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look it. He guessed it didn’t matter. Both he and Jennifer were a year short of twenty-one too but in a lot of places Ray had clout or to be exact his dope had clout so it didn’t matter. He glanced at Jennifer.
    “Whatever,” she said.
    The light in her eyes was gone again.
    He looked at the girl, this amazing girl. And then he looked back at Jennifer.
    No surprise.

Chapter Three
    Saturday, August 2
Anderson
     
    It was strange and maybe even ridiculous the directions sex could turn a man, he thought. Ever since this thing with Sally started he found himself gardening again, something he hadn’t wanted to do with Evelyn while she was alive but did only at her urging because Evelyn was a Brit and the Brits did dearly love their gardens. But now here he was, digging in the dirt just for the hell of it. An ex-cop, six-foot-three and two-hundred pounds, sweating in the sun over a patch of violets by the back porch stoop.
    When the cat came by as she usually did around this time, Ed filled the empty water dish with fresh cold water from the outdoor tap and went inside for the Friskies dry he’d bought her the other day and kept for her in the cupboard. The cat was already drinking when he returned. He set the bowl of cat food on the stoop and watched the cat chow down. Friskies was noisy food, all hard little pellets. He enjoyed the crackling sounds and supposed the cat did too. He thought that they probably reminded her of tiny bones breaking, of who she was down deep.
    The cat never left a crumb in her bowl and when she was finished she went back to the water, eyes narrowing, concentrating, quick pink tongue darting out maybe three or four times a second. Very efficient animals, cats were. Very well put together. The pebbled tongue that was good for both cleaning and trapping water was only one example. Anderson could respect a cat. He wondered why he didn’t just take this one in and get it over with. She’d been coming around for about a week now and he had to admit he didn’t mind the company.
    Evelyn hadn’t wanted animals, said they just kept on dying on her; she kept on outliving them and she hated that. But Evelyn wasn’t with him anymore. Evelyn had done six years’ time with bone cancer and finally gave in to the inevitable. Gracelessly, as you almost had to with that disease. She died lost in a morphine haze, her rear end covered with bedsores despite the best efforts of Ed and the hospice people. Less than half her fighting weight at the end, hairless and gray as a slug. He’d never loved anyone more and knew he never would again. He loved her much the same way she’d loved her flowers, he thought. As a quiet, pacific force of nature.
    And maybe that was why he was out planting again this summer, maybe it was that and not Sally or both. People were complex creatures, walking, talking rag quilts, youthful dreams and hopes and fears and middle-aged indiscretions, aging aches and pains and losses, the whole damn kit and kaboodle, mended here and tattered there. People were pushed and pulled in all sorts of directions and did whatever it was they had to do for balance.
    So here he was this summer, down on his knees with the trowel, patting at the loose earth surrounding the tender shoots just so , the way Evelyn had taught him, wiping his hands on his dirty white T-shirt. The cat nosed around awhile and then lost interest, heading out over the lawn to the woods. He watched her black tail disappear waving flaglike into the brush.
    He ought to take the cat in. Before she got hurt out there. It was a rough precarious life. The weather could take you. A coon or a dog.
    He resisted, though. Maybe he’d simply had it with taking on the responsibility for another life for a while after Evelyn. Any life. Had it with responsibility in general.
    This thing with Sally now, that sure wasn’t too responsible. He knew that.
    Charlie would get on his case about it every now and then and there was no way Ed could get