Tripwire

building with very high ceilings, was all. The shell was original. It had probably been industrial. The outside walls were sandblasted brick, and the inner walls were smooth, clean plaster. The windows were huge. Probably put there to illuminate the sewing machine operation or whatever was there a hundred years ago.
    The parts of the walls that were brick were a warm natural brick color, but everything else was white, except for the floor, which was pale maple strips. The decor was cool and neutral, like a gallery. There was no sign that more than one person had ever lived there. No sign of two tastes competing. The whole place was very unified. White sofas, white chairs, bookshelves built in simple cubic sections, painted with the same white paint that had been used on the walls. Big steam pipes and ugly radiators, all painted white. The only definite color in the living room was a life-size Mondrian copy on the wall above the largest sofa. It was a proper copy, done by hand in oil on canvas, with the proper colors. Not garish reds and blues and yellows, but the correct dulled tones, with authentic little cracks and crazings in the white, which was nearer a gray. He stood and looked at it for long time, totally astonished. Piet Mondrian was his favorite painter of all time, and this exact picture was his favorite work of all time. The title was Composition with Red, Yellow and Blue. Mondrian had painted the original in 1930 and Reacher had seen it in Zurich, Switzerland.
    There was a tall cabinet opposite the smallest sofa, painted the same white as everything else. There was a small TV in it, a video, a cable box, a CD player with a pair of large headphones plugged into the jack. A small stack of CDs, mostly fifties jazz, stuff he liked without really being crazy about.
    The windows gave out over lower Broadway. There was a constant wash of traffic hum, neon blaze from up and down the street, an occasional siren wailing and booping and blasting loud as it came out through the gaps between blocks. He tilted the blind with a clear plastic wand and looked down at the sidewalk. There were still the same knots of people hanging around. Nothing to make him nervous. He tilted the blind back and closed it up tight.
    The kitchen was huge and tall. All the cupboards were wood, painted white, and the appliances were industrial sizes in stainless steel, like pizza ovens. He had lived in places smaller than the refrigerator. He pulled it open and saw a dozen bottles of his favorite water, the same stuff he had grown to love in the Keys. He took the seal off one of them and carried it into the guest bedroom.
    The bedroom was white, like everything else. The furniture was wood, which had started out with a different finish, but which was now white like the walls. He put the water on the night table and used the bathroom. White tiles, white sink, white tub, all old enamel and tiling. He closed the blinds and stripped and folded his new clothes onto the closet shelf. Threw back the cover and slid into bed and fell to thinking.
    Illusion and reality. What was nine years, anyway? A lot, he guessed, when she was fifteen and he was twenty-four, but what was it now? He was thirty-eight, and she was either twenty-nine or thirty, he wasn’t exactly sure which. Where was the problem with that? Why wasn’t he doing something? Maybe it wasn’t the age thing. Maybe it was Leon. She was his daughter, and always would be. It gave him the guilty illusion she was somewhere between his kid sister and his niece. That obviously gave him a very inhibiting feeling, but it was just an illusion, right? She was the relative of an old friend, was all. An old friend who was now dead. So why the hell did he feel so bad about looking at her and seeing himself peeling off her sweatshirt and undoing the belt from around her waist? Why wasn’t he just doing it? Why the hell was he in the guest room instead of on the other side of the wall in bed with her? Like he’d ached to be through countless forgotten nights in the past, some of them shameful, some of them wistful?
    Because presumably her realities were rooted in the same kind of illusions. For kid sister and niece, call it big brother and uncle. Favorite uncle, for sure, because he knew she liked him. There was a lot of affection there. But that just made it worse. Affection for favorite uncles was a specific type of affection. Favorite uncles were there for specific types of things. Family things,