Again he reached for the lights, and saw the four small nubbins of skin sitting on top of an anesthetic tank. Of course, he'd put them there, just a convenient place at the time.

He picked them up. Shriveled, with the long shiny lashes, they looked like a new species of arachnid, a new one-sided spider. They were, of course, something much more mundane: Cortese's eyelids. He peered at them in the palm of his hand. He'd never seen them like this, so separate, so disembodied.

Ha. Another one. Another joke. He looked in the stainless-steel cabinet, laughed and held his belly, and pointed a finger at himself. Disembodied…

He went back to them, the eyelids. Fascinating.

CHAPTER

4

Lucas was lying on the roof of his house, the shingles warm against his shoulder blades, eyes closed, not quite snoozing. He'd put down one full flat of green fiberglass shingles and didn't feel like starting another. A breeze ruffled the fine black hair on his forearms; the humid air was pregnant with an afternoon storm and pink-and-gray thunderheads were popping up to the west.

With his eyes closed, Lucas could hear the after-work joggers padding along the sidewalk across the street, the rattle of roller blades, radios from passing cars. If he opened his eyes and looked straight up, he might see an eagle soaring on the thermals above the river bluffs. If he looked down, the Mississippi was there, across the street and below the bluff, like a fat brown snake curling in the sunshine. A catsup-colored buoy bobbed in the muddy water, directing boat traffic into the Ford lock.

It all felt fine, like it could go on forever, up on the roof.

When the taxi pulled into the driveway, he thought about it instead of looking to see who it was. Nobody he knew was likely to come calling unexpectedly. His life had come to that: no surprises.

The car door slammed, and her high heels rapped down the sidewalk.

Lily.

Her name popped into his head.

Something about the way she walked. Like a cop, maybe, or maybe just a New Yorker. Somebody who knew about dog shit and cracked sidewalks, who watched where she put her feet. He lay unmoving, with his eyes closed.

"What are you doing up there?" Her voice was exactly as he remembered, deep for a woman, with a carefully suppressed touch of Brooklyn.

"Maintaining my property." A smile crept across his face.

"You could have fooled me," she said. "You look like you're asleep."

"Resting between bouts of vigorous activity," he said. He sat up, opened his eyes and looked down at her. She'd lost weight, he thought. Her face was narrower, with more bone. And she'd cut her hair: it had been full, to the shoulders. Now it was short, not punk, but asymmetrical, with the hair above her ears cut almost to the skin. Strangely sexy.

Her hair had changed, but her smile had not: her teeth were white as pearls against her olive skin. "You're absolutely gorgeous," he said.

"Don't start, Lucas, I'm already up to my knees in bullshit," she answered. But she smiled, and one of her upper incisors caught on her lower lip. His heart jumped. "This is a business trip."

"Mmmm." Bekker. The papers were full of it. Six already dead. Bodies without eyelids. Cut up, in various ways-not mutilated. Bekker did very professional work, as befitted a certified pathologist. And he wrote papers on the killings: strange, contorted, quasiscientific ramblings about the dying subjects and their predeath experiences, which he sent off to scientific journals. "Are you running the case?"

"No, but I'm… involved," she said. She was peering up at him with the comic helplessness with which people on the ground regard people on roofs. "I'm getting a crick in my neck. Come down."

"Who'll maintain my property?" he teased.

"Fuck your property," she said.

He took his time coming down the ladder, aware of the special care: Five years ago, I'd of run down… hell, three years ago… getting older. Forty-five coming up. Fifty still below the horizon, but you could see the shadow of it…

He'd been stretching, doing roadwork, hitting a heavy bag until he hurt. He worked on the Nautilus machines three nights a week at the Athletic Club, and tried to swim on the nights he didn't do Nautilus. Forty-four, coming onto forty-five. Hair shot through with gray, and the vertical lines between his eyes weren't gone in the mornings.

He could see the two extra years in Lily as well. She looked tougher, as though she'd been through hard weather. And she looked hurt, her eyes wary.

"Let's go inside," he said as he bent to let her kiss him on the cheek. He didn't have to bend very far; she was nearly as tall as he was. Chanel No. 5, like a whiff of distant farm flowers. He caught her by the arm. "Jesus, you look good. Smell good. Why don't you call?"

"Why don't you?"

"Yeah, yeah…" He led the way through the front door to the kitchen. The kitchen had been scorched in a gunfight and fire two years past, a case he'd worked with Lily. He'd repainted and put in a new floor.

"You've lost some weight," he said as they went, groping for something personal.

"Twelve pounds, as of this morning," she said. She dropped her purse on the breakfast bar, looked around, said, "Looks nice," pulled out a stool and sat down. "I'm starving to death."

"I've got two cold beers," Lucas said. He stuck his head in the refrigerator. "And I'm willing to split a deli roast beef sandwich, heavy on the salad, no mayonnaise."

"Just a minute," Lily said, waving him off. He shut the refrigerator door and leaned against it as she took a small brown spiral notebook from her purse. She did a series of quick calculations, her lips moving. "Airline food can't be much," she said, more to herself than Lucas.

"Not much," he agreed.

"Is it light beer?"

"No… but hell, it's a celebration."

"Right." She was very serious, noting the calories in the brown notebook. Lucas tried not to laugh.

"You're trying not to laugh," she said, looking up suddenly, catching him at it. She was wearing gold hoop earrings, and when she tipped her head to the side, the gold stroked her olive skin with a butterfly's touch.

"And succeeding," he said. He tried to grin, but his breathing had gone wrong; the dangling earring was hypnotic, like something out of a magician's show.

"Christ, I hate people with fast metabolisms," she said. She went back to the notebook, unaware of his breathing problems. Maybe.

"That's all bullshit, the fast-metabolism excuse," Lucas said. "I read it in the Times. "

"Another sign of decline, the Times printing obvious bullshit," Lily said. She stuffed the notebook back in her purse, put the purse aside and crossed her legs, clasping her hands on her knees. "Okay, a beer and half a sandwich."

They ate at the breakfast bar, facing each other, making small talk, checking each other. Lucas was off the police force and missed the action. Lily had moved up, off the street, and was doing political work with a deputy commissioner. Lily asked, "How's Jennifer? And Sarah?"

Lucas shook his head, finishing the sandwich. "Jen and I-we're all done. We tried, and it didn't work. Too much bad history. We're still friends. She's seeing a guy from the station. They'll probably get married."

"He's okay?"

"Yeah, I guess," Lucas said.

But he was unconsciously shaking his head as he said it.

Lily considered the tone: "So you think he's an asshole?"

"Hell… No. Not really." Lucas, finished with his half of the sandwich, stepped over to the sink, squirted Ivory Liquid into the palm of one hand, turned on the water and washed off the traces of the sandwich's olive oil. His hands were large and square, boxer's hands. "And he likes Sarah and he's got a kid of his own, about seven months older than Sarah. They get along…"