Hendrickson—hobbled ankle to ankle, zip-tied to his chair, hands palms-up on the table—at first sat silently as Jane paced the kitchen. She massaged her trapezius muscles and rolled her head side to side to work a stubborn soreness out of her neck.
The light at the windows would last an hour and a half; but the overcast would steal the golden radiance and scarlet dusk that could make a California day’s end so enchanting. Following the events of the morning and afternoon, and considering those to come, nature’s loveliest pyrotechnics couldn’t have bewitched Jane, anyway. Her mood matched the gray skies.
At the table, Hendrickson muttered. When she asked what he’d said, he only smiled at his upturned palms. His expression had no dangerous edge; it was wistful, pensive. She suspected that he hadn’t heard her, so lost was he in thought.
She continued pacing and, not for the first time, regarded her reflection in the brushed stainless-steel door of the refrigerator. Her form was warped and blurred, her face a mask of shadows from which all features had been shorn, as though she had died and become a revenant.
At the table, Hendrickson said, “Now is it true, or is it not, that what is which and which is what?”
She went to the table and stared down at him.
His gentle smile was a storybook thing, the smile of a cat who learned to be friends with a mouse, the smile of a mouse who won his prize of cheese, the smile of a boy who survived a fearful adventure and sat now hearthside and home again. Jane was creeped out by it.
Tethered to the chair as he was, he could make no move against her. Even if he had not been shackled, she could have handled him, taken him down.
Nevertheless, she wished that Gilberto would return soon with dinner.