I snorted, coughed up a wad of traffic-tasting phlegm. I swallowed it. "We aren't friends."

"But you are. I can tell."

"That is," I said, and held out an open palm, "we aren't anymore."

"I see," she said. And looked at me.

I felt compelled to complete the thought. "He used me."

"Of course."

"He does that, does he?"

"But here you are, looking for him. Why is that?"

"I-" The words caught in my throat.

Why was I looking for him? End the guilt, of course. Find out what he meant. And then? Once I find him and we're standing face to face? Tell him to go to h.e.l.l. What else was there? This wasn't about him. It was about me. I was a self-centered b.a.s.t.a.r.d and didn't care who knew it, and this woman's questions were getting on my nerves.

She said, "You love him, don't you."

"I what?"

"You love him. You love Pitt."

"I'm not gay."

"I never said you were."

Love. Love was giving your girl the big beefy injection. Cooing over tiny humans caused by said beefy injection. Bald, half-naked cults that meditated on the Ganges. You might as well go catch a f.u.c.king cloud.

"f.u.c.k love," I said. "You just met me. What do you know."

"Where did you meet him?"

I'd had enough of this game. She didn't know anything. And even if she did-there had to be some easier way to find Pitt. I got up. "You don't know where he is, just say so." I walked toward the door.

"You didn't even think to ask?"

My stride faltered. "So you know where I can find him?"

She giggled and clasped her knees. "No idea."

"Well then." I made a beeline to the exit.

She called after me, "No one else is going to care."

That struck home. I stopped. Beneath the table, the oldest child was demonstrating to the others how to pick up the cat by the tail. The cat made no complaint.

"No one likes me," I said. "I am not a nice man."

"I'm sure you're not."

"I'm an a.s.shole. Sc.u.m."

"If you say so."

I sighed. "But Pitt liked me. Or pretended to."

Get out of my head! I wanted to scream. Now who was toying with who?

"Why would he pretend?" she asked.

"I have been disappointed too many times by too many people." I thought of La Paz. What happened to Lili. People I had trusted wrongly. Dozens of them in my past. But for reasons I could not fathom, Horse the Master Cynic got suckered in again and again, and every time the betrayal felt like the first time.

I ran a hand across my face. "But with Pitt, it was like..." I shrugged, began again. "The one time, the only time I ever-"

"Loved another human being."

"Used me. I was nothing to him. Nothing." I paced the room. I raised a clenched fist, nearly crashed it into a mirror hanging from a nearby staircase. "A tool."

"Maybe," she said. "I wouldn't be too sure."

"And you know what the worst thing is?" I rushed on before she could stop me. "I knew it was going to happen. I could see it coming a mile away. It was like watching a train wreck and being unable to stop it. I mean the man told me the day we met, for chrissakes."

"Told you what?"

If she didn't know, I wasn't going to be the one to break the news. "The kind of man he is."

"And now you want to find him."

I ran my fingers through my hair. "Yes."

"Need to find him."

I hung my head. "Yes."

"I understand."

I studied her. Was this part of her seduction? Turn shrink and psych me out? She wanted to f.u.c.k my mind as well as my body. That is verboten in Horse Land.

"Do you?"

"I am his..." she paused, bit her lip. "That is, in my dark moments, when he is not around, I call myself his secret shadow."

"Meaning what?"

"I have done him wrong." She laughed, and the sound seemed to conceal great sadness. "A lousy wife, remember?" She gestured at the children, none of whose various skin tones matched Pitt's striking blond Nordic features. "I take what sc.r.a.ps of love I can, and for that I am grateful."

I sat down next to her again. "Has he called? An email? Letter, anything?"

"Sergio called from Anglo-Dutch. 'On special a.s.signment' was all he said."

I exhaled through my nose. Lit a cigarette. A cloud of smoke rose in the air. Maybe it would be enough to keep her at arm's length. Doubtful.

"Nothing else?"

"His Highness came by."

"Ambo."

She laughed and sucked in a lungful of secondhand smoke. "Pitt taught you that too."

"And?"

"Said the mining company wouldn't talk to him. Wanted to know had I heard from Pitt."

"Had you?"

"No. But then I don't usually. Ambo asked me to call if I heard anything."

"So Pitt said nothing, where he might have gone?"

The children under the table were inserting matches in the cat's a.n.u.s. The animal arched its tail to allow for greater access.

Janine sat back against the sofa. She laid one forearm across her belly, tightening the thin silk across her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. "He had to go find himself," she said softly. "I had to let him go."

"Go where?" My anger was seeping away, replaced by frustration.

"Does it matter?"

I took a long drag on the cigarette, let the cancerous smoke trickle from my lungs.

One child, the oldest again, sc.r.a.ped a match against the box. It failed to light. He sc.r.a.ped it again. The third time it caught. The cat looked around, curious, nosed the boy's hand. The child held the flame to the match heads. There was a flash of sulfur, and the cat's tail caught fire. The animal yowled and ran across the room, the movement fanning the flames that spread across its body.

Janine reached behind the sofa and came up with a fire extinguisher. She tracked the cat, like shooting skeet, and let go a blast of white powder that coated the animal in white sugar frosting. Snook.u.ms dove under a recliner, trying to escape its tiny tormentors. The fire extinguisher returned to its appointed post behind the sofa with a hollow clunk.

"Come on," she said. "I want to show you something."

She walked to a corner of the house, strode down a narrow corridor. She unlocked a side room. I followed after her, and she closed the door.

An unmade king-size bed sprawled across the empty room. Bookshelves overflowed, their contents in disarray. Empty beer bottles stood on a nightstand. A rolltop desk sat open in a corner, its pigeonholes stuffed with papers. One corner of the room was coated in dry vomit. The stink of stomach acid and rotting, half-digested bits of food filled the room.

"Tell me something, Horse," she said.

She unlatched the chain that held the veil across her face. She dangled the silk between two fingers. Let it slip to the floor. If her eyes were astonishing, her face doubled the effect. Angular features formed the platinum setting those burnings b.a.l.l.s of sapphire deserved.

I shuddered. I put the cigarette in the corner of my mouth and ran a thumb along the bookshelf. Plato. Nietzsche. Sartre. Augustine. Camus.

I said, "Shoot."

"Am I beautiful?"

I pulled out a well-thumbed copy of Kierkegaard's Sickness Unto Death. "Didn't know Pitt was into philosophy."

She clucked her tongue. "He's not."

"No?"

"Or wasn't. Until recently."

"What happened?"

She sighed. "I was a philosophy major. About a month ago he asked to borrow all my books from college."

I laughed. "Pitt can barely read."

She shook her head, the blue fire keeping me in its sights. "Pitt always tells people that. He's a speed reader. Could do it faster than anyone I've ever met. Went through all my books in a week."

"Any idea why?"

She shrugged. "Afterward, he got drunk and puked in the corner."

"I can see that."

Her lips lifted in a half-smile. "The smell reminds me of him."

I put Sren back in his place, crouched to check out the bottom shelf.

She said, "You going to answer my question?"

A lump throbbed in my throat. I swallowed hard. "What was the question again?"

"Do you think I'm beautiful?"

"Pitt must have thought so. He married you, didn't he?" A copy of Crime and Punishment lay sideways on top of the bottom shelf. I pulled it out.

"Then can you tell me-why did he prefer to sleep in here, alone?"

The sound of swishing silk, a judge's robes as he enters the courtroom. I stood in time to catch the final ounce of niqab sliding to her feet. Janine stood naked in a pile of silk.

She was beautiful. Too beautiful. b.r.e.a.s.t.s to melt the resolve of the mightiest sinner, hips that twitched, waiting for hands to command them. A long full head of soft brown hair curved at her throat, tickled her collarbone. Four kids didn't show.

The cigarette burned my lips. I spat it out and crushed it with my shoe. "Thought you said you didn't want to cheat."

"The spirit is willing, but the flesh..."

I swallowed. "The flesh."