“I’m more likely to be eaten by a great white shark, though I never swim in the ocean.”

“Then is it the blood, the general messiness of the job? Or some moral compunction, misguided pacifism?”

The waiter arrived with their salads and offered fresh-ground pepper, and they both said yes, and by the time he left the table, the last of the scarlet stain was gone from the sky. The waters of the harbor were jet-black but for the reflections of the shoreside lights that floated upon them like wreaths of radiant flowers cast out to mark some ceremony.

“Do we play this game all the way to the entrée?” he asked.

“Oh, goodness, David, allow me some mystery for a little while. You’ve certainly got your own share of it. I rather like being an assassin. It’s so much more glamorous than being a representative for IBM business systems. Now let’s talk about that movie they made from one of your books.”

“If you really were an assassin, I could give you a contract for a megalomaniacal film director the world wouldn’t miss.”

| 13 |

Maddison had a profound interest in literature that was unusual in this digital age when the language arts were receding into the mists of the unfashionable along with a knowledge of history, an appreciation for complex music, general civility, and so much else that David valued. In fact, her education was both broad and deep, and consequently their conversation seemed to be a kind of jazz that made three hours pass like one.

Over coffee, when he asked where she’d gone to school, she said, “The University of the Machine,” and implied—but would not say—that she was largely self-educated online, as though it might be an embarrassment to her highly educated parents that she had not attended college.

“Given all your interests,” David said, “I’m surprised you find it fulfilling to be a sales rep for IBM business systems.”

“I’d find it stifling if that’s what I was.”

“But you said—”

“You inferred, dear. I didn’t say or so much as imply IBM. It was just an example of a glamorless career.”

“So I’m still supposed to believe you’re an assassin.”

“And quite a good one.”

After the waiter refreshed their coffee, David said, “We’ve talked nonstop all evening, yet there’s a long list of essential things about you that I don’t know.”

She was about to speak, but her smile became fixed, and her lips parted without producing a word, and her gaze slipped out of focus. She cocked her head as if listening to some voice or siren song that only she could hear.

After perhaps half a minute, he said, “Maddison?”

She blinked, blinked, came back from wherever she’d gone, and said, “Sorry. What did you say?”

“There’s a long list of essential things about you that I don’t know,” he repeated.