And the furniture…a nondescript mishmash. Jack knew his talents for interior décor were on a par with his ability to fly a 747, but this stuff looked like secondhand junk. Fine if Any a didn’t care, but he was struck by the lack of personality. He’d been in motel rooms with more personal touches than this. It was as if she lived in a vacuum.

Except for the plants. Maybe they were her personal statement. Her family. Her children.

Anya reentered and struck a pose with one arm held aloft. “What do you think?”

She’d wrapped herself in some sort of psychedelic kimono which made her skinny figure seem even thinner. She looked like a Rainbow Pop that had been left out in the sun too long.

“Woo-woo,” Jack said.

It was the best he could do on such short notice.

Dinner turned out to be as idiosyncratic as the chef. She mixed up a wok of walnuts, peanuts, peas, jalapeño peppers, and corn seasoned with, among other things, ashes falling from her ever-present cigarette, all rolled up in big flour tortillas. Despite Jack’s initial reservations, the mélange proved very tasty.

“Can I hazard a guess that you’re a vegetarian?” he said.

They were into their second magnum of Côtes du Rhone. Anya kept refilling his glass, and Jack noticed that she was putting away two or three glasses to every one he had, but showing no effects.

Anya shook her head. “Heavens, no. I don’t eat vegetables at all. Only fruits and seeds.”

“There’s corn in this,” Jack said around a mouthful. “Corn’s a vegetable.”

“Sorry, no. It’s a fruit, just like the tomato.”

“Oh. Right.” He remembered hearing that somewhere. “Well, how about the peas?”

“Peas are seeds—legumes. Nuts are seeds too.”

“No lettuce, no broccoli—?”

“No. Those require killing the plant. I don’t approve of killing. I eat only what a plant intends to discard.”

“What about Oyv?” He glanced at the little Chihuahua chowing down on something in his bowl. “He needs meat.”

“He does perfectly well on soy burgers. Loves them, in fact.”

Poor puppy.

“So I guess if I stop by with a craving for a bacon cheeseburger—”

“You can just keep on going, hon. There’s a Wendy’s not too far down the road toward town.”

Gia would be right at home here, Jack thought. She wasn’t a vegan or anything, but she’d stopped eating meat.

Whatever. This dish was delicious. Jack wound up having four burritofuls.

He helped clear the dishes, then Anya brought out the mahjongg tiles, saying, “Come, I’ll teach you.”

“Oh, I don’t know…”

“Don’t be afraid. It’s easy.”

She lied.