five full days of shopping, hassling with the utilities, arranging furniture and unpacking the big cardboard boxes sent on ahead from California, he decided to inaugurate the kitchen. A little Thai/Chinese fusion was what he was thinking: three-flavor stir-fry (scallops, monkfish, tiger shrimp), pork spring rolls to start and a nice medium-spicy squid salad that would have enough push to it to satisfy Natalia and yet not overwhelm Madison's tender young palate. Though Madison was learning--he had to give her credit for that. Ever since her mother had moved in with him he'd been weaning her off the bland stuff, slipping her a slice of daikon or Vidalia onion when he was cooking, an extra portion of wasabi and pickled ginger with her sashimi--and then a bowl of green-tea ice cream to cool and compare. Or having her do the taste test with a tiny sliver of the tan chipotle mecos he liked to use in his chicken enchiladas or the dark red coil of a smoked serrano, and always an ice afterward. She was getting to be a little champ, actually, insisting on a dollop of jalapeño jelly instead of cinnamon on her butter-drenched toast in the morning.

The supermarket wasn't what it was in California, of course, but he'd found an Asian market in Fishkill (a little bit of a haul from Garrison, but he tried to restrict his shopping to the north so as to stay away from Peterskill, for obvious reasons) and got pretty much everything he needed, from the cellophane noodles to the sweet chili sauce, spring roll wrappers, fresh cilantro and gingerroot. It had rained earlier, the clouds gathering atop Storm King and fanning out to sink low over West Point, and that was something he'd missed, the suddenness and violence of the thunderstorms; now, standing at the kitchen counter, he caught the indefinable scent of his boyhood drifting across the lawn and through the screens, the smell of the woods, sumac, mold, rot, the superabundant water sitting in its pools in the hidden places, everything in ferment. He was happy suddenly, feeling as if a load had been lifted from him, a load that had worn him down this past month and more, happy to be cleaning squid with one of his sharp new J. A. Henckels ice-hardened knives and having a glass of Champagne at the window, the sky close and gray and the grass spread out beneath him such a dense green it was almost black. Happy about the Champagne too, the price on the Perrier-Jouët so good he'd gone ahead and bought a case, the French wines cheaper here by far than on the west coast, thinking he'd be drinking a lot more French from now on, not to mention Italian and even Spanish. He was feeling all this, alternately plying the knife and setting it down to lift the Champagne flute to his lips, when Natalia slipped up noiselessly behind him and wrapped her arms round his waist.