They had always stayed cool during the B & E’s, not showing each other anything but feeling it inside. One would never say to the other, “Come on, let’s go.” Or look anxious to get out. The idea was to walk through it, take your time, pick up what you wanted. Once Ryan walked into the den and Leon Woody was sitting down reading a magazine with a drink in his hand. That was about the coolest until the afternoon the guy came with the dry cleaning. Ryan went to the door: he took two suits and a topcoat from the guy, thanked him, and put the clothes in a suitcase. Thanking the guy was the touch. It was a hard one to beat. Leon Woody came close the time he answered the phone and the guy calling wanted to know who the hell this was speaking and where his wife was. Leon Woody said, “Waiting for me up in the bed, man. Where do you think?” And hung up. They gave themselves a few more minutes, just enough time, and were up in the next block when the cop car pulled in front of the house.

Once Leon Woody brought along a set of power tools he had stolen somewhere and they plugged into the porch light and drilled the lock out of the front door. Ryan said it made too much noise. Leon Woody said yeah, but it seemed more like the professional way. It was good to vary the style, he maintained, so all your B & E’s didn’t look alike. He was a funny guy, a tall skinny jig who had played basketball in high school and got college offers but couldn’t pass the entrance exams even at the jock schools. Leon Woody’s problem was heroin. He was strung out most of the time Ryan knew him and it was costing him fifteen, twenty dollars a day. But he was a good guy and he would have gotten a kick out of the job Sunday, walking into the house with fifty people out in front eating hamburgers.

There were lights in the darkness, but they were pinpoints, cold little dots off somewhere in the night, as far away as stars and not part of the beach, not part of now.

There was another light, faint orange, above him. The lake frontage had climbed gradually from the low rise at the Bay Vista to a steep bluff above the beach: a brush-covered slope rising out of the sand and lined every two hundred feet or so by wooden stairways that reached up into the darkness.

Ryan stared up at the slope as he walked along, as the realization that he was wasting his time sunk in and became a fact. Finally he stopped. He should have stayed in bed. What was he supposed to do, guess which stairway led to her place? Then what, if you found it? Go up and knock on the door and act casual and say, “Hello, I just happened to be walking by.” The hell with it.

Nancy watched him. Above him, up on the bluff, she had watched him pass. She had watched him stop and stand for a moment gazing up the slope; now he was coming back. Nancy walked into the orange glow of the post lamp-a girl in a dark sweater and shorts and sneakers-and out of it, a dark figure again moving down the stairs to the beach.

She waited, one hand on the railing. He was staring up at the slope and not until he was almost even with her did his gaze drop and there she was, stopping him only a few strides away.

“Well, Jack Ryan,” Nancy said. “What a surprise.”

Ryan walked up to her and she didn’t back away or shift her position. She was at ease. She had been waiting for him, expecting him, and he could feel it.

“I was taking a walk,” Ryan said.

“Uh-huh.”

“You think I was looking for you?”

“Uh-unh, you were taking a walk.”

“Just up the beach, nowhere special.”

“I believe it,” Nancy said. “Do you want me to walk with you?”

“I was going back.”

“Why don’t you relax a little?”

Walking along the beach, doing something, he felt better; though he was still aware of himself walking along next to her. They didn’t talk much at first, just little probing introductory questions that Nancy asked about the migrant camp and Camacho and picking cucumbers. He answered them simply: The camp was okay. He didn’t worry about Camacho. Yes, picking cucumbers was hard work. They stopped to light cigarettes and he felt her hair against his cupped hands as she leaned in and saw her face clearly for a moment in the glow of the match. She was really nice looking. The rich girl in the movies.

“You look like somebody in the movies,” Ryan said.

“Who?”

“I can’t think of her name.”

“What type is she?”

“Like you. Dark hair, long.”

“Is she sexy?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“What was she in?”

“I can’t remember right off.”

“I probably didn’t see it anyway. I don’t go very often. Just sometimes.”

They walked along in silence and Ryan said, “Do you watch any television?”

“Hardly ever. Do you?”

“If it’s something good.”

“Like what?”

“A war movie, something like that. Or spy stuff.”

“Wow, real-life fakey drama.”

“They don’t have to be true, long as they’re good.”

“They’re boring.”

“Well, what do you like, then?”

“Doing something.” She looked up at him with the dark hair slanting close to her eye. “Something that makes an impression. Something that leaves a mark.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. A bullet maybe. That would be a good clean example.”

“Shoot somebody?”

“Shoot something-hear it go off.”

“How about dynamite?”

“Beautiful. I think dynamite would really be fun.”

“But you have to put in your detonators and wire the charge and string the wire out-how about a grenade?”

“Oooo, a grenade, yes! Just pull the pin and throw it.”

“Or hook it up to a trip wire,” Ryan said. “As a joke.”

“I think I’d rather throw it,” Nancy said. “The other way you might have to wait too long.”

“Okay, but where’re you going to throw it?”

“I’ll have to think about it,” Nancy said. “I picture throwing it up on a porch or through a window. Isn’t that funny?”

“A guy was telling me, during World War Two the Japs would send these Geisha girls over to our lines bare naked but with grenades under their arms; then they’d come in and the American guys would tell them to put up their hands and wham.”

“Do you believe that?”

“A guy told me that was there.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Why not?”

“Why would they walk in? Why not just throw them?”

“Because they were ordered to. The Geisha girls.”

“Why no clothes? I think your friend’s putting you on.”

“He’s not a friend. He’s just a guy I know.”

“I’ll bet he wasn’t even there,” Nancy said.

“I don’t care,” Ryan said. “Maybe it happened, maybe it didn’t. I don’t care one way or the other.”

Nancy was looking up the slope. She stopped, her gaze holding on the bluff, and Ryan stopped with her. “How about rocks?” she said then. “What if we used rocks and pretended they were grenades.”

“And do what?”

“Throw them.”

“You want to throw rocks.”

“Find some, come on.”

A nutty broad. God, looking for rocks. Very seriously in the dark looking for rocks. It was a dumb thing to do, but he was feeling pretty good now. “Little rocks or big ones?”

“I think a little smaller than my fist,” Nancy said. “They shouldn’t be too heavy.”

“No,” Ryan said. “You can’t have them too heavy. How many you need?”

“Just a few. We’ll make them count.”

Very nutty broad. They took their rocks and went up the next stairway they came to, up to the lawn of a house that was totally dark, partly obscured, and shadowed by trees and shrubbery.

“They’re probably at the club,” Nancy said, her voice low and close to Ryan.

“You know them?”

“I don’t think so. Everyone along here belongs.”

“You’re going to throw a rock at that house?”

“Uh-huh, right through the picture window.”

“Why this house? If you don’t know them-”

“Because it’s there,” the girl said.

“Maybe they’re asleep.”

“What difference does it make?”