“I don’t care what you felt,” she snapped. “I just want you to listen, that’s all. I want you to know how it was. The truth finally. You think he was so special, don’t you? So beautiful. Well, maybe he was. I don’t know. And you see, that’s where it’s at for me—the pain. Because I don’t know, no matter what I told you before about how he and I talked and talked, and how special it all was. Because it wasn’t. To me, he was just like all the others. I drove down to 101 and picked him up just like a junkie making a connection. His body was the stuff, the bag of smack. And I put it to use. I used his head too, like a garbage bag, a place to dump all my exquisite sufferings.” She looked back at the cliff, her eyes streaming tears. “And then suddenly it happened. He was dead. Inside I was still wet from him, and I didn’t even remember his name. It was only then it began to dawn on me what had happened, that while I was crying for myself and all of us and all our ugliness, maybe something beautiful had come and gone. Just maybe. But me, I was too busy to notice.”

Hook did not know what she saw in his eyes now, perhaps some slight indication of what he was feeling, for she turned from it. She scooted down off the other side of the boulder and walked aimlessly away from him, toward the cliff face at first and then turned, wandering down the beach for a short distance before she stopped and stood there with her back to him. Hook walked over to her and raised his hands to place them on her shoulders but hesitated, like the surf afraid to touch her. And then he did, and he felt her come alive under the light pressure of his hands, felt her shoulders lift toward him, her sea-smelling hair brush his face as she let her head fall back and rest against him. And then just as abruptly a stiffness shot through her and she pulled away, walked on. Hook followed.

“I’m glad he knew you,” he got out. “I’m glad Chris had that, his last hours.”

“Yes. He had that,” she said.

They had come to the trail that climbed the cliff now and she went ahead of him, leading the way.

“Have you never loved anyone?” he asked. “Not even—”

“The men I screw? I’m afraid not. But I’ve already told you that.”

“Jack Douglas? Never him?”

They had come to a turn in the trail, and she stopped and looked at him. “No. And not you either.”

“Was I asking that?”

“Weren’t you?”

She moved on without waiting for his answer, which made it easier for him, easier to confess his weakness, his sudden soaring madness, to her back than to her face. “I guess I was,” he admitted, his breath coming short now, as they climbed. “I know it doesn’t add up. I want to hate you for what you are, for having been a part of Chris’s death. But I can’t. I—”