“I’ll call you later, will be back before the weather moves in,” Lucy adds, as she leaves. “It’s going to be really bad later in the day.”

Then Marino is in my doorway. His khaki field clothes are rumpled as if he’s slept in them, his face flushed, and he walks in as if he lives here, talking loudly on his phone. Bryce is behind him, my delicately handsome chief of staff, wearing designer sunglasses on top of his head and faded denim drainpipe jeans and a T-shirt, as if he just stepped off the set of Glee. I notice he hasn’t shaved since I saw him a week ago, before he went to Florida, and facial hair or the lack of it always means the same thing. Bryce Clark is stepping in and out of different characters as he continues auditioning for the star role in his own life.

“Well, normally that would be a no,” Marino says into his cell phone. “But you’re going to need to get the lady from the aquarium on the line so the chief here can tell her directly and make sure everybody’s on the same page. . . .”

“We appreciate that and totally get it.” Bryce is talking to someone else. “We certainly do realize nobody’s going to be fighting over it. Maybe you and the fire guys can flip a coin, just kidding. I’m sure the fireboat’s got a Stokes basket same as you. No vacuum bag or cervical collar or whatever needed, obviously. Of course the fire guys are better equipped to hose everything off after the fact with those big bad deck cannons of theirs. Point is? Doesn’t matter in the least to us, but someone’s gotta help get it to shore, and we’ll handle it from there.” He looks at his watch. “In about forty-five? A little after nine? That would really be fabulous.”

“What is it?” I ask Bryce, as he ends the call.

He puts his hands on his hips, scrutinizing me. “Well, we certainly didn’t wear the right thing for going out in a boat this morning, did we?” He surveys the gray pinstriped skirt suit and pumps I wore today for court. “I’ll just be a minute, gonna grab a few things because you’re not going out with the Coast Guard in what you’ve got on. Fishing out some floater? Thank God it’s not July, not that the water’s ever warm around here, and I sure as hell hope it’s not been in there long, my least favorite thing. I’m sorry, let’s be honest. Who can stand it? I realize nobody means to get in such a disgusting condition, can you imagine? If I die and get like that please don’t find me.”

He’s in my closet, retrieving field clothes.

“That’s the part the boys with the Guard aren’t happy about, because why would they be?” He keeps talking. “Having something like that on their boat, but no worries, they’ll do it because I asked them pretty please and reminded them that if you—and I specifically mean you, the chief—don’t know how to take care of it, who does?”