Page 11 of The Bad Weather Friend

Tyler had to admit the crate had made him uneasy even before Gordie shared his story. “You’re saying the devil’s in this box, come to California to buy souls?”

Gordie took a deep breath and exhaled between clenched teeth. “Nah, the devil’s not that stupid. He’d know he’s already bought most of them around here. Hell, Tyler, I just don’t know what to make of it.”

“Maybe you didn’t see with both eyes again, only imagined you did, some kind of brain freak-out. It was only for a minute, right?”

Gordie nodded. He picked up the drill. “Whatever it was, whatever happened ... let’s move this sucker back into the dispatch sequence where it belongs. I want it out of here tomorrow.”

ROMANCE

After viewing the video message from Talmadge Clerkenwell, as he considered with which of the major realty firms he would most like to be associated now that he’d departed Surfside, Benny wiped down all the kitchen counters, used a stainless-steel cleaner on the doors of the two refrigerators, and Swiffered the floor. None of this was necessary. Mrs. Shinzel, his housekeeper, came in two full days a week and was a hard worker. However, housecleaning soothed Benny. It was his meditation. He was happy when scrubbing and polishing, making his sparkling home even a little more sparkly.

He had no hobbies to take his mind off his worries and settle his nerves. His life was dedicated to work and to Jill Swift, to her dream. Currently a top agent with Belle Maison, she was determined that, by their thirties, she and Benny would form a brokerage of their own and build a platoon of agents who would storm the high-end market and dominate it for decades. “All the candy-ass firms that own the ground now will be smoking ruins when we open fire on them,” she’d said recently. Jill was twenty-six and sexy and smart and stylish and loving, but sometimes Benny wondered if maybe she might be the reincarnation of General George Patton.

On this occasion, she was also stealthy. He hadn’t heard her coming in the front door. She had her own key—and he had a key to her place—but she usually rang the bell as she was entering, and cried out,“C’est moi!”This time, she materialized in the kitchen as if she’d transported herself from elsewhere by an act of true magic.

She rounded the island as Benny was polishing the swan-neck spout at the smaller of the island’s two sinks and startled him when she said, “Hey, babe.” When he turned toward her, she vised his face in her hands and tongue kissed him with insistence and to a depth that was arousing but a little scary, as if she were a succubus intent on tonguing his soul out of him.

When Jill finished with his mouth, still clamping his face in her elegant but strong hands, she regarded him with such affection that his knees jellified. Her blue eyes were full of light, as if she had availed herself of a new cosmetic procedure that installed a tiny LED bulb behind each retina.

He said, “What—”

She shushed him. “Just let me look at you. I need to look at you.” She seemed to starethroughhis eyes, to admire the smooth convolutions of his forebrain. She surveyed the width of his brow, dwelt for a long moment on his right ear, gazed across his brow again, and focused on his left ear. Nose, septum, lips, jaw, chin, other jaw—no element of his face was given short shrift, as if she were not his lover, but relied on a facial recognition program to identify him. A soft sigh marked the completion of her inspection, whereupon she released his face and kissed the tip of his nose and stepped back and said, “I will never forget your face. Will you forget mine?”

The most romantic response that occurred to Benny didn’t sound so Cary Grant when he put it into words. “When I’m a hundred years old and riddled with dementia and don’t know who I am, I will still remember you and your amazing face.”

“We were great together, weren’t we?” Jill said.

“We’re fabulous together,” he confirmed, belatedly registering her use of the past tense.

By then, she was handing him the key to his house, with which she’d let herself in. Tenderly, with a melancholy expression that made her yet more beautiful, she said, “I want you to be happy, so it’s better by far you should forget me and smile than that you should remember me and be sad.”

Benny vaguely recognized those words as a line from an old poem she had read to him in a tender moment. When Jill Swift was in a philosophical mood, she often relied on the artful words of poets or songwriters to convey her most profound insights into the meaning of life and the human condition.

“I don’t understand,” he protested.

“You light up my life,” she said softly.

“And you light up mine.”

“I’m totally devoted to you.”

“Well then—”

“To every season there is a reason,” she explained, “and a time to every purpose under heaven.”

“But I love you,” he said.

“Love is a many splendored thing, Benny. Love is all around us. It’s everywhere we go. I will always love you. But my life and yours are paths that have taken different directions in the woods.”

“Woods? What woods?”

“The woods of life, sweetheart. It tears me up, Benny. God, it really does. But the woods of life are scary, and it’s easy to get lost. When one person is on a well-lit path and the other person is on a path into darkness, it makes no sense for both of them to get lost and wander in misery forever.”

“Misery? Forever?”

“Take care of yourself, Benny.”

“Wait. If your path is the well-lit path, then I’ll take it. I’ll follow you. We’ll be on the same path.”

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