I'm fixing our fifth round. I tell myself the drunker she gets the more she'll talk. And that's true. But it's also true that the drunker I get the more I peek up her skirt.

I walk over to the couch, hand Marilee her drink. She has to try twice before she can get her fingers around it. Reclined on the couch, she props her head up with her hand and takes a sip.

– They're getting better. Why is that?

– I'm pouring more in the glass.

She laughs and a little bourbon sprays from her lips.

– A joke! Excellent, you're loosening up, getting into the spirit of things.

– Yeah, life of the party, that's me.

She gives a seal bark of a laugh.

– Another one!

She squirms around on the cushions so she can look at me.

The skirt has climbed all the way to her hips and her blouse has twisted around so that I can see most of her right breast through the translucent material of her bra.

– Are you getting tipsy, Joseph?

The truth is I am. Normally, this many drinks? It might as well be lemonade. But my resistance to poisons is eroding right along with the rest of my body.

I shrug.

– Back to that, are we?

She shrugs several times, making little grunting noises. Her breast peeks further from her blouse. The edge of a nipple appears.

– Like my daughter. Where are you going, Amanda?

She does the shrugging grunting thing again.

– When will you be back, Amanda?

Shrug. Grunt.

– Who's your new friend, Amanda?

More of the same.

– You know many of her friends?

– Hmmn? Why? Oh right, work. Trying to find my daughter. I know some. She brings them around to raid the kitchen from time to time.

– Ever meet a girl named Whitney Vale?

She barks again.

– Oh, God. Her! Whitney.

She takes a drink, spills some down her cheek and wipes it away.

– Amanda's little idol. God save us.

– Watch the news lately, Ms. Horde?

She looks at a movie poster thumbtacked to the wall above my head, They Drive by Night.

– Yes.

– So you heard about what happened to Whitney?

– Of course.

– You know it happened in the same school where your daughter was squatting last summer?

Her eyes move from the poster to my face.

– Yes, I believe I made that connection.

– And it never occurred to you to mention to me that your daughter knew her?

– Joseph.

She drains her drink.

– Trust me when I tell you that what happened to Whitney Vale was only a matter of time. As for the rest. You were recommended to me as a detective of sorts. I suppose I assumed that if any of this were important, you'd detect it.

I look at the ice melting in my glass.

– Uh-huh. Your husband know Whitney Vale?

– My husband? Oh, God, yes. Dr. Dale Edward Horde makes a special point of meeting all his daughter's friends whenever possible.

– Why's that?

She looks at me, levers her upper body up from the couch. I can see the entire breast now. It's perfect.

– Josephs. I was sixteen when I first met Dale, and he was thirty-four. Why do you think he wants to meet the friends of his teenage daughter? God, didn't you know that's why Amanda ran away?

She drops flat again.

– And if you're going to fuck me you better do it now before I pass out.

She's staring at me, perfect tit hanging out, skirt so high I can see the lower lip of a black thong that probably cost a hundred dollars. My dick is hard. I shift in my seat. I rub a hand over my unshaven face. The patch of sunburned skin is still tender. I swallow the last of my drink and stand up. I walk to the bottle on the counter.

– I'll pass.

Behind me, she sighs.

– Well, you're not the first.

I pour a quick shot, down it and pour another before I return to my chair.

– It was, I shudder to say it, '88 or '89? I was a club kid and he was slumming at Limelight. He was at a VIP table, behind the velvet rope and all that. I caught him looking at me a couple times. I thought he was attractive and, more to the point, I could tell that he had money. So I followed him into the bathroom and blew him. He came back the next night. And I followed him into the bathroom again. That was the beginning of our courtship. We kept it remarkably well concealed for the next two years. And when I was eighteen, we met, had a whirlwind romance, and married before the end of the year. By then I'd seen enough to know why he had fallen for me so hard, but I thought we'd bridged the gap and his attraction was now for me as a person. How profoundly naive. I got pregnant when I was nineteen. And that was probably the last time he ever fucked me. Too old, he said.

She's sitting up now, her clothes more or less straight. She finished off my bottle and now she's drinking vodka from a silver flask she had in her purse.

– I'm not certain what he did to bridge the gap until Amanda was… of age. His willpower in that area has never been great. Although he has always been very discreet. I will give him that. In any case, I don't believe he's been too successful with Amanda.

– Why?

She upends the flask, empties it, and drops it on the couch.

– You're certain you don't have anything else to drink, Joseph?

I nod. She shrugs.

– For the best, I'm certain. As to your question, he's not had great success with Amanda because I took her aside when she was ten and told her that her father would soon be trying to fuck her. Not the facts-of-life talk I had dreamed of having with my daughter, but I thought it best that she should be warned.

She gets up and walks an overly precise straight line to the window and peeks through a crack in the curtain. The back of her blouse is stretched tight over tense muscles as articulated as those in her arms.

– Don't suppose it ever occurred to you to just take her and leave?

– I'm sure it will not surprise you to discover that I have not been what anyone would call a faithful wife. Not that Dale cares. But I have not been nearly as discreet as he has been. And he has the evidence to prove it. That's how he knew Dobbs in the first place. The good detective has been documenting my infidelities for my husband for several years. The man has probably seen me naked more often than any of my lovers.

– So?

She turns from the window.

– If I try to take Amanda from Dale he will divorce me. He will destroy me. I will be kept from my daughter. And that will leave her alone. With him. I will not have that.

She inhales sharply and clenches her jaw.

– I think I'll be needing your bathroom now.

I stand behind her and hold her hair as she kneels on the scummy tiles and throws up into the streaked toilet bowl. She turns her head and looks up at me.

– You don't have to do that, you know. I have plenty of experience.

So I drop her hair and leave her to clean up her own mess. Everything should be so easy.

– May I get some water?

She's standing in the bathroom doorway, face damp and eyes rimmed red.

– I'll get it.

She waves me down and walks to the sink.

– My drunken seduction scene and its fallout are over, Joseph. I'm quite capable of filling a glass.

She fills the glass, shows it to me as proof. Then she sits back on the couch and opens her handbag. I watch as she takes out her compact and looks at herself in the mirror.

– Horrors.

She begins reapplying her makeup. I look at my watch, it's after two and I still have things I need to take care of.

– What about Whitney Vale?

Her eyes flick from the mirror to me and back.

– She's one of the kids Amanda had been living with in that school last summer. One of the, squatters, is it? Amanda was attached to her, wanted her to come stay with us. Well, that was out of the question. We told her she wasn't even to see any of those people. Naturally she did what any teenager would do and threatened to run away again if she couldn't see Whitney.