“So,” I said, struggling to maintain my cheerfulness, “when do you start?”

“Tomorrow, after school,” Paul said. “Unless I blow my brains out tonight.” He shook his head, unable to believe something this horrible could happen to him. “When my grades start to go down, it’s not going to be my fault.”

“Why don’t you go share your news with Angie,” I said. “She just got home.”

I figured, with so much joy in the house, why not spread it around?

Paul trudged upstairs, his every step shaking the house right down to the foundation.

The phone rang. “Hello?” I said.

“It’s all set up,” Trixie said. “We’ve got a sit-down with Martin Benson to talk some sense into him. Tomorrow. One o’clock.”

TRIXIE TOLD ME THE LOCATION -Pluto’s, an Oakwood diner that featured neither delisted planets nor Disney characters in its décor-before I could voice my objections. By the time I was able to get the words “Trixie, there’s no way” out of my mouth, she’d hung up. I called back but she didn’t answer, so I left a message: “Trixie, I can’t meet you and this Benson guy. Maybe if you gave me some idea why this has freaked you out so, I could help you with some sort of alternative, but I can’t talk a fellow reporter out of-Oh fuck, just call me back.”

Paul had come back downstairs and was in the kitchen, looking in the fridge for something to snack on. “I heard you saying to Mom the other day that we swear too much. Like, look in the mirror, Dad.” He found a processed-cheese slice, peeled the cellophane wrapper off, folded it in half, downed it in two bites, walked out.

Trixie did not call back. Not during dinner, not that entire evening. I left two more messages asking her to call.

So I had to decide whether she’d gone out and wasn’t there to take my calls, or was ignoring me. She likely had caller ID, so I placed one call using Paul’s cell phone, which he’d left on the table by the front door, and still she didn’t answer, which convinced me that she wasn’t home. I only hoped Paul didn’t hit Redial and find himself connected with a dominatrix.

After dinner, while we were clearing the table, Sarah said, “So what, exactly, did Trixie want today? You said something at work about journalistic ethics?”

I shrugged, like it was no big deal, doing my best to cover the fact that Trixie’s actions were very much on my mind. “Oh, there’s some reporter, for the Suburban, wants to do a story on her, and she was asking my advice.”

“What kind of story? About what she does for a living?”

“I guess. Kink in the burbs, that kind of thing.”

“So what was she asking you? Whether to do it or not?”

“Yeah, sort of. I think she’s a bit uncomfortable with it.”

Sarah snorted. “Well, considering that what she does is, to the best of my knowledge, against the law, I can see that.”

“Anyway,” I said, wanting to move on, “it’s her decision. Whatever she wants to do, doesn’t matter to me.”

Sarah gave me a look. “She’s not dragging you into some sort of trouble, is she?”

“Trouble? Are you kidding? Do I look like someone who needs any more trouble? Haven’t I had enough trouble lately?”

“You haven’t forgotten your promise, have you?” Sarah said.

“Promise?”

“The one you made? Just a few days ago? When you got back from your dad’s place? That you weren’t going to get into any of these ridiculous messes again? Where you end up, Jesus Christ almighty, where you end up nearly getting yourself killed?”

I finished drying off a dish and threw the dish towel over my shoulder and turned and held Sarah by the shoulders. “The last thing in the world I want to do is get into any more situations where I, or anyone in this family, is put at risk. If anyone understands how unsuited I am to that sort of thing, to taking on the frickin’ forces of evil, believe me, it’s me.”

Sarah eyed me warily before slipping her arms around me. She rested her head on my chest. “Okay,” she said. Then, more softly, “Okay.”

I tried Trixie again in the morning, from my desk at the Metropolitan. She picked up.

“I tried to get you last night,” I said. “You weren’t answering.”

“I was out. And besides, if I can’t risk clients coming to the house, what’s the point of answering the phone? Why? Everything okay?”

“I can’t make it today. I can’t meet with you and Martin Benson.”

“But Zack, it’s already set up. How’s it going to look if you’re a no-show? Isn’t that going to make him even more suspicious?”

“You’ve told him I’m coming? That I, personally, am going to be there?”

“I sort of hinted that there might be a surprise guest,” Trixie said. I didn’t say anything for a moment, so Trixie continued, “Zack, I know I’m putting you in a bit of a bind here, no pun intended, but this is really important to me. Remember that night you came to me, with that ledger in hand, asking me to figure it out while those nutcases were hunting you down?”

“I remember,” I said.

“So I’m calling in a favor. Just talk to the guy. Look, Zack, there’s more at stake here than you realize.”

“I wish you’d tell me.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line. “I wish I could. Maybe, sometime, I can. But for now, I’m asking you to take this on faith.”

I swallowed. Shit. “I’ll be there,” I said, and hung up.

“You’ll be where?”

I looked over my shoulder. Sarah. “What?” I said.

“You got something on the go? Because I was just going to give you something.” She was standing there with a piece of paper in her hand.

“Sure, what is it?”

“But if you’ve got another story, I can hand this off to someone else.”

“No, no, let me have it.”

“Okay, well, it’s just some city hall budget thing. The bureau’s a bit short-staffed this week, so we’re helping out. It’s about the proposed Windsor Street bridge project over Mackenzie Creek. The way it is now, you have to go all the way down to Broad, or up to Milner, and the neighborhood has been asking for a bridge for years and every year when they prepare the budget the money gets put in but at the last minute gets taken out.”

“Yeah sure, I can do that.” I took the sheet from her that had some contact numbers on it and an earlier story someone at the city hall bureau had done.

“What’s the other thing you got?” Sarah asked.

“Oh, just someone calling about a Star Trek convention. There’s going to be one here, next spring, they wanted to send me some stuff on it, because of my books. That guy, the one who played Picard’s nemesis, Q? That guy? I think he’s coming, they want to know if we’re going to want to interview him.”

“Okay,” Sarah said. “You just better check with Entertainment. They find out you’re interviewing some TV star, they’re going to have a shit fit.” She glanced up at one of the many wall clocks, all set at different times depending on the world locale they were supposed to represent. It was midafternoon in London. It would be nice to be there, hanging out in some pub, right about now. “I’ve got to go to the morning meeting. You know how Magnuson is when you show up late at these things.”

“How’s the foreign editor thing going?”

“Interview’s in a couple of days,” Sarah said. “Tonight you can drill me on the difference between Shiites and Sunnis. I don’t think I understand it any better than Bush does.”

“Sure,” I said, forcing a smile. I wasn’t a particularly good liar, and I was afraid she wouldn’t buy the Star Trek thing. But it helped that she had a lot on her mind.

I could make some calls on the bridge story, get the interviews done, I figured, before heading out to Oakwood.

A couple of hours later, I slipped out of the office, got in our Virtue, a hybrid car that I’d bought in a police auction a couple of years ago, and did the twenty-minute drive out of downtown to the suburbs of Oakwood. I headed south off the highway, toward the lake, and found a parking spot along the main street, just down from Pluto’s.