“Pretty much,” I said.

He pursed his lips, exhaled slowly. “You got me then. I know what I just told you about Jason and that’s about it. I’d like to say who he is or isn’t with total certainty, but I’ve been at this long enough to realize that no one truly knows anyone else.” He waved his hand at bookshelves crammed with criminology and psychology texts. “If my years of study have taught me anything, that’s the sum total.”

“Deep,” I said.

He loosened his tie. “You asked my opinion of Jason and I gave it you, prefaced by my belief that all humans have secret selves and secret lives.”

“What’re yours, Eric?”

He winked. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

As we walked into the sunlight, Angie slipped an arm through mine and we sat on the lawn under a tree and faced the doors through which Jason would exit in a few minutes. It’s an old trick of ours to play lovers when we’re tailing someone; people who’d possibly see either one of us as incongruous in a given place rarely give us a second glance as a couple. Lovers, for some reason, can often pass easily through doors the solitary person finds barred.

She looked up at the fan of leaves and limbs in the tree above. Humid air stirred yellow leaves against brittle pikes of grass and Angie leaned her head into my shoulder and left it there for a long time.

“You okay?” I said.

Her hand tightened against my bicep.

“Ange?”

“I signed the papers yesterday.”

“The papers?”

“The divorce papers,” she said softly. “They’ve been sitting in my apartment for over two months. I signed them and dropped them at my attorney’s office. Just like that.” She moved her head slightly, resettled it in the space between my shoulder and neck. “As I signed my name, I had the distinct feeling it was going to make everything much cleaner somehow.” Her voice had grown thick. “Was that how it was for you?”

I considered how I’d felt sitting in an attorney’s climate-controlled office, bundling and bagging up my short, barren, ill-conceived marriage by signing on a dotted line and folding pages neatly three times before sliding them into an envelope. No matter how therapeutic, there’s something pitiless about wrapping up the past and tying a ribbon to it.

My marriage to Renee had lasted less than two years, and it had been over in most respects in under two months. Angie had been married to Phil over twelve years. I had no conception what it was like walking away from twelve years, no matter how bad many of them had been.

“Did it make everything cleaner and clearer?” she said.

“No,” I said, pulling her tight. “Not at all.”

12

For another week, Angie and I tailed Jason around campus and town, up to classroom and bedroom doors, put him to bed at night, and rose with him in the morning. It was’t exactly a thrill a minute, either. Sure, Jason led a pretty lively existence, but once you got the gist of it—wake, eat, class, sex, study, eat, drink, sex, sleep—it got old pretty quick. I’m sure if I’d been hired to tail de Sade himself in his prime, I’d have tired of that too by the third or fourth time he drank from a baby’s skull or arranged an all-night fivesome.