Mahjongg was a four-person game played with illustrated tiles, but Anya was teaching him a two-player variant. The images on the tiles swam before his eyes—circles, bamboo stalks, ideograms that were supposed to represent dragons or the four winds—while terms such as chow and pong and chong searched for purchase in his brain. He didn’t have any references for this stuff. Why couldn’t the tiles have spades and hearts or jacks and queens and kings?

The constant stream of smoke from the chimney that was Anya didn’t help. Neither did her plants. They seemed to be watching the game, like a gaggle of curious spectators crowding around a high-stakes poker table in Las Vegas. One strand of vine with broad green and yellow leaves kept falling off a palm frond and draping across his shoulder. Jack would put it back, but it wouldn’t stay up.

“That’s Esmeralda,” Anya said.

“Who?” Jack replied, thinking she was referring to some new tile or rule in the game.

“The gold-net honeysuckle behind you.” She smiled. “I think she likes you.”

“I’m not fond of clingy women,” he said, reaching once again to remove the vine from his shoulder. But when he saw Anya’s frown he changed his mind and let it stay where it was. “But in this case I’ll make an exception.”

She smiled and Jack thought, Sweet lady, but nut so, nut so, nut so.

In addition to the green, leafy distractions, all the wine he’d consumed wasn’t exactly helping his learning curve. Anya lifted the bottle—she’d opened a third magnum—to give him a refill. Jack put his hand over his glass.

“I’m flagging myself.”

“Don’t be silly, hon. It’s not as if you have to drive home.”

“I have something I want to do tonight.”

“Oh? And that would be…?”

“Just getting some answers to a few questions.”

“Answers are a good thing,” she said. Her voice was clear, her hand steady as she refilled her glass almost to the rim. No doubt about it: The woman had a hollow leg. “Just make sure you’re asking the right questions.”

12

Even in his slightly inebriated state, Jack had no trouble entering the clinic. All it took was a flat-head screwdriver from his father’s toolbox to pop the window lock and he was in.

He’d managed to extricate himself gracefully from the mahjongg lesson with a promise to return for another real soon. He wasn’t big into board games, although he’d played Risk a lot as a kid. He liked video games, though. Not so much the first-person shooters that were mostly reflexes; he did well in those but preferred role-playing games that involved strategy. He liked trying to outwit the designers.