counter and made her way down the row of partly open drawers to the floor. Then he reached up to retrieve the smaller of the two combatants from the top of the fridge. “It’s a kinkajou, actually,” he said, keeping his tone bland. “She doesn’t much like having her nap interrupted.” But his self-consciousness was gone, and he wondered how it was that a run-of-the-mill pet-shop owner happened to know the scientific name of such an obscure little animal.
“I’ve never seen one.” Ellie was extending a cautious hand toward the kinkajou, who was now occupying her favorite perch on McCall’s left shoulder with her long tail wrapped around his neck.
“She doesn’t take much to strangers,” he said, just as the kinkajou was perking up and leaning toward Ellie, nose quivering to beat the band.
“What’s her name?” Her voice had gone soft and sing-songy, with almost none of that rough little edge he was getting used to and, in fact, beginning to like. And he saw now that the fingers she was extending toward his passenger were holding a grape.
“Inky,” he answered, holding his breath. He wasn’t surprised about the grape, not really. After all, he’d learned from personal experience that this woman’s arsenal of weapons included bribery. He just wondered how she could have known that grapes were Ink’s all-time favorite treat.
Her eyes flicked to his face. They had that glow again, that warm golden shimmer that made him feel a tickle of laughter under his own breastbone, and farther down, a nice little nugget of a different kind of pleasure altogether. “Not Kinky?”
He grimmaced. “Cute-but obvious, don’t you think? No-I started calling her Inky because she likes to annoy me while I’m painting. I paint in the evenings, mostly, which is her active time. She gets into the paint…you know, makes a mess of things.”
Ellie gave a delighted laugh as the kinkajou flicked out a hand and snatched the grape from her fingers, then retreated with it in triumph to her nest on top of the refrigerator. She turned back to her host, shivering and giddy with the particular thrill she always got from a close encounter with a wild creature. She was breathless, dusting her hands, ready to say something…she didn’t know what, maybe something about her pleasure and excitement at actually meeting a kinkajou. Then her eyes met McCall’s, and her hands went still and her breathing stopped, and every thought of kinkajous and conversation went right out of her head.
Those alarms were going off for real now-the crash cart was undoubtedly on its way.
“What?” she asked. McCall had said something, and she was utterly at a loss.
“Would you like to wash up?” A polite host’s question, but his voice sounded sharp, edgy.
“Oh-yes, thanks.” She was almost to the kitchen door in what felt like full and ignominious retreat before it occurred to her to ask, “Where is it? You do have a bathroom…inside?”
His skewed smile flashed briefly. “To me, hassle-free includes indoor plumbing. Go through the big room-there’s a door opposite this one, that’s my bedroom. Bathroom’s on your right.”
“Right,” said Ellie, breathing again. Breathing as if she’d just come up those stairs of his at a dead run. What
She finally left the kitchen on wobbly legs, and with a stomach full of butterflies such as she’d not felt in years- probably not since eighth grade, standing on the steps of the school gym waiting for Jimmy Rockingham to screw up enough courage to ask her to the Halloween dance.
She was halfway across the living room when she heard her host say-apparently to the kinkajou, “What’re
Laughter bubbled up inside her and she clamped a hand over her mouth to stifle it. The laughter felt good, but it didn’t do a thing to banish the butterflies.
She made her way across the big central living room-and
“Yes, Your Majesty,
Her butterflies and spaghetti legs were gradually fading, to be replaced once more by that Alice-in-Wonderland sense of bemusement. Since she’d arrived in this town, nothing seemed to be turning out the way she’d expected. She, who had always been so sensible and careful, had had her purse stolen, then recovered by a man who’d have made her hold on to her purse a little tighter if she’d seen him coming toward her down the street. She’d been accosted by thugs in a bar, then “rescued” by that same man, who incidentally was the very image of the kind of man women were warned to stay away from in bars.
Finally, and most incomprehensibly, she’d lost her partner, and acquired a new one-yes, that very same unsavory-seeming beach bum, in spite of the fact that he claimed to have no interest in helping anybody. Live and let live, wasn’t that his motto? He seemed a confirmed and unrepentant social dropout, with no concern for anyone or anything but numero uno-but he’d refused the money she’d offered him. He barely knew her, seemed not even to like her very much, but he’d agreed to help her out of an impossible dilemma. He behaved the way she’d imagined an antisocial dropout would behave-cranky and sarcastic and downright rude-but today in the cantina he’d put his body between her and an armed thug. He looked like a beach bum-sunburned, scruffy and unshaven, perpetually scowling-but seemed clean and smelled like nothing more unpleasant than paint and turpentine. And his mouth, when she’d kissed him, had felt warm and firm and had tasted, not at all unpleasantly, of tobacco.
Her stomach fluttered alarmingly, and she drew a quick hard breath as she pulled the French doors shut and latched them. Another surprise, she thought as she watched the raccoon disappear into the garden’s riotous foliage. In her experience it took a man with a gentle and generous soul to respect and appreciate wild creatures, much less form bonds of mutual trust with one.
And yet, this McCall didn’t seem at all a comfortable sort of man.
Who was he, really? Or rather, who had he been? Where had he come from, and what had brought him to this place, and this life?
Did he have a first name?
Noises were coming from the kitchen-cupboard doors banging, dishes clinking, water running, and a tuneless whistle that might have been annoying if it hadn’t reminded her so much of her brother, Eric. Eric, whom she seldom saw these days, and missed so much…
Like an unexpected rain shower, the sadness of that thought dampened her curiosity and scattered the last of the butterflies. Quickly, now, she found her way to the bathroom, trying hard not to notice the bedroom as she swept through-which was, of course, impossible. She’d been prepared for the dimness of drawn shades, the clutter of clothing and unmade bed, and so wasn’t really surprised, since everything else about McCall had been so unexpected, to find light and space instead, and the bed neatly made beneath its veil of mosquito netting.
The bathroom was spartan but clean. She made use of its facilities as quickly as possible, then paused on the way back through the bedroom to study a framed photo that was standing on top of a high dresser near the door. She’d noticed it on her first pass through the room, probably because it was the only photo of any kind she’d seen in the house-in contrast to her own apartment in Portland and her parents’ house near Sioux City, Iowa, where every available space was always crowded with photographs and family mementos.
This one was most likely a blowup of an old snapshot, black and white and slightly blurry, of a man and a woman-or boy and girl, actually; they looked very young, probably still in their teens. The couple were dressed in the style of the late 1950s. The girl wore a Lucille Ball hairdo, a white blouse with the collar turned up in back and a scarf tied around her neck, pedal pushers and flat-heeled shoes. The boy wore his dark hair in a James Dean
