“Thirty-two.” There was a long pause. You could almost say the pause was pregnant. “So, Mr. Travis, Bill, what do you want to do now?”

I didn’t even have to think about my response. “If you really want to know, what I’d like to do more than anything is spend the rest of the day in bed.”

“With me?” She didn’t miss a beat.

“Not by myself.”

Her face turned a shade of scarlet.

“Yeah,” she said. “Let’s go.”

I’ve always had this strict policy: Never get intimately involved with a client. It’s a violation of just about every ethical code imaginable.

The only problem is, there has to be one exception to every rule. Well, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Julie and I spent most of the rest of that first day in the sack with only the occasional jaunt to the surface for air, food, water, and other necessities.

We finally came all the way up to the surface of our ocean of lust long enough to dress ourselves and step out for awhile.

I took her out on the town. After driving around for a good hour I remembered a very special spot I hadn’t visited in a few years: the Captain’s Cabin, down at Ski Shores on Town Lake. It was the most out-of-the-way venue I could think of going and still stay in the same city. The place is one of Austin’s little-known secrets.

Sure enough, the place was still standing.

Over a couple of beers at an outdoor picnic table right on the water of Town Lake we got to know each other a little more, even over the melodic din of a native-Austin folk singer with a good sense of lyrics, not a bad voice, and a propensity to turn the amp up too loud.

After the food arrived we ate, made eyes at each other and soaked up the atmosphere and the loud music. As we finished our hamburgers and onion rings, the singer took a break.

“Bill,” she said. “You know all that stuff I told you about all the husbands and miscarriage and everything. Some of that’s not completely true.”

“Why’d you tell me that stuff, then?” I asked.

“Because,” she said and then looked down at the table, unable to look me in the eye. “I wanted to shock you. I wanted you to not be interested in me. It didn’t work. Did you believe me?”

“I believed everything you said. And I believe you now.”

“Why?”

“Because. Because you look like you could use a little faith right now. And because I damn well like you. I don’t think there’s anything you could tell me that would make me notlike you.”

And then the tears came again, slow but certain, and then, afterwards, came a smile like warm sunshine.

“Bill,” she said. “You never did answer my question this morning.”

“Which question was that?”

“Have you ever been afraid?”

“Can’t say as I have,” I told her.

“That’s what I thought,” she said and upended her Budweiser long neck.

I found myself looking out over the water behind her. Across the lake there were mansions on the cliff, new homes built by new money scant yards from the edge and a hundred- yard tumbling fall. Out on the lake the Jet Skis and pleasure craft had lessened with the rapidly descending twilight. But all the while I was really looking at Julie, my new lover, and hoping it would last, thinking that it just could, and also hoping I’d be able to harden my heart a little just in case it didn’t.

And it hit me.

Fear. It’s what I felt right then and there.

*****

Traveling back home that evening as a brilliant, fading sun traced the last arc of purplish sky, Julie and I took the winding, twisting City Park Road through the rocky countryside west of Austin. A sense of calm and surrealism came over me. I turned to look at her as I felt her fingers interlace with mine. She flicked her eyes my way and smiled, then turned back to take in the vista as we topped another hill. Something in my chest thudded fatalistically. I was either sinking or swimming. I had no way of knowing which as yet. If I drowned soon, then I’d know; or conversely, if I didn’t, I’d also know.

By the time we made it back to my split-level home in Westlake Hills night had fallen and it had grown cold out.

Once inside I opened a bottle of port and got the fireplace going. There was one rough moment when I realized I’d forgotten to open the flue and managed to singe some of the hair off my arm getting it open. The house got a little too smoky so I opened up a few windows. Julie laughed at my antics. That sort of stuff seems to happen to me all the time. By the time the flames were roaring and the small pine knots were cracking and we were sipping our port, all the questions that I had been holding back from asking her seemed to be wrong for the mood I had set. So, instead of talking we found other things to occupy us.

One time during the night we found ourselves both awake and whispering to each other.

“Bill?” Julie asked.

“Yeah?”

“What is it that you do?”

“I help people, darlin’,” I said. I didn’t have to pause on that one.

“If that’s not a practiced answer, I’ve never heard one.”

“Yeah. Okay. I’ve said it a few times too many.”

“Yeah. So answer.”

“People who have problems with money come to me. I solve their problems.”

“You launder money?”

“Hey,” I said. Not a whisper. “I do notlaunder money.”

“What do you do then?”

“I spread it around. And it comes back. But the people who come to me are good people-meaning not criminals.”

“I’m no criminal,” she said. Did I detect a little poutiness in her voice?

“No. You’re not a criminal. You’re just a thief.”

Julie talked in her sleep, or rather she talked in her nightmares. Those squirreled-away secrets normally kept hidden behind her soft green eyes and even softer lips came out and showed shadows and corners of themselves.

Across her delicate face there was a soft splash of blue light from my fish tank. In there I keep Tiger Oscars, Jack Dempseys, and an African Knife, all cichlids imported from Lake Victoria, a dark ocean and an even darker continent away. Huge fish shadows swam over her face, possibly evoking these dreams, these torments. I could have awakened her, sure. But then again I was under some kind of spell. Really, I could no more have brought myself to do it than I could have granted her immortality.

“Doan,” she murmured, which I translated as “don't.”

“Doan.” Again.

“No, Ray.”

Who's Ray?

“Please. Not there. Doan shoot me there…”

Shoot? Either a gun or a needle. God, I thought, please let it be only a needle.

“Raa-aaa-AAAY!”

She cried out and a shiver knifed through my stomach.

I reached for her but my hand didn’t even make half the distance. She awoke, eyes stark and wide in the blue light and she was in motion and hitting me and screaming.

“NO! I SAID NOOO!”

A rake of nails across my ribs like the tracks a red hot poker might make. A cuff to the chin and for just an instant there were little splashes of light, and my adrenalin kicked in and I was strong and grabbed her and held her.

“Julie! It's me! It's Bill!”

Eyes frozen, locked on mine in the submarine glow. First horror. Dawning recognition. Wonder.

“It's okay,” I cooed to her. “I've got you.” I put my arms fully around her and held her to me, tight. “It was a dream.”

“Oh… uh… Bill. God. Bill. I'm… so… so sorry!” Her voice broke.

She sobbed like that for five minutes until her sobs became whimpers and even the whimpers soon drew away into silence as I held her. We found ourselves looking into each other's eyes and she kissed me and I kissed her back and we were making love yet again, and I wasn’t thirty-nine but eighteen, or maybe sixteen, and our bodies and our thoughts and what we could see and touch and feel became one thing.