He didn't smile back. His eyes rested on my face for a moment and then dropped back to the eggs. "What happened to you doesn't change that, Kinsey, but you have to keep it straight. Blow somebody's brains out and you don't brush that off. And you don't try to turn it into an intellectual stance."

"No, you don't," I said uneasily. I had a quick flash of the face that peered into the garbage bin just before I fired. By some remarkable distortion, I could have sworn I saw how the first bullet stretched the flesh like elastic before smashing through. I shook the image away and hopped down. "I have to run," I said, feeling anxious.

I left the kitchen without glancing back, but I know what the look was on Henry's face. Caution and sorrow and pain.

Once outside, I had to put it out of my mind again. Back the subject went, into its own little box. I did a quick stretch, concentrating on my hamstrings. I don't run fast enough or far enough to justify much of a warm-up. Other joggers, I know, would argue with that, citing injuries that result from insufficient stretching before a run, but I find exercise loathsome enough without adding contortions up front. For a time, I tried it, dutifully lying on my back in the grass with one leg straight out and the other cocked sideways toward my waist as though broken at the hip. I could never get up afterward unless I flopped about like a bug and I finally decided it was worth a possible groin-muscle pull to avoid the indignity. I've never been injured running anyway. I've never thrilled to it either. I'm still waiting for the rumored "euphoria" that apparently infuses everyone but me. I headed over to the boulevard at a brisk walk, keeping my mind blank.

I generally do three miles, jogging along the bicycle path that borders the beach. The walkway is stenciled with odd cartoons at intervals and I watch for those, counting off the quarter-miles. The tracks of some improbable bird, the mark of a single fat tire that crosses the concrete and disappears into the sand. There are usually tramps on the beach; some who camp there permanently, others in transit, their sleeping bags arranged under the palm trees like large green larvae or the skins shed by some night-stirring beast.