“Not quite.”

“Cheese stick?” Harold reached back, offering me one.

“Thanks.” I unwrapped it. “Should you be eating these?”

“You mean because I’m big?”

“No, because you’re fat, Harold.”

“That’s why I like you, Prof. You cut right through it. No bullshit with you.” He turned the wheel. “My kid likes these in her lunch and so I always stick a couple in my pocket. Just a little cheese, right?”

I bit into the stick. “Just a little.” I shared it with Trigo.

I got off the bus at the bottom of the hill and walked up toward my house. The air was much colder now and the wind picked up. The gray sky looked like snow. As soon as I had formed that thought, flakes began to fall.

3

True to his word, Sam had returned my car, parked it more neatly that I ever could have in the drive, and had passed the key through the mail slot in the door. The key was in a small envelope with a note that read: Sometimes 2+2 is 4, at other times it only equals 4. I liked the note and then tossed it in the waste can. My house no longer smelled of the gas that had been tossed in through the kitchen window.

I showered and changed into less exotic clothing, corduroy trousers and a blank T-shirt. Trigo barked in the living room, an angry bark. I walked one-shoed to find him pointing with his nose at Bill Clinton.

“If he had only one more leg he would kill you,” I said.

“How was your trip?”

I looked around the room for anyone else. “Where is your partner? What’s his name? Twitchell?”

“Mitchell. He’s in the car listening to the radio.”

I looked out the window. The snow was falling heavily now. I saw Mitchell there, sitting in the passenger seat. “What’s he listening to?”

“I don’t know. He loves country music. So, how was Miami?”

“You know about that, do you?” I picked up Trigo and sat on the sofa with him in my lap. “It was interesting.”

“I can’t impress upon you enough how dangerous John Sill is.”

“I’m getting the picture,” I said.

“Really? What happened?” Clinton asked. He sat on the stuffed chair not far from me. His attitude had changed. Now he was attempting to come off as friendly.

“What’s the name of the agency you work for?”

“That’s of no concern to you,” he said.

“How do I know that you’re not an operative of Sill’s here to check up on me? Test my loyalty or ability to keep a secret or something like that?”

“Is there a secret?”

I looked him in the eye. “Yes,” I said. “No,” I said. “Maybe,” I said. “There could be. There must be. I know there is one, but I don’t know it. I don’t know of one, so there couldn’t be one. There might be a secret that which none more private can be conceived.”