no lover but his hand, the limited pleasure of masturbation.
He was alone.
Forever.
For a while, he stood in front of the mirror, crying, his broad shoulders bent under the terrible weight of abject despair. But slowly his unbearable grief and self-pity gave way to rising anger. She had done this to him. Katherine. The bitch. She had killed half of him, had left him feeling incomplete and wretchedly empty, hollow. The selfish, hateful, vicious bitch! As his fury mounted, he was possessed by an urge to break things. Naked, he stormed through the bungalow--living room and kitchen and bathroom--smashing furniture, ripping upholstery, breaking dishes, cursing his mother, cursing his demon father, cursing a world that he sometimes couldn't understand at all.
***
In Joshua Rhinehart's kitchen, Hilary scrubbed three large baking potatoes and lined them up on the counter, so that they were ready to be popped into the microwave oven as soon as the thick steaks were approaching perfection on the broiler. The menial labor was relaxing. She watched her hands as she worked, and she thought about little more than the food that had to be prepared, and her worries receded to the back of her mind.
Tony was making the salad. He stood at the sink beside her, his shirt sleeves rolled up, washing and chopping fresh vegetables.
While they prepared dinner, Joshua called the sheriff from the kitchen phone. He told Laurenski about the withdrawal of funds from Frye's accounts in San Francisco and about the look-alike who was down in Los Angeles somewhere, searching for Hilary. He also passed along the mass murder theory that he and Tony and Hilary had arrived at in his office a short while ago. There was really not much that Laurenski could do, for (so far as they knew) no crimes had been committed in his jurisdiction. But Frye was most likely guilty of local crimes of which they were, for the moment, unaware. And it was even more likely that crimes might yet be committed in the county before the mystery of the look-alike was solved. Because of that, and because Laurenski's reputation had been stained slightly when he had vouched for Frye to the Los Angeles Police Department last Wednesday night, Joshua thought (and Hilary agreed) that the sheriff was entitled to know everything that they knew. Even though Hilary could hear only one end of the telephone conversation, she could tell that Peter Laurenski was fascinated, and she knew, from Joshua's responses, that the sheriff twice suggested that they exhume the body in Frye's grave to determine whether or not it actually was Bruno Frye. Joshua preferred to wait until Dr. Rudge and Rita Yancy had been heard from, but he assured Laurenski that an exhumation would take place if Rudge and Yancy were unable to answer all of the questions he intended to ask.
When he finished talking with the sheriff, Joshua checked on Tony's salad, debated with himself about whether the lettuce was sufficiently crisp, fretted about whether the radishes were too hot or possibly not hot enough, examined the sizzling steaks as if looking for flaws in three diamonds, told Hilary to put the potatoes in the microwave oven, quickly chopped some fresh chives to go with the sour cream, and opened two bottles of California Cabernet Sauvignon, a very dry red wine from the Robert Mondavi winery just down the road. He was rather a fussbudget in the kitchen; his worrying and nitpicking amused Hilary.
She was surprised at how quickly she had developed a liking for the attorney. She seldom felt so comfortable with a person she had known only a couple of hours. But his fatherly appearance, his gruff honesty, his wit, his intelligence, and his curiously off-handed courtliness made her feel welcome and safe in his company.
They ate in the dining room, a cozy, rustic chamber with three white plaster walls, one used-brick wall, a pegged-oak floor, and an open-beam ceiling. Now and then, squalls of big raindrops burst against the charming leaded windows.
As they sat down to the meal, Joshua said, 'One rule. No one talks about Bruno Frye until we've put away the last bite of our steak, the last swallow of this excellent wine, the last mouthful of coffee, and the very last sip of brandy.'
'Agreed,' Hilary said.
'Definitely,' Tony said. 'I think my mind overloaded on the subject quite some time ago. There are other things in the world worth talking about.'
'Yes,' Joshua said. 'But unfortunately, many of them are just as thoroughly depressing as Frye's story. War and terrorism and inflation and the return of the Luddites and know-nothing politicians and--'
'--art and music and movies and the latest developments in medicine and the coming technological revolution that will vastly improve our lives in spite of the new Luddites,' Hilary added.
Joshua squinted across the table at her. 'Is your name Hilary or Pollyanna?'
'And is yours Joshua or Cassandra?' she asked.
'Cassandra was correct when she made her prophecies of doom and destruction,' Joshua said, 'but time after time everyone refused to believe her.'
'If no one believes you,' Hilary said, 'then what good is it to be right?'
'Oh, I've given up trying to convince other people that the government is the only enemy and that Big Brother will get us all. I've stopped trying to convince them of a hundred other things that seem to be obvious truths to me but which they don't get at all. Too many of them are fools who'll never understand. But it gives me enormous satisfaction just to know I'm right and to see the ever-increasing proof of it in the daily papers. I know. And that's enough.'
'Ah,' Hilary said. 'In other words, you don't care if the world falls apart beneath us, just so you can have the selfish pleasure of saying, 'I told you so.''
'Ouch,' Joshua said.
Tony laughed. 'Beware of her, Joshua. Remember, she makes her living being clever with words.'
For three-quarters of an hour, they spoke of many things, but then, somehow, in spite of their pledge, they found themselves talking about Bruno Frye once more, long before they were finished with the wine or ready for coffee and brandy.
At one point, Hilary said, 'What could Katherine have done to him to make him fear her and hate her as much as he apparently does?'
'That's the same question I asked Latham Hawthorne,' Joshua said.
'What'd he say?'
