When Anna let Jerry into her apartment, the King of Siam took one look at him, then bolted into the bedroom and hid under the bed. The beast hadn’t seen him for a couple of months, which made him a stranger and a presumptive cat-killer. If you looked at it the right way, it was funny. If you didn’t, the way the King of Siam saw Jerry was too much like the way Jerry saw the CIA. He did his damnedest to look at it right.

He kissed Anna, which took his mind off other things while he was doing it. “Hey, babe,” he said. “How are you?”

“I’m tired. I’m way better than I was yesterday, though—I’ll tell you that.”

“I am sorry.” Jerry’d known he would keep paying for his late flight.

“It wasn’t your fault.” From Anna, that was no small admission. She took back half of it a moment later: “No matter whose fault it was, I was a mumbling idiot at the office.”

“It was screwed up all the way around. You want to go to Tres Hermanos and get something to eat?” Jerry said. They both liked the Mexican place on Prairie.

“And a margarita. Maybe three margaritas, one for each brother,” Anna said. Jerry nodded. Tequila wasn’t his favorite, but Tres Hermanos served Dos Equis, too. He liked that fine.

He had enough beer with dinner to be extra careful driving back to her place. Luckily, it wasn’t far. The King of Siam had come out when he realized he had the apartment to himself. Since Jerry walked in with Anna, the cat decided he might be an acceptable human being after all.

Then his very own person shut him out of the bedroom while Jerry stayed in there with her. That was insulting enough to provoke a couple of irate meows. The cat must have realized the people weren’t paying any attention to him, because he shut up after that.

“Oh, honey,” Jerry said. “Oh, honey. I missed you so much.”

Anna poked him in the ribs with a sharp fingernail. “Did you miss me or did you just miss this? You could play with yourself in the shower and get this.”

He’d done that. He was damned if he’d admit it. “It’s not the thing. It’s the company.” He meant most of that, anyway. And he did his very best to show her how sincere he was.

His very best must have been good enough, because she didn’t hit him when he was ready to go again right away. He thought he got her where she was going once more, too, but he was less sure than he had been the first time. That made him decide against trying for round three just then.