3
THE DARTBOARD IN Dismas Hardy’s office was designed to look like an upscale cherrywood cabinet. Behind its dark polished wooden doors was a professional-quality board on a green baize backdrop—Hardy never, ever missed the board entirely. Not exactly camouflaged, but subtle, was a cherrywood throwing line built into his light hardwood floor.
Now he stood at that line and threw a dart that landed in the center of the 4, his target. He was playing his third round of Twenty Down today, and so far this round, he hadn’t missed. His coat hung over the chair behind his desk, his collar and tie were loose, and he knew that he was in the zone, locked. He had one more dart this round. Taking very little time so that he wouldn’t think and screw it all up, he hefted his little tungsten beauty with its custom-made blue flights and let fly.
Nailed it. The 3. One round away from perfection.
He had come close once before, when the telephone rang and distracted him as he was setting up to throw, so now he hesitated a moment before going to the board to retrieve his last round. He knew he could walk over to his desk and take the phone off the hook. But by his own internal rules, that would be cheating. He could call Phyllis out in the lobby and tell her to hold his calls for exactly one minute, although she might—no, she would—ask him why and ruin his concentration. Or he could ignore the phone altogether, keep his head out of it, get his darts right now, and throw the goddamn things.
Finally, giving these options no more than the split second they were worth, he moved forward, retrieved his round from the board, walked back to the baseline, turned in a measured and unhurried fashion, lifted his first dart, aimed, and threw.
2.
Second to last dart.
1.
No thought. Don’t think. Don’t f*cking think. Throw it throw it throw it.
Bull’s-eye!
“Yes!” Hardy threw up his hands in a touchdown gesture. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” he said aloud, pumping his fist. “Yes!”
After three quick knocks, his office door opened, and Phyllis was standing there with a look of alarm. “Is everything all right? I heard you calling out.”
“I’m great. I’m at a peak moment.” Hardy, beaming, his arms again halfway raised, motioned her inside. “Check this out.” He gestured to the dartboard. “I ask you, is that a thing of beauty? A last-round two-one bull’s-eye. Twenty down and no misses! First time ever. Is that awesome or what?”
His receptionist/secretary shot a nervous glance over at the board, then back at her boss. “Very nice,” she said with some uncertainty, “but I really think I should get back to the phones.”
She had barely started back toward her workstation when a man in a uniform appeared behind her, tapping on the open door. “Excuse me,” he said. “I don’t know if I’m in the right office. I’m trying to find a lawyer named Dismas Hardy.”
? ? ?
HAL CHASE WASN’T aware that he’d made a rational decision to come to Hardy’s offices. All he knew was that after his interview with the two Homicide cops, he had to get out of the jail, like now, or he might crack. He needed to take a walk, clear his head. It was way early for lunch, but he didn’t care. By now, all of his coworkers knew Katie was gone—no one would call him on anything. He passed through the lobby without a word on the way out, and the guys behind the counter just watched him go.
He turned uptown but didn’t consciously know it. Cruel and relentless, his brain kept replaying scenes of good times he had shared with Katie; in the early years, it seemed they’d never had anything else: the blessed couple, the golden couple, the pair all their friends envied.
Where had those two people gone?
? ? ?
THE ENORMOUS OLD seal lay sleeping in his usual spot right down by the water, on the ramp by the Santa Catalina ferry landing. Katie in her Dolphin shorts and the sexy tank top, as lovely as any swimsuit model with her long tan legs, her shoulder-length hair blowing in her face in the breeze, was urging Hal to get nearer to the seal for the picture.
“I get any closer, he’s going to bite me.”
“Is my big brave boyfriend afraid of a little old seal?”
“That little old seal weighs about half a ton.”
“Chicken.”
“How about if I take your picture with him? You can sit on his lap.”
“Seals don’t have laps. At least Ben doesn’t.”
“That’s just your excuse. I think you must be the chicken.”
“Come on. Look at him. He’s so cute. A couple more steps, and I get a classic picture. We’re making a memory here.”
Hal hesitated another moment and finally said, “Only because I love you.” He moved a step closer down the ramp.
The apparently sleeping seal suddenly lurched at him with an ear-splitting angry cry. Which Hal pretty much matched with his own scream as he jumped out of his skin and ran back up the ramp to Katie, the seal hot on his heels, not nearly as slow as they might have supposed.
When they stopped running, all the way up by the ticket window (although the seal had called off the chase after only a few yards), they were breathless, holding each other.
And laughing, laughing, laughing.
? ? ?
HOLDING HANDS OVER the table after their pizza dinner at Giorgio’s, which was one of the few places they could afford in San Francisco. “Something seems wrong,” Hal said.
“No, not really.”
“ ‘Not really’ really means ‘yes really.’ ”
Katie sighed. “It’s not that big a thing. The important thing is we’re getting married.”
“But . . . ?”
“But . . .” She took a small breath. “I’ve tried to get used to it, but I don’t really like the ‘obey’ part. ‘Love and honor’ I’m good with, but . . . I don’t want to have a fight about it. I mean, if it’s important to you.”
“That you obey me? I’ve never thought of asking you to obey me. How weird would that be? We decide things together. That’s who we are. That’s who we’re going to be after we’re married.”
“It would really be okay with you? To leave out ‘obey’?”
“I wouldn’t even notice it. Now that we’re talking about it, I don’t think I’d even want it at all. I’m a little embarrassed that I didn’t think of it first. How about ‘love, honor, and cherish’? That’s got a nice rhythm, and it’s how I feel.”
“Cherish,” she said. Her hand went to her mouth. Her eyes glistened in the pizzeria’s dim light. Nodding, she pushed her chair back, stood up, and came around to kiss him right in front of God and everybody. “I love you so much,” she whispered. “You are so who I belong with.”
? ? ?
WHEN KATIE WAS pregnant with their first child, Ellen, she and Hal had nicknamed her Zy, for zygote. Every night before they went to sleep, he kissed Katie’s stomach, and if that didn’t lead to something else, he would say, keeping his mouth close, “Hi, Zy. Your daddy loves you.”
Now newborn Ellen lay swaddled on Katie’s stomach outside the delivery room. Twenty-five hours of labor with Hal by her side every minute of it, and then at last the delivery of the healthy child. Hal looked down on her tiny face, her eyes scrunched closed. He touched her cheek. Leaning over, he gently kissed his exhausted wife. Then he looked down at the baby. “Hi, Zy,” he said.
Thirty minutes old, the baby opened her eyes—only for a second or two, but it was there, a definite moment of recognition—and she smiled at him.
Hal broke down and sobbed.