Sam asked, "Is it still there?"

Roy turned. "When are they going to let you out of here?"

Sam's smile soured. "If this place bores you, think of what it does to me."

Now his best friend was chastened. "I didn't mean that, kid. I just hope you can come home soon."

Kristin emerged from the lavatory. Sam waited until she reached his bedside, before announcing to them both, head swiveling, "Now for my surprise. They're letting me out tomorrow-pending another episode, of course."

Kristin was standing, hands clamped to the back of the steel chair. "Now you tell us. How long have you known it?"

"Your excitement is overwhelming."

"Of course it's great news." She showed a bright face to Roy, as if asking for confirmation.

Roy played along. "That's terrific, kid. What time should I pick you up?"

"I'll do it," said Kristin.

"Let Roy," said Sam. "You're manager of the First United Bank. He just waits for phone calls from wealthy car-nuts."

That was normal needling, and Roy was relieved to hear it. "There haven't been many of them lately."

Kristin noted drily that tomorrow was Sat.u.r.day. "Meanwhile, can I remove some of this stuff tonight?" She indicated the bedside table overloaded with electronic gear.

Sam said no, anything she took away would inevitably be needed as soon as it was gone: one of those truths of nature.

"I'll check at the nurses' station to see what time you'll be released tomorrow," Kristin said.

Sam asked Roy, "You're not leaving, too?"

"No. I'll hang out for a while."

"Bye," Kristin said to Sam. She did not come to kiss him this time. "Goodbye, Roy." She had hardly glanced his way.

8.

Roy took the chair last used by Kristin. "I wanted to talk to you in confidence," said Sam. "In case you haven't noticed, Kris has no sense of humor. That's no criticism. It's praise. She doesn't have a dark side. You have to have a decadent streak to look at things our way-I mean, you and me."

"Speak for yourself," said Roy. It was not that he disagreed, but rather that he disliked being included in someone else's self-characterization, even that of his best friend.

Sam elevated his head with an elbow hooked behind the pillows. It looked uncomfortable. "I've been on the phone with Ray and Sy." Ray Walser was his accountant; he shared Seymour Alt with Roy. "I'm thinking about Chapter Thirteen."

"Christ sake."

"How about that?" Sam snorted and rolled back, staring at the ceiling. "My wife's a bank official, and I'm about to go into bankruptcy."

"That might affect her career, wouldn't it?"

"Ha! What would it do to mine?"

Did you ever have one, you selfish a.s.shole? was not said aloud by Roy, and not even, exactly, thought; it was as if muttered by a pa.s.sing stranger. "You must be in deep."

"The failure of eToys was the last straw. I was still buying it when it was at the peak price, in the low eighties."

"The stock went to zero, didn't it?" This event had been of only academic interest to Roy, who never played the market.

"They were really f.u.c.ked when Toys 'R' Us linked up with Amazon. I don't know how it could have been foreseen. s.h.i.t."

"What does Kristin think of this?"

"She doesn't," said Sam, still talking to the ceiling. "She doesn't know everything about me. Some guys have girlfriends on the side. I got this."

"You won't be able to hide Chapter Thirteen from her."

"Don't I know it." He rolled over ponderously to look at Roy from a horizontal position.

"How much do you need?"

Sam produced a laugh from the ma.s.sive cavern of his belly. "I wouldn't want to scare you off by answering that literally. But I could take the edge off, avoid bankruptcy for the moment anyhow, with, say, fifty."

Roy stood up and one-handedly carried the chair to the corner.

"Mind giving me an answer?" Sam asked. "I'd kinda like to know where we stand."

Roy resented the "we." He fussed with the chair, as if its precise placement were a matter of substance.

"Okay," Sam said behind him. "How much could you let me have?"

Roy moved to the foot of the bed. "There hasn't yet been any year I've made a profit."

Sam grimaced. "You mean selling old cars."

"That's what I do."

His best friend produced a rhetorical groan. "That's never been what you've lived on."

"If you could call it living."

Sam was not amused by the self-disparagement. "You don't live the crummy way you do because you can't afford otherwise."

"Look," said Roy, "I couldn't just give you that kind of money."

"It would be a loan, for G.o.d's sake. Sy can set that up."

Roy deplored seeing the hope in Sam's eyes. He disliked the idea of making him happy by monetary means, which experience had proven to be the shortest-lived of states. By the time the funds reached him, Sam felt more deprived than ever.

"I've got to think about this. You can't expect to spring this on me and get an immediate answer."

Sam scrooched up until his head was higher on the pillow. "You won't even feel it. You and I both know what your dad left you."

"You've always been more of an authority on that than me."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Roy did not want to get into an argument. "You had a father of your own."

"That f.u.c.king loser."

Because Sam had usually been at Roy's house, Roy had never seen much of Samson Grandy, Sr., a stockbroker who had not done as well as his only child thought he should have, leaving him, on a coronary failure in middle age, with only slightly more than a million in securities along with half that in real property, which Sam soon impatiently sold at lower-than-market prices. Sam's mother had died, after a lingering illness, when he was twelve, and his father, like Roy's, never remarried; unlike Victor Courtright, he had a series of lady friends, not one of whom young Sam could abide. It was fortunate for him, then, that he could enjoy the friendship of Roy's father, who preferred Robin and Sam to his own son. Roy had resented this, but blamed neither his sister nor his best friend.

"Would Sy Alt be the right guy?"

"To handle this? Why not?"

"He can't represent us both."

Sam sighed. "This ain't a divorce, kid. We're not adversaries. I trust you." He a.s.sumed a huge grin.

Roy had always been irritated by Sam's premature optimism. "It would have to be set up as a legitimate loan, with a believable rate of interest, you know. The IRS is watching." None of his other "loans" to Sam over the years had exceeded the ten-thousand-dollar annual limit for untaxable gifts. "And what could you list as collateral? Didn't you tell me your house is in Kristin's name?...Don't keep smiling. I'm not saying yes."

Sam turned his head away, but the visible side of his face, large as a ham, looked smug. Roy felt an impulse to hurt him in a unique way, neither physical nor emotional. But what was left? Torment him mentally with some unsolvable brain-twister? The fact was that Sam had always had his number. Perhaps that was true of Kristin as well-Sam had hers, not that she had Roy's, with whom she was still hardly more than an acquaintance. Giving Sam fifty thousand dollars because of her would be grotesque.

"I won't tell your pal Kris," said Sam, as if he had read Roy's mind, "if that's what's worrying you."

"It never occurred to me. It's beside the point."

"Didn't you give her your word you wouldn't lend me any more money?" a.s.suming that he had his friend morally on the run, Sam was gloating.

"I told you I have to think it over. And it wouldn't be lending in any case. You'd never return any part of it." On that note he left the room.

In the parking lot he was wary lest he encounter Suzanne Akens, with whom he had been too unguarded, justifiably earning her scorn. But it was not she who awaited him beside the Rolls-Royce. It was Kristin Grandy.

"Easy car to find in a crowd," said she, and then, perhaps as a courtesy to him, looked at the coachwork and added, "It really is lovely."

"I meant what I said," Roy told her. "Drive it on loan for a while. See how it fits."

"Please. Let's take that as one of Sam's jokes. What isn't, unfortunately, is his wanting to borrow more money from you." She elevated her impeccable chin. "That's obviously what he wanted to talk to you privately about."

Roy had not sworn an oath of silence on the matter, nor had he been asked to. Basic principle, however, restrained him from saying more than, "The subject came up."

"Well, it's your affair, Roy. It's your money and your friend, but Sam cannot handle money."

"To say the least."

Kristin and the Rolls-Royce were a natural pair. They seemed self-illuminated in the beginning twilight. Her beige suit looked golden; the white car showed suggestions of pearl.

"I'm willing to be the villain," said she, and it struck him that this exquisite woman was pleading with him. "Feel free to put all the blame on me."

"I told you the other day that the only way I would turn him down was by doing just that, blaming you. That wasn't very courageous of me. Taking the hit should be my job. As you rightly say, the money's mine and he's my friend." What Roy would not tell Kristin was that he had decided to furnish Sam with the fifty grand, thus protecting her career from the consequences of her husband's bankruptcy, while hiding the transaction from her, and Sam's silence on the deal would be a nonnegotiable condition of it.

Kristin spoke in a straightforward manner. "You're an awful lot more than I once thought you were." Her smile was rueful. "I hope that doesn't sound as patronizing to you as it does to me. What I want to say is you're going above and beyond the call of duty."

Roy understood that You're doing this for me? was asked only in cla.s.sic romantic movies. She anyway was not supposed to learn all that he was doing for her. Nevertheless, it was with a certain disappointment that he accepted her simple thanks.

She had said goodbye and was walking toward her Corolla when Roy asked, "Do you have any plans for dinner?"

It was only when he was following Kristin to the Grandy house, where she would leave her car and join him in the Silver Wraith, that Roy remembered Mich.e.l.le Llewellyn.

Directory a.s.sistance provided him with the numbers of three local Llewellyns, none of them named Mich.e.l.le, but he heard her voice when he dialed the second of them. He had expected to be vigorously abused when he identified himself, but she expressed more grief than wrath.

"I bought a nice dress. It was expensive." She was sobbing. "I told my friends." She took a quavering breath. "Is this the way you get off? Making fun of people?"

"Mich.e.l.le," said Roy, "my best friend had a heart attack. I've been with him at the hospital until just now. Please forgive me for not getting in touch sooner."

"Oh, s.h.i.t. I'm really sorry. I didn't know."

"You couldn't have. Can I get a raincheck on dinner? The dress won't go to waste. I can't wait to see it."

"Great. I hope your friend gets better soon."

"Thanks a lot. I'll be calling you soon as I can."

That had been easier than he thought and employed only existing truths. She sounded like a very nice girl, though he regretted having established a personal connection with her in the first place. If now he never again got in touch, she might reach the wrong conclusion.

He was relieved when the two cars arrived at Kristin's house and she simply parked hers and joined him without going inside for any reason. Had she done so, he might have been expected to come along and wait. It would have made him uncomfortable to be alone under the same roof as she now that darkness was settling in, whereas when they had eaten lunch there, on a sunny day, he had been almost at ease.

"It seems to me we have two choices," said he. "Either eat someplace where we, or particularly you, might be recognized, or go to one where that would be unlikely."

"Huh?"

The car was still sitting in the driveway; they were lighted by the dashboard illumination.

"I'm thinking of how it might look if the new bank manager is seen dining out with someone else while her old man's in the hospital."

"Oh, yes. I see. You're right."

"You didn't think of that?"

She smiled. "I probably would have. I should have."