Spring Forward

*sigh*

I am reminded of a quote by pirate Captain Jack Sparrow:

“The problem is not the problem. The problem is your attitude about the problem.”

Every spring, I am faced with Daylight Savings Time. Every spring, I despise it for days in advance and fight it for days afterward. This spring (this weekend, in fact), I have tried to roll with it, but old habits die hard and losing that hour in the morning really does mess with my chemistry, biology and mathematics.

My spirit doesn’t care. My body most definitely does, and my mind is practically lathered with it. Life is confusing enough; why must we confuse it further by playing with the clock? Ours is the only dimension where time matters, and boy, do we make it count. Aside from the almighty dollar, time is the thing that rules us. We’re always watching the clock, scheduling appointments, afraid we’ll be late, forgetting to set the PVR or to watch what we’ve recorded because we can’t find the time, stressing with insomnia because the alarm is going off in two hours and forty-seven minutes … ARG!

So, am I making this a problem? Or am I simply acknowledging that there is a problem? I am never happier than when I lose track of time. My natural rhythm takes over and I eat when I’m hungry, sleep when I’m sleepy, and write until I’m faint from lack of one or the other.

My intention is always to spend less time being aware of the time, so how do I get past DST?

I guess I’ll just have to give myself time.

True Detective

Eight episodes in and I’m glad I stayed with this series. It’s followed a predictable pattern in a most unpredictable way, and now that the timelines have met and we’re all in the present day, I’m enjoying the rapport between the main characters of Marty Hart and Rustin Cohle. Reunited after a bitter blowout in 2002, they’re finding their way as a team while catching up on each other’s lives. Hart (played to macho-jerk-tight-jawed perfection by Woody Harrelson) isn’t nearly as interesting as Cohle (Matthew McConaughey), but the chemistry between them works better now than when they first met to solve a murder in 1995.

The best moments are the ones when I can’t decide which is better: the line or the delivery. An offhand comment about art leads Hart to ask if Cohle has started painting, and Cohle’s reply, dryly delivered in a smoky Texas drawl, is priceless: “Nah—it’s too late to start something new, I reckon. Life’s too short to get good at any one thing …” and if there was more, I was laughing so hard I missed it.

Well-written and equally well-performed dialogue can redeem a so-so plot in my view, so even though I’ve so far stayed a step ahead of the story, the gold star performances of the leads—McConaughey in partikilar—is keeping me engaged.

I won’t mourn when the season ends, though. It’s sitting in GoT’s time slot on Sunday night, so when TD is done on March 28, my world will be restored come April 6!

“Black and Blonde” (Part 6)

Tess met him at the appointed place, pulling up to the curb in a white BMW that blended into traffic about as well as she had blended into the bar crowd two nights ago. The top was down; he had her put it up before he got into the passenger seat. “Couldn’t you have been a little less obvious with the wheels?” he grumbled, slamming the door.

“This is Travis’s car. Mine is in the shop. Where to?”

“Just drive where I tell you. Did you bring the books?”

She nodded, checking her blind spot before pulling into the street. “In the back seat. He had tons more, but those were the last.”

Black reached behind her seat and hauled a tote bag full of hardcover sketchbooks from the floor. He counted six spines with his fingers. “Go left here,” he said.

“Where are we going?”

“Nowhere. It’s harder to hit a moving target.”

She glanced at him, alarmed. “What does that mean?”

“You’ve been made, sugar. I might not be the fizziest beer in the two-four, but I’ve got friends who are. I visited one last night. He told me all about you. Well, not everything; just that you’ve been tailing me for some weeks and it’s a concern.”

“Am I in trouble?”

“Much as I hate to admit it, since any trouble you’re in is trouble for me. Turn right at the next street.”

She guided the car as directed. Black pulled out one of the sketchbooks and started flipping pages. The drawings were good, mostly of women in various stages of undress. The faces had been dashed out in the fewest strokes, yet he recognized Tess in more than a few racy positions. Travis had stayed true to her build as well; her curves were deeper and sexier than the contours of the others he had drawn.

“Did you tell your friend about the safe deposit box?”

“He’s a bright boy. He figured it out.”

She hit the brakes to avoid a tabby cat that streaked across the road. Black stuffed the book into the bag and pulled out another one, dated a month before Travis had died. Tess started the car rolling again.

“Why did you want to see the sketchbooks? Are you looking for someone?”

“Maybe.”

“A vampire?”

“Did he work with other models?”

“What do you mean ‘other’?”

Black tapped his forefinger on a sketch of Tess sleeping naked on a sofa. “He did these from memory?”

She flushed a luscious shade of pink. “He had a good memory,” she said, “and a better imagination.”

“He was good,” Black allowed.

“Yeah,” she breathed, “he was.”

Tess drove while Black went through the books. Melissa Etheridge played on the stereo and after a while, Tess asked if she could drop the top on the Beemer again. He agreed because they had gone beyond the city limits and were driving along the coast road. Traffic was light and heading in the opposite direction. His paranoia seemed excessive in such conditions.

“Did Travis make any money doing this?”

“Some. It was half and half between art and the band; sometimes he made more playing, other times he did better drawing.”

“I suppose his life insurance didn’t kick in since the report said it was suicide.”

“That’s not why I’m doing this, Black.”

“Did I say it was?”

“You still don’t believe me, do you? You’re just humouring me.”

“No, I think you might be on to something. That’s what scares me.”

“Why?”

“You can’t call the cops on a vampire. They already think you’re nuts. So what happens if I find the one who killed your boyfriend? What do you expect me to do?”

Her hands clenched on the steering wheel. “I expect you to kill him.”

“Now, wait a minute—”

“No,” she cut in, fiercely. “That’s the deal. You find and kill him, then I destroy the dossier I’ve got on you.”

He scowled at her profile, etched pale and stark against the night flowing past her window. “I can’t kill another vampire. It’s not allowed.”

She snorted. “Since when have any of your kind worried about what’s allowed and what isn’t? Killing humans isn’t allowed, either, pal.”

“You don’t think we’re human?”

“No, I don’t!” she cried. “You forfeit your humanity when you start drinking our blood. It’s a drug for you; the more you get, the more you want until someone finally dies for it. It’s what happened to Travis, I know it is. He got in over his head. He was dumb that way, too sweet and trusting for his own good. He was suckered into dying for one of you, and by God I’m going to see justice done for it!”

She was sobbing as she drove. Black laid a hand on hers where it clung to the leather-wrapped wheel and she flung him off with a sweep of her arm that caught him in the face and knocked his shades off his nose. He swore at her, making a grab for them before they got out the open window.

Too late.

“Fuck!”

She swerved onto the gravel shoulder and stopped the car in a biting cloud of dust. Black opened the door and rolled out with one hand shielding his eyes from the fine silt that sought to blind him. He scrambled alongside the car, scanning through his lashes for the black Ray Bans. Tess got out to look as well.

“Get back in the car!” he snapped.

She ignored him. “I think they landed back here.”

He gave up arguing and sank to his knees by the rear wheel, closing his eyes against the red glare from the tail lights. Stupid eyes; they were so damn sensitive to everything. Clare had laughed at him for keeping them shut while making love, but he couldn’t stand the onslaught of his perfected sight.

“Here you go.”

Squinting, he raised his head. Tess stood before him, holding out his shades. The lenses were tinted so dark they looked opaque. He reached for them; she jerked them away.

“For Christ’s sake, lady—”

“Look up,” she said.

He ducked his head and counted to ten.

“Do you want them or not?”

He muttered a vehement curse under his breath. “Just give me the damn glasses.”

“Come and get them.”

Peering through his lashes, he saw her figure painted in shades of blood. Her hair was a corona of fire, her blue eyes tinted lilac. She wore jeans and a sweatshirt, but he saw the curves Travis had depicted so accurately beneath her clothes. She was small but powerful. She’d have made a good vampire.

Now there was a thought.

He shook it from his head and got slowly to his feet. “I don’t like you,” he growled.

“I don’t like you, either,” she said. “What’s wrong with your eyes?”

“Nothing. It’s what was wrong with them. Give me the glasses.”

She handed them over in silence.

He replaced them on the bridge of his nose and inhaled a shaky breath. “Now take me home.”

* * *

He meant her home, not his. The books in the tote bag had revealed nothing save a promising talent and a love of the female form—one in particular. Not the one he was looking for. The books were too recent. He had to go further back to be sure.

He hoped he was wrong. He doubted that he was.

Tess dropped him off a few blocks from her house and continued home alone. He walked slowly along the sidewalk, spreading his senses outward in search of another’s presence. If any of Raymond’s spies were handy, he wanted to know about it. It was an odd feeling, dropping the shields he had constructed so carefully. The mortal world was noisy and crowded; he had been forced to devise a means of locking out the mayhem before he lost his mind. Timing had been critical and nearly missed. Becoming a vampire had not been easy. Without Clare, he might not have made it.

He was supposed to meet her at the Four Seasons before dawn. She wanted to show him a slice of the life that awaited if he agreed to go with her, and he was tempted to try. If he could find a place where blood ran rich and thick, if he could fool the elite into believing he belonged among them, he could leave the waterfront. He could quit bargaining for blood with poison, quit stealing cash from corpses. Clare could help him find his way, teach him the trick of living in society. He wasn’t dumb. He could fake it. And if he went with her, it would be harder for her to leave him.

But he had to finish with Tess, first.

She had done as he said and parked in the driveway, waiting in the car until he signed it was safe to get out. The house was a cute little character cottage nestled on the property of a main house. A good place for vampires, he thought, noting the lush foliage and thick, droopy trees. Tess led him to the front door and handed him the key.

“Will the neighbours talk?” he asked.

“At this hour, they’re all asleep.”

The deadbolt clicked and Black opened the door. He was met by an aromatic gust of spice-scented air. Gingerbread had been baked that afternoon. “You cook?” he asked, over his shoulder.

She pushed him inside. “I’ll take you to the studio.”

A sun porch had been built onto the back of the house, behind the kitchen. They had converted it to an art studio. Paints and canvases were everywhere; the work in progress on an easel in the corner was a portrait of Travis. He had been a handsome man made irresistible to women by the sweetness Tess had mentioned. She had captured it in his eyes, giving life to a work that was not near finished. “That’s very good,” Black remarked.

“I started it eight months ago,” Tess told him. “I haven’t touched it since.”

He suddenly regretted being so hard on her over the sunglasses.

“The books are over there.” She pointed to a low set of bookshelves against the far wall, crammed with more of the hardcover sketchbooks. They were labelled and arranged in date order; Black found the year he was looking for and pulled the book free.

“When did you meet him?”

“Last spring.”

The book in Black’s hands was dated Jan­­–Mar/99. Before Tess. She wouldn’t have been at Raymond’s New Year’s party. Travis wouldn’t have been clean then, either. He might have been trying, but he hadn’t succeeded yet.

“Have you looked through the older books, Tess?”

“There are too many.”

Black didn’t want to open the book in his hands. There wasn’t much point. But he opened it anyway, hoping for negation and finding confirmation. He recognized the long, limber form sketched in bold strokes on page after page, in pose after erotic pose, unabashedly nude or playing peek-a-boo in slinky designer gowns. Her hair was long and straight, burnished even in black and white, but the siren’s eyes were the same.

He sat cross-legged on the floor, his back to Tess while she clattered around in the kitchen. If he asked to borrow the book, she would be suspicious and he didn’t want that. He would have to manage without the sketches. Then he remembered the photo in his pocket.

He replaced the book on the shelf and took a stool at the breakfast bar. Tess gave him an inquiring glance.

“Let’s talk money,” he said.

to be continued ...

"Under the Porch"

A quiet space. A private place. Soothing shadows and solitary silence. They’ll never think to look for me here, once they realize I’m not there.

I love them. I do. I am there for them, always. When they need a cuddle. A companion. A neutral ear. An excuse to play. They think my life is empty without them ... and it would be, if not for these stolen moments under the porch.

I can hear my heartbeat.

I can smooth my fur.

I can rest undisturbed.

I can be.

My name is called above the floorboards. My corner of the sofa is empty. I am not in anyone’s room. I am not in the yard. I am nowhere they can see. When rising panic trills in someone’s voice, I will emerge to a flurry of attention aimed at soothing themselves rather than welcoming me.

I love them. I do.

My life would be empty, but it would be mine. 

Being an introvert, even one with extrovert tendencies, can be difficult in our demanding world. At the end of a particularly exhausting day, I will “go under the porch” to recharge my batteries undisturbed. I am a people person, thus a people pleaser, so while this piece was written from a pet’s point of view, it easily applies to the way I sometimes feel about being “Dr. Ruth”.

Today is my most precious day off—one with no plans except to write write write. Reijo’s romance is once again moving along smoothly, so I’m treating myself to a pot of peach momotaro as I follow my hero's path to wedded bliss. He’s a lovely boy, exactly the sort of character to work with on a sublimely sunny day. Gratitude abounds.

With love,

Oscars Wild

There was a time when I watched the Academy Awards to see how my favourite movies fared. These days, I watch them to see what’s worth seeing after the fact. And to see who’s wearing what, of course, and if the host can do better than Bob Hope, Billy Crystal, or Steve Martin did in their time. Awards as rule mean little to me, but the Oscars are an event. Even when they suck, they’re still the Oscars.

Ellen DeGeneres made them more fun, this year. Movies are magic and she has the right blend of humour and wide-eyed wonder to let the starts shine in their designer best. Her face in the “selfie that crashed Twitter” says it all: “Look, Ma! An ordinary kid in the midst of a constellation!” Honestly, I loved it enough to post it and copyright be hanged. I’d happily have Ellen host into the next millennium.

Alas, there were no real surprises among the winners except for the original song. I was stunned when Let it Go from “Frozen” beat out U2 and Pharrell Williams. I was dancing to Happy and bobbing to Ordinary Love, so was floored when neither of them scored the little golden guy. I thought for sure the political nod would go to U2 for their song (featured in “Mandela”), but “Frozen”, I am told, is also political. It’s the first Disney animated pic where the heroine is rescued not by the traditionally strong and handsome prince, but by another girl (her sister)! Oops. Well, having being enlightened, the song still left me cold.

Same for the naysayers who question that the selfie and pizza segments were staged. Um, these people are actors, folks. Staged or not, their job is to make us believe it’s for real. So buy in and enjoy, for Pete’s sake. Besides, if it was a staged promo, it failed because I’m not running out to buy a Samsung iPhone. As a spontaneous show of fun, however, they knocked it out of the park.

I love the movies. I don’t go to them as much anymore—too many explosions and too little story—but the cinema had a powerful influence on my budding creativity (not to mention my hormones) when I was a teen. It can still inspire me to rend my garments and wail, “I wish I’d written that!”

Hey, I’m only 52. I may yet write that Oscar-winning screenplay, perhaps adapted from my own original work.

“I’d like to thank God, my family, and the Academy …”

Oh My Papa

Dad and wee Ru - 1968

There was a time in my teens when, every night after dinner, my father would rev up the stereo and play Eddie Fisher’s paean to paters everywhere—the sugared chestnut titled “Oh, My Papa.” I think it was his way of reminding my sisters and me (the boys had married and moved on) how lucky we were to have such a kindly, benevolent man at the head of the family ... that, or he enjoyed watching us scatter to our rooms with our hands clamped over our ears. It was sometimes hard to tell with Dad.

It sometimes still is.

While my sibs and I were growing up, our mother was almost always accessible, but Dad was mysterious and a little scary. He was so elusive that time spent with him was precious—unless you were in trouble for something. We all learned early on to walk with our hands behind our backs in case he swatted our butts as we passed. I don’t recall Mum ever threatening us with “wait ’til your father gets home”, but if he was already home …

He sang to me when I didn’t want to go to sleep. He painted me a picture of a polar bear because I asked him to, even though he had never seen one before and had no idea how to go about painting one. (I still have the painting; if I can find it, I’ll post a photo of it.) Dad painted a lot when I was a kid. I loved watching him mix the oils and brush the colours on the canvas. To entertain me—and perhaps himself—during production on a tropical sunset, he told a story about being held captive on a bad island and swimming across the ocean to the good island, pausing en route to do battle with a great white shark that grazed him with its teeth before he sent it packing (he even showed me the scrape on his leg!) Cuddling with him on the couch of a Sunday afternoon, listening to his heart beating strong and slow beneath my ear, I nearly blacked out more than once trying to match my breathing to his. I didn’t dare wriggle, either. No matter how numb I got, I stayed as still as I could for fear of disturbing his nap. It wasn’t as if he had a bad temper; I just wanted to be good so I could cuddle with him another time. Once I hit my teens, I’d sit on the end of the couch and he’d stretch out with his feet in my lap and my paperback propped on his slippers. Occasionally, he was stabbed with my nail file for nudging my book with his toes.

Dad was serious about providing for his wife and family, but he knew how to use his downtime. I learned practical stuff like how to stretch a dollar and bake a crumble from my mother (sewing, alas, never took root). From my father, I learned to dream. And write. And sing. And draw. And how to call an offside in hockey. And that it was okay to have a crush on a movie star. And that if I thought Bram Stoker wrote scary stuff, I should give Dennis Wheatley a whirl.

It seems that he and I can discuss, debate, and dissect any subject. I have talked with my father about the meaning of life, the nature of God, and how to coach in the NHL. For as long as I can remember, he has encouraged open dialogue between himself and his kids. If we are troubled, he wants to help. If we are in trouble, he will help. If all is well, he’s either relieved to hear it or doesn’t believe it for a second.

No matter how old you are, everyone wants their father to praise, commend, and/or recognize them as funny, smart, intelligent, successful adults. Dad and I have had our tussles—what father and daughter haven’t?—but like my mother, I choose to have selective recall. Besides, I have figured out that any conflict stemmed from me growing up and Dad struggling to let go of his little girl. He is thirty years and six months older than me. There was a time when three-and-a-half decades seemed unbridgeable. Not so anymore. My older older brother once observed, “As I got older, Dad got smarter.” Well, as I got older, Dad and I became a lot more alike than is comfortable for him. Turns out we’ve always been alike; it just took this long to realize—and accept—it. I’m good with it … and I hope he is, too.

Today is Dad’s birthday. Listen carefully, Pop; I shall say this only once:

Oh, my pa-pa, to me he is so wonderful
Oh, my pa-pa, to me he is so good
No one could be, so gentle and so lovable
Oh, my pa-pa, he always understood.

Gone are the days when he could take me on his knee
And with a smile he'd change my tears to laughter

Oh, my pa-pa, so funny, so adorable
Always the clown so funny in his way.

three and a half decades later

“Black and Blonde” (Part 5)

He woke at dusk. She was all over him again, voracious with teeth and nails, playing him like the fool he was. His body responded as if its need for her outweighed its need for blood, and maybe it did. For a blissful, thoughtless moment, he let himself enjoy the rasp of her tongue on his belly, willing her further south. Reading his mind—or had he mumbled under his breath?—she obliged.

She bit him and he came in a shower of blood and fruitless semen, arching with a mangled cry off the worn mattress while she gulped once and grimaced. “God, I hate that stuff you call blood,” she spat, tossing her hair like a filly in the winner’s circle. “How can you drink it night after night? It might as well be bilge water.”

He lay, panting, on his back, gazing at her through the stars that danced before his eyes. He had no answer. Becoming a vampire had not made him a duke or an earl. He was still a peasant boy spread out for her amusement. He hadn’t decided how he felt about it, yet. Maybe he didn’t want to know.

“I’m taking you out of here tonight,” she declared, rolling off the bed in a glorious tangle of arms and legs. “I’ve got a suite at the Four Seasons; I’d have taken you there this morning, but …” She flashed him a naughty smile “Are you still happy to see me?”

He nodded, following her with his eyes as she collected her clothes. He was hungry but didn’t want to lose sight of her. She wouldn’t hunt with him, anyway, and he couldn’t hunt with her. They were from different worlds. The gift of immortality had not altered that.

“Then you’ll come with me,” she said.

“No,” he croaked.

She slid into her shirt but left it open. “Why not?”

“This is my home.”

She snorted. “Get over it, Ariel. You’re a god now; you don’t have to live like this.”

“I’m no god,” he answered. “I’m a predator like you, and they’re catching onto us, Clare. They’re starting to figure out what we are and how to stop us. I don’t want to die. Do you?”

She didn’t understand the question. “I am death. So are you. There hasn’t been a mortal yet who could cheat either of us. You give them too much credit.”

“You give them too little,” he said, and as he spoke, an awful possibility dawned on him. She held mortals in as much contempt now as she had done at the beginning, when Raymond had taken her from her father’s castle and raped her for her blood. Black knew she preferred to kill. She loved it, revelled in it. Raymond had taught her well—but even Raymond had tempered his appetite with the passage of time.

She grabbed his hands and pulled him upright. “Come with me, my love. I will show you pleasure beyond your wildest imagining.”

“Have you been killing?” Black asked.

“What do you mean?”

“How long have you been in town?”

“A few days. Long enough to set myself up at the hotel. Why?”

“Clare, if you’re lying to me—”

“What? You don’t believe me? Ask Raymond. He’ll be as shocked to see me as you were.”

“Raymond is a liar. I’d be a fool to believe anything he says.”

She smiled, sidling close. “You are a fool, though, aren’t you, my beloved? Look at the way you live, scraping out an existence by the grace of inferiors. They don’t love you, Ariel. They’re afraid of you, so they pretend to be allies. Any one of them would turn you in for the price of a mickey.”

He got out of bed, convinced that his hunger was making her make sense. She didn’t know what she was talking about. She didn’t know his people. She had never known his people. She came from a world frosted with illusion. What did she know of the hideous truth?

“I’ve made you angry,” she said.

He pulled his t-shirt on over his head.

“I’m sorry.”

“Sure you are.”

“I can’t bear to see you living this way. You’re so much better than this.”

He turned to face her. She was sitting on the rumpled bed, hands dangling between her knees. Her nails were painted pearl white, curved like claws. He wanted them to scrape him raw so she could lap up the blood that oozed from the wounds. “I can’t come with you, Clare. Not tonight.”

She nodded. “You want time to think.”

“Yeah.”

“You do want something better, don’t you?”

“Don’t we all?”

She smiled. “I just want you.”

He laughed softly, a reflex aimed at deflecting the usual hope that she wasn’t jerking him around this time. She was so beautiful, so desirable. He had loved her from the first moment and been grateful to her for saving him when Raymond would have let him die. How ironic that she who had spared him was the one who killed him every time she left.

He wanted to say, “I’m yours.” It was smarter to say nothing. 

* * * 

He dealt for blood with one of the warehouse squatters, a man in his forties whose engineering career had been snuffed by a drug problem that eventually cost him his house and his family. “I want to die,” he told Black. “Can you do it for me?”

“It’s not my place,” Black said, “nor yours, either. Have we got a deal?”

The fellow thought for a minute, then nodded. “Give me the dope.”

Black hesitated.

“What is it?”

“When did you last eat?”

“What’s it to you? Just give me the dope, man, then you can have as much blood as you want.”

He didn’t want tainted blood. He was tired of it. It was sour and left him slightly disoriented, the way scotch burned his throat but didn’t make him drunk. This guy was hardly a pure specimen on either end of the syringe, but he wouldn’t be so harsh on the tongue if Black drank before handing over the goods.

“Forget it,” the man said. “If you’re not going to kill me, you give me the dope first or walk away now.”

He conceded victory with a grim face. When the fellow was pleasantly glazed, Black bent his head and pierced the quivering jugular with his fangs. The blood spouted, surprised, into his mouth. It ran cold over his tongue, heating up as it hit the back of his throat. He swallowed, conjuring the flavour of Clare to mask the bitterness. She had expensive taste and fed from the best—the rich proceeds of greed and avarice in the upper classes. Last night, he had scented caviar and champagne in her blood and been hurt when she refused to drink from him. Little wonder, he thought now, sucking back the sting of despair; this was the hemoglobic equivalent of Aqua Velva. He drank the fellow to unconsciousness, then settled him as comfortably as he could beneath his newspaper blanket. It might be more merciful to kill him, but Black doubted he could stomach the job. It was getting harder to take what little he was offered.

He met up with Aurora on his way to the bar; she had paused to light another in a long chain of Marlboros when he spotted her at the corner. She grinned at him. “Hey, Black, that was some serious combat happening over my head last night. You get lucky with another girl?”

“I wouldn’t say ‘lucky’,” he answered. “Have you got a quarter? I need to make a phone call.”

“This from a guy with a pocketful of fifties,” she grumbled around her smoke. She dug through her bag for change. “I swear I don’t know why I let you use me this way. You sure you can’t hypnotize people through your shades?”

He took the quarter. “I’ll make it up to you, honey.”

“Go a round with me like you did with your mystery chick last night and I’ll call us even.”

“Sweetheart, you don’t want to go a round with ol’ Black.”

“Says you,” she retorted, accepting his kiss on her cheek. She blew a lungful of smoke into his face. “Not gonna tell, are you?”

“Nope.”

She studied him through hooded eyes. “Old girlfriend,” she decided.

“I wouldn’t say that, either. Any luck with the search for Travis?”

She shook her head. “If your boy did fall off the wagon, he didn’t do it down at our level. Cokeheads are upper crust junkies, Black. You’re fishing too low in the pond.” She gave him a sympathetic look. “Sorry, honey.”

He waved her off. “Didn’t hurt to try. You’d better get back to work.”

“Sure you don’t want a quickie on the house?”

He laughed at her. “I’ll take a raincheck. Go on, get lost. I’ll catch you later.”

“Promises, promises,” she sighed, wandering off in a cloud of blue smoke.

He went to the bar and called Tess at the number she had given him. It turned out to be a cellular phone, and he was instantly angry about it. Cell phones were glorified radios that anyone could tap into; he had her hang up and call him from a land line so they could arrange to meet without fear of being ambushed. Black was not naive. Clare was in town for a reason—and Raymond was well aware of it.

to be continued ...