She raised her head and met his eyes.
“All right,” he said.
“Don’t I know bad trouble when I see it?”
“Yes,” he acknowledged. “Yes, you know it.”
“The coffeecake must be nearly done.”
He glanced at the prosthesis on the counter by the refrigerator, palm turned up, fingers relaxed. “I’ll get it from the oven for you.”
“I can manage. I never wear the hand when I’m baking. If it burned, I wouldn’t feel it.”
Using oven mitts, she transferred the cake to a cooling rack.
By the time Michelle took off the mitts and turned from the cake, Tim had moved to the door.
“I’ll look forward to seeing the lamp,” he said.
Because her lacrimal glands and tear ducts had not been damaged, both her living eye and the dead one glimmered.
Tim stepped onto the landing at the head of the stairs, but before he let the screen door fall shut behind him, Michelle said, “It’s lions.”
“What?”
“The lamp. It’s lions.”
“I bet it’ll be terrific.”
“If I do it right, you’ll get a sense of their great hearts, their courage.”
He closed the screen door and descended the steps, seeming to make no noise on the scaling concrete.
Gliding by in the street, the traffic surely was not quiet, but Tim remained deaf to its chorus. Headlights approached and taillights receded like luminous fish in the silence of an oceanic abyss.
As he neared the bottom of the steps, the noise of the city began to rise to him, softly at first, but then loud, louder. The sounds were mostly made by machines, yet they had a savage rhythm.
The woman marked for death lived in a modest bungalow in the hills of Laguna Beach, on a street that lacked a money view but that was being gentrified nonetheless. Compared to the aging structures, the land under them had such value that every house sold would be torn down regardless of its condition and its charm, to make way for a larger residence.
Southern California was shedding all its yesterdays. When the future proved to be a cruel place, no evidence of a better past would exist, and therefore the loss would be less painful.
The small white house, huddled under tall eucalyptuses, had plenty of charm, but to Tim the place looked embattled, more bunker than bungalow.
Lamplight warmed the windows. Sheer curtains made mysteries of the rooms beyond.
He parked his Ford Explorer across the street from—and four doors north of—Linda Paquette’s property, at another house.
Tim knew this place: three years old, in the Craftsman style, with stacked stone and cedar siding. He had been the head mason on the job.
The walkway was random flagstone bordered by a double row of three-inch-square cobbles. Tim found this combination unattractive; but he had executed it with care and precision.
Owners of three-million-dollar homes seldom ask masons for design advice. Architects never do.
He pressed the doorbell once and stood listening to the faint susurration of the palm trees.
The offshore flow was less a breeze than a premonition of a breeze. The mild May night breathed as shallowly as an anesthetized patient waiting for the surgeon.
The porch light came on, the door opened, and Max Jabowski said, “Timothy, old bear! What a surprise.”
If spirit could be weighed and measured, Max would have proved to be bigger than his house.
“Come in, come in.”
“I don’t want to intrude,” Tim said.
“Nonsense. How could you intrude in a place you built?”
Having clasped Tim’s shoulder, Max seemed to transfer him from porch to foyer by some power of levitation.
“I only need a minute of your time, sir.”
“Can I get you a beer, something?”
“No, thank you, I’m all right. It’s about a neighbor of yours.”
“I know them all, this block and the next. I’m president of our Neighborhood Watch.”
Tim had expected as much.
“Coffee? I have one of those machines that makes it a cup at a time, anything from cappuccino to plain old plain old.”
“No, really, but that’s very kind, sir. She lives at fourteen twenty-five, the bungalow among the eucalyptuses.”
“Linda Paquette. I didn’t know she was going to build. She seems like a solid person. I think you’d enjoy working with her.”
“Do you know her husband, what he does?”
“She isn’t married. She lives there alone.”
“So she’s divorced?”
“Not that I’m aware. Is she going to tear down or remodel?”
“It’s nothing like that,” Tim said. “It’s a personal matter. I was hoping you’d speak to her about me, let her know I’m okay.”
The bushy eyebrows rose, and the rubbery lips stretched into an arc of delight. “I’ve been a lot of things, but never before a matchmaker.”
Although he should have foreseen this interpretation of his questions, Tim was surprised by it. He hadn’t dated anyone in a long time. He had assumed that he’d lost the telltale glint of eye and had stopped producing whatever subtle pheromones might have allowed him to be mistaken for a man still in the game.
“No, no. It’s not that.”
“She’s easy on the eyes,” said Max.
“Truly, it’s not that. I don’t know her, she doesn’t know me, but we have a… mutual acquaintance. I have some news about him. I think she’ll want to know it.”
The rubbery smile loosened only a little. Max didn’t want to let go of the image of himself as a facilitator of true romance.
Everyone, Tim thought, had seen too many movies. They believed that a meet-cute relationship awaited every good heart. Because of movies, they believed a lot of other improba ble things, as well, some of them dangerous.
“It’s
