“Hi,” he said, getting in.

“Sorry I’m late.” She could not look at him. “My cat’s lost his mind.”

This was certainly starting off well, Brazil dismally realized. He was thinking about her, and she was thinking about her cat.

“What’s wrong with him?” Brazil asked.

West pulled out of the parking lot as rain sprinkled. Her tires swished over wet streets. Brazil was acting as if nothing had happened. It just went to corroborate her belief that all males were the same. She supposed that his foray through her private possessions was no different than flipping through a magazine full of naked women. A thrill. A passing turn-on like a vibrating motorcycle seat or the right person sitting in your lap when the car was packed with too many passengers.

“He’s just crazy, that’s all,” West said. “Stares out the window all the time. Drags things out of my washing machine. Bites me. Makes weird yowling noises.”

“This is new and different behavior?” asked Brazil, the psychologist.

“Oh yeah.”

“What kind of yowling sounds?” Brazil went on.

“He goes yowl-yowl-yowl. Then he’s quiet and does the same thing again. Always three syllables.”

“Sounds to me like Niles is trying to give you information and you’re not listening. Quite possibly he’s pointing out something right under your nose, but either you’re caught up in other preoccupations, or you don’t want to hear it.” Brazil enjoyed making this point.

“Since when are you a cat shrink?” West glanced at him, experiencing that same giddy sensation again, a wiggling in her bowels, as if tadpoles had hatched somewhere down there.

Brazil shrugged. “It’s all about human nature, animal nature, whatever you want to call it. If we take the time to try and look at reality from someone else’s perspective, try a little compassion, it can make a difference.”

“Gag,” West said as she flew right by the Sunset East exit.

“You just passed the truck stop. And what do you mean, gag?”

“You sure got your lines down pat, don’t you, boy?” She laughed in a not-so-nice way.

“I’m not a boy, in case you haven’t noticed,” he said, and he realized for the first time, to his shock, that Virginia West was scared. “I’m a legal adult, and I don’t deliver lines. You must have met a lot of bad people in life.”

This honestly amused her. She started laughing as rain fell harder. She turned on wipers and her radio while Brazil watched her, a smile playing on his lips, although he was clueless as to what he had said to amuse her so.

“Met a lot of bad people.” She sputtered, almost helpless. “What do I do for a living, for Christ’s sake? Work in a bakery, serve ice cream cones, arrange flowers?” More peals of laughter.

“I didn’t mean just what you do for a living,” Brazil said. “The bad people you meet in policing aren’t the ones who really hurt you. It’s people off the job. You know, friends and family.”