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were no memories for a while, not until Macy found me in some rathole, half-dead from whisky and grief, and flew me south to a small island in the Caribbean where I had the chance to start living again if I wanted to take it.
    I remembered the day I stood high on a cliff, a storm blowing toward me from off the choppy sea, the wind high. Macy was yelling in my ear, his coat and tie whipping, hair in his face. He had a bottle in his hand and as he argued with me he raised his arm and threw the bottle over the cliff.
    “You want another drink? If that’s what you want, go get it! I’m tired of fooling around with you. You got any guts, go get that bottle!”
    And I stood there, shaking, cold, squeezing my face with my hands, wondering why it was so hard for me totake those steps that would end it. I stood there a long time until I wasn’t trembling any more. Then I turned and walked away from the edge of the cliff. I didn’t feel good because I was doing it. I didn’t feel as though I had won any great victory over myself. I didn’t feel anything.
    “Where do you think you’re going?” Macy had said with a grin.
    I turned and looked back at him. “With you, if you want me. If not, I don’t know where.”
    But too many wires had pulled loose for me to hope that I could live normally again before many years. I needed the feeling of danger that the job with Macy offered me — until the healing was complete. Then I left him.

Chapter Seven
    A woman was asleep on my bed when I opened the door of the room. Apparently she had been sleeping fitfully because she sat up, squinting painfully, as soon as I turned on the light. She seemed to be about thirty years old, small and tightly knit, with hair like dull gold. Without the puffiness under the eyes and the tension lines on her face, she would have been beautiful.
    “Please turn it out,” she said, almost moaning. “It hurts my eyes.”
    I turned off the overhead, switched on a small pin-up lamp over the dresser, throwing long searching shadows through the room.
    “I didn’t know anyone was using this room,” she said, blinking. She sat tensely on the edge of the bed, as if constantly aware of some internal tightening. She wore a filmy pale green nightgown that dropped like a curtain from the mounds of her breasts to her lap. Her nipples showed prominently through the material. Glancing down, she became aware of her body and, without any fuss, took a robe from the floor and put it about her shoulders, drawing it shut indifferently, as if it didn’t matter whether I looked or not.
    “I couldn’t sleep in my room,” she said. “I walked around the house and came in here and just lay down.” She looked at me. “I’m Evelyn Rinke,” she said.
    I put my shirt over the back of a chair. “Pete Mallory.”
    Her eyes inspected me openly and with great care. She seemed to have no embarrassment. The set of her mouth and sleepy eyes reminded me of a hungry young bird. “Yes,” she said. “I knew you were coming. I’ve heard them talk about you.”
    She got up slowly, walked toward me and around me. “I guess you want to go to bed. You must be tired.” She tilted her head slightly, looked up at me. Her lips parted and I saw her tongue against her teeth. She stepped closer to me, her fingers grasping my arms, sliding over the elbows, along the flat muscles. Her fingers were long and hard, hot and dry. They tightened, relaxed. She drew her body against me, the material of the nightgown rasping softly. There was no softness about her body, no fleshiness. It was as hard as the fingers, had a feeling of strength, as if it could be used again and again with no slackening of the lean tight muscles. I could feel her trembling, feel her warm, vaguely sweet breath come in gusts. It wasn’t passion that made her tremble. Her eyes were restless and wild. She wanted me to put my hands on that body and gentle it, and then do with it as I pleased.
    “Let me go to bed with you,”