of the travel and client clothes and into something more suitable for a gentleman of leisure: sweatpants and a Bullwinkle T-shirt. No maiden to save, no dragon to slay, no client to serve. There would also be no money coming in, but what's that to a tough guy like me? Maybe Pike and I would go river kayaking in Colorado. Maybe we'd run with the bulls in Pamplona. Why not? When you're between jobs, you can do things like that.
Halfway through the sorting and changing I discovered that most of the Falstaff was gone. Leaky can. I went back downstairs, opened another Falstaff, then got KLSX on the radio for Jim Ladd, the best disc jockey in the universe. Jim was playing George Thoro-good. What could be better than that? I went out onto the deck and stoked the Weber. The sun was down and the air was cool and smelling of mint and honeysuckle. George finished, and Jim put on Mick Jagger singing about his lack of satisfaction. I layered mes-quite charcoal into the kettle, splashed on the starter fluid (EPA approved), and fired up. The flames rose tall and orange and a wave of heat rolled over me, and in that moment of warmth I wondered what Lucy Chenier was doing. I had more of the Falstaff and thought that it might be pretty nice if Lucy were out here on the deck with me. Maybe we'd spent the day at Disneyland, and now we were back and feeling good about it. We'd be a little bit sunburned and a little bit tired, but Lucy would be smiling. She'd stand at the rail and think the view was fine, only she'd find the desert nights chilly and I'd put my arms around her to ward off the cold. I had the rest of the FalstafF. Funny. Thought I'd just opened the can.
I washed the potatoes, slit the tops, and wrapped them in foil. I put them in the oven at five hundred degrees. They were small and wouldn't take long. I took the steak out of its package, stabbed it with a fork a zillion times on each side, then sprinkled it with pepper and garlic powder and soy sauce. I washed the green onions, chopped them, then mixed them with a container of non-fat yogurt. Everything was ready to cook. Your basic fast meal. Of course, since I was unemployed, fast wasn't a requirement. A nine-course Julia Child extravaganza would have been appropriate. Goose in aspic, perhaps. Or oyster-stuffed quail in chili poblano sauce. Maybe Pike and I should head down to Cabo San Lucas and go after billfish. Our friend Ellen Lang might like to go. So might my friend, Cindy, the beauty-supplies distributor. I opened another Falstaff.
The cat came in while I was thinking about it, and hopped up onto the counter the way he does when he's hoping I won't notice. You could see his nostrils working, smelling the steak. I said, "Bet you missed me, huh?"
He made a little cat nod.
I carved a piece of steak, then put the cat and the steak on the floor. He sniffed once, then went to work on the meat. I said, "I missed you."
I was sitting on my kitchen floor, drinking beer and petting the cat when the doorbell rang, and there was Jodi Taylor. She was wearing a gray sweatshirt over jeans, and no makeup. Her hands were in her pockets, and she looked closed and pensive, not unlike she had in the motor home. Awkward. I said, "Well, well. The TV star." It was only my fourth beer, wasn't it?
She said, "I hope you don't mind."
"Why should I mind? It beats getting lied to." Maybe my fifth. I held up a hand, shook my head, and stepped back. "Forgive me for saying that. I'm feeling sorry for myself, and I've been drinking. It's a boy thing."
She nodded.
"Please come in." I showed her in, only moderately embarrassed by the Falstaff and the Bullwinkle shirt. "Have you eaten?"
She kept her hands in her pockets. "I'm not hungry. I feel bad about what happened and I wanted to talk about it."
"Okay. I was just about to put a steak on the grill. Do you mind talking while I eat?"
She said of course not and followed me to the kitchen. "Oh. You have a cat."
The cat looked up from his piece of steak, lowered his ears, and growled. "Don't try to pet him. He doesn't care for people