“No.”

“Where did you go with him?”

“We stayed around the beach house, like I said.”

“And you talked.”

“Yes.”

“About what?”

“Me, mostly. Chris was a good listener. Or rather, he was a good confessor. He made me want to talk, to get it all out. Maybe I was trying to scare him off, I don’t know. Only he didn’t scare.”

Hook asked her if the boy had talked about himself at all.

“A little.”

“Can you tell me what he said, how he was?”

Her smile faded. “One thing I remember was about you,” she said. “I had told him about my mother, how I went into her bedroom one morning and found her dead. She’d taken a whole bottle of sleeping pills. I was eleven then. So he reciprocated. He told me about his mother, and the accident, and how you took it afterwards. He said you never let it show very much in front of anyone, but one of his strongest memories was lying in bed at night and hearing you get up and go outside, and then he’d watch you through the window as you headed down the road, toward the cemetery, he said. And he said he cried for you. Many times.”

For the moment Hook could not speak. He closed his eyes against the sun.

“You loved your wife very much,” Liz said.

“Yes.”

“How about me? Did you feel any love for me last night?”

The question surprised him and he looked down at her. But her expression had not changed, was still solemn, bare of irony. “I don’t know,” he said. “I wanted you. I guess I’ve wanted to make love to you since I first saw you. But that isn’t an answer, is it?”

She disagreed. “Yes, it is.”

Hook tried to explain. “It’s just that the idea of love, romantic love, is dead for me, Liz. It’s meaningless. Especially now, after Chris. I have no feelings left.”

“Except the one,” she said. “The rage. The vengeance.”

Hook did not respond. He took out his cigarettes and offered her one, but she declined. Instead she brought out her own pack of Trues and shook out a single cigarette, which was not a True. It was home-rolled and fat, with pinched ends.

“Why don’t we share this,” she said. “A joint, Mister David Hook. A lovely high-class joint.” She lit it and dragged deeply, held it, finally exhaled. “I’m not trying to shock you or impress you,” she went on. “It’s just that I like it, better than booze. And especially here. You want a drag?”

“No.” Hook was not afraid of marijuana, in fact tended to believe the reports that said it was no more harmful than alcohol. But he thought of it as essentially part of the youth cult, and if there was anything he despised it was seeing some middle-aged jerk frantically trying on the dress and jargon and vices of the young. Hook had his own, he figured; let them have theirs. And anyway he wanted to remain clear-headed now. He wanted to know what he was doing. So he lit his own cigarette, settled for his own vice. And he watched her lying beside him in the sun, smoking, her eyes closed, a band of sweat beginning to gleam in her hairline and above her mouth. She was braless still, the nipples of her breasts thrusting lightly into the yellow wool of her sweater. And Hook could feel it beginning in him, like the first true pang of morning hunger, an almost specific pain, a need.