“Oh, I should have known. I mean, who wouldn’t have known?”

“This lawyer I know was in Milan by himself, ends up drinking alone next to another American. Hey, let’s try this bar I heard about. They hold his card for the bill, and at the urinal there’s a knife to his throat.”

“Scuttle in the bushes, and I can’t help turning around. My high school ring.”

“Cash I made six months tipping, I always figure someone at the restaurant tipped somebody off. The proverbial alley. I had to tell my girlfriend there were no tickets. There was crying.”

“Can you say transvestite or is it all gender now? Someone with a beard and a dress, I am saying, with the oldest rustiest gun you ever—like a cowboy movie, but who takes chances?”

“The police said, well, it helps with statistics.”

“They said check lost and found, and I thought, the only thing you’re going to find in lost and found are idiots checking lost and found. They said no and I said si and they went in back and there in a bag was my camera.”

“Tacked up was a photo of it. Found: Executive Briefcase, no questions asked. Can you believe it? Found, no questions asked.”

“Can you believe it? I thought they were going to murder me, minimum.”

It goes on the whole hour, the only parade Martin gets tonight or maybe, he looks at the door like she might come back, the rest of his life. “These people,” Stanford says to him, both of them thinking of Padgett, “are. Trying. To. Kill. Us.”

Chapter Four

CHAPTER 4

“Is the milk warm enough?”

“Yes, Vic.”

“You sure?”

Padgett is looking at a drop of milk on her wrist, a small albino island uncharted and uninhabited. Never in her life did she think she would approach a place like this. When her brother was born, pink and stinky, Padgett—four years old and still Gail then—had vowed that never would such a thing as a baby be in her life. It has been an easy promise to keep, what with birth control, and not being taken for mother material by anyone who has spent any time with her. Through half a bottle of white wine, she tries to concentrate on the temperature of the drop of milk on her wrist. What is the temperature? It feels like a drop of milk.

“Yes, Vic.”

“Well, let’s start her up.”