She was now only a dozen paces or so from the man in black. His trench coat was an expensive London Fog model, and his black shoes had recently been polished. The man was eighty if he was a day, but tall for a man that age. He was wearing a navy blue watch cap that pressed his ears against his head. He also had the collar of his trench coat turned up, but his neck was thick, with loose folds of skin hanging from it. The old guy was too absorbed in what he was doing to notice her approach. Molly heard a small whimpering sound. She looked down and her mouth dropped in horror. The black-clad man was poking at a cat with his stick.

The cat had obviously been hit by a car and left to die. Its coat, mottled white, black, orange, and cream, was smeared down the entire left side with blood. It had clearly been hit some time ago — much of the blood had dried to a brown crust — but it was still oozing thick red liquid from one long cut. One of the cat’s eyes had popped partway from its skull and was clouded over in tones of bluish gray.

“Hey!” Molly shouted at the man in black. “Are you crazy? Leave that poor thing alone!”

The man must have stumbled on the cat by accident, and had apparently been enjoying the pathetic cries it made each time he jabbed it with his stick. He turned to face Molly. She was disgusted to see that his ancient bone-white penis, erect, was protruding from his unzipped trousers, and that his other hand had been on it. “Blyat!” cried the man in an accented voice, his dark eyes narrowing to slits. “Blyat!”

“Get out of here!” Molly yelled. “I’m going to call the police!”

The man snapped “Blyat” at her once more, then hobbled away. Molly thought about going after him and detaining him until the police could arrive, but the very last thing in the world she wanted to do was touch the vile character. She loomed in to look at the cat. It was in terrible shape; she wished she knew a way to put it quickly out of its misery, but anything she might try would probably just torture the poor creature more. “There, there,” she said in soothing tones. “He’s gone. He won’t bother you anymore.” The cat moved slightly. Its breathing was ragged.

Molly looked around; there was a pay phone at the end of the block. She hurried over to it, called directory assistance, and asked for the SPCA emergency number. She then dialed that. “There’s a cat dying at the side of the road,” she said. She craned her neck to see the street signs. “It’s just off the sidewalk on Portola Drive, a half block up from the corner of Swanson. I think it was hit by a car, perhaps an hour or two ago… No, I’ll stay with the animal, thanks. Thanks ever so — and please hurry.”

She sat cross-legged on the sidewalk next to the cat, wishing she could find it in her heart to stroke the poor animal’s fur, but it was too disgusting to touch. She looked down the street, furious and distraught.

The black-clad old man was gone.

Pierre sat in his lab, looking at his watch. Shari had said she might be late getting back from lunch, but it was now 14:45, and a three-hour lunch seemed excessive even by West Coast standards. Perhaps he’d been crazy hiring someone who was just about to get married. She’d have a million things to do before the wedding, after all, and…

The door to the lab opened, and Shari walked in. Her eyes were bloodshot and although she’d obviously taken a moment to attempt to fix her makeup, she’d clearly been crying a lot.

“Shari!” said Pierre, rising to his feet and moving over to her. “What’s wrong?”

She glanced at Pierre, her lower lip trembling. Pierre couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen someone look so sad. Her voice was low and quavering. “Howard and I broke up.” Tears were welling again at the corners of her eyes.

“Oh, Shari,” said Pierre. “I’m so sorry.” He hadn’t known her that long and wasn’t sure if he should pry — and yet, she probably needed somebody to talk to. Everything had been fine before she left for lunch; Pierre’s might very well be the only friendly face she’d seen since whatever had happened.

“Did you — did you have a fight?”

Tears rolled slowly down Shari’s cheeks. She shook her head.

Pierre was at a loss. He thought about drawing her close to him, trying to comfort her, but he was her employer — he couldn’t do that. Finally he settled on, “It must hurt.”

She nodded almost imperceptibly. Pierre led her over to a lab stool. She sat on it, placing her hands in her lap. Pierre noticed the engagement ring was gone. “Everything was going so well,” she said, her voice full of anguish. She was quiet for a long time. Again, Pierre thought about reaching out to her — a hand on her shoulder, say. He hated to see anyone in such pain. “But — but my parents came over from Poland after World War II, and Howard’s parents are from the Balkans.”

Pierre looked at her, not understanding.

“Don’t you see?” she said, sniffing. “We’re both Ashkenazi.”

Pierre lifted his shoulders slightly, helpless.

“Eastern European Jews,” said Shari. “We had to go for counseling.”

Pierre didn’t really know much about Judaism, although there were lots of English-speaking Jews in Montreal. “Yes?”

“For Tay-Sachs,” said Shari, sounding almost angry that it had to be spelled out.

“Oh,” said Pierre very softly, understanding at last. Tay-Sachs was a genetic disease that resulted in a failure to produce the enzyme hexosaminidase-A, which, in turn, caused a fatty substance to accumulate in the nerve cells of the brain. Unlike Huntington’s, Tay-Sachs manifested itself in infancy, causing blindness, dementia, convulsions, extensive paralysis, and death — usually by the age of four. It was almost exclusively found among Jews of Eastern European extraction. Four percent of American Jews descended from there carried the gene — but, again unlike Huntington’s, the Tay-Sachs gene was recessive, meaning a child had to receive genes from both parents to get the disease. If both the father and the mother carried the gene, any child of theirs had a 25 percent chance of having Tay-Sachs.

Still — maybe Shari had misunderstood. Yes, she was a genetics student, but… “So you both have the gene?” asked Pierre gently.

Shari nodded and wiped her cheeks. “I had no idea that I carried it. But Howard — he suspected he carried the gene, and never said a word to me.”

She sounded bitter. “His sister discovered she had it when she got married, but it was okay, because her fiance didn’t have it. But Howard knew that since his sister had it, he himself had to have a fifty-percent chance of being a carrier — and he never told me.” She looked briefly at Pierre, then dropped her gaze down to the floor. “You shouldn’t keep secrets from someone you love.”

Pierre thought about himself and Molly, but said nothing. There was quiet between them for perhaps half a minute.

“Still,” said Pierre at last, “there are options. Amniocentesis can determine if a fetus has received two Tay-Sachs genes. If you found that it had, you could have an…” Pierre couldn’t quite bring himself to say “abortion” out loud.

But Shari simply nodded. “I know.” She sniffed a few times. She was quiet for a moment, as if considering whether to go on. “But I’ve got endometriosis; my gynecologist warned me years ago that I’m going to have a very hard time conceiving. I told Howard that when we got serious.

I really, really want to have children, but it’s going to be an uphill battle, and…”

Pierre nodded. And there was no way she could afford to have pregnancies terminated.

“I’m so sorry, Shari, but…” He paused, not sure if it was his place to say anything more.

She looked at him, her face a question.

“You could adopt,” said Pierre. “It’s not so bad. I was raised by someone who wasn’t my biological father.”