She looked at him evenly. “Of course you are.”

Whatever that was supposed to mean. Cadan shifted on his feet. He had a paintbrush still in his hand and he wondered suddenly and idiotically what he was meant to do with it. Or with the tin of paint. They’d been brought to him and no one had said where to put them at the end of the workday. He’d not thought to ask.

“Did you know him?” Dellen Kerne said abruptly. “Did you know Santo?”

“A bit. Yeah.”

“And what did you think of him?”

This was rocky ground. Cadan didn’t know how to reply other than to say, “He bought a surfboard from my dad.” He didn’t mention Madlyn, didn’t want to mention Madlyn, and didn’t want to think why he didn’t want to mention Madlyn.

“I see. Yes. But that doesn’t actually answer the question, does it?” Dellen came farther into the room. She went to the fitted clothes cupboard for some reason. She opened it. She looked inside. She spoke, oddly, into the cupboard’s interior. She said, “Santo was a great deal like me. You wouldn’t know that if you didn’t know him. And you didn’t know him, did you? Not actually.”

“Like I said. A bit. I saw him round. More when he was first learning to surf than later on.”

“Because you surf as well?”

“Me? No. Well, I mean I’ve been, of course. But it’s not like it’s the only…I mean, I’ve got other interests.”

She turned from the cupboard. “Do you? What are they? Sport, I expect. You look quite fit. And women as well. Young men your age generally have women as one of their main interests. Are you like other young men?” She frowned. “Can we open that window, Cadan? The smell of paint…”

Cadan wanted to say it was her hotel so she could do whatever she wanted to do, but he set down his paintbrush carefully, went to the window, and wrestled it open, which wasn’t easy. It needed adjusting or greasing or something. Whatever one did to rejuvenate windows.

She said, “Thank you. I’m going to have a cigarette now. Do you smoke? No? That’s a surprise. You have the look of a smoker.”

Cadan knew he was meant to ask what the look of a smoker was, and had she been somewhere between twenty and thirty years old, he would have done so. His attitude would have been that questions like that one, of a potentially metaphoric nature, could lead to interesting answers, which in turn could lead to interesting developments. But in this case, he kept his mouth shut and when she said, “You won’t be bothered if I smoke, will you?” he shook his head. He hoped she didn’t expect him to light her cigarette for her-because she did seem the sort of woman round whom men leapt like jackrabbits-since he had neither matches nor lighter with him. She was correct in her assessment of him, though. He was a smoker but he’d been cutting back recently, inanely telling himself it was tobacco and not drink that was the real root of his problems.

He saw that she’d brought a packet of cigarettes with her and she had matches as well, tucked into the packet. She lit up, drew in, and let smoke drift from her nostrils.

“Whose shit’s on fire?” Pooh remarked.

Cadan winced. “Sorry. He’s heard that from my sister a million times. He mimics her. He mimics everyone. Anyway, she hates smoking.” And then again, “Sorry,” because he didn’t want her to think he was being critical of her.

“You’re nervous,” Dellen said. “I’m making you that way. And the bird’s fine. He doesn’t know what he’s saying, after all.”

“Yeah. Well. Sometimes, though, I’d swear he does.”

“Like the remark about shagging?”

He blinked. “What?”

“‘Polly wants a shag,’” she reminded him. “It was the first thing he said when I came into the room. I don’t, actually. Want a shag, that is. But I’m curious why he said that. I expect you use that bird to collect women. Is that why you brought him with you?”

“He goes most everywhere with me.”

“That can’t be convenient.”

“We work things out.”

“Do you?” She observed the bird, but Cadan had the feeling she wasn’t really seeing Pooh. He couldn’t have said what she was seeing but her next remarks gave him at least an idea. “Santo and I were quite close. Are you close to your mother, Cadan?”

“No.” He didn’t add that it was impossible to be close to Wenna Rice Angarrack McCloud Jackson Smythe, aka the Bounder. She had never remained stationary long enough for closeness to be anywhere in the deck of cards she played.

“Santo and I were quite close,” Dellen said again. “We were very like. Sensualists. Do you know what that is?” She gave him no chance to answer, not that he could have given her a definition, anyway. She said, “We live for sensation. For what we can see and hear and smell. For what we can taste. For what we can touch. And for what can touch us. We experience life in all its richness, without guilt and without fear. That’s what Santo was like. That’s what I taught Santo to be.”

“Right.” Cadan thought how he’d like to get out of the room, but he wasn’t certain how to effect a departure that wouldn’t look like running away. He told himself there was no real reason to turn tail and disappear through the doorway, but he had a feeling, nearly animal in nature, that danger was near.

Dellen said to him, “What sort are you, Cadan? Can I touch your bird or will he bite?”

He said, “He likes to be scratched on his head. Where you’d put his ears if birds had ears. I mean ears like ours because they can hear, obviously.”

“Like this?” She came close to Cadan, then. He could smell her scent. Musk, he thought. She used the nail of her index finger, which was painted red. Pooh accepted her ministrations, as he normally did. He purred like a cat, yet another sound he’d learned from a previous owner. Dellen smiled at the bird. She said to Cadan, “You didn’t answer me. What sort are you? Sensualist? Emotionalist? Intellectual?”

“Not bloody likely,” he replied. “Intellectual, I mean. I’m not intellectual.”

“Ah. Are you emotional? Bundle of feelings? Raw to the touch? Inside, I mean.”

He shook his head.

“Then you’re a sensualist, like me. Like Santo. I thought as much. You have that look about you. I expect it’s something your girlfriend appreciates. If you have one. Do you?”

“Not just now.”

“Pity. You’re quite attractive, Cadan. What do you do for sex?”

Cadan felt ever more the need to escape, yet she wasn’t doing a single thing except petting the bird and talking to him. Still, something was very off with the woman.

Then it came to him at a gallop that her son was dead. Not only dead but murdered. He was gone, kaput, given the chop, whatever. When a son died-or a daughter or a husband-wasn’t the mother supposed to rip up her clothes? tear at her hair? shed tears by the bucketful?

She said, “Because you must do something for sex, Cadan. A young virile man like you. You can’t mean me to think you live like a celibate priest.”

“I wait for summer,” he finally told her.

Her finger hesitated, less than an inch from Pooh’s green head. The bird sidestepped to get back within its range. “For summer?” Dellen said.

“Town’s full of girls then. Here on holiday.”

“Ah. You prefer the short-term relationship, then. Sex without strings.”

“Well,” he said. “Yeah. Works for me, that.”

“I expect it does. You scratch them and they scratch you and everyone’s happy with the arrangement. No questions asked. I know exactly what you mean. Although I expect that surprises you. A woman my age. Married, with children. Knowing what it means.”

He offered a half smile. It was insincere, just a way to acknowledge what she was saying without having to acknowledge what she was saying. He gave a look in the direction of the doorway. He said, “Well,” and tried to make his tone decisive, a way of saying, That’s that, then. Nice talking to you.