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gentle squeeze before releasing her. He would have held her in his arms if he could have, so delicate and wounded did she seem just then, lying there in that sterile room with its plastic curtains and hospital blankets, its dismal view of the city. He recalled their conversation in the bookstore in Berkeley not two weeks prior, the business about the chairs, her expression in recalling the loss ofher dog, her beguiling smile as they had waited in line to buy their books. She was a gentle soul, he thought, a kind spirit. She declined to look at him and she declined to be comforted. And of course the truth was that while surgery might free the trapped muscle, it would not free her from the man Chance had seen in her room just now, bending over her like some B movie vampire, her hand in his, the same that had beaten her. For now that Chance had looked into the man’s face he had no doubt that Janice had been right. There’d been no intruder in the back of the condominium. It was the man he had seen, the bad cop, hunting his whore, angered at her sudden disappearance.

     
    Beyond the walls of the hospital, which were dull and gray and rather more like a prison than a place of healing, a pall had settled. Even those views of the city by way of the Richmond–San Rafael Bridge that had almost never failed to cheer seemed veiled in gloom. He spent the rest of the day in the small, overly warm kitchen of a retired dentist. He’d been retained by a distant relative on suspicion of elder abuse and asked to make an assessment with regard to vulnerability to undue influence. The man, William Fry, though he preferred to be addressed as Doc Billy, was ninety-six years old. He sported dual hearing aids and was attached to an oxygen tank. The requisite cognitive and psychiatric testing had dragged on for hours. By the time Chance reentered the day, as claustrophobic as Doc Billy’s kitchenette, the afternoon had given way to darkness, the sidewalks made wet by a roiling fog he might once have found romantic. Returning to his apartment, he was alerted by way of a letter that the IRS had just put a lien on any profits realized from the sale of his house.

     
    Though well into the dinner hour, he was able to get his attorney on the phone. The situation was explained as follows: The government’s interest had been piqued as a result of an audit of his soon-to-be ex-wife’s business, a small photographic studio. There’d been a couple of years there when he’d pumped some money into the enterprisein an effort to help her get it off the ground. It seemed now that the money had not been properly accounted for. On his end were unsubstantiated expenses, on hers unreported income. Being married, the two had filed jointly, leaving both now tarred with the same brush. The only difference between them was that he had money, albeit in dwindling sums, while she had none. The government was looking for back taxes and penalties in excess of two hundred thousand dollars. There would of course be further bills from the requisite attorneys. He thanked his attorney and hung up.
    He sat holding the letter from the IRS, fingers trembling with rage or stress, or fear, unable to shake the feeling that his former spouse and confidante, the mother of his child, had ratted him out. “It never fucking rains . . .” he said to no one, realizing almost at once and with a lasting chagrin it was exactly the kind of thing his mother might have said. And how he would have hated her for it, she with her platitudes and clichés, her grating homilies. But then he guessed that was how it was . . . you stuck around long enough . . . your reward was to become the very person you’d spent the better part of your life holding in contempt.

     
    He took a three-dollar bottle of Trader Joe’s wine from the cabinet above his refrigerator, found something to drink it from, and seated himself in his own kitchenette, only slightly larger and less confining than Dr.