“They all do, Padgett. One thing you do not want in life with a man, is to know his secrets. I’d eat ground glass before I checked Gabe’s browser history.”

“A basement,” Padgett hears herself saying. “Animals.”

Nina looks wild with wine. “That’s it! That’s the same. Wild. I can’t even describe.”

“I don’t know if we’re talking about the same thing.”

“No, we definitely are.”

Padgett holds up wine in a solitary toast: Your turn, then. Nina sighs. “When Reynard and I were in the accident?”

A kid on the diving board just needs a push. “Next day,” Padgett says, again again, and this time it takes.

“Next day my neighbor’s home is broken into, his apartment, and I mean broken. And he’s killed. This firefighter the next day, very handsome if you like muscular, told me the fixtures were all busted up, holes in the walls, and that the medical whoever told him it was like the guy had his stomach scooped out.”

Nina looks at her, How do you like that?, and Padgett figures they’re all, everyone on this grayed-in planet, drunk as skunks. “OK,” she says.

Nina shakes her head like a tennis match. “Not OK. It’s been boarded up but I think someone’s living there.”

“Like, squatters?”

“Not squatting. Scratching around. It’s why I gave up on my place and just moved in with Gabriel almost instantly.”

“Sure, this is why you abandoned a scroungy Sunset apartment for some huge Noe Valley—”

“Not scroungy. But I was afraid they were going to break through.”

“Break through where?”

Nina just shakes her head. “When I went one last time back to pick up my last stuff, there was a guy coming out, very tall. For a second I thought it was Reynard. He had something all banged up with him, a motorcycle helmet I think, but he was carrying it like a bowl, and I swear to God, Padgett, it looked like it was full of bloody meat.”

She looks at Padgett again, and Padgett drinks wine again.

“I must have made a noise,” Nina says, “and the guy, I shouldn’t say guy, looks up.” She leans across the table, almost tipping the tall delicate glasses to the floor. The place is filling up, it’s time for everybody to drink now. “It made me run. I ran six blocks with him behind me in the rain. I fell into a planter, Padgett, I was a mess, outside Martin’s bar. They got me a hot toddy because of what I saw when he turned around.”

Padgett can’t help it, whatever expression she is displaying. She lifts her glass and that, too, rings a faint bell. “What?”