“No, hang on,” I said. “Let’s go with your first instinct. You said no.”

“Well, the thing is, I think gay men put a greater emphasis on, I don’t know, sartorial matters.”

“It’s how I dress.”

“You are a bit rumpled, and you know, if you ever decide to update your wardrobe, I’d be happy to assist you. But for now, as a rabidly heterosexual female, I have decided to regard your lack of fashion sense as endearing. I’d love to talk about this more, but I have to get going. I’ve got a bunch of stuff to do at the office before I leave on this stupid retreat. Give me a kiss, you disheveled beast.”

I did as I was told. And she got in the car, backed down the narrow driveway, and disappeared down Crandall.

7

SOMETIMES, I blame my father.

He worried about everything, and I imagine he still does. We don’t talk all that much since my mother died more than a decade ago, and he lives up in the mountains now, renting out a few lakeside cabins to fishermen, and presumably he moved up there because there would be less to worry about.

His obsessive nitpicking and general sense of impending doom were his gift to me, and from all accounts they are what led my mother to leave the family home for nearly six months when I was in my early teens.

We were the only family I knew of that had fire extinguishers on every floor, an escape route in case of fire taped to the back of bedroom doors. Dad had to be the one, every night, to make sure the doors were locked. You always ran cold water in the shower first, then added hot, to ensure against scalding. You put away as much money as you could every week because for sure you’d be fired the next.

We never had a fire. We never got burned in the shower. Dad was never laid off. He’d be the first to tell you his strategy has paid off.

And now I am the worrier. There is no stuff too small to sweat. My obsession with personal safety issues and protecting the members of my family has been a problem for a while, and has even backfired rather spectacularly. You might have heard about that.

It was the memories of my father that persuaded me to listen to Sarah and pay a visit to Harley, my smartass doctor, in a bid to get a handle on this aspect of my personality. But the thing was, the more I tried not to worry about things, the more things there were, landing on my doorstep, to worry about.

Only hours before, I had been in a car that was being pursued by men with guns. I’d looked down the barrel of a gun before, but I’d never been shot at, nor had I ever been in a car that was being shot at. If that guy hanging out the window of the Annihilator had had a little better aim, Lawrence and I might have been sharing space down at the funeral home with Miles Diamond.

Standing in the kitchen, I found myself almost short of breath, and took a seat at the table. I pushed The Metropolitan, with its story about the deranged, gun-toting teen, out of sight, and wrapped both hands around my coffee mug to keep them from shaking.

It wasn’t just my night with Lawrence that had me on edge. There was this whole thing with Angie and Trevor Wylie. All I could picture was Keanu Reeves, decked out in shades and long black coat, a machine gun in each hand, spraying bullets every which way. All while doing that leaning-back doing-the-limbo thing he did.

I’d yet to meet Trevor Wylie, but I was betting he couldn’t do that.

Maybe if it hadn’t been for that story in the paper, about that withdrawn kid blowing away his friends in the park, I wouldn’t have been so obsessed with this. But it was the kind of story you come upon more and more in the news. Postal workers, it seemed, had taken a break from shooting their fellow employees so that dysfunctional teens could have a piece of the action. It was a modern-day cliché: the quiet kid, the one no one believed was an actual threat, the one no one could ever remember causing any trouble, suddenly going off like a bomb. Computer nerd turns mass killer.

Did that describe Trevor? Probably not. Angie’s characterization of him as a “stalker” was teenage hyperbole. A stalker was anyone whose attentions you didn’t welcome.

It was pretty clear Angie didn’t want me interfering, talking to him. Angie probably didn’t want me to talk to any of her friends ever again.

I reached for the paper that I’d pushed to the far corner of the table, glanced again at the article. “Police said that while the boy had been ostracized by his peers on occasion, no one thought him capable of bringing a gun from home and executing youngsters he’d sat with in school.”

I tossed the paper aside a second time. It was a curse to have an imagination that allowed you to envision worst-case scenarios so vividly.

It was time to think about something else. Like women in leather.

I had Trixie’s number in an address book in our study. I got it out, found the number, and dialed. She had two phone lines, one personal, another for work. I called the former.

“Hello,” she said cheerfully. This was definitely her personal line. I’d called her business line once, by mistake, and it’s a bit like getting Eartha Kitt. Your whole body temp goes up a degree or three.

“It’s Zack.”

“Hi! Long time no hear! How’ve you been?”

“Good, pretty good. You?”

“Can’t complain.”

“Business good?”

“I think I’m recession proof. No matter how bad the economy gets, there are guys who need to be tied up and spanked. You called the wrong line if you want to book a session.”

“No, this is personal.”

“You think spanking isn’t personal?”

“Point taken.”

Trixie and I don’t exactly occupy the same worlds, and I don’t mean that to sound judgmental. She’s in a line of work my kids would call “sketchy” and maybe even a little bit dangerous, not to mention very possibly illegal. But her straightforwardness, honesty, and willingness to help me when I was in trouble once, made her a friend.

“Listen,” I said, “I haven’t touched base with you in a while, and thought I’d call. It was nice, when you were next door, we could have a coffee now and then.”

“Usually when you were having some sort of crisis,” Trixie said. “Does that mean you’re having one now?”

“I guess you could say I’m a bit stressed.”

“Nothing like when you lived next door, I hope.”

“I’m not trying to duck a murder charge, if that’s what you mean.” I told her about the night before, with Lawrence.

“How does a normal guy like you find so much trouble?” Trixie asked.

“It’s a gift. And then there’s this thing with my daughter.”

“My mind’s gone blank. Your daughter…”

“An-”

“Angie! Yes. How’s she? Still interested in photography?”

“Not enough that we’ve put a darkroom into the house, like we did when we lived in Oakwood. She’s pretty busy, anyway. This is her first year in college. With all the studying and assignments, there’s not that much time for hobbies. She’s living at home, heading downtown for her classes, taking a mix of things, but kind of leaning toward psychology, I think. She’s got a couple of psych courses.”

Trixie said, “Maybe, if she takes enough of them, she’ll be able to figure out what’s wrong with you.” I smiled. She went on, “So, what’s up with her?”

I told her about Trevor Wylie.

“I think you’re making a big thing out of nothing. So there’s a guy who likes her, she’s not interested. Eventually, he’ll get the message.”

“You’re probably right. But showing up at her friend’s place, out of nowhere. Sounds like he had to be following her, don’t you think?”

“Look, Angie’s a smart kid, right?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“She knows how to take care of herself. If she thinks there’s a real problem, she’ll tell you.”

“Maybe,” I said, not with much conviction.