“Now show me your hands!”

Two empty hands thrust out the window. Male hands. A white, long-sleeved dress shirt, crisply laundered, with gold cuff links.

“Driver, open the door from the outside and slowly step out of the vehicle!”

The driver exited as ordered.

Khakis, Ray-Bans, and a yellow ball cap with the image of a bull on it — the Lamborghini logo. I didn’t recognize him until he opened his big, self-important mouth.

“I’m a lawyer! I know my rights! And that son of a bitch,” he said, pointing angrily toward me, “has been trying to fuck my fiancée for months!”

His fiancée. Charise MacInerny. My former student. From an innocent kiss goodbye at the airport the day she’d decided to quit flying lessons, her lawyer boyfriend, Louis, had somehow gotten it into his insanely jealous head that I’d been jonesing for his lady. He’d chased me repeatedly in his tricked-out Honda — among the lesser members of his vast automobile fleet — torched Mrs. Schmulowitz’s garage, and forced my cat to live in substandard housing down by the tracks. Felons in Texas get the needle for less.

The cops ordered him out felony-style, face-down on the pavement, and handcuffed him with his wrists pulled behind his back. He screamed police brutality. They were fucking with the wrong man, he warned them; he’d see all their asses in court.

I walked over.

“There’s never been anything between Charise and me,” I said as two CHP officers yanked him to his feet.

“You’re a liar!” Louis seethed. “You took her to Paris!”

“I what?”

“You wrote it in that pilot book you gave her—‘We’ll always have Paris!’”

I started laughing.

“What, you think this is funny? Wait’ll I get outta jail. I’m suing your ass, too, you miserable piece of shit!”

“Louie,” I said in my best Bogie imitation which, truth be told, pretty much sucks, “this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

I turned without answering and strode back to my truck.

The police dragged him kicking and screaming to a patrol car. They hog-tied his ankles when he continued to resist, and tossed him in like a bale of cotton. One of the cops told me I could give my statement at police headquarters at my convenience and said I was free to go.

I debated going home. I drove to the airport instead.

The Duck was waiting for me on the tarmac like a reliable old friend. We flew until day turned to dusk and dusk to dark.

The air was glass.