“No no, you see, that happened after the other thing. Look, we saved some food from there, so that you could test it. We put it in our fridge as soon as we got back home and-”

“I tell you what. I’m heading out this morning, and I’ll drop in, see how things are at Burger Crisp and I’ll get back to you.”

“Fine,” I said, and gave him my number. “Could you call me this afternoon and let me know what you find out?”

“I’ll get back to you,” Sandler said, in what I thought was a pretty noncommittal way, and hung up.

That’s when I realized Frieda was standing behind me.

“How’s it going?” she asked. “With the feature?”

I sighed. “It’s coming along. Look, I’ve had a few things going on I just needed to deal with, but don’t worry, you’ll get your story.”

“Because the thing is,” Frieda said, almost wincing, like it was hurting her to tell me this, “they want, well, I think Mr. Magnuson wants me to do a performance review on you. To see how you’re doing here.”

“A performance review. Frieda, it’s my second day on the job. How on earth can you be expected to assess my work for a performance review? I haven’t turned in a single story to you yet.”

“Well, that’s certainly true. But if Mr. Magnuson wants me to do it, I’m not going to tell him no. But I don’t want you to feel under any pressure. This would be a chance not only for me to tell you how you’re doing, but a chance to tell me how you feel things are going, whether you have any issues you want to raise, any goals, that kind of thing.”

“My issue would be that this paper is totally fucking me over at the moment, Frieda,” I said. She blinked. I continued, “I’ve gotten some great stories for this paper, but Magnuson feels that because they sort of fell into my lap, or more accurately, because I stumbled into some deep shit a couple of times, I don’t really deserve any credit. And then some dipshit reporter from a two-bit paper in the burbs figures he can give his career a shot by sabotaging mine-may he get trapped in a Wal-Mart cave-in, the son of a bitch-and now I’m sent to the exclamation point section, working with you, no offense, because this is the first newspaper department I’ve worked in where you get cookies in the afternoon, but this is not really where I want to be, so when you do your performance review, in the part where it talks about attitude, you could put down that mine could be categorized as,” and I thought a moment, “miffed.” I smiled. “Yes, fucking miffed.”

Frieda’s mouth was half open. Finally, it occurred to her to close it, and she said, “It’s true. You really are an asshole.”

I tried to think of something to say, but Frieda’s comeback seemed so out of character that I was struck dumb. We seemed engaged in a staring contest when, thankfully, my phone rang.

“I better get this,” I said. Frieda walked off and I grabbed the receiver. “Walker,” I said.

“It’s me,” Trixie said. “I called to apologize.”

“Yeah, well,” I said.

“I haven’t been totally honest with you.”

“I kind of figured that.”

“I’m not going to ask anything else of you. I was wrong to put you in an awkward position. I took advantage of our friendship.”

I said nothing.

“This has been a tough time for me. I just hope no one saw that picture in the paper.” She paused. “No one that matters. But I think he’s still snooping around. Benson, that is.”

“I remember,” I said.

“I’m calling from my cell. I’ve been out of town the last day, I’m getting back to Oakwood early this afternoon. I’d like to tell you what’s going on.”

“Go ahead.”

“Not on the phone. Can you come out to the house? At one-thirty?”

I paused. “Here’s the thing, Trixie. Things are not very good right now with Sarah. Personally, and professionally. My dustup with Martin Benson got me moved out of the newsroom and cost Sarah a promotion. You follow that trail back and it leads to you.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t blame you for being pissed.”

“Look, I value our friendship too, but it’s kind of interfering with my marriage these days. Sometimes I think Sarah has the idea that we’ve got something going on.”

Although it might have been slightly humiliating had Trixie laughed then, it also would have been comforting. Instead, she was silent.

“You still there?” I said.

“This’ll be the last time,” Trixie said. “I want to tell you everything. I think you should know everything. I feel like,” she seemed to be catching her breath, “I feel like I have to tell somebody. And you’re one of the few people I actually trust.”

I sighed, closed my eyes. I felt, suddenly, very tired. There seemed to be so much going on. My troubles with Sarah. My career in a shambles. Losing Paul his job. And now Trixie wanted to unburden herself to me. I didn’t know whether I had the energy.

“Zack?”

“Yeah,” I said. “What time did you say, one-thirty?”

“That’s perfect,” she said. “I should be back home by then.”

I arrived around 1:25 p.m. Trixie’s nondescript two-story brick house was two doors down from our old place, the one Sarah and I and the kids had lived in during our suburban interlude. I wondered who lived there now, and how much they knew about what had happened in that house.

There was no car in Trixie’s driveway, no sign of her GF300 on the street. Perhaps I had beat her home from wherever she happened to be coming from. I parked in the drive, rang the bell, got no answer, and got back into my car.

Trixie pulled into the drive ten minutes later.

“Sorry,” she said, getting out of her car. “There was a truck rollover on the expressway.”

“No problem,” I said. “I only got here a couple minutes ago.”

She was in jeans and a silk blouse, and her high heels clicked on the pavement and flagstone as she approached the front door, keys out. She put the key in the deadbolt lock, turned it, and cocked her head to one side.

“That’s funny,” she said. “It didn’t feel like the bolt went back.”

“That happens with me sometimes,” I said. “You can’t tell whether you unlocked it or whether it was already unlocked.”

She opened the door, somewhat warily, and stepped inside. I followed. Trixie had a kind of Crate & Barrel look going on throughout the first floor, and the tasteful decorations gave no hint of the “early dungeon” décor of the basement. She headed straight for the kitchen, all white cupboards and aluminum trim with skylights filling the room with light. She tossed her purse onto the countertop, where there was a copy of the Suburban. She handed it to me.

“Check it out,” she said.

It was a pretty good picture of her. Striding from her car to a coffee shop. The wind blowing her hair back so you could get a good look at her face. And under the pic, Lesley Carroll’s photo credit.

“Shit,” I said, putting down the paper. I didn’t bother to read Martin Benson’s accompanying story, which speculated about just what sort of activities this woman engaged in in the fine, morally upright town of Oakwood.

“I’ll start some coffee,” she said. She opened the freezer, hunted around. “Can you do me a favor? I keep my tins of coffee in the freezer, keeps it fresher longer, but there’s none in here. There’s probably some in the fridge downstairs, in the freezer compartment? You want to grab that while I get some cups out?”

“The basement?” I said.

Trixie flashed a smile at me. “You’re a big boy. You go past the rack, around the corner, there’s the second fridge. I’ve got decaf and regular, take your pick.”

“The rack?”

Now she sighed, hands on hips, looking at me like I was six. “Fine,” she said. “I’ll go.”

“No,” I said, already turning for the door to the basement. “I can do this.”

I flicked on the light at the top of the broad-loomed stairs and descended into Trixie’s pleasure palace-or torture chamber. Pleasure and torture seemed so closely linked in Trixie’s world, it was difficult to know what terminology to use.