The story behind this, I told myself, has got to be good. I couldn't wait to hear it.
I stood, creaking like a rusty hinge. I made my way to the pile of clothes on the chair, pulled on my shorts. Minimally decent, I kept going, to the small bathroom under the stairs.
I took a piss it felt like I'd been waiting a week to take. Then I turned on the water in the sink. The rush of it, loud in the silence, made me vaguely uneasy. I filled the bathroom tumbler, drained it three times. The water was sharp and sweet.
The face in the mirror looked worse than it had last time I'd seen it: pale, stubble-covered, and old.
I soaked a hand towel in hot water, used it to wash everywhere I could reach. I took a look at my shoulder. A messy-looking bruise was coming up inboard of the shoulder blade, more or less in line with the aching place behind my ear.
Something, or someone, had hit me pretty hard.
I wandered back out to the living room, pulled on my jeans. They were as stiff as I was. I maneuvered my undershirt on with as little use of my left shoulder as I could manage, which was not little enough.
Then I had done enough hard work for a while. I reached into the wooden bowl for the unopened pack of Kents that lay there, then went to the woodstove for a kitchen match.
I dropped back down onto the couch, rested my elbows on my knees. I drew smoke in, streamed it out, probed the blank space in my memory for a way in. The cigarette was almost gone when I heard the front door open.
I grabbed my gun from the bowl, held it out of sight. I didn't stand; I was steadier seated. The door closed; there were sounds in the vestibule. The inner door opened and Leo trotted through.
When he saw me he scrabbled over to the couch, wagging everything from his neck back. He put his front paws on my knee and stuck his face up near mine, licked my chin. I scratched his ears with my left hand, which was holding the cigarette. I figured that was better than my right one, where the gun was.
"Leo!" Eve said, coming through the inner door. "Get down!"
He did, sitting in front of me, lifting a paw excitedly, scratching at my knee.
I put the gun down as Eve walked around the cedar chest, came to stand in front of me.
"How do you feel?" she asked.
"Tired." A half dozen other words came to mind, but that one got there first.
She nodded. "You had a bad night. You ran a fever. I don't think you really slept until almost dawn."
"What happened?" I asked her.
She frowned. "I was waiting for you to wake up so you could tell me that."
I made no answer.
Eve moved around the couch to the kitchen. "Do you think you could handle a cup of coffee?"
"God, yes."
She brought me one, and one for herself. The coffee was rich and fragrant and hot. I gulped at it.
She moved what was left of the laundry pile onto the cedar chest, settled herself in the chair.
"I found you," she said. "About an hour after you left here last night, just down the hill." She gestured toward the slope outside the windows, where the scrub trees began about ten yards from the house.
"Found me," I repeated stupidly. I wasn't sure I was following her.
"Well, Leo did. Something strange happened. Something . . . frightening."
"Tell me."
She sipped at her coffee. "I got a phone call, maybe forty-five minutes after you left. A man's voice, I think, but whispering, so I really don't know. 'Your friend Smith,' it said. 'He's down the hill from your place. It's a bad night to be out.'"
I sipped my coffee, tried to understand this. She went on, "He hung up. I didn't know what he meant, down the hill, but I took Leo and went out. Leo found you, lying just where the trees start, only half-conscious." She stopped, studied me. "You don't remember? You were soaking wet; you were freezing."
I shook my head. "No. How did I get here?"
"Back to the house? You walked." She smiled her small smile. "You didn't want to. You kept telling me to leave you alone. I began to get desperate. It's a way of conserving heat, that refusal to move, but it really would have killed you. Alcohol's not the best thing for someone whose body temperature's dropped as low as yours had, but it feels good, and you needed motivation. I came back for the brandy." Her smile faded. "You don't remember any of this?"
I shook my head. Leo, who had climbed onto the pile of blankets beside me, rearranged himself with a happy sigh.
"Actually," Eve said, "I think Leo saved your life."
I raised my eyebrows, looked at the dog.
"Besides finding you, I mean. When I ran back here for the brandy, I covered you with my slicker and told him to get under it and stay with you until I came back. I think his being there kept you just warm enough to stay conscious. Then I gave you brandy and told you you'd die if you didn't get up and come with me." She smiled again. "And you told me to go to hell.
"But you got up. It took a couple of tries. I was afraid that you couldn't. It was obvious you were hurt. I was trying to think what to do if you really couldn't walk, but you did get up, and you leaned on me and we came here."
She made that last part sound easy.
When shed come through the door her cheeks had been glowing from the wind, but as wed talked the color had faded, and I saw now that her eyes were dark-ringed and her skin was patchy and dull.
"You haven't slept," I said.
She shrugged, finished her coffee. Over her shoulder, framed in the squares of the window, leafless branches danced in a gusting wind.
"Thanks," I said. It was dust when it should have been diamonds, but when I said it she lifted her eyes to mine and smiled.
She stood, got the coffeepot from the stove, refilled our mugs. Small, everyday blessings. I drank.
"Why were you there?" she asked. "Why did you come back? Who called me?"
I passed my hand over my eyes. Something was in the back of my brain, but it was darkness and noise. "I don't know."
I drank more coffee. "I remember leaving after dinner, driving away. No, wait—" The coffee was nudging something forward, like an indulgent aunt with a shy child whose turn it was to recite. "Light. I wanted to reach the light." That seemed right, but I didn't know what it meant.
"Where?"
I pulled out another cigarette, dropped the pack back in the bowl. I lit another match. With the flare came a sudden burst of memory. "Your studio. In your studio. There were lights down there as I came around the curve, so I parked the car and went down to look."
"Lights in my studio? Last night? What—who was there?"
I reached, but there was nothing. "I don't know. I came close, but I don't think I got there." A dark figure, a shadow in the shadows. "Someone was waiting. He hit me from behind. I didn't pee him."
"Someone was waiting for you? Someone wanted to kill you?" Her voice might have cracked, but if it did she got it back under control fast.
"No. They couldn't have known I'd come, couldn't have even known I'd see the light. And I would've been easy to kill, once I was down. I was even carrying a gun, if he didn't want to use his own."
"But you could have died. But they didn't want you to, or they wouldn't have called here. I don't understand. Why do that to you, and then call me?"
I thought about that. "Something was going on that someone didn't want me to know about, or screw up. But there's been one death already; maybe they thought another would call down more heat than they were ready to take. I suppose they could have ditched my body where it wouldn't be found"—Eve cradled her coffee as though her hands were suddenly cold—"but I'm too high-profile right now to just disappear. Brinkman would love nothing better than for me to just turn around and go back to the city, but he knows I won't, so if I disappeared he and MacGregor would know something was up. No, as long as they make sure I don't know what the hell's going on, I must be less trouble alive than dead. So they got me out of the way, got their business done, and called you."