“Thank you,” she said. “You’re very kind.”
Frank startled her by laughing.
“Did I say something funny?” she asked.
“No,” he said, smiling. “It’s just…very kind is not something I’m called often.”
“Really? That surprises me. It seems to me you’ve been nothing but kind since you arrived.”
“Maybe so,” he said, “but when I was younger, I was not the nicest guy.”
“I doubt that’s true.”
“It is. I was a thug. A criminal. Sometimes I hurt people.”
He wasn’t sure why he’d told her that. He expected her to recoil. To ask him to leave. Instead, she said, “Are you familiar with Heraclitus of Ephesus, Max?”
He cocked his head, confused by the conversational hairpin. “Can’t say as I am,” he said. “Is it a person or a thing?”
“A person,” she said, smiling. “A pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, in fact.”
“Oh. I don’t know a thing about philosophy. Never had much use for it.”
“Mr. Rausch, you wound me. I spent thirty years teaching Classics before retiring.”
“You were a teacher?”
“A professor, yes, first at UNC and eventually across the bay at UC Berkeley.”
“Huh. Then you extra wouldn’t have liked the younger me. He never met a teacher he didn’t manage to piss off.”
“Clearly the two of you have little in common, then-just as Heraclitus would have predicted.”
“How’s that?”
“He believed that change was the only constant in the universe. As he observed, ‘No man can step into the same river twice, for it is not the same river-and he is not the same man.’”
“So you’re saying I ain’t that guy anymore.”
“I’m saying everything, even what we think of as our essential self, is fluid.”
“I dunno,” he replied. “Seems to me, most people never change.”
“I think you’re wrong. We all do. Most of us simply never change direction.”
“Maybe,” he said. “Maybe not. But I don’t see how it matters. Either way, I’m stuck carrying around the memories of what I’ve done.”
“Those memories might be not a burden, but a gift. It’s possible you carry them to remind yourself why you’ve chosen a different path.”
“That’s a nice thought,” he said. “But if I could, I’d ditch ’em in a heartbeat.”
Her face clouded. “I suppose we all have things we wish we could forget.”
“Listen, Lois. About Cal-”
“Has he called?” she asked, sounding shrill and desperate but not disingenuous, as if she’d convinced herself that he was somehow still okay but knew the illusion wouldn’t hold if examined closely. “Is he on his way?”
“No, Lois, he hasn’t called,” he said, his tone gentle but insistent. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”
A brief glimmer of understanding flickered across her face and then vanished, replaced once more by that same odd incuriosity Frank witnessed yesterday and had attributed to the drugs. “Perhaps later,” she said flatly, and then, the topic dismissed, she perked up some. “First, I think I’d like to try to eat some breakfast, since it seems these aspirin are staying down.”
Last time Frank had taken notice of a clock, it was after three-a little late for breakfast, but he didn’t bother to point that out to her. It was one of many things he didn’t bother pointing out.
Lois threw back the covers and tried to get out of bed, but she was shaky, her body weak. Frank wondered how many of those muscle relaxants she’d taken yesterday before the Park Police interrupted her by knocking on her door. Not enough to kill her, it would seem-but if he had to guess, he’d say she hadn’t been far off.
He watched uncomfortably for a minute while she struggled to get up, uncertain if she’d accept his assistance. But when it became clear she’d never make it downstairs on her own, he took her hand and helped her to her feet. She frowned but didn’t object.
Once she got going, she did okay, although he linked arms with her on the way downstairs for safety. Frank’s strength wasn’t what it once was-there was a time when his slender frame had been coiled with muscle-but Lois was so slight, he had no trouble keeping her upright. They apparently moved too slowly for Ella, though, because she raced past them down the stairs.
“So,” Frank said once they’d reached the kitchen and he’d deposited her on a stool beside the island, “what can I get you?”
“That’s very kind of you, Max, but I can’t have you cook me breakfast in my own home.”
“Of course you can. In fact, I insist. So what’ll it be? I make a mean omelet. You want one?”
He watched her expression cycle from disgust to curiosity to outright hunger as she tried the idea on for size. “I’ll take that as a yes,” he said. “How about coffee? I made some earlier-I hope you don’t mind-but I finished it hours ago. I’d be happy to put on some more.”
This time, she ran through the same cycle of expressions in reverse and wound up little green. “I think I’ll stick to water for now, thanks,” she said.
Frank got Lois some more water. Then he opened her fridge and dug around. Even after their feast last night, it was well stocked-eggs, milk, several kinds of meats and cheeses, and scads of local produce. He selected an herbed goat cheese, thin-sliced prosciutto, and some leftover asparagus, as well as a few sprigs of chive to chop for garnish. Then butter for the pan-an expensive, restaurant-grade nonstick made of anodized aluminum-and three eggs.
He set the pan on the Viking cooktop, put two pats of butter inside. The burner clicked three times when he cranked the dial and then lit with a whoosh, blue flames licking the underside of the pan. He cracked the eggs into a bowl. Seasoned them with salt and pepper. Beat them while the butter melted. Poured the mixture into the pan. Fed Ella a small scrap of prosciutto while the eggs set. All the while, Lois watched in bemused silence.
“What?” he asked when he noticed her expression.
“It’s just…” She hesitated-maybe wondering if she was about to offend him-and then continued. “You must be the most thoughtful home invader on the planet, to make me breakfast.”
The briefest frown touched his features, an expression he replaced immediately with a genial smile. “I didn’t invade nothing-you let me in!”
“Did I?” she asked as he added filling to the omelet and folded it. “I confess, it’s all a bit fuzzy. I remember I was in the tub and heard you knocking.”
It was the Park Police she’d heard, not Frank. “You came downstairs,” he said, rooting through the cupboards, “saw me outside”-he found a plate and set it on the island in front of her-“and let me in.” He grabbed the pan and expertly slid the omelet onto the plate with a nudge from the spatula he’d taken from a ceramic crock beside the stove.
“To the left of the sink,” she said, when he looked flummoxed trying to find the silverware drawer. “No, your other left.”
Frank found the drawer, opened it, and handed her a fork. She cut a bite from the center of the omelet and put it in her mouth. At first, she chewed tentatively, as though worried it would be terrible or-more likely-that her body would rebel. But when she swallowed, she immediately took another. By her third bite, she was practically shoveling it in.
“This is delicious,” she said around a mouthful of omelet. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure,” Frank replied. “It’s been a long time since I got to cook in a kitchen this nice. You have a lovely home.”
“Thanks. I think so too. Of course, it’s not actually ours-we pay the Presidio Trust twelve grand a month for the privilege of staying here. Cal always tells me that it makes more sense to buy than rent, that our money would go farther elsewhere. But I like it here, and in the end, we’re all just renting anyway, aren’t we?”