“Careful, it will burn,” she said, frowning, and turned back to the stove. “I got a couple of steaks, with A1 sauce the way you said you liked it. Do you want to fire up the grill?”

He had learned before now that that meant turning on the gas, and went out back to do it, thinking about things as he took the platter Gloria handed him and proceeded to cook the meat.

Thinking that all his life he had missed out on a woman bringing him steaks to grill and he wanted more of it.

Thinking that he hoped everything went well and he would have a lot more time with Gloria who wasn’t such a bad old gal.

Thinking people were of two kinds. One kind made him nervous. The other kind he could see was weaker than he was, and he could have his own way with things. He prided himself on being smart enough to tell which person was which. Gloria was the weak kind. He had lucked out finding her.

No, it wasn’t luck. It was brains. A mind as sharp as a surgeon’s scalpel. His time with junkies, his time in jail, he had learned how to find out who the weak ones were, the ones who could be separated from the rest of the herd.

He was smoking on the back porch after dinner when Gloria came out with the remains of her wine.

“I didn’t think you smoked,” she said.

Interesting how a woman could go from good old gal to annoyance in a moment. Beaufort didn’t like people trying to control him in any way. He’d had enough years of that in prison. “I just started,” he said, not bothering to apologize or explain.

Whether or not she could accept that, Gloria was distracted by something bigger. “Jerry, your hand.”

He looked at his hand when he raised the cigarette. The palm was raw. At first he didn’t know how it could have gotten that way, and then he realized he must have been rubbing it on the adobe wall of the house while he was thinking. Gloria kissed it, took him inside, put some antibiotic ointment on it, and placed a large square Band-Aid over the raw place.

“You’ve seemed tense,” she said, rubbing his back at the top.

“I’m not.”

“You’ve got stress knots.”

“Ouch. Stop it.”

“If you wanted, I could give you the number of someone I’ve used.”

“Are you saying I need a shrink?”

“No. He’s more of a life coach.”

That’s another new one, Beaufort thought. But he had become accustomed to not speaking out loud when he didn’t understand. If he let people keep talking it usually became clear what they meant.