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tiny open kitchen, rather primitive in terms of appliances, just
an icebox and a gas cooktop with two burners, which I took to mean
there was no electricity. There was water, though, an enamel sink with
a pump, and mismatched dishes stacked on open shelves. A doorway led
off to the right, to what I assumed was the bedroom.
    I looked about me. "Breeta," I called out. "Come and say hello."
    The two men looked perplexed. After a few seconds, Breeta sidled
through a door to the right of the fireplace. She was the kind of young
woman, I thought, that people always made a point of saying had a
pretty face, by way of ignoring her excess weight. She did have many
good features, beautiful dark hair set against flawless pale skin and
blue eyes, but at this very moment, she looked dreadful. I wanted to
take her home to my friend Moira's beauty salon and get her
straightened out. Her dark hair was unkempt, and she kept twisting a
lank tendril round and round her finger. Dressed in black jeans and a
baggy and rather unflatteringly-colored brown sweatshirt, she looked
lumpen. Her pale skin was blotchy. She was suffering, it suddenly
occurred to me, despite her uninterested demeanor, but whether it was
from sorrow at the death of her father, or disappointment at being cut
out of his Will, I couldn't say. "How did you know?" she asked
accusingly.
    I pointed toward the floor. "The tortoise. I saw its little brown
head poking out from under the sofa," I added.
    "He," she said getting down on her knees and reaching under the
sofa. "It's a he, not an it. His name is Vigs." That appeared to be all
she was prepared to say.
    "Vigs," I agreed, as I walked to the kitchen counter. A half-empty
bottle of whiskey sat on the counter. I opened it and sniffed. It
smelled just fine to me. I grabbed four tumblers, and turned to the
others. "How about a get-acquainted drink?" I asked. "We might as well,
it's starting to rain," I added, as the room grew suddenly darker.
    "Should these young people be drinking this?" Alex asked severely,
eyeing the bottle of Bushmills.
    "This is Ireland, Mr. Stewart," Michael laughed. "We'll be getting
this in our mother's milk. Whiskey was invented here, you know. Irish
monks. For medicinal purposes, of course. Took the recipe to Scotland,
where they've made a bit of a botch of it."
    Wisely I think, Alex and I chose not to get into a discussion of the
relative merits of Scotch and Irish whiskey.
    Seconds later, the wind was blowing sheets of rain almost
horizontally against the window. Breeta slumped once again in one of
the chairs in front of the fireplace, a large wing chair covered in a
cabbage rose print, and stroked the tortoise's head. I poured. Breeta
sulked.
    I felt myself getting irritated. Words cannot express how much I
dislike people who sulk all the time. Mercifully, Jennifer Luczka has
grown out of such a phase. Actually it was not so much growing out of
it as a miraculous transformation when her father's then live-in
girlfriend Barbara vacated the premises. Barbara is a perky blonde I
call Ms. Perfect on account of how she designs her own clothes, irons
everything, even socks, runs marathons, and never serves a salad that
doesn't have a flower of some kind in it, all the while holding down a
job as a vice president of a bank. Come to think of it, I like perky
even less than I like sulky. Perhaps Jennifer does too.
    "How about a fire?" Michael exclaimed. He peered into the wood box,
shrugged, and headed for the door. "I'll be right back," he said.
    I stood by the window peering out into the mist. It was impossible
to see more than a few feet from the window, and Michael had
disappeared from view almost immediately. The rain drummed on the roof,
and made splintering sounds against the windowpanes. In the distance I
heard a squawk, a gull perhaps, or an animal scurrying from the wet, a
sound that for a moment brought back the edginess I'd been feeling
earlier.
    In what seemed rather longer than I would have thought