Her mother had told her — during one of the woman's pretty much incoherent facts-of-life lectures that ran from ages twelve to eighteen — that there was only one thing that older men would want from her. Rune's experience, though, was that it was pretty much all men who wanted that one thing and older men were a lot safer because you usually could stay up later than them and, if worse came to worst, you usually could scare them into submission by talking about your recent twenty-year-old lover who kept you up all night with sexual acrobatics.

Not that she was inclined to scare off Healy. Hell, she thought he was totally sexy. She just wished he'd hurry up and get the preliminary pass over with, then get down to some serious moves. Maybe it was out of line, loaning him Lusty Cousins. There was a lot of gentleman in him, though, and she wanted to see what was underneath that. But what do you do with a sexy gentleman who doesn't call you?

The train pulled into the station, and she got off, climbed the steep stairs and began walking west.

Wondering if there was maybe something weird or Freudian about what she felt for him. Father image, something like that. That Oedipus thing. Okay, he was older. Okay, he was a cop.

Okay, her mother would shit a brick when she heard. Still...

At a deli she bought a chocolate milk and a package of Oreos — lunch — then walked up the street a half block and sat on a fire hydrant, sipping the milk out of the carton through a bent straw.

Healy's wife, she reflected. That was probably the problem. Why he hadn't called.

He was attracted to Rune — oh, she could tell that — but he was still in love with this wife.

That was a weird thing about men: Love was like a business to them. They get it into their heads that they invest so much time in somebody, it's like a total bummer to give it up too fast. The wife, what was her name, Cheryl? She'd be a bitch, of course. She'd eat him alive. Oh, already the shifty lawyers were working on gouging him for alimony, while she dressed up in silky oriental dresses and had affairs. She neglected Adam, locked him in the basement while she had sex with her lovers on the rec-room floor...

Vampire, vampire!

He should dump her fast.

The last of the milk was slurping through the straw when she saw the station wagon turn the corner and cruise past, slowing down. It stopped fast and screeched backward, stopping quickly in front of her.

The engine idled for a moment, then went silent. Sam Healy got out. He looked at Rune, then at the smoldering front of the Pink Pussycat, then back to Rune. She picked up the video camera and walked over to him.

“How —” he began.