Three

      In the downfall of golden light from the dragon lamp, a simple iron railing guarded the rising concrete steps. The concrete had been worked with a screed when it was bleeding, and as a consequence, some edges had scaled badly; some treads were as crazed as crackle-glazed pottery.

      Like a lot of things in life, concrete is unforgiving.

      Through four framed panels, the copper dragon, still bright but greening at the edges, serpentined against a luminous backdrop of lacquered mica lenses.

      In the wash of ruddy light, the aluminum screen door appeared to be copper, too. Behind it, the inner door stood open to a kitchen rich with the aromas of cinnamon and strong coffee.

      Sitting at the table, Michelle Rooney looked up as Tim arrived. “You’re so quiet that I felt you coming.”

      He eased the screen door shut behind him. “I almost know what that means.”

      “The night outside quieted around you, the way a jungle does when a man passes through.”

      “Didn’t see any crocodiles,” he said, but then thought of the man to whom he had given the ten thousand dollars.

      He sat across from her at the pale-blue Formica-topped table and studied the drawing on which she worked. It was upside-down from his point of view.

      Out of the jukebox in the tavern downstairs rose the muffled but lovely voice of Martina McBride.

      When Tim recognized the drawing as a panorama of silhouetted trees, he said, “What’s it going to be?”

      “A table lamp. Bronze and stained glass.”

      “You’ll be famous someday, Michelle.”

      “I’d stop right now if I thought so.”

      He looked at her left hand, which lay palm-up on the counter near the refrigerator.

      “Want a cup?” she asked, indicating the coffeemaker near the cooktop. “It’s fresh.”

      “Looks like something you wrung out of a squid.”

      “Who in his right mind wants to sleep?”

      He poured a mugful and returned with it to the table.

      As was true of many other chairs, this one seemed like toy furniture to him. Michelle was petite, and the same kind of chair appeared large under her, yet Tim was the one who felt as if he were a child playing at coffee klatch.

      This perception had less to do with chairs than with Michelle. Sometimes, all unaware, she made him feel like an awkward boy.

      She finessed the pencil with her right hand, holding the drawing tablet steady with the stump of her left forearm.

      “ETA on the coffeecake,” she said, nodding toward the oven, “is ten minutes.”

      “Smells good, but I can’t stay.”

      “Don’t pretend you’ve gotten a life.”

      A shadow danced across the table. Tim looked up. A yellow butterfly fluttered at the silvered hooves of the leaping bronze gazelles in a small chandelier by Michelle.

      “It slipped in this afternoon,” she said. “For a while I left the door open, tried to chase it out, but it seems at home here.”

      “Why wouldn’t it be?”

      A tree branch whispered into existence between the pencil point and the paper.

      “How did you make it up the stairs, carrying all that?” Michelle asked.

      “All what?”

      “Whatever it is that has you so weighed down.”

      The table was the blue of a pale sky, and the shadow seemed to glide behind it, a graceful mystery.

      “I won’t be coming around for a while,” he said.

      “What do you mean?”

      “A few weeks, maybe a month.”

      “I don’t understand.”

      “There’s this thing I have to take care of.”

      The butterfly found a perch and closed its wings. As though the shadow were the quivering dark reflection of a burning candle, it vanished as suddenly as a flame from a pinched wick.

      “‘This thing,’” she echoed. Her pencil fell silent on the paper.

      When his attention rose from the table to Michelle, he found her staring at him. Her eyes were a matched blue and equally convincing.

      “If a man comes around with a description of me, looking for a name, just say the description doesn’t ring a bell with you.”

      “What man?”

      “Any man. Whoever. Liam will say, ‘Big guy on the end stool? Never saw him before. Kind of a smart-ass. Didn’t like him.’”

      “Liam knows what this is about?”

      Tim shrugged. He had told Liam no more than he intended to tell Michelle. “Nothing much. It’s about a woman, that’s all.”

      “This guy who comes around to the bar, why would he also come up here?”

      “Maybe he won’t. But he’s probably thorough. Anyway, you might be down in the bar when he comes around.”

      Her left eye, the artificial one, the blind one, seemed to pierce him more thoroughly than did her right eye, as if it were possessed of major mojo.

      “It’s not about a woman,” she said.

      “It really is.”

      “Not the way you’re implying. This is trouble.”

      “Not trouble. Just embarrassing.”

      “No. You’ll never embarrass yourself. Or a