somewhere. Maybe she told him where she was going.'
Perez looked thoughtful. 'Yeah,' he said.
'They're working in the same field, so he'd probably know about her,' Leaphorn said. 'But in such a big country it's not likely they'd meet, and if they did, why is she going to tell a virtual stranger that she's going to run off with a government vehicle?'
'Mutual interests, though,' Perez said. 'They cut pretty deep. How often do you find someone who wants to talk to you about fleas on prairie dogs? And Woody is a downright fanatic about his work. Run him into another human with any knowledge of infectious diseases, immunology, any of that, and he's going to tell 'em a lot more about it than they'll want to know. He's obsessed by it. He thinks the bacteria are going to eliminate mammals unless we do something about it. And if they don't get us, the viruses will. He feels this need to warn everybody about it. Jeremiah complex.'
'I can sympathize with that,' Leaphorn said. 'I'm always talking about what's wrong with the War on Drugs. Until I notice everybody is yawning.'
'Same problem with me,' Perez said. 'I'll bet you're not very interested in discussing molecular mineral transmission through cell walls.'
'Only if you explained it so I could understand it.' Leaphorn said. He wished he hadn't mentioned Woody to Louisa, wished she hadn't invited Perez, wished they could just be having a relaxing evening together. 'And first I guess you'd have to explain why I should care about it.'
It was the wrong thing to say, inspiring Dr. Perez to defend pure science and orate on the need to collect knowledge merely for the sake of knowledge. Leaphorn nibbled at the second chop. He down-rated his character for lacking the courage to refuse it. He examined his semihostile reaction to Perez. It had begun when he saw the Saab parked where he liked to park in Louisa's driveway and worsened when he saw the man standing beside her in the doorway, grinning at him. And it clicked up another notch when he noticed that Perez seemed to be looking upon him as a rival. Perez was jealous, he concluded. But then what about Joe Leaphorn? Was Joe Leaphorn jealous? It was an unsettling thought, and he took another bite of the lamb chop to drive it away.
Perez had completed his account of how pure science had led to the discovery of penicillin and the whole arsenal of antibiotics, which had pretty well wiped out infectious diseases. Now he digressed into how stupid misuse of those drugs had turned victory into defeat and how the killer bugs were mutating furiously into all sorts of new forms.
'Mom brings her kid in with a runny nose. The doc knows a virus is causing it, and antibiotics won't touch the virus, but the kid is crying, and Mom wants a prescription, so he gives her his pet antibiotic and tells Mama to give it to the kid for eight days. And then two days later, the immune system deals with the virus, and she stops the medicine. But two days of the antibiotic'—Perez paused, took a long sip from his wineglass, wiped his mustache —'has slaughtered all the bacteria in the kid's bloodstream except—' Perez paused again, waved his hand. 'Except the few freaks who happened to be resistant to the drug. So, with the competition wiped out, these freaks multiply like crazy, and the kid is full of drug-resistant bacteria. And then—'
'And then it's time for dessert,' Louisa said. 'How about some ice cream? Or brownies?'
'Or maybe both,' Perez said. 'Anyway, just a few years ago about ninety-nine-point-nine percent of
Louisa's voice came from the kitchen. 'Enough! Enough! No more doomsday talk.' She emerged, carrying dessert. 'And now thirty percent of the people who die in hospitals die of something they didn't have when they came in.' She laughed. 'Or is it forty percent? I've heard this lecture before, but mythologists aren't good with numbers.'
'It's about thirty percent,' Perez said, looking miffed. A bowl of ice cream and two brownies later, Perez pleaded the need to finish grading papers and rolled his Saab out of Leaphorn's place in the driveway.
'An interesting man,' Leaphorn said, stacking saucers on plates, and cutlery atop that, and heading for the kitchen.
'Have a seat,' Louisa said. 'I can take care of the cleanup.'
'Widowers get awfully good at this. I want to demonstrate my skills.' Which he did, until he noticed Louisa rearranging the plates he'd put into the washer.
'Wrong way?' he asked.
'Well,' she said, 'if you put them in with the food side facing inward, then the hot water spray hits that. It gets 'em cleaner.'
So Leaphorn sat and wondered if Perez had actually been jealous of him and what that might imply, and tried to think of a way to bring up the subject. He drew a blank. A few moments later the clattering in the kitchen stopped. Louisa emerged and sat on the sofa across from him.
'Wonderful dinner,' Leaphorn said. 'Thank you.'
She nodded. 'Michael really is an interesting man,' she said. 'He was way too talky tonight, but that was because I told him you were interested in what Professor Woody was doing.' She shrugged. 'He was just trying to be helpful.'
'I sort of got the feeling he didn't care too much for me.'
'That was jealousy. He was showing off a little bit. The male territorial imperative at work.'
Leaphorn had not the slightest idea how to react to that. He opened his mouth, took a breath, said 'Aah,' and closed it.
'We go way back. Old friends.'
'Aah,' Leaphorn said again. 'Friends.' He had left the question off the sound of that, but it didn't fool Louisa.
'He wanted to marry me once, long ago,' Louisa said. 'I told him I'd tried getting married once when I was young and I hadn't cared much for it.'
Leaphorn considered this. Now was one of those times when you wished you hadn't quit smoking. Lighting up a
