11
Mitch had made breakfast, his marital equivalent of half a dozen Hail Marys. He started plating the food when he heard the back door open and close.
‘What’s this?’ Diane breezed into the kitchen on a current of fresh air. Her cheeks were pink from her morning run, her blond ponytail damp when she pulled back the Gore-Tex hood. She looked like an ad for a health club.
He smiled at her. ‘Penance.’
‘I didn’t even hear you come in last night.’
‘I slept in the den. It was very late. I didn’t want to wake you.’
‘Hmm.’ She was trotting in place to cool off, running shoes squeaking on the tile. ‘Do I have time for a shower?’
‘Sorry.’
He carried the plates through the dining room he preferred, out to the glass sun porch, Diane’s favorite room in the house. It was a large space made small by a jungle of ferns and palms and flowering plants that all looked healthier than he felt. The air was heavy and humid and smelled of damp earth. Mitch hated that smell.
‘Oh, this is lovely, Mitchell.’ Diane settled at the wrought-iron table and admired her plate. A spinach omelet in fluted puff pastry, iced pears with grated Reggiano, a single fanned strawberry. ‘You must have done something truly awful. Are we going to have sex, too?’
He must have looked startled, because she smiled a little as she tucked a pear into her mouth and held out her cup. ‘Half, please.’
‘How’s the new painting coming along?’
‘Badly. If I don’t have any luck today, I may pull it from the show.’
‘Oh. Sorry.’
‘Don’t be silly. It’s not your fault, now is it? And one painting more or less isn’t going to make any difference to the gallery. This is really extraordinary. Nutmeg?’
‘Right.’ He laid his fork upside down on the edge of his plate, cue to a nonexistent waiter. He wasn’t hungry at all; still a little off-balance from her sex remark.
‘I can’t place the cheese.’
‘Five cheeses, actually.’
Silver scraped china as she chased down the last bite of her omelet. ‘You are so good at this. You really should come out of the closet and cook for your friends.’
His cup clattered into the saucer. ‘Why do you do that?’
She looked up, all innocence. ‘Do what?’
‘Call them my friends. They’re our friends, not just mine.’
‘Oh. Did I say that? I didn’t mean anything by it. It’s just that you spend so much more time with them . . .’ Her voice and gaze drifted until she focused on his plate. ‘You aren’t going to let that go to waste, are you?’
He stared at her for a moment, almost irritated enough to pursue the issue if it weren’t so damn hot in this room; so damn close. When she glanced at his face, her own crumpled instantly. My God. What had he looked like? What had she seen?
‘Please,’ he said quickly. ‘Help yourself. I ate while I was cooking.’ He wanted to run, out of the room, out of the house, but he made himself sit there and smile until her mouth curved in a tentative answer, and then he watched in silence as she polished off both breakfasts. It was amazing, really. She had an almost frightening appetite, and yet remained in perfect physical condition, never gaining or losing a single pound.
Use that. Give her something. You owe her that much.
‘I don’t know how you do it, Diane.’ He added another smile for good measure. ‘If I told Annie what you ate this morning she’d have you killed.’
She laughed out loud, almost frightening him. She never did that. ‘Maybe Annie should start running. You all should, for that matter. It’s not healthy being cooped up in that loft all day, just sitting in front of those silly computer screens.’
‘We take an occasional break. Roadrunner bikes and does his yoga, Grace lifts weights . . .’
‘Does she? I didn’t know that.’
‘Maybe that’s because you hardly see her anymore.’
‘I try to keep in touch. I called her the minute the show was over in Los Angeles, didn’t I? We had a wonderful chat.’
‘So call her more often. Come into the city for lunch. She’d love that.’
‘You’re right. That’s precisely what I should do, right after this show is over.’ She sipped at her coffee and opened the newspaper he’d left neatly folded to the left of her place. ‘Hmm. Market took a tumble yesterday.’
Mitch pushed back his chair. Time to leave.
‘Oh dear.’
‘What?’
‘I certainly don’t need to read that sort of thing with my morning coffee.’
‘What sort of thing?’
She passed him the paper with a disgusted flick of her wrist. ‘There simply are no good newspapers anymore. They’re all like tabloids, reporting every single grisly detail . . .’
She may have continued talking, but if so, Mitch didn’t hear her. He’d started to read the article that had dared to offend, eyes darting back and forth, then freezing suddenly while all the blood drained from his face.
‘It’s horrible, isn’t it?’
He blinked at her, confused for a moment, then remembered to nod. ‘Yes. Horrible.’
‘Well, I’m off to the shower.’ She popped out of her chair and paused long enough to kiss the top of his head. ‘Thanks for the breakfast, darling. It was wonderful.’
Mitch refolded the paper carefully, running a thumbnail along the crease. ‘My pleasure,’ he murmured, but by that time, Diane was already in the shower.
12
The Monkeewrench loft space was cavernous and silent, still asleep like most of the city. The sun was just beginning to creep over the eastern horizon and its weak light struggled to penetrate the bank of windows on the far wall.
In the dark maze of desks in the center of the room, a computer monitor hissed to life – an eerie blue window glowing brightly in the gloom. Slowly, letter by letter, red pixels coalesced on the screen and a message materialized:
WANT TO PLAY A GAME?
Down on the ground floor, the freight elevator rumbled and groaned, then wheezed to a stop at the loft. Roadrunner emerged, walked over to the computer monitor, read the message, and frowned. He tapped a few keys, but the message remained and his frown deepened. He tapped a few more keys, then shrugged and headed for the coffeemakers.
As he started grinding beans, he gazed out the windows at the awakening city below. In the distance the Mississippi River flowed sluggishly, as if it were practicing for its winter hibernation in ice, and even the first wave of commuters was moving more slowly on this frosty morning. Winter was a state of mind in Minneapolis, and it always started long before the first snows flew.
He began the meticulous work of leveling tablespoons of fresh coffee and carefully depositing them into a new filter. He was so intent, so focused on his chore that he never saw the massive figure creeping silently, stealthily, toward him through the shadows.
‘BEEP, BEEP!’
Roadrunner twitched convulsively and sent coffee grounds flying. ‘God damnit, Harley, that was Jamaican Blue!’
‘Heads up, little buddy.’ Harley shrugged off his battered leather bike jacket and tossed it on the back of his chair.
Roadrunner started scooping up coffee grounds with angry sweeping motions. ‘Where the hell were you, anyhow? I thought the place was empty.’
‘I was taking a leak. And you gotta loosen up a little. You got a spooky little ritualistic thing going on with that coffeemaker. Every time you get within five feet of it, you enter a fugue state. It worries me.’ He glanced over at the monitor where the red message still glowed. ‘You working on Grace’s computer?’