Why? What had she needed $6000 for? We had a joint checking-account here, and I never questioned the checks she cashed. I crushed it in my hand and threw it on the rug. It didn’t matter. Roberts was what we were going to have out, and we’d do it before she got through this living room.

I glanced at my watch. The way she drove, she’d be here in less than an hour. Dropping the cigarette lighter in my pocket, I switched off the light and sat down to wait, conscious of the cold weight of anger in my chest and of the whiskey mounting to my head.

iii

FORTY MINUTES LATER GRAVEL CRUNCHED in the driveway beyond the far wall of the living room. I heard the garage door bang as it came up. The door closed.

The weight in my chest was so heavy now I could hardly breathe. Her key turned in the kitchen door. Light came on in the kitchen, and I heard the old magic tapping of high heels as she came toward the front of the house. Then she was silhouetted in the doorway, suitcase in one hand and her purse under her arm as she groped for the switch. The lights came on.

“Hello,” I said. “Welcome home.”

She gasped. The suitcase fell to the floor, followed by her purse. Then her eyes blazed with anger. “What are you sitting there in the dark for? You scared me half to death!”

She was very beautiful in anger, I thought—or any time, for that matter. She wore a slim dark suit and a white blouse, but she didn’t have her coat. Maybe she’d left it in the car; she was as careless of mink as another woman might be of a housecoat.

“If this is your idea of a joke…” Her voice trailed off uncertainly as I still said nothing. “What’s the matter? Aren’t you glad to see me?”

“I want to know why you suddenly decided to come home,” I said.

“Well, you wanted me to. But I must say, if this is the way you’re going to act…”

“I want to know why,” I repeated. She had come on into the room and started to peel off her gloves. She could make even that sexy and full of the promise of greater things to come. If she’d ever become a professional strip-teaser, I thought, she’d have the bald heads giving off wisps of steam by the time she started toying with the first zipper. It was obvious to her now that something was wrong, so I was about to get the good old laboratory-approved answer that answered everything. She gave me a sidelong glance. “Well! Do I have to have a reason?”

“I just wondered,” I said, playing along with it.

“Maybe it was talking to you this afternoon,” she murmured.

There was just enough pause for me to pick up my cue and join the act. All I had to do was stand up, take two steps toward her, and we’d be in bed in ninety seconds flat. And the hell of it was that once I started there’d be no more possibility of turning back than of changing my mind halfway down about going over Niagara Falls. Maybe she was a liar, and a cheat, and capable of using sex with the precise calculation of a tournament bridge player executing a squeeze play, but she was good at it. I reached in my pocket for the cigarette lighter and began tossing it in my hand.

She was still talking, probably to cover her bewilderment at this lack of response.