Deal Breaker

Win steepled his hands, bouncing the fingertips gently against one another. 'You do realize,' he began, 'that this photograph probably means nothing. Chances are there is a very simple explanation for all this.'

'Maybe,' Myron agreed, rising from his chair. He had been telling himself the same thing for the past two hours. He no longer believed it.

'Myron?'

'What?'

'You don't think it was a coincidence - Jessica being in the -downstairs, I mean.'

'No,' Myron said. 'I guess I don't.'

Win nodded. 'Be careful,' he said. 'A word to the wise.'

26 4

Damn him.

Jessica Culvur' sat in her family's kitchen, in the same seat she had sat in innumerable times as a child.

She should have known better. She should have thought it through, should have come prepared for any occurrence. But what had she done instead? She had gotten nervous. She had hesitated. She had stopped for a drink in the bar below his office.

Stupid, stupid.

But that wasn't all. He had surprised her, and she had panicked.

Why?

She should have told Myron the truth. She should have told him in a plain unemotional voice the real reason she was there. But she hadn't. She had been drinking unaware, and suddenly he had appeared, looking so handsome and yet so hurt and-Oh shit, Jessie, you are one fucked-up chick…

She nodded to herself. Yup. Fucked-up. Self-destructive. And a few other hyphenated words she couldn't come up with right now. Her publisher and agent did not see it that way, of course. They loved her 'foibles' (their term - Jessie preferred 'fuck-ups'), even encouraged them. They were what made Jessica Culver such an exceptional writer. They were what gave Jessica -Culver's writing that certain 'edge' (again, their term).

Perhaps that was so. Jessie really couldn't say. But one thing was certain:

These foibling fuck-ups had turned her life to shit.

Oh, pity the suffering artist! Thy heart bleeds for such torment!

She dismissed the mocking tone with a shake of her head. She was more than usually introspective today, but that was understandable. She had seen Myron, and that had led to a lot of 'what if-ing' - a veritable avalanche of What ifs from every conceivable height and angle.

What if. She pondered it yet again. in her typically self-centered way, she had seen the 'what if-ing' only in herself, not Myron. Now she wondered about him, about what his life Had really been like since the world crumbled down upon him - not all in one piece, but in small, decaying bits. Four years. She had not seen him in

27

four yeais. She had shoved Myron into some back closet in her mind and locked the door. She'd thought (hoped?) that would be the end of it, that the door could stand up to a little pressure without opening. But seeing him today, seeing the kind, handsome face high above those broad shoulders, seeing the still why-me stare in his eyes - the door had blown off its hinges like something in a gas explosion.

Jessica had been overwhelmed by her feelings. She wanted to be with him so badly that she knew she had to get out right away.

Makes sense, she thought, if you're a total fuck-up.

Jessica glanced out the window. She was waiting for Paul's arrival. Bergen County police Lieutenant Paul Duncan - Uncle Paul to her, since infancy was two years away from retirement. He had been her father's closest friend, the executor of Adam Culver's will. They had both worked in law enforcement - Paul as a cop, Adam as the county medical examiner - for more than twenty-five years.

Paul was coming to finalize the details for her father's memorial service.

No funeral for Adam Culver. He wouldn't hear of it. But Jessica wanted to talk to Paul about another matter. Alone. She did not like what was going on.

'Hi, honey.'

She turned to the voice. 'Hi, Mom.'

Her mother came up through the basement. She was wearing an apron, her fingers fiddling with the large wooden cross around her neck. 'I put his chair in storage,' she explained in a forced matter-of-fact tone. 'Just cluttering space up here.'

For the first time Jessica realized that her father's chair - the one her mother must have been referring to - was gone from the kitchen table. The simple unpadded four-legged chair her father had sat in for as long as Jessica could remember, the one closest to the refrigerator, so close that her father could turn around, open the door, and stretch for the milk on the top shelf without getting up, had been taken away, stored in some cobwebbed corner of the basement.

But not so Kathy's.