The path closes in around her, a canal of dark. He wouldn’t meet on the avenue, he wouldn’t get a drink first. So here she is, on time, she hopes, and should she call his name or not, is what she is wondering. The world rustles around her and there’s a very big very sudden noise, her own scream at the hand on her shoulder.

“Mothertrucker!”

“Trucker?” Reynard’s voice is faint in the night, her scream still a lollygagging echo in the eucalyptus. His hand pulls back.

“I’m trying,” she says, after a deep breath, “to stop swearing. Nicky’s sharp enough to imitate it.”

Reynard’s chuckle is a little refuge from the shock, but why won’t he step closer? Why isn’t he holding her or at least taking her arm?

“Where are you?” he says, drink on his breath. She can smell it.

“Here,” she says, reaching out an arm and brushing the buttons on his jacket, which rattle teethlike.

“Did you bring the money?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t mean to be rude, but how much—”

“Ten thousand dollars, a little more.”

In many places in San Francisco this is not a lot of money. In Bottle Grove in the dark it still is. Don’t mean to be rude, she thinks, and then wonders, as she has so many times in these woods, what is going to happen.

“OK,” he says. “Just down here more.”

“On the ground?” She stumbles a hand below her knees, some weed tickling at her knuckle.

“No, no. We’re going to the field, I told you this. We will rid you of all trouble.”

“How?”

“The same way I reformed and stopped drinking.” His breath comes at her closer, the words near and definite. “Spiritual practice.”

“This is how you stopped drinking?” She is asking doubtfully but she can hear her question in the dark and knows it’s not doubtful enough. Nobody stops drinking with a sack of money in a park. She wants a drink herself, out here, and like a magic trick Reynard’s flask is thrust into her hand, too hard, moving past her arm to punch her a little in the stomach, and she stumbles over a root in the ground, or her own feet.

Reynard catches her. He catches the bag too, and it’s gone from her hands. She hears it rustle as her feet right her and the flask slides onto her palm. She closes her hand around the drink and feels how really frightened she is. Her husband is sleeping unaware and her other hand is scared empty. “I would have given you money!” she cries out. “If you’d just asked! There’s no need for this.”

“What are you talking about?” Reynard asks. He is closer than she thought, calmer, but she cannot see one single thing now. “The money’s here. I thought you were giving it to me. Have a drink.”