You wish, she thought. She realized he had heard her wisecrack in the subterranean room about having nothing on under the nightgown but baby powder. He had been listening to her conversation with Chino all along — and for all she knew, it had been Gregory watching her through the mirror in the guest bathroom.

He patted her knee, then took a twisting, painful pinch of the back of her thigh. “Patience. We’re almost at the boat.”

Merrill couldn’t hear a thing. Or see very much, either. When the grenade had gone off, Chino had let out a cry, and that was the end. Silence. There was no point in looking in the absolute darkness for what was left of him. Merrill made his way to the elevator, closed the gates, and rotated the control lever to the Up position. Gregory — and Amy — would be waiting for Chino at a boat. Which boat? Where?

Ten

TEN

The car kept rolling, but even down on the floor Amy knew that its time was running out. The banging of the fan was worse, not better, and the engine was developing an ominous roughness. Amy kept her eyes away from Gregory, but she sensed that he was aware of the growing problem. He watched the dashboard and sometimes tilted his head to listen to the rheumatic hacking coming from under the hood. Good enough. Anything to keep him from twisting her flesh or making another move toward the cigarette lighter.

She still didn’t want to believe Sam was dead — but she knew what she was doing to herself in the process. She had seen denial in patients and the relatives, but she was realizing that she had never really understood it. Sam had not quit on her. Had she done anything yet for him that was equivalent? He had never given up. She had kept herself alive — she could just as easily be dead now, she knew, if she had done the wrong thing, gone too far, at any point tonight. She felt no shame or guilt about anything she had done, but she also knew it was going to take more than a long hot shower to get rid of what she would feel if something had happened to him.

She saw she was even trying to think in euphemisms, just like every other sucker who had ever headed over the falls.

Gregory turned onto what looked like an ancient narrow street, the walls close in and high, higher than she could see, stucco walls heavy with centuries, not just decades. She began to smell the sea and feel the heavy dampness of the salt air. She did not want to cry, but she did not want to live, either, if Sam had died trying to save her. There it was: she didn’t want to live without him.