A substantive woman but she takes a long time getting herself together.

The kiss on my cheek was quick and cool. She slid into the booth, just close enough to make conversation feasible but too distant for easy touching. Before we could talk the waiter had planted himself in front of us. Eduardo, the feisty one. Eighty-year-old Argentinian immigrant who claimed he could cook seafood better than the chef.

He bowed before Allison. “Evening, Dr. Gwynn. The usual?”

“No, thanks,” she said. “It’s a little chilly outside, so I think I’ll have an Irish coffee. Make it decaf, Eduardo, or I’ll be calling you up at three a.m. to play cards.”

His smile said that wasn’t a dreaded outcome. “Very good, Doctor. Another Chivas, sir?”

“Please.”

He marched off. I said, “Been coming here a lot?”

“No. Why?”

“He used your name.”

“I guess I’m here every three weeks or so.”

Alone or with another guy?

She said, “The T-bone made a lasting impression on me.”

Eduardo returned with drinks and menus. Extra whipped cream for Allison’s Irish coffee. Bowing again, he left.

We touched glasses and drank. Allison licked foam from her upper lip. Her face was smooth and white as fresh cream. She’s thirty-nine but when she eases up on the jewelry, she can pass for ten years younger.

She pushed her drink away. “How’s Robin?”

I worked at a casual shrug. “I guess she’s okay.”

“Haven’t seen her much?”

“Not much.”

“Sleeping with her?”

I put my scotch down.

She said, “That means yes.”

When in doubt, revert to shrink tactics. I kept quiet.

“Sorry, that was totally inappropriate.” She smoothed hair away from her face. “I knew it and felt like asking, anyway.”

Bending over her coffee, she inhaled steam. “You’re entitled to sleep with anyone you want, I just yearned to be bitchy. Sometimes I wouldn’t mind sleeping with you myself.”

“Sometimes is better than never.”

“On the face of it, why shouldn’t we?” she said. “Two healthy, libidinous people. We were great together.” Faint smile. “Except when we weren’t…not very profound, is it?”

We drank in silence. The second Chivas brought on a nice warm buzz. Maybe that’s why I said, “So what the hell happened?”

“You tell me.”

“I’m asking you.”

“And I’m asking you back.”

I shook my head.

She drank, laughed. “Not that anything’s funny.”

Eduardo came over to take the food order, saw the looks on our faces, and turned heel.

Allison said, “Maybe nothing went wrong, it was just evolution.”

“Devolution.”

“Alex, when we started out, there was this rush of feeling every time I saw you. All I had to do was hear your voice and this sympathetic nervous system thing kicked in- this incredible flood of emotion. Sometimes when the doorbell rang and I knew it was you there’d be this heat- like a hot flash. I started to worry I was going through early menopause.” She looked into her Irish coffee. “Sometimes I’d get sopping wet. That was something.”

I touched her hand. Cool.

She said, “Maybe we just had some kind of hormonal thing going on and it faded. Maybe every damn thing boils down to hormones and we’re in the wrong damn field.”

She turned away. Grabbed for her purse, fumbled for a tissue, and poked at her eyes. “One drink and my filter goes bye-bye.”

Her mouth set in a way that thinned her lips. “I’ll probably regret saying this but what really bothered me when I felt things diminishing was that it wasn’t that way with Grant.”

Her dead husband. Wharton grad, rich kid, successful financial type. He’d succumbed young to a freakishly rare cancer. Even when Allison loved me she’d talked about him adoringly.

“You had something great with him,” I said.

“You weren’t a replacement, Alex. I swear.”

“Worse things to be.”

“Don’t be noble,” she said. “It makes me feel worse.”

I said nothing.

She said, “I just lied big time. It did fade with Grant. After I buried him he stopped being physical to me and turned into a…a…wraith. I felt- still feel guilty about that.”

I groped for a reply. Every option sounded like shrinky cant. Coming here had been a mistake.

Suddenly, Allison’s hip was touching mine and she was taking my face in her hands, kissing me hard. She retreated, ended up even farther down the booth.

We sat there.

“Alex, what I felt about you in the beginning was every bit as intense as with Grant. More intense on the physical level. Which also made me feel guilty. I started to think about us in a long-term sense. Wondering what it would be like. Then we had that problem on the Malley case and things just started to change. I know that alone couldn’t have done it, there must’ve been…oh, listen to me, I sound like every other talky broad…it’s confusing. The work stuff was part of what turned me on, and then all of a sudden it repulsed me.”

The Malley case was the eight-year-old child murder. One of Allison’s patients- a fragile young woman- had been drawn in. I’d deceived her. All in the name of truth, justice…

Robin had never liked hearing about the work stuff. Allison had chased gory details with a vengeance.

I said, “Things change.”

“They do. Dammit.” She looked away. “If I said your place or mine, would you feel manipulated?”

“Maybe for a nanosecond.”

“I’m not going to say it. Not tonight. I’m feeling really unattractive.”

“There’s a delusion for you.”

“Inside I’m unattractive,” she said. “I wouldn’t be good, believe me.”

I raised my glass. “To brutal honesty.”

“Sorry. Want to forget about dinner?”

“Dinner wasn’t a ploy to get you in the sack.”

“What was it?”

“I don’t know…maybe a ploy to get you in the sack.”

She smiled. I smiled.

Eduardo had positioned himself across the room, spying on us while pretending to be above it all.

I said, “I could eat.”

“I could, too.” She waved him over. “Dinner with a former lover. How civilized in that French-movie kind of way.”

Shifting closer, she lifted my left hand, traced the outline of my thumbnail. “Still here.”

“What is?”

“That split in the crescent- the little Pac-Man growing out of your nail. I always thought it was cute.”

My body part, I’d never noticed it.

She said, “It’s the same you.”

I spent the next day interviewing the three women who’d filed suit against Dr. Patrick Hauser. Individually, they came across vulnerable. As a group they were calmly credible.

Time for Hauser’s insurance company to settle and cut its losses.

The following morning, I got to work on my report, was still in the thinking phase when Milo called.

“How’s it going, big guy?”

“It’s going nowhere at warp speed. Still haven’t gotten into Michaela’s place, landlord doesn’t like leaving La Jolla. If he doesn’t get here soon, I’m popping the lock. I talked to the Reno detective who nabbed Reynold Peaty for peeping. The story was Peaty was in an alley behind an apartment building, drunk as a skunk, looking through the drapes of a rear unit bedroom. The objects of his affliction were three college girls. Some guy walking his dog saw Peaty wagging his weenie and yelled. Peaty ran, the guy gave chase, knocked Peaty to the ground, called the cops.”

“Brave citizen.”

“Defensive tackle on the U. Nevada football team,” he said, “Student neighborhood.”

“Ground-floor rear unit?” I said.

“Just like Michaela’s. The girls were a little younger than Michaela but you could make a case for victim similarity. What got Peaty off light was that these three had a history of being less than careful about the drapes. Also, the prosecutors never got word of Peaty’s burglary conviction years before. That was a daylight break-in, cash and ladies’ undies.”