'He's passed every phase of his training perfectly. It's not his fault he's got a pretty face. That's what got us all here, isn't it?'

Norton nodded, acknowledging this reference to Rebecca. 'How does he react to pressure?'

'The most pressure we've put him through was today, your questions about Rebecca.'

'Based on that, I'd say he's liable to become pissed off.'

'I think he can keep his head.'

'Does he sprint at the end of his runs?'

'Always. Why?'

'He looks like a quick-comer to me. He might need endurance, Joshua. If he saves enough mustard for a sprint after seven miles, all the better. Has he shown any interest in Sharon?'

'A little. Not much. I could be wrong, though.'

'Hmm. I'd sure like to have more pull with him than just you.'

'Rebecca's the pull, Norton. Not me, or Sharon, or anyone else. He's single-minded.'

'No use trying to change that, I suppose.'

'Let's use it while it's there.'

Norton and Weinstein stood and shook hands. Monica took a chair at the table.

'Things in Washington are okay,' said Norton 'Frazee is still too interested in Wayfarer, but I don't know how to correct that. And the more I try to shade him away, the more control he wants. He's like a kid with toys. I hate bureaucrats. Of course he's worried sick about the Hate Crimes money we got from the White House-worried about it going away. He's always whining about no money. So he's determined to keep this operation small and deniable. No show of force from us. No Ruby Ridge. No Waco.'

'We've all got our crosses to bear,' said Monica. 'You're Joshua's, and Frazee is yours.'

'Whose are you?'

'My husband's, I hope.'

Weinstein remained standing when Norton sat back down. Joshua's stomach was trembling a little, and he felt uncertain in his knees. 'Well?' he asked.

'Nice work,' said Norton. 'Move ahead.'

CHAPTER 9

They dropped John in front of a little house on Sun Valley Drive a small street off of Laguna Canyon Road, then headed for town to pick up some groceries for their celebration.

He stood there for a while, noting the fresh asphalt under his feet, the ivy choking the Chinese elm in his front yard, the wooden fence he'd built to contain the dogs, the old brick chimney and the forlorn face of the house he had once happily called home. Mrs. Gorman from across the street waved at him uncertainly, focusing on him with her weak eyes as if he were someone returned from the dead. He nodded, walked down the driveway and let himself in through the squeaking gate for the first time in almost five months.

The yard was overgrown, in shambles. Luckily, it was hidden from the neighbors by the ivy-covered fence. The lawn furniture seemed to have sunk into an abyss of weeds. The vegetable garden was profuse with zucchini, and pocked by gopher mounds. A ground squirrel, squash in mouth, hurried away toward the woodpile by the side of the house. The needles of a bristlecone pine lay deep beneath the tree, lashed loosely together by a silk skein of spiderwebs and funnels that shone dustily in the afternoon sun.

John sees Rebecca there, under that tree, sitting in a bead chair with a book open on her lap and her long pale legs stretched into a patch of late December sun.

'Wine?' he asks.

'You,' she answers.

John worked the key in a lock gone stubborn with disuse. Finally it turned. Then the familiar clunk of the heavy door sucking inward, and the ambience-aged by absence but intact- reaching out to greet him as he stepped inside. Dust. Heavy air. The smell of loss. Shapes of things still firm in their places, matching perfectly the shapes and places in his memory. Sunlight diffused through the dirt of windowpanes. A potent silence. Home.

'Oh,' he muttered.

He gathered up the sheets he'd placed over the couch and chairs, the television and stereo, the coffee table and hearth. The covers were heavy with dust, and so were the things beneath them. John had not known until now that motes were smaller than the weave of cotton. He took the sheets outside and tossed them into the weeds.

He walked back inside, leaving the door open, then went into the kitchen. He opened the blinds and windows. The refrigerator still hummed quietly and John was pleased that he had kept the utilities on. Five months, he thought. In the dining alcove off the kitchen he removed the sheets from the table and chairs, then slid open the glass door that faced the canyon drainage creek and dropped them to the patio. The bricks were buried by the bright orange bracts of an enormous bougainvillea growing beside the house. When the sheets hit, some of the bracts lifted up, then floated down in alternating sideways dips, like tiny magic carpets. And he sees her again on that patio, wrapped in a heavy blue robe he has bought for her visits here, with the rain pouring off the roof shingles on three sides of her, and she smiles at him over a cup of coffee as the steam issues up past her eyes and John thinks, yes, those are the eyes I've waited a lifetime to know.

He straightened the downstairs bathroom a little. The toilet bowl was stained, so he brushed it out with some liquid bleach, flushing twice. For Sharon, he thought.

Then he approached the bedroom. He didn't walk right in, but rather hesitated at the threshold and, leaning over it like an inquiring butler, scanned the room for its familiarities, its memories and heartaches. They were dense in there, too packed and coiled and alive for John Menden to confront just now. He kept seeing Rebecca by the planter in the rain.

'Oh,' he muttered again. 'Oh.'

He sat alone on the upstairs deck and looked over the canyon. Vultures and redtail hawks cruised in the updrafts. From isolated stands of scrub oak, heat waves shimmered up again: the dry hills.

He thought about when he had hiked and camped in this arroyos as a boy, when he had found shards of Gabrieleno pottery, arrowheads and a revolver made in 1844. He still clear! y remembered the mountain lion he had seen in 1960. He recalled with minor pride the tiny night snake he had captured, which local biologists assured him was not found in the region. He wondered if his boxes of 35mm slides down in the garage were still good.

John stared off toward the hills, but in his mind's eye he saw only Rebecca. It was important to be here now, he thought, to touch the same places she had touched, to breathe the air she had once shared.

Just before sunset John uncovered the barbecue, arranged it out by the railing overlooking the street, and lit the charcoal.

Joshua came up with his second gin and tonic, watching closely as John started up the fire. 'Want that bottle of tequila now?' he asked.

'Later,' said John.

'You almost sunk us with that crack to Evan about hating Wayfarer's guts.'

'It worked out okay, Joshua. At least they were my word not something you put in my mouth.'

'True. My words would have been about the same.'

Joshua pulled deeply on his drink.

Downstairs, Sharon boiled water for rice and made a salad. John could hear her knife strokes on the cutting board. He had always liked the sounds of a woman in his house, and he remembered the ones he had been with in his thirty-four years. It was odd, he thought, that you could love someone but not be able imagine yourself with her for very long. The harder you look ahead, the more your vision blurs.

But when he had met Rebecca Harris, engaged though she was, he easily foresaw her presence in his life. She had simply arrived. Up to that point, John had not believed that destiny was anything more than what you decided to do, but the connection he felt to Rebecca made him reconsider. Rebecca wasn't so much a discovery as a recognition.

He had puzzled over this for many nights, wondering if the circumstances of a man's life could conspire to

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