I tiptoed down the hall and quietly rapped on the door to Sinclair's closet room. It would have been his bedroom, except he didn't sleep in there; he slept with me. But all his clothes and such were in here. And I'm sure that meant something, but I wasn't going to worry about it now.

"Eric?" I whispered, knowing full well he could hear me. But I wanted to keep our impending chat as private as I could.

"Yes?" he whispered back.

"Can I come in?"

"Why?"

I spun around. He was in the hallway, grinning and carrying a foot-thick freshly wrapped pile of clean dry cleaning by the hangers. Wooden hangers. Wherever he went, it cost a friggin' fortune. "You know I hate, hate, hate when you sneak up on me. You know that, right?"

"It's possible you might have mentioned it once before." He leaned past me and opened the door and then courteously stood aside so I could go in. "What nasty business have you been involved in since we parted ways four hours ago? I can't imagine what else would bring you to my room. Have you finally given in to your primal urge to kill Antonia?"

"I wish."

"Perhaps you kidnapped Baby Jon for his own good, and now you're here to tell me I'm a new father."

"I really wish." I paused. Best to just get it over with. "I invited Jon of the Bees to move in with us."

He was taking each dark suit out of its plastic cocoon and carefully examining it before hanging it on some kind of weird suit tree, and in the middle of the ritual he laughed. "What a coincidence. I invited the new pope for breakfast."

"No, really."

He glanced at me and frowned. It was a mild frown, but pretty much all the sun and joy were sucked out of the room when his smile went. "Elizabeth."

"I know, I know."

"Elizabeth. You didn't."

"I really kind of did."

His eyebrows had rushed together to become one overpowering, disapproving unibrow. "Well, I am sure, since the invitation came so easily and thoughtlessly tripping off your dulcet tongue, you can un-invite him just as easily."

"It's only for a little while. Just till he gets his shit together."

"Oh, so twenty years, then?" he snapped. He tried to stomp toward me, but dry cleaning bags were everywhere and he was momentarily snared. I chewed on the insides of my cheeks and stared at him with wide eyes as he stumbled toward me. Don't laugh don't laugh don't laugh.

His black eyes narrowed, and he stomped an errant bag, which deflated with a sad whoooooooooffff. "Are you smiling, girl?"

"No, Eric." Girl? That was a new one. "Listen, I could hardly turn him out into the street."

"Why not, exactly?"

"Eric! Come on. Look, I'll make it up to you."

"Too damned right you will," he muttered, and grabbed me by the elbows.

"You're just going to fuck me, right? You're not going to make me run a lint brush over all your suits or anything horrible like that, right?"

"Be quiet." He pulled me in for a savage kiss and then tossed me on the bed and landed on me like a cat. In a flash, one hand was up my skirt, divesting me of my tights, and the other was pulling at his own pants. And while he was busy with all that, his tongue was busy in my mouth. I tried to help, to move, but he was controlling everything, and so I lay there and, as they say to do, thought of England. Except I was really thinking about his big dick and drooling at what he was going to do to me with it.

He pushed inside me and I wasn't ready, but I didn't give a ripe damn. We both grunted as we tried to force friction where there wasn't much. He had stopped kissing me and had buried his face in my throat, and my legs were wrapped around his waist. His shirt was still buttoned, and we both had our socks on.

He finally slid all the way home and I was able to pump back at him, and we found a sort of rhythm. It was better, much better, way better-it was fantastic. I loved the way his hands felt on my body, strong and frantic, and the way his voice sounded in my head:

Never let anyone else never never you're mine mine mine mine MINE MINE.

Pretty much just frantic. Then he stiffened against me, and even though I was miles away from coming, I didn't mind. I knew he'd spend the next hour making it up to me.

He collapsed over me with a groan, and I laughed; my shirt was still on, too. But with scattered clothes and all the plastic bags, the room looked like Filene's Basement on the day of a really good sale.

"Don't laugh at me, you horrible woman," he said without heat.

"Sorry, Eric. That was a real good lesson you taught me. Consider me chastened. Also, the Minnesota Vikings are moving in tomorrow."

He groaned again. "You're trying to kill me. You should feel deep shame."

"Ha!" I looped my legs around his waist and tickled him behind his ear, in a spot I knew was sensitive. "Ready to go again?"

"Kill me," he mumbled, slowly unbuttoning his shirt, but he couldn't hide the gleam in his eyes, or the sudden, ah, surge of interest. "The state of Minnesota frowns on premeditated murder, you know."

"The state of Minnesota would frown on pretty much everything that goes on in this house." I pulled off my strawberry socks and threw them in the air. "Let's ride, partner!"

"They probably don't think much of suicide, either," he snarked, but then he was kissing me again, and I pretty much lost the rest.

"What are you supposed to do again?" Jessica whispered.

"I told you, like, three times. Jeez, tune me out much?"

"There's a lot of trivia in your life I have to sift through."

"What am I, the six o'clock news?"

"Exactly!" she said, refusing to take offense. "Sometimes it's hard to remember what's important and what's not so much."

"Very nice! Here... one-ten, one-eleven, one-twelve." We paused outside the closed door, which, like all nursing home doors, tried to look homey with cards and such, and was anything but. No matter what you did to them, they looked, felt, and smelled like hospitals.

I rapped gently and, when there was no response, pushed on the door. It wheezed open on pneumatic hinges, and I could see an old lady sitting on the edge of the far bed.

She smiled when she saw us, her gums looking just like Baby Jon's.

"Uh, hi," I said, creeping in like a thief, Jessica right behind me. "I'm Betsy. This is Jessica."

She cupped a hand over one ear. She looked like just about every old person in Minnesota I'd ever seen, which was to say white-haired, blue-eyed, skinny, and wrinkly. She was wearing those old-lady panty hose that rolled to the knees and a faded yellow housecoat, buttoned to her neck.

"Hmm?" she asked.

"I said..." I inched closer. The door sighed shut behind us. Thank goodness. A scrap of privacy. "I'm Betsy, and this is Jessica."

"Hmm?"

Oh, great. I leaned over until we were kissing distance. She smelled strongly of apple juice. It brought back awful memories of my candy-striper days. And God knew what I smelled like. Probably the Angel of Death. "Annie sent me!" I bawled. "She said to tell you-!"

She leaned closer. Now we were a fraction of an inch away from actually kissing. "Hmm?"

"Annie said to tell you there never was a map!" I screamed, ignoring Jessica's giggles. Great! Maybe some of the nurses on the first floor hadn't heard the first part of this extremely private conversation. "But there was an account, and here's all the info you need to get into it!" I handed her a folded piece of paper.

"No se..." She shook her head. "No se, no se."

"Oh, for fuck's sake." I resisted the urge to kick the bed through the window. "Annie never mentioned this."

Jessica was actually lying on the other bed, holding her stomach, in hysterics. "Louder, louder! No se!"

"Will you get off your ass and help me, please?"

"I took French. You know that."

"Thanks for a big fat goose egg of nothing. You are, without a doubt, the worst sidekick in the history of duos. Now what?"

Luckily, the old lady-gad, I had to remember she was a person, she had a name (Emma Pearson)-she wasn't "the old lady." Anyway, while I was bitching at Jessica, Emma had unfolded the piece of paper I'd handed her, and her face broke into a huge toothless smile. She said something excitedly in Spanish-I'd only had a year of it in high school and all I remembered was dondeesta el bano?-and clutched my hand.

"Oh, gracias," she said. "Muchasnuchas gracias. I am thanking you so much. Thank you."

"Uh... de nada. Oh, I almost forgot... Annie is very, very sorry she stole the money, and she hopes you have a lot of fun with it. She's... uh, lo siento. Annie esmuy muy lo siento para ... uh . . .para stealing? El dinero?"

Emma nodded, still smiling. I prayed she had the faintest idea what I was talking about. If she didn't, Annie'd be paying me another little visit.

Then we just looked at each other. To break the newly awkward silence, I asked, "Dondeesta el bano?"

She gave complicated directions, which was okay because I didn't have to go anyway, and we left after much waving and shouted good-byes.

"She didn't appear to get a word of that," Jessica observed, pulling her checkbook out of her purse, groping for a pen, and scribbling something. "But she seemed to know about the account."

"Maybe she reads more English than she speaks. Or maybe she understands the words First National Bank and her own name."

"Maybe." She ripped off the check-I saw it was for $50,000-and casually dropped it into the suggestion box on our way back to the car. "This place really needs new wallpaper. Who picked mucous green?"

"You're asking me? This place is like my worst nightmare. Look at all these poor guys. Shuffling around and just pretty much waiting to die."

"There were some people in the game room," Jess said defensively. "They looked like they were having fun putting the big puzzle together."

"Please."

"Okay, it sucks. You happy now? I wouldn't want to end up here, I admit it."

"A problem you'll never have, honeybunch."

"Well, that's true. And neither will you."

I cheered up a little. No, one thing that was most definitely not in my future was spending my last days scuffing along in Wal-Mart slippers and eating applesauce.

"You remember that time you volunteered at Burnsville Manor in high school, and you only lasted a day because that old guy punched you in the knee when you tried to make him finish his-"

"Let's stop talking for a while," I suggested, and the cow had the giggles all the way back to the mansion.