Caitlin was sitting opposite Sophie and me. I still couldn’t get over how neat and ordered she looked. Nothing frazzled or frizzy, not one hair out of place. I know people deal with their problems in different ways, but how could she go days missing her partner, terrified every minute that he might be seriously hurt or dead, yet still look as if she’d just come from the hairdresser’s?

“Wyatt, you know my husband pretty well—”

“No, he doesn’t,” Sophie interrupted. “They’ve met only a few times. You were there when they had that stupid fight. Jesse doesn’t like Wyatt because he’s gay.”

Caitlin’s eyes widened as she snatched a quick embarrassed look at me to see how I responded to that. Sophie waved it away impatiently. “Look, there’s no time for decorum now. My brother Jesse is a decent man. Too much of the time he’s a stiff tightass who refuses to accept that he could be wrong about things, but that’s his failing. We all have ours. What you’re going to hear now you have to put in that context. What I mean is, here’s a guy—Wyatt—who is the original skeptic. He believes a deal is real only when the contract is put in front of him to sign. He doesn’t like French restaurants because he can’t understand the menu. You get the drift. Seeing is believing. Go ahead, Cait.”

Her friend looked at me and began again hesitantly. “About a week ago, Jesse got up one morning and went into the bathroom—to wash up and brush his teeth, I thought. He’s almost always up before me and starts making breakfast for the two of us. This time—I don’t know how long it was, but I’d guess half an hour later—I got up and went in there. He was sitting on the toilet with his head in his hands, not moving. I thought he was sick to his stomach and had been throwing up, but then I saw that the seat cover was down. I went over to ask if he was all right but the moment I touched him, he pulled back as if he’d been stabbed. And his eyes were as wild as a horse’s in a fire. The only other time I’d seen him that way in our whole marriage was once when we were in a bad car accident. Jesse’s the ultimate Mr. Dependable; nothing rattles him. But he was badly rattled that morning.

“When I asked what was wrong, he wouldn’t say. I asked all the wifely questions, but that did no good; he wasn’t going to tell me anything. Maybe, I thought, he was too embarrassed to talk about it. Fine, leave him alone; let him handle it. I went out to the kitchen.

“Jesse is a creature of habit and always eats breakfast. One of his rules: always go out with a full stomach. I expected he’d at least have something to eat, a banana or a glass of milk to calm his stomach. But he didn’t, and the funny thing is, that worried me more than anything. I didn’t even hear when he left the house. A few hours later I did call him at his office and he sounded okay. And that night when he came home he seemed fine, but he still wouldn’t talk about what had gone on that morning. You know how it is—life is full of weird things, and you try to let them slip by without a fuss if possible. Because if you take note or complain, they stick around. So I pushed this thing aside and blamed it on a full moon or whatever. Fine.

“Until the next night, when I woke after hearing him in the bathroom crying out, ‘I don’t want this! I don’t want it!’ Again and again. It was the middle of the night, two or three, that time when things scare you most and not just because you’re coming up out of sleep. I went in and saw him standing in front of the mirror, staring at himself. Again, when I asked what was going on he wouldn’t tell me. He was shocked that I’d come in while he was doing whatever he was doing, and said only he’d been having nightmares. I knew it wasn’t the whole truth, but what could I do? He told me to go back to bed; he’d be in soon. I wanted to stay with him, but he wouldn’t allow it. God, it was horrible and I felt so helpless…

“I waited for him in bed and he came soon enough. What was strange, though, was that when he got there, he grabbed me roughly and made love to me as if we were two high school kids in the back seat of a car. All kinds of fumbling, flipping around, and rough, much too hard. When he… when he came, he cried out again, ‘I don’t want this!’ but before I got up the nerve to ask what, he fell asleep. Absolutely exhausted. Jesse only snores when he’s totally pooped, and that night he sounded like a truck with no muffler.

“Next morning he was business as usual, although I kept waiting for him to tell me what the hell was going on. At least tell me something! But nope. He left for work and that was the day he disappeared. Walked out of the house, went straight to the airport, and flew away.”

“But now he’s back?”

“Yes, he came this morning. I was out shopping, and when I got back, there he was, sitting in the living room in his yellow bathrobe, drinking coffee.”

“What did he say?”

“Not a thing. And I was so relieved that I didn’t press him about where he’d been. He was very calm and didn’t say much except that he was okay and glad to be home.”

“But you did ask again?”

“Yes, finally. And then he said he’d been to London and Venice.”

“Did he tell you why?”

Sophie interrupted again. “First tell him about the bandage.”

“Okay. Well, the sleeves on his robe are long, but once when he made a gesture I saw all the way up the left one. There was a flash of a big bright white something. I asked whether it was a bandage, and he said he’d done something to his arm while he was away. I didn’t ask about it because there were too many other questions.”

I looked at Sophie. “What does it mean, this bandage?”

“You’ll hear in a minute.”

The waiter came by and asked if Caitlin wanted anything. She spoke quickly in German and he went away.

“What was I talking about?”

“The bandage.”

“Right. The whole scene was loony, but you regain perspective fast. Okay, husband, so now you’re back. It’s time to answer my questions p.d.q. What have you been doing? Why did you go to London? Venice?

“Then I got really wound up and started ranting and raving… but it was relief and fury and angst and all that stuff coming out at once. He didn’t try to say anything till I was finished blowing my top. Why hadn’t he called and at least told me where he was? Didn’t he stop even once to think how worried I’d be? Oh, yeah, my gun was full of bullets.

“After a while, I ran out of them and we sat there, silent, looking at each other. Then he asked if I had ever had a real enemy, someone I wanted either dead or destroyed. Huh? What? The question stopped me cold. What was he talking about? I wanted to know about his disappearance; what did enemies have to do with it? When I asked what he meant, he said, “Do you remember Ian McGann in Sardinia?” Caitlin turned to Sophie and asked if I had read the letter. Sophie nodded.

“What letter?” I definitely was not tuned to their channel.

“The letter Jesse wrote me about their trip to Sardinia. Remember I showed it to you? About the man there who dreamed he talked to Death and asked Him questions?”

The two women watched me expectantly, hoping I’d make the essential connection without having to be told. A quiet fell over the three of us that lasted while I searched their faces for further hints. It was as if we were playing charades and they’d given a brilliant final clue.

“London. Venice. A bandage. The cut has something to do with all this?”

They nodded.

“McGann. His girlfriend’s name was strange. She was Dutch.”

“Miep.”

My eyelids got it before my brain did. I felt them rising and for a few seconds didn’t know why. Then my tongue knew it before my brain because it started saying “Mc-Gann!” a moment before all the pieces snapped together like train cars connecting. KA-CHUNK! MC-GANN!

“Jesse went to London to find McGann!”