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You’ve trashed it

Is that what you think?

Unless you’re going toin the bowl, although it had been cut from the tree, how did it look?

Beautiful

Lush and alive? she asked

Yes

And now it looks dead

Very dead

She propped her elbows on the table, rested her face in her cupped hands, and s with the flower

All right

Not now

When?

All things in their ti

Her smile broadened, and her voice was soft with the affection of a friend You have a certain grace, you know

I shrugged and shifted lass la I ht that she had distracted otten the question that she had dodged, she rong I returned to it:

If they don’t want to kill you right now but ant to kill you soon, and for the wrong reason--what is the right reason? I’ht have for wanting you dead?

You will knohen you will know, she said

And ill I know?

As she replied, I answered s in their ti infor in riddles either to deceiveabsolutely truthful

Further she had said had carriedthan I had taken from it, and that eventually, when I looked back on our dinner, I would realize that on this night, in this hour, I should have known her for who she was

With both hands, Anna of tea and sipped froht froht of late afternoon, on the pier Neither beautiful nor ugly, and yet not merely plain Petite yet so presence for reasons that I could not define, a presence that was not as

Suddenly ht on my chest

I raised one hand to the pendant that I noore

Lowering theof tea, she looked at the bell captured between er

I said, ‘The bell invites me…it is a knell that summons me to Heaven or to Hell’

Shakespeare, she said But that’s not quite the quote And a man like you doesn’t need to doubt his ultiaze to the oil laination is so rich, I saw the leaping flaon raether, without more talk, we quickly cleared the table, hastily put away the uneaten food, rinsed and stacked the dishes

Annamaria retrieved a car coat fro-handled wick pincher to snuff the flame in the kitchen lamp, and also the one in the lamp by which we had eaten dinner

She came to me with just a purse, and I said, You may need more than that

I don’t have much else, she said, some clothes, but suddenly I don’t think we have ti off the dinner table

Put out the other laht fro three flaht across the floor, toward the door, out of the silent night ca vehicle, a truck by the sound of it

At once, she hooded the bea the s

Brakes barked in the night, and the previously racing engine only idled now--in the driveway in front of the garage above which aited

A truck door slammed And then another

FIFTEEN

THIS WAY, SHE SAID, AND WITH THE FLASHLIGHT still hooded, Annamaria led me to a door that I assu lay beyond, and narrow interior stairs went down to the garage

Although sturdy, the stairhead door could be locked only froot into the apartment, we could not foil their pursuit

Because Annanant and because I was afraid that, in a rush, she ed her to hold fast to the railing and to folloith caution

Filtering the beaht behind me to illue less quickly than I would have liked

I was relieved to see that the roll-up door featured no glass panels Ts, one in the north wall and one in the south, were sht was not likely to be seen through those high dusty panes Nevertheless, I continued to keep the lens half covered

Two vehicles were parked in the garage: facing out, a Ford Explorer; facing in, an older Mercedes sedan