"'Cause I saw that in a movie once. One of those erotic thrillers on cable."

"Come up here and kiss me."

"Maybe I ought to brush my teeth first. As a courtesy, I mean."

"Come here."

Bernie Walters signaled the waitress for another beer.

"Me, too, Helga," said Thomas Wilson as she arrived.

Walters pointed at Stephanie Maroulis. She put her hand over her gla.s.s and shook her head.

"So what's up with your friend?" said Wilson.

"Nick?" said Dimitri Karras.

"Yeah."

"What do you mean, what's up with him?"

"When we were all walking over here, before we split up, that Nick character was really checkin' out my car on the street there."

"You drive a Dodge, right?"

"That's right."

"Nick's a Dodge freak, man. He's got an old Mopar from the sixties that he babies."

"Gearhead, huh?"

"I liked having him there," said Walters, shaking a cigarette from his deck. "With another smoker in the room, I didn't feel like a leper and all that."

"Well," said Wilson, "it was a different night for us, I'll say that much."

They were all avoiding looking at Stephanie. She had broken down in the meeting, talking about her husband, Steve. It wasn't like her to do that. Her role was the Cheerful One, and it had taken them by surprise. She still had the tracks from the tears that had fallen down her face.

There was an uncomfortable silence. Then the waitress returned and served Walters and Wilson their beers.

"Thanks, Helga," said Wilson.

"It's Helen," said the waitress tiredly, pointing to her name tag. "Why they go to all the trouble makin' you dress up like Oktoberfest gals," said Wilson, "then go and let you use your American names?"

"I don't know. I'll bring it up at the next board meeting." The waitress rolled her eyes and walked away.

"Just tryin' to make the girl smile, is all," explained Wilson.

"They're probably not allowed to laugh on duty," said Karras, "seein' as how they're supposed to be Germans and all that."

Wilson laughed, reached across the round-top and gave Karras finger-skin.

Stephanie cleared her throat. "It was different tonight, Thomas, you were right. And better, I think."

Walters pushed his Orioles cap back on his head. "That Bill Jonas is a good guy."

"There was something about him," said Stephanie. "It just felt easy, talking around him. Look, I'm sorry if I lost it back there -"

"That's all right," said Karras, reaching for her hand, taking it and stroking it, not caring that the others were there.

Wilson looked away. Walters pretended to study his burning cigarette.

"We better get going," said Karras.

Stephanie opened her wallet and left money on the table.

"We on this weekend, Dimitri?" said Walters. "Gonna be a little cold down there on the property, but the weather should be clear."

"Sure, Bernie. Sat.u.r.day's good for me."

"We got to take two cars, buddy. It's my vacation, and I'm staying down for the week."

"Okay. I'll follow you down."

Stephanie and Karras said good bye and left the bar.

Wilson cleared his throat. "Guess I was right about those two, eh, Bern?"

"Oh, I always knew the two of them were together," said Walters with a wink. "I was just letting you go on."

"Whatever makes them happy," said Wilson softly.

"The Lord's brought them together, Thomas. I been watching the way they look at each other. They don't know it yet, but to me it's plain."

"What is?"

"You ask me, it looks like those two are falling in love."

Nick Stefanos pulled the blankets up over his shoulder. "We gonna leave that window open all night?"

"I like to hear the city sounds," said Alicia Weisman.

"Well, it's warm enough under these blankets. And there's you."

His arm was beneath her. She shifted so that her chest was pressed against his.

"I had a good time with you tonight," said Stefanos.

"And me with you."

"I wasn't my usual sloppy self, right?"

"I wouldn't ever call you on that. You told me who you were when we hooked up. I'm not looking to be your mother. I just want to hang out with you, Nick. I like being your friend, and I like making love to you. Let's enjoy it and not get too far ahead of ourselves."

"Well, it was Dimitri Karras who said that you and me'd have a better time if I showed up sober. He dragged me out of the bar and to that meeting."

"Who was there?"

"The cop who was crippled at the crime scene. Family members of the victims and one of the victim's friends. I've been through that before. I had to deal with this woman whose son was murdered down by the Anacostia River a few years back. It's one of the reasons I cut back on picking up those kinds of jobs."

"I can't imagine how awful it must be for those people."

"The woman who was married to the bartender, she kind of broke down tonight. I felt like walking out when she was telling her story. But I stayed. It would have been disrespectful to leave, you know?"

Alicia stroked Stefanos's hair. "You're not going to go back there, are you? I mean, there's nothing you can do for them, Nick."

"That's right," he said. "There's nothing anyone can do for them now."

Thomas Wilson drove his Dodge across town and parked it on Georgia. He entered a supper club down near Kenyon. Neighborhood folks, a couple of guys in suits who looked like they had been there since coming off their nine-to-fives, a few workingmen with just enough for a draft high, and a skinny, pipehead-lookin' sucker sat at the bar. Wilson had a seat on the end, all by himself.

He ordered a Courvoisier up with a side of c.o.ke, and had a look around the bar.

There were some round-the-way girls in the place, but they appeared to be taken. The ones who weren't didn't have that look he liked. s.h.i.t, who was he kidding? Those women hadn't so much as turned their heads in his direction when he'd walked into the joint.

He could smell a sweet hint of reefer coming from the bathrooms down along the supper club's back hall. Rick James was doing "Mary Jane" on the house system. He found this funny, but there was no one there to share the joke.

He looked at his reflection in the bar mirror. He saw a tired man with tired threads and a third-rate a.r.s.enio Hall fade. The eyes in his face stared back at a stone dead end.

He had another drink. He was angry enough to get into a fight tonight, but he knew he'd lose. He never was all that good with his hands, anyway. Charles always used to crack on him about that.

"Charlie," said Wilson, staring into his drink.

Wilson flashed on the detective in the wheelchair, his son by his side. Thomas Wilson closed his eyes tight and brought the cognac to his lips.

Bernie Walters pressed down on the scan b.u.t.ton on the remote that was Velcroed to his recliner. He sipped his beer, watched the channels flash by: the Spanish soap opera station, the cowboys and their girls doing some fancy line dance, the black-and-white movie station, the show about the cops in Brooklyn with all the actors who looked too pretty to be cops... nothing on. He killed his beer and lit a cigarette.

He put the empty in the carrier at the side of the chair and pulled a fresh one. He had gone through three already. Those fancy triple-bocks he'd tried down at the Brew Hause had really messed up his head.

Nothing to do this week except work. He had switched to a sorter's position since his feet had gone bad on him. Now that friendly guy Mike Hanc.o.c.k, the one who looked like Magnum P.I., had taken his Bethesda route. He was happy for Hanc.o.c.k, who had a nice wife and a couple of kids.

Walters remembered when it was all in front of him like that. He drank some more beer.

Yeah, there wasn't much to look forward to this week.

There's nothing to look forward to ever again.

Well, there was his vacation. On Sat.u.r.day he'd go down to the property with Dimitri, hang out, show him around, drink some beer. Do some shooting in the woods, because that's what Dimitri had asked to do. Spend the rest of the week down there by himself.

As for tonight... he'd just get drunk tonight.

He'd get good and drunk, because when he was drunk he slept solid. He didn't remember his dreams when he slept drunk. He did hear Vance's voice as a child, though, saying his name. He could never get drunk enough to stop that.

I love you, Vance. I was always proud of you, son.

He wanted to be with Lynne, his wife, and he wanted to be with Vance. He was ready now. He knew that he could live on for a good many years, and he knew that however long he lived, it was G.o.d's decision, not his. Still, he was ready. Sometimes he prayed to be taken.

Yes, he had thought of suicide, many times. He had thought of it but never once considered it beyond the thought.

The Lord said that it was a sin to take one's life. Bernie Walters would just have to wait.

Dimitri Karras propped himself up on one elbow and kissed Stephanie Maroulis on the mouth. He looked at her lush figure on the bed and ran his hand down her arm.

"I guess I'm not much good tonight," she said.

"It's okay. This This is good. We can just do this." is good. We can just do this."

"You sure?" Stephanie smiled weakly as she reached down and brushed her fingers down the shaft of his hardening c.o.c.k. "Because you're mouth is saying one thing and your body's telling me something else."

Karras grinned crookedly.

Stephanie turned and looked at the photograph of Steve Maroulis on the nightstand. "You know, it wasn't like me to get that way in the meeting. I've been doing pretty well up to now, don't you think?"

"Yes."

"But there was something about Bill Jonas being there that made me want to talk about it. About how it was for Steve, at the end."

"I know."

Stephanie had told the group how her husband had been robbed many years before at an after-hours, high-stakes card game down off New York Avenue, near the Henley Park Hotel. The gunmen had made the gamblers put their heads down on the carpet. Steve had been the last to comply; he thought that if he were to put his head down, they'd kill him. His fear was so great that he'd fouled himself that night. He had told Stephanie that putting his head down was the hardest thing he'd ever done.

"I didn't mean to cry," said Stephanie. "It's just, when I was telling it, I could imagine seeing him there in that kitchen, how afraid he must have been.... I couldn't help myself, Dimitri."

"I know," repeated Karras. Her hair had fallen across her cheek, and he brushed it away. "I've been thinking of you these last few days, Stephanie. What I mean to say is, you've been in my head. I know this is supposed to be a once-a-week thing, us being together. But I was looking forward to seeing you tonight. I was hoping this night would come sooner, understand? I'm not certain that I know what it means."

"I've been thinking of you, too."

Dimitri Karras awoke in the middle of the night, confused and oddly ashamed. He felt a strange sense of having committed a betrayal. It was as if he were considering breaking a promise he'd made never to be happy again.

He walked barefoot down a hall to the darkened kitchen and found Stephanie's wall-mounted phone. He dialed the number of his old house and let it ring several times.

Lisa's tired, fragile voice came through from the other side. "h.e.l.lo."

Karras did not answer.

"h.e.l.lo? Is anybody there?"

He listened to Lisa breathing, and then there was a soft, final click.

Karras stood in the kitchen with the receiver pressed against his cheek. After a while he hung the phone in its cradle and returned to Stephanie's bed.