"Yes. I think it's terrific."

"It's not that good." She put her hands on her hips - very definite hips. She had the kind of figure, small - wasted, busty and gently concave, that couldn't be camouflaged by the overalls she'd thrown on over her turtleneck.

"Oh, really?"

"Oh, really." She took the guitar from me. "There's a spot right here - " she tapped the soundboard " - where it's been sanded too thin. And the balance between headstock and box could be better." She strummed a few chords. "All in all I'd give it an eight on a scale of one to ten."

"You seem to be quite an expert on it."

"I should be. I made it."

She took me to her shop that afternoon and showed me the instrument she was working on. "This one's going to be a ten. The other was one of my first. You learn as you go along."

Some weeks later she admitted it had been her way of picking me up, her version of come up and see my etchings.

"I liked the way you played. Such sensitivity."

We saw each other regularly after that. I learned that she had been an only child, the special daughter of a skilled cabinetmaker who had taught her everything he knew about how to transform raw wood into objects of beauty. She had tried college, majoring in design, but the regimentation had angered her, as had the fact that her dad had known more about form and function intuitively than all the teachers and books combined. After he died, she dropped out, took the money he left her and invested in a shop in San Luis Obispo. She got to know some local musicians, who brought her their instruments to fix. At first it was a sideline, for she was trying to make a living designing and manufacturing custom furniture. Then she began to take a greater interest in the guitars, banjos and mandolins that found their way to her workbench. She read a few books on instrument making, found she had all the requisite skills and made her first guitar. It sounded great and she sold it for five hundred dollars. She was hooked. Two weeks later she moved to L.A." where the musicians were, and set up shop.

When I met her she was making two instruments a month as well as handling repairs. She'd been written up in trade magazines and was back - ordered for four months. She was starting to make a living.

I probably loved her the first day I met her but it took me a couple of weeks to realize it.

After three months we started to talk about living together, but it didn't happen. There was no philosophical objection on either side, but her place was too small for two people and my house couldn't accommodate her shop. It sounds unromantic, letting mundane matters like space and comfort get in the way, but we were having such a good time with each other while maintaining our privacy, that the incentive to make a change wasn't there. Often she would spend the night with me, other times I'd collapse in her loft. Some evenings we'd go our separate ways.

It wasn't a bad arrangement.

I sipped coffee and eyed the pie.

"Have some, babe."

"I don't want to pork out before dinner."

"Maybe we won't go out for dinner." She stroked the back of my neck. "Ooh, such tension." She began to knead the muscles of my upper back. "You haven't felt this way in a long time."

"There's a good reason for it." And I told her about Milo's morning visit, the murder, Melody, Towle.

When I was through she placed her hands on my shoulders.

"Alex, do you really want to get into something like this?"

"Do I have a choice? I see that kid's eyes in my sleep. I was a fool for getting sucked in, but now I'm stuck."

She looked at me. The corners of her mouth lifted in a smile.

"You are such a pushover. And so sweet."

She nuzzled me under my chin. I held her to me and buried my face in her hair. It smelled of lemon and honey and rosewood.

"I really love you."

"I love you, too, Alex."

We undressed each other and when we were totally naked, I lifted her in my arms and carried her up the stairs to the loft. Not wanting to be apart from her for one second I kept my mouth fastened upon hers while I maneuvered myself on top of her. She clung to me, her arms and legs like tendrils. We connected, and I was home.

8

We slept until 10 p.m." then awoke famished. I went down to the kitchen and made sandwiches of Italian salami and Swiss cheese on rye, found a jug of burgundy and toted it all back upstairs for a late supper in bed. We shared garlicky kisses, got crumbs in the bed, hugged each other and fell back asleep.

We were jolted awake by the telephone.

Robin answered it.

"Yes, Milo, he's here. No, that's all right. Here he is."

She handed me the receiver and buried herself under the covers.

"Hello, Milo. What time is it?"

"Three a.m."

I sat up and rubbed my eyes. Through the skylight the heavens were black.

"What's going on."

"It's the kid - Melody Quinn. She's freaked out - woke up screaming. Bonita called Towle who called me. Demanded you get over there. He sounds pissed."

"Screw him. I'm not his errand boy."

"You want me to tell him that? He's right here."

"You're over there now? At her place?"

"Certainly. Neither rain nor hail nor darkness stays this trusted civil servant and all that shit. We're having a little party. The doctor, Bonita, me. The kid's sleeping. Towle gave her a shot of something."

"Figures."

"The kid spilled to her mom about the hypnosis. He wants you there if she wakes up again - to rehypnotize or something."

"That asshole. The hypnosis didn't cause this. The kid's got sleep problems because of all the dope he's been shoving into her system."

But I was far from certain of that. She had been troubled after the session on the beach.

"I'm sure you're right, Alex. I just wanted to give you the option to come down here, to know what was going on. If you want me to tell Towle to forget it, I will."

"Hold on a minute." I shook my head, trying to clear it. "Did she say anything when she woke up - anything coherent?"

"I just caught the tail end of it. They said it was the fourth time tonight. She was screaming for her daddy: "Oh Daddy. Daddy, Daddy' - like that, but very loud. It looked and sounded pretty bad, Alex."

"I'll be down there as soon as I can."

I gave the sleeping mummy next to me a kiss on the fanny, got up, and threw on my clothes.

I sped along Pacific, heading north. The streets were empty and slick with marine mist. The guide lights at the end of the pier were distant pinpoints. A few trawlers sat on the horizon. At this hour the sharks and other nocturnal predators would be prowling the bottom of the ocean floor. I wondered how much carnage was hidden by the glossy black outer skin of the water; and how many of the night hunters lurked on dry land, hiding in alleys, behind trash bins, concealed among the leaves and twigs of suburban shrubbery, wild - eyed, breathing hard.

As I drove I developed a new theory of evolution. Evil had its own metamorphic intelligence: The sharks and the razor - toothed serpents, the slimy, venomous things that hid in the silt, hadn't given way in an orderly progression to amphibian, reptile, bird and mammal. A single quantum leap had taken evil from water to land. From shark to rapist, eel to throat - slasher, poison slug to skull - crusher, with bloodlust at the core of the helix.

The darkness seemed to press against me, insistent, fetid. I pushed down harder on the accelerator and forced my way through it.

When I got to the apartment complex, Milo met me at the door.

"She's just started again."

I could hear it before I got to the bedroom.

The light was dim. Melody sat upright in her bed, her body rigid, eyes wide open but unfocused. Bonita sat next to her. Towle, in sports clothes, stood on the other side.