'I don't know,' she said. She looked out her window, away from him: nothing to see but the dirt bluff rising away from the highway into the dark. 'I've just had other things.'

'Been a little lonely?'

'I've been busy,' she said. And after a few seconds, 'Yeah, I've been a little lonely. Then.'

'What?'

'Ah, there's this guy. I went out with him years ago; pretty intense. I thought we were gonna get married, but we didn't. I saw him the other day, at a gas station. He's out here on a fellowship, I guessI called a mutual friend. Anyway, it all sorta came back on me.'

'What's he do?'

'He's a composer. Modern stuffthe New York Philharmonic debuted one of his poems, "Sketch of Malaga".'

'One of his poems.'

'Compositions; he calls them poems. He's not really that arty, just knows. how to work the levers on the classical music machine.'

Harper glanced at her: 'Sounds like you might resent that, a little.'

'Oh, no. I guess it's necessary. But I wasn't good at it.'

'So you're a musician.'

'That's what I really am,' she said. Harper had a way of listeningmaybe picked up when he was a copthat seemed to pull the words out of her. He was attentive: reallylistened.

She told him about growing up in Wisconsin, about her mother's death. How she'd been the best pianist in her high school, the best they'd ever had. That she'd been the best at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the year she graduated. That she was one of the best two or three in graduate school.

'Not quite good enough,' she told him, staring out the window at the night. Clark had also been a pianist, not quite at her level, but he'd seen the writing on the wall much sooner than she had. He'd branched into direction and composition, started working the music machine.

'Couldn't you have gone that way?'

'Nah. Performance is one thing, composition is something else. Takes a different kind of mind.'

'Did you ever try it?'

'I was never really interested in it,' she said.

'So what happened?'

'We were living together, and he was the big intellectual and I was doing session gigs. Movie music. I don't know; it pulled us apart. I kept thinking that if you just played well enough, practised hard enough, you'd make it. And that wasn't the game at all. So I went to Burbank, and he went to Yale.'

'Ah, that's really excellent,' Harper said.

'What?' she asked, half-smiling.

'You doresent the mealy little poser.'

'No, I really don't,' she protested. Then, 'You'd like him. He even plays golf.'

'Rock bandsplay golf,' Harper said, not impressed. 'So. are you pining for him?'

'I don't know,' she said. 'Maybe.'

'Shit.'

'Yeah, it's sort of a problem. You know, if you're thinking about. it might be sorta awkward having you stay over.'

'I'm gonna stay over,' he said. 'But I won't be rattling your doorknob in the night. Staying over is business.'

'Okay.' Was she just the smallest bit disappointed? Maybe.

'Would you play something on the piano for me?' he asked.

'If you like.' The car seemed hushed; the outside world away from the two of them. 'What music do you listen to?'

'Mostly hard rock or hard classical; some old funky blues and jazz, but only for an hour or so at a time.'

'We like the same things,' she said, 'except I'm not so big on rock, and a little bigger on the jazz. what should I play for you?'

'Maybe something by, I dunno. Sousa, maybe.'

He turned quickly, saw her embarrassed: 'That was a joke, for Christ's sake,' he laughed. 'Loosen up, Batory.'

'So who do you like?'

'You could play me anything by Satie.'

'Satie? Really?'

'Really,' he said. 'I've been listening to him a lot; he's very delicate and funny, sometimes.' He glanced at her, interpreting her silence as skepticism. 'I'm a lawyer, not a fuckin' moron,' he said.

She ducked her head and pointed up the hill. 'Malibu,' she said.

The house was a half-block east of Corral, on a short, hooked turnoff with a circle at the end. There were two other homes on the circle, all three showing lights, and all with steel fences, darkened and turned to resemble wrought iron, facing the street. The driveways were blocked with decorative eight-foot-high electric gates between stone pillars.

'We'll just keep rolling through,' Harper said, looking out through the sweep of his headlights. 'Look for dogs, anything that might be a dog.'

'I can't see anything,' Anna said.

They were back out at Corral: Harper stopped, looked both ways, then said, 'We'd be crazy to try to get in the front.'

'Get in?' She looked back at the house, at the fence and the hedge behind it, the security sign next to the stone pillars beside the driveway. 'That place is a fort.'

'Let's go get an ice cream,' he said. 'Isn't there an ice cream place down at the shopping center?'

She got a Dutch chocolate and he took a raspberry and they sat on a bench outside of a Ben amp; Jerry's and ate the ice cream, talking about nothing of importance. When they finished, Harper wiped his hands and face with the tiny napkin from the ice cream parlor, pitched it into a trash container and said, 'You drive.'

'Why?'

'I want to go back there and take one more look. Maybe get out.'

'Jake. this is a really bad idea.'

He nodded. 'I know, but I can't figure out what else to do. I just want to stand on one of those stone pillars, if I can, and take a look. See what's in there.'

'Jake.'

'What, you chicken?' he asked.

Never a chicken. Never.

One of the houses had gone dark, but the target house showed lights on all three floors. 'We'll roll right up, I'll hop out, do a quick step-up, look in and then get right back in the car and we're out of there,' he said.

'Aw, man.' But she felt a little thrill, a little of the roaming-through-the-night feel; she took the car into the hook and heard Harper's door pop.

She slowed and he said, 'Keep rolling, slow, I'll latch the door, don't want them to see headlights stopping.' He hopped out with the car still moving, pushed the door shut until it caught, looked around once as he approached the fence and then stepped on a horizontal brace-bar, pulled himself up and looked into the yard. Anna continued through the circle, headed out toward the street; she rolled her window down and looked over at his back and said, in a harsh whisper, 'Let's go.'

'Just a minute.'

And suddenly he was over the fence and out of sight.

'Oh, no.' She continued moving, but her mind was churning. Better to move than to stop, she thought; she'd go out to the street, do a U-turn out of sight, and come back in. What was he thinking, hopping over the fence? He wasa moron. She was at the street, touched the brakes to show the red flash of a departing car, did the U-turn on Corral and started back in; rolled the window down on his side as she went, and tried to look back.

As she did, somebody behind the fence screamed: 'Get him. get him, over there.'

And Harper shouted, 'Anna, the highway.'

She couldn't see him, but his voice was clear enough: Anna rolled through the circle again, accelerating, the wheels squealing on the new blacktop. Down the short street, a finger of fear in her throat, left down the hill, the BMW tracking as though it were on rails.

BAK!

Was that a shot? Her face jerked to the right, but all she could see was hillside. She'd heard something, but what was it?

BAK!

A shot, that's what it was. She jammed her foot to the floor, powering through sixty-five, downhill, then hammered the brake as she got to the bottom, paused at the highway, then ran the light and headed around to the left.

She looked up the bluff, saw nothing but scrub brush and weeds; the house was right there, fifty feet ahead.

And so was Harper. He was spilling down the hill, tumbling, hitting every ten feet, dirt flying, not quite out of control, but not quite under control, either. A car passed her going north, and as soon as it was clear, she swerved across the highway to the left, up onto the narrow weedy shoulder, powered through the dirt and rocks until she was directly below him. He landed in a cloud of dirt, struggled to get up, limped around the car as she popped the passenger door, fell inside and gasped, 'Go. go.'