He raised his hands in a gesture that looked like surrender. "All I'm saying is, when I stand back from all this—from what our relationship is and what I would like it to be—when I ask myself what would really be best for you—my advice is to let this go. Stop asking questions. Maybe even think about heading back home, back to California."

"I don't want to go home."

"Think about it, is all I'm saying. There's only so much I can do to protect you."

"I never asked you to protect me."

"Maybe we can talk about this again when you've given it some consideration."

She stood up. "Or maybe not."

"And maybe we can talk about Turk Findley and what's going on in that department."

In that department. Poor Brian, unfailingly prim, even when he was rebuking her.

She thought about defending herself. She could say, We were having dinner when the ash fell. She could say, Of course he came home with me, what was he supposed to do, sleep in his car? She could lie and say, We're just friends. Or she could say, I went to bed with him because he's unafraid and unpredictable and his fingernails aren't impeccably clean and he doesn't work for the fucking DGS.

She was angry, humiliated, not a little guilt-stricken. "It's not your business anymore. You need to figure that out, Brian."

And turned, and left.

* * * * *

Turk went home to fix himself dinner, some shiftless meal appropriate to his mood. He lived in a two-room bungalow set among similar cabins on a barely-paved road near Arundji's airfield, on a bluff overlooking the sea. Maybe someday this would be expensive real estate. Currently it was off-grid. The toilet fed a cesspool and his electricity came from sunlight and a generator in a back shed. Every summer he repaired his shingles, and every winter they leaked from a new angle.

The sun was setting over the foothills west of him, and to the east the sea had turned an inky shade of blue. A few fishing boats straggled toward the harbor to the north. The air was cool and there was a breeze to carry off the remnant stink of the ash.

The ash had settled in windrows around the foundations of the cabin, but the roof seemed to have borne up under the strain. His shelter was intact. There wasn't much food in the kitchen cupboards, however.

Less than he remembered. It was canned beans or go out for groceries. Or spend money he didn't have in some restaurant he couldn't afford.

Lost my plane, he thought. But no, not really, not yet; the plane was only embargoed, not yet sold. But there was nothing in his bank account to offer a convincing counter-argument. So that little mantra had been running through his head since he left Mike Arundji's office: Lost my plane.