| The phone rang again as I tightened my laces. Did the whole world believe I lived here? I had already decided to let it go and then snatched it up anyway. Paranoia, a habit of successful people. "Paige Smith. Spectator After Hours." I was becoming a little giddy. "Mr. Smith. Thank God you�re there. I have to talk to someone about this." I was a crisis hotline. I couldn�t quite place the fluent but youthful voice, like a schoolboy chorister�s. He sounded almost as if he had been weeping. "You gave me your card the other night? Outside Mr. Knight�s? Tamlin Bailey." Who on the planet named their son Tamlin? "Something�s come up and I�ve got to figure out where to go with it. I don�t think anyone here can see it straight. You seemed a lot more fair and objective than I expected. I� I don�t want to talk from here, can I come around and see you?" "Where are you?" "Caerleon Park. I�m the last one in here but I, I really think I should come down. Are you going to be there? I know the offices, I brought Mr. Keller down there back in the summer for an interview with that Tabor fellow." I thought. Two miles, twenty minutes, twenty-five counting warmup. "Can you be here in a half hour?" I said. "There�s an intercom by the door, it�ll reach my desk. If I don�t answer I�ll be coming up behind you." "Okay," he said, sounding about sixteen. "I�ll be there around five." I hurried through the stretches and couldn�t get a groove on the short two-mile loop I�d started out with three months age � a little circuit through Fairmont whose only difficult feature was a nearly vertical hill. Eileen, I went running in Fairmont this afternoon, did I pass your house? Chief French would say I was showing signs of traumatic stress. The wind came up as I descended the hill, a stretch that I had learned was death on the knees, and fat raindrops were slapping my face before I got back out to Reed Drive. Potters Run was brown and perturbed, already throatier as it passed under the bridge, swollen from the overnight rain. I wasn�t completely soaked before I could key the combination to the office door, but it would do. The gym-sized towel in my drawer was all I had; a soggy struggle in the men�s room ensued. Five-fifteen and still no Tam. I decided to wait another half hour, and twenty minutes later was wondering whether it was worth bothering, when there were three sharp raps at the outside door. I waited for the intercom, but nothing. Several seconds passed. The raps came again. Paranoia was a habit I felt myself embracing. The outside door doesn�t have a peephole, no one thought of it, and there are no windows that really give a good view in front of it without exposing you. I walked softly to it and listened. There was a third volley of knocks and a woman�s voice calling "Hello?�. Hello?" Maybe thinking of Dvorah killed my caution. I opened the door and found myself face to face with a large, glossy Irish setter; for a moment I had the surreal impression that it had spoken. The woman holding its lead had turned away from the door for a moment; when she looked back I saw that it was Mrs. Grover Friedman. She was half propping up a pale Tam Bailey, blood from a small but already bruising split in his forehead trickling down to make a gluey mess in one blond eyebrow, the arm away from Mrs. Friedman held awkwardly. On a Saturday afternoon he was dressed as if for a lecture appearance, bow tie perched in the V of his knit vest, khakis sharply pleated even in their drenched state. I stared, baffled to the point of paralysis, until the dog decided to trot inside the office and shake itself. |