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She held open the door and I stepped through it and made my way to the Audi I had just about reached it when I turned She atching from the door There was considerable distance between us now and she had to shout

"I said I didn’t want to get married and I meant it, but"

"But what?" I shouted back

"You’ll never find anyone better for you than I a ti for sleep that did not coes that made me toss and turn and twist and continually flip my pillow to the cool side The incident in the skyway Do the right thing Wasn’t that a Spike Lee fil lot There is nowhere you can run that I can’t follow There is nowhere you can hide that I can’t find you If that wasn’t a line from a movie, it should be Jack and Lindsey Barrett, Donovan, Muehlenhaus, and the others Nina Maybe I didn’t want to get h noise like that?

Eventually, I gave it up and padded in bare feet down the stairs and into erator I retrieved a half-filled bottle of Stolichnaya I poured two fingers of the icy vodka into a short, squat glass and took a sip It was so cold it made my teeth ache, only, Lordy, it went down nice I returned the bottle and glanced about The kitchen appliances on h my s--blender, espresso machine, bread e Forerill My sno-cone, mini-donut, and popcorn machines were stored in boxes on my kitchen table--I reminded myself to take them to the Dunstons

I took another sip of vodka and drifted to the breakfast nook I sat at the end of the table, surrounded by eight s arranged in a semicircle, each ith a view of my backyard The pond had been frozen over since early Deceone since late September

Nina

The first year there had been seven ducks, Tracy and Hepburn and their five ducklings that I named Shelby, Bobby, Victoria, and Katie, after the Dunstons, and Maureen, after my mother Victoria and Katie returned with their s between them that I named after an assortment of friends Yet I had never na before I could answer the question

"There is nowhere you can run that I can’t follow," a voice told me "There is nowhere you can hide that I can’t find you"

The voice startled me The malice it conveyed was unmistakable and I had to remind myself that it was merely a voice on the phone It can’t hurt you Besides, I had heard it before

I turned on the light to read the number in my caller I D attachment, but the field was empty

"Did you hear me?" the voice asked

"There’s nowhere I can run that you can’t follow, there’s nowhere I can hide that you can’t findelse?"

The voice hesitated as if it was unsure of itself "John Barrett must not be allowed to run for the Senate," it replied in a rush

"Okay Thanks for sharing"

Aat the silent receiver

This is what happens when you agree to do favors for old friends

4

The difference between five below zero and five above is mostly in the mind The odds that your car won’t start are just as slim at either teht burst is just as high; the danger of frostbite, of nu death fro joyous in the fact that the Twin Cities had finally crept into positive digits I could see it in the robust gait of pedestrians who no longer felt as anxious over the climate as they had the day before and I could hear it in the voices of the customers at the Dunn Brothers coffeehouse where I had stopped for a lad to be about with a job to do and a heart for any fate, as the poet once wrote I didn’t evenrush hour traffic had forced me to rein in the 225 horses beneath the hood of my Audi as Itraffic laws seemed perfectly reasonable to me