Fall Guy

emptied the cylinder into his hand, placed the unloaded gun and the bullets on top of the dresser. Without a word, we stood in the dark undressing ourselves and each other, inhabiting a world apart from the one that had obsessed us both for so long.
    For over a year, I had been sharing my bed with my dog and only with my dog, feeling wounded and unready to risk getting hurt again. Now desire changed all that. I reached for Brody and pulled him close, wanting nothing other than to lose myself completely in this man and this moment. We made love again and again, holding on to each other as if for dear life. When Brody finally fell asleep, I couldn't. My hand on his chest rising and falling with the rhythm of his breathing, my breathing in harmony with his, I felt as I did when I lay close to Dashiell—that we were separate, but we were one.
    I might have dozed off. I didn't hear the downstairs door open. I heard it close.
    I sat up, the sheet coming with me. Brody sighed, rolled over, taking the sheet as he did, now covered from head to toe.
    Another step. Another sound, the old boards groaning under the weight of a man. He was on the wooden steps now, coming slowly, trying hard not to make noise.
    I rolled off the bed, stood, grabbed Brody's gun and the bullets, crouching as low as I could at the side of the bed away from the door. There was another sound, in the hall this time. I grabbed the pillow, loaded the gun, folding the pillow around the gun to muffle the sound of the cylinder snapping into place, my breathing sounding as loud as a respirator in the quiet, dark room.
    He appeared in the doorway, standing still for a moment. Then he raised both arms, one hand cupping the gun, the other ready to pull the trigger, pointing it toward the bed, toward the figure covered by the sheet. There was no time to think, to weigh options. There were no options. I pointed Brody's gun at the intruder's chest and fired, the gun flying up, the concussion feeling like an explosion in my face, the sound seeming to crush everything else out of the small room, even the air. And then there was silence. I saw Francis Connor crumple to the floor. I saw Brody leap up. I saw his lips moving, but I couldn't hear what he was saying.
    Brody came around the bed, took the gun from my hand and wiped it on the sheet. Then he held the gun straight out in front of him and fired once into the frame of the door.
    He pulled me up. I saw his lips moving again.
    „Wash your hands,“ he was saying, „and put on a robe.“ He reached for the phone, balling up the sheet he'd used to wipe the gun as he did.

CHAPTER 32
    Brody stayed after all the others had left, Francis carried out in a body bag, his mission over at last. We sat in the garden, on the front steps, neither of us speaking. Brody was deep in thought, not sharing what he was thinking, not a man who wasted words. He hadn't wasted words when the cops arrived, either— uniforms, detectives, the whole damn station house squeezed into my little bedroom or standing in the hallway, an explosion of blood and bone on the wall behind them.
    He'd heard a noise, he'd told them. He'd rolled out of bed, grabbed and loaded his gun. When Francis had appeared in the doorway, when he'd lifted his gun and pointed it at the sleeping figure in the bed—that would be me in this story— Brody had fired twice, missing him once, firing again and hitting him fatally in the chest.
    „It doesn't seem right, Dashiell not here,“ he said after a while.
    „No, it doesn't.“
    „He would have heard Francis when he broke the lock on your gate.“
    „He would have.“
    „He would have barked,“ he said. „We would have had some warning.“
    „Correct.“
    „Without him ...“ He stopped and looked at me. „If not for you ...“
    I waved a hand at him, telling him to stop.
    He took the hand in both of his. „You saved my life.“
    „Guys always say that after sex,“ I said. I got up and stretched my back.
    „Tell me something,“ he said, standing too.
    „What?“
    „Tell me about Tim in the group where you met him. Tell me every detail, everything he said.“
    „There isn't much to tell,“ I said, describing what had happened, and, more important, what hadn't happened, repeating what Tim had said to me that last day.
    The sky had started to lighten. It was time to go get Dashiell. Brody told me I could use his car. He said he'd take care of the lock on the gate, that it would be replaced by the time I