“He’s young to have big sex trouble, isn’t he?”

“I hate to speculate.”

“Yeah, it is pretty disgusting, thinking about another man’s sex problems.”

“Right.”

“On the other hand, I’m going to sleep good tonight, hoping that. What could be wrong with his approach, do you think?”

“Settle down, Wish.”

“She could like me, if she dumped Bruce.”

He was such a messy mix of mournful and hopeful, Paul almost laughed. “She’s almost a married woman. You ain’t got no business there, to misquote Sippi Wallace.”

The blue front door to Kirby’s house flew open. Brandy stepped outside, pulling the door shut hard behind her.

“Things didn’t end well,” Wish almost chortled.

“I reiterate, we don’t get involved with clients,” Paul said. “It’s unprofessional, plus it could get you in real trouble.”

“Okay, Rocky,” said Wish.

“I’m going back to Tahoe,” Brandy informed them.

Wish, grinning broadly, jumped out to open the back door for her.

Around Vacaville, Brandy finally started talking again. “I told him I’m going back to Angel’s for a few more days. He’s very mad at Nina for bringing all this trouble our way.”

“He’s mad and he’s a lawyer,” Paul summarized.

“Beeg trouble for Moose and Squirrel,” said Wish.

Friday-night traffic up the freeway to South Lake Tahoe made the long trip an infinite exercise in stop-and-go and imposed patience. The usual four-hour drive took them six. For dinner, to appease Wish and Brandy, Paul stopped in Placerville. They carbo-loaded at Mel’s Diner, a chrome-trimmed restaurant on the main drag. Paul left them to it and went out to the car to use his phone. Reaching Nina at her office, he was happy to hear Bob had been invited to sleep over at a friend’s house, which meant they would have the four-poster bed and the yellow comforter to themselves for the entire night. Elated, Paul hung up and went back to the table.

Watching Wish as he talked with Brandy, Paul stuck to iced tea, amazed that the gawky kid’s social gaffes and big elbows did not seem to register with her at all. Brandy ate like the hungry girl she was, oblivious to the effect she was having on the big lunk. Meanwhile, Paul did what he could to urge things along. He wanted to get to Tahoe.

Unfortunately for him, there was an unavoidable delay. In a ritual that probably originated with the first language, Brandy and Wish needed to exchange life stories. Brandy talked first. I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours, thought Paul, exasperated, trying not to study his watch too openly. But Wish, Paul observed, was having the time of his life, listening intently as Brandy talked about her childhood, flirting in his oddball Washoe way. After she reported extensively, Wish told his own story in fits and starts, glossing over college, launching into asides about Sandy and Joseph, their marriage, divorce, and remarriage, their ranch near Markleeville, their activism in Native American causes.

“Your life is so exotic, Wish,” Brandy said after he finished his narrative of his vital legal investigations for Nina’s office.

“It is?”

“You know, Native American people and heritage, such fascinating roots in a culture struggling to maintain dignity and identity in a new, complicated era. Your mother sounds cool, too.”

“Oh, that describes Sandy to a T,” Paul said, slipping out of the booth, meditating upon the mincemeat Sandy could make of a Wish-Brandy alliance. “And on that ominous note, I think we’d better hit the road again.”

Back in South Lake Tahoe, Nina prepared for Paul’s arrival. After packing Bob off to Taylor Nordholm’s-driving him there herself just for the reassurance that he was, in fact, exactly where he said he would be-she ran through the cabin with stern determination, shoving kitchen piles into drawers, kicking loose shoes and laundry into Bob’s room and shutting the door, and cutting stems off three bunches of flowers she had bought to splash around the place. Roses in three-colored bunches, yellow, pink, and red, were arranged loosely in vases, placed and replaced on tables and in corners.

Then she examined her handiwork and decided things looked unearthly neat, so she messed a few magazines around on the coffee table. As if Paul cared. But the work was automatic and inexorable, as important as a court appearance to her on this night. She wanted everything beautiful and harmonious.

She missed him every night. She loved him so much! She wanted to be with him forever. Or something!

In the kitchen, she laid out ingredients as directed by Andrea to be swiftly boiled, blanched, and assembled later: fresh rigatoni, Swiss chard, toasted crumbs, anchovies, newly grated Parmesan. She tossed sliced tomatoes, slivered carrots, and two kinds of lettuce into a bowl, covered it tightly, and put it into the refrigerator. She would add homemade tomato-basil croutons and dressing, her specialties, later. A frosty bottle of champagne rested on the middle shelf, lonesome. She inserted a second beside it.

After lighting a pyramid of orange and blue candles on a side table in the living room, she threw a fresh log on the fire.

She took Hitchcock out for a brisk trot up the road, and then, murmuring words of apology, she tossed a big bone into the laundry area and shut him up inside for the night.

Upstairs, she changed the sheets on her bed and gave the yellow roses a pat. Checking the clock, she stepped into the shower. Hot steam forced her to shut her eyes. She stayed under the waterfall for a long time, until her skin was pink and shining, all the sins of the days and weeks drained temporarily away. Back in her room, she settled on a silk nightie with a matching silk robe loosely tied at the waist. She brushed her long brown hair, despaired of controlling it, and let it fly.

The phone rang. She started toward the bedside table.

The doorbell rang. She let the phone go to the message machine, racing downstairs to answer the door. Paul walked in the door, grabbed her, and trundled her into the warm, vanilla-scented living room, his mouth all over her neck, shoulders, and breasts, lips cold with the outside. Within minutes, he removed his shirt, her fine silk.

Everything.

Bliss, or fatigue, or mutual satisfaction must have knocked them both out, because a strange sound woke Nina, the sound of a key jiggling in the front door.

But how could that be? Why wasn’t she in bed, with this long, hairy arm across her breasts covered demurely by a down comforter? Why did she feel so exposed?

The fire must have kept them warm, she thought groggily, realizing they had never made it to the bedroom. Paul, who lay all over and around her in an intimate clutch on the living-room rug, snored softly. Before she had time to heed the situation further or form a plan to stave off impending disaster, the front door opened widely.

Bob stepped in. “Mom?” he said. “Taylor’s grandma’s sick. I tried to call-” His voice fell away.

Closing her eyes, Nina played asleep, trying to keep her breathing regular, just like Bob used to do when he was little and was caught late at night reading by flashlight.

“Mom.” This time, Bob said the word more softly. He stood there in the entryway for what seemed like months, then tiptoed past them and crept up the stairs to his room.

“Wake up,” she whispered to Paul when she felt convinced of the thoroughness of Bob’s absence from the room. She tried to lift Paul’s heavy arm off her, but the arm, awakening slowly, had other things in mind. She repeated herself a few times, watched the lazy hazel eyes open wide at last, and fended off his hands, which had gone exploring. “I have to get up. Let me go!”

Something in her voice worked. He removed his arm. “What’s the matter?”