82 Desire

involvement with the Skinners, a drug of another sort. The exhilaration of it was like getting out of a pool after winning a race—tingly not only with victory, but also with the sheer pleasure of using your muscles.
    And then came the sailing accident, the five days in darkness; the spiritual dissection of everything in his entire life.
    He didn’t know it when he was rescued, but Bebe was lost to him at that moment. He had become a different person in less than a week, one she didn’t recognize and didn’t know what to do with.
    In her place, he might have done what she had—tried desperately to understand him, and failing, begun collecting the illicit kisses of Ernest LaBarre or someone like him.
    He didn’t tell all of it to Dina Wolf, in fact hardly said more than that he’d once had a wife, and now he didn’t. But she acted as if she knew everything there was to know about him.
    She shook her head, slowly, as if slightly disgusted. “You are one fucked-up dude.”
    That certainly wasn’t the impression he’d meant Dean Woolverton to make. He said, “You mean fucked-up drunk or fucked-up crazy?”
    She held two fingers a quarter-inch apart. “You’re just about this far from being drunk—and I don’t know about fucked-up crazy. You seem like a very nice man. All I meant was, you seem confused.”
    He said, “Maybe you could bring me some clarity,” but he really didn’t know what he meant or why he was saying it.
    “I think I’d better get you some coffee. Look, where do you live?”
    He pointed at the sloop.
    “You live aboard?”
    He shrugged. “Bachelor’s quarters.”
    “Well, I have a car. I’ll take you somewhere and sober you up enough so you can get back to wherever you park that thing.”
    “I have coffee on board.”
    “Uh-uh.” She shook her head firmly, and he understood that she was saying she wasn’t going home with him. She took him to a place with lights so bright that just about did the trick by itself.
    Three cups of coffee later, she deemed him okay to drive a boat. Later, when he thought about it, he had no idea what they talked about while he ingested brown liquid.
    He hoped he hadn’t told her any of his secrets, and made a solemn vow never to get drunk with a strange woman again.
    About noon his phone rang, and he was sure it was a wrong number.
    But it was she—the weird babe with the baseball cap.
    “Hey, Dean—it’s Dina. You okay?”
    “Fine. Hey, thanks for taking care of me.”
    “I’m cooking tonight. You eating?”
    Well, what the hell? What else did he have to do?
    “Bring wine,” she said, and gave him an address.

Thirteen
    SKIP HATED IT when she stepped into her own courtyard and a German shepherd as big as a pony raced toward her, barking and snarling as if she meant to steal everything in her own house and rape herself as well. It happened these days every single time she came in.
    “Napoleon, goddammit,” she said, “don’t be a chicken-shit. Bite me. Just go ahead and bite me.” She held out a forearm for him to gnaw on.
    “You’re encouraging him,” Steve said. “I thought you wanted him to stop.”
    “Maybe, deep down, I really want to be bitten.”
    “Oh, God, I better call Cindy Lou.”
    “Nah. Just give me a beer and let me cry in it.”
    He went to get the beer. After she had sat down and sipped it, Napoleon having been cowed into lying down, he said, “What’s going on?”
    “You didn’t see the paper this morning?”
    “Oh, God. Bebe and Ernest LaBarre. What an embarrassing piece of crap. I had no idea Jane Storey was like that.”
    “Well, she’s not, really. Still, she’s a reporter.”
    “Let’s not get off the subject here. Could we go back to ‘what’s going on?’ Possibly expand it to ‘what’s wrong?’ “
    “Everything. LaBarre’s family’s broken up—or damaged, anyway. I walked in this morning to find Mrs. LaBarre’s wrists slit and blood all over the sheets.”
    “My God.”
    She took a pull of her beer. “Superficial wounds. Making a statement, I guess. It impressed me—don’t know about Ernest. And Bebe’s a mess. Who needs all this crap, anyway?”
    “You think it’s somehow your fault? I mean—that remark about being bitten.”
    “No. Not exactly. But Jane really, really shouldn’t have done that.”
    “What would make her do it, anyway?”
    “I don’t know. The press these days…” She let it trail off, confident he’d know what she meant. “I mean, whose