She sat back on her heels and thought about that. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. I would.”

“Awww,” Dina said, with more appreciation than sarcasm. She sprawled on her back on the sofa and swung her legs over the arm, watching me. She said, “I don’t feel good. Ever since I read those newspapers, things are sounding funny again. I flushed your jacks and it made a noise like popcorn.”

I said, “I’m not surprised. That’s why we need to get you back to Geri’s. If you feel like crap, then you’re going to want someone around.”

“I do want someone around. I want you. Geri makes me want to get a brick and hit myself in the head. One more day of her and I’ll do it.”

With Dina, you don’t have the luxury of taking anything as hyperbole. I said, “So find a way to ignore her. Take deep breaths. Read a book. I’ll lend you my iPod and you can block Geri out altogether. We can load it up with whatever music you want, if my taste isn’t trendy enough for you.”

“I can’t use earphones. I start hearing stuff and then I can’t tell if it’s in the music or inside my ears.”

She was banging one heel off the side of the sofa in a relentless, infuriating rhythm that jarred against the fluid sweep of the Debussy. I said, “Then I’ll lend you a good book. Take your pick.”

“I don’t need a good book I don’t need a DVD box set I don’t need a nice fucking cup of tea and a sudoku magazine. I need you.”

I thought of Richie at his desk, chewing a thumbnail and spell-checking his request form, of that desperate call for help in his voice; of Jenny in her hospital bed, wrapped in a nightmare that wasn’t going to end; of Pat, gutted out like a trophy animal, waiting in one of Cooper’s drawers for me to make sure he wouldn’t be stamped Killer in a few million minds; of his children, too young even to know what dying was. That surge of anger heaved up again, shoving at me. I said, “I know that. Right now, other people need me more.”

“You mean this Broken Harbor thing is more important than your family. That’s what you mean. You don’t even see how fucked-up that is, do you, you don’t even see that no normal guy in the world would say that, no one would say that unless he was obsessed with some hellhole place that was pumping shit into his brain. You know perfectly bloody well if you send me back to Geri’s then she’ll bore me till I lose my mind, and I’ll walk out and she’ll be going crazy worrying, but you don’t even care, do you? You’re still going to make me go back there.”

“Dina, I don’t have time for this shit. I’ve got, what, fifty-odd hours to charge this guy. In fifty-odd hours’ time I’ll do whatever you need, come get you from Geri’s at the crack of dawn, go to any museum you want, but until then, you’re right: you’re not the center of my universe. You can’t be.”