Winter Prey

said. The line came out soundingskeptical instead of wry. Before she could say anything, he put up a hand. “Sorry. That came out wrong.”
    She shrugged. “I owed you one.” She looked at his hand. He was holding it at his side, waist height, clenching the towel in his fist. “What happened to your hand?”
    “Broke a nail.”
    “You oughta use a good acrylic hardener,” she said. And then quickly, “Sorry again. Let me see it.”
    “Aw . . .”
    “Come on.”
    He unwrapped the towel and she held his finger in her hand, turned it in the weak light. “Nasty. Let me, uh . . . come more under the light.” She opened her bag.
    “Listen, why don’t I . . . Is this gonna hurt?”
    “Don’t be a baby,” she said. She used a pair of surgical scissors on the nail, trimming it away. No pain. She dabbed on a drop of an ointment and wrapped it with a Band-Aid. “I’ll send you a bill.”
    “Send it to the sheriff, I got it on the job,” he said. Then: “Thanks.”
    They stopped at the door, looked out at the snow. “Where’re you going?” Lucas asked.
    She glanced at her wristwatch. No rings. “Get something to eat.”
    “Could I buy you dinner?” he asked.
    “All right,” she said simply. She didn’t look at him. She just pushed through the door and said all right.
    “Where?” following her onto the porch.
    “Well, we have six choices,” she said.
    “Is that a guess?”
    “No.” A grin flickered across her face and she counted the restaurants off on her fingertips. Lucas noticed that her fingers were long and slender, like a pianist’s were supposed to be. Or a surgeon’s. “There’s Al’s Pizza, there’s a Hardee’s, the Fisherman Inn, the Uncle Steve’s American Style, Granddaddy’s Cafe, and the Mill.”
    “What’s the classiest joint?”
    “Mmm.” She tilted her head, thought about it, and said,“Do you prefer stuffed ducks or stuffed fish? On the wall, I mean, not the menu.”
    “That’s a hard one. Fish, I guess.”
    “Then we’ll go to the Inn,” she said.
    “Do you play piano?”
    “What?” She stopped and looked up at him. “Have you been asking about me?”
    “Huh?” He was puzzled.
    “How did you know I play?”
    “I didn’t,” he said. “I was just thinking your hands . . . they look like a pianist’s.”
    “Oh.” She looked at her hands. “Most of the pianists I’ve known have heavy hands.”
    “Like a surgeon’s hands, then,” he said.
    “Most surgeons’ hands are ordinary.”
    “Okay, okay.” He started to laugh.
    “Ordinary. They are.”
    “Why are you grumping at me?” Lucas asked.
    She shrugged. “We’re just getting over being awkward. It’s always hard on a first date.”
    “What?” he asked, following down the sidewalk. He had the sense that something had just flown past him.

    The restaurant had been built from two double-wide trailers set at right angles to each other, both covered with vinyl siding disguised as weathered wood. A neon Coors sign hung in the window. Lucas pulled into the parking lot and killed his light, trailed a few seconds later by Weather in her Jeep.
    “Elegant,” he said.
    She pivoted her feet out of the Jeep, pulled off her pac boots. “I want to change shoes . . . elegant, what? The restaurant?”
    “I think the vinyl siding combined with the sparkle of the Coors sign gives it a certain European ambiance. Swiss, I’d say, or possibly Old Amsterdam.”
    “Wait’ll you find out that each table has its own red votive candle, personally lit by the maitre d’, and a basketof cellophane-wrapped crackers and breadsticks,” Weather said.
    “Hey, it’s a gourmet joint,” Lucas said. “I expected nothing less. And a choice of wines, I bet.”
    “Yup.”
    And they both said, simultaneously, “Red or white,” and laughed. Weather added, “If you ask for rosé, they say fine, and you see the bartender running into the back with a bottle of white and bottle of red.”
    “Where’d you get your name?” Lucas asked.
    “My father was a sailboat freak. Homemade fourteen-foot dinghys and scows. He used to build them in the garage in the summer,” she said. She pulled on the second loafer, tossed the pac boot onto the floor on the passenger side, stood up and slammed the car door with authority. And left it unlocked. “Anyway, Mom says he was always talking about the weather—‘If the weather holds, if the weather turns.’ Like that. So when I was born, they called me