Over the years, the immense pepper tree had conformed around the second-story deck. Consequently, the feeling of being in a tree house was even greater here than when you looked out of the apartment windows.


Samantha had draped a red-checkered cloth over the patio table and had set out white dishes, flatware, and a red bowl of white roses.


Filtered through the tree, late golden sunlight showered her with a wealth of bright coins as she poured for Ryan a Cabernet Sauvignon that was beyond her budget, while he lied to her about the reason for the bandage on his neck.


Following a crimson sunset and purple twilight, she lit red candles in clear cups and served dinner as the stars came out, with a Connie Dover CD of Celtic music turned low.


Having allowed fear to raise doubts about Sam, having ordered a background report on her mother, Ryan initially expected to feel awkward in her company. In a sense, he had betrayed her trust.


He was at once, however, at ease with her. Her singular beauty did more to improve his mood than did the wine, and a dinner superbly prepared was less nourishing than the faultless golden smoothness of her skin.


After dinner, after they stacked the dishes in the sink, and over the last of the wine, she said, “Let’s go to bed, Winky.”


Suddenly Ryan was concerned that impotence might prove to be a symptom of his illness. He need not have worried.


In bed, in motion, he wondered briefly if lovemaking would stress his heart and trigger a seizure. He survived.


Cuddling afterward, his arm around Samantha and her head upon his chest, he said, “I’m such an idiot.”


She sighed. “Surely you didn’t just arrive at this realization.”


“No. The thought has occurred to me before.”


“So what happened recently to remind you?”


If he confessed his absurd suspicions, he would be forced to disclose his health concerns. He did not want to worry her until he had Dr. Gupta’s report and knew the full extent of his problem.


Instead, he said, “I threw out those sandals.”


“The pair recycled from old tires?”


“I was suckered by the planet-friendly name of the company-Green Footwear.”


“You’re gorgeous, Dotcom, but you’re still a geek.”


For a long while, they talked about nothing important, which sometimes can be the best kind of conversation.


Samantha drifted into sleep, a golden vision in the lamplight, and Ryan soon traded the soothing sight of her for dreams.


Dream changed fluidly into dream, until he was in a city in the sea, at the bottom of an abyss. Shrines and palaces and towers were lit by eerie light streaming up domes, up spires, up kingly halls, up fanes, up Babylon-like walls. He drifted through flooded streets, drowned in deep-sea silence…until he heard a bass throbbing full of melancholy menace. Although he knew the source of the sound, he dared not name it, for to name it would be to embrace it.


He woke in low light. The dread that weighed him down was not of an imminent threat but of some monumental peril he sensed coming in the weeks and months ahead, not the failure of his body but some worse and nameless jeopardy. His heart did not race, but each beat was like a heavy piston stroke in some great slow machine.


Although Samantha’s alluring scent clung to the sheets, she had risen from the bed while Ryan slept. He was alone in the room.


The digital clock on the nightstand read 11:24 P.M. He had been asleep less than an hour.


The light that came through the half-open door called to mind the strange glow in the submerged city of his dream.


He pulled on his khakis and, barefoot, went in search of Sam.


In the combination dining room and living room, beside an armchair, a bronze floorlamp with a beaded-glass shade provided a brandy-colored light, dappling the floor with bead gleam and bead shadow.

The kitchen was an extension of the main room, and there the door stood open to the deck on which they had sat for dinner.


The candles were extinguished. Only faint moonlight glazed the air, and the branches of the old tree were tentacular in the gloom.


The mild air was slightly scented by the nearby sea, more generously by night-blooming jasmine.


Samantha was not on the deck. Stairs descended to the courtyard between the garage and the house.


Murmuring voices rose from below, leading Ryan away from the stairs to a railing. Looking down, he saw Samantha because a shaft of moonlight devalued her hair from gold to silver and caressed her pearl-white silk robe.


The second person stood in shadows, but from the timbre of the voice, Ryan knew this was a man.


He could not hear their words, and he could not discern their mood from the rhythms of their conversation.


As in the butler’s pantry the previous night, when he tried unsuccessfully to eavesdrop on a whispered discussion in the kitchen, he was overcome by a creeping unease, by a tantalizing suggestion of hidden dimensions and secret meanings in things that had heretofore seemed simple, clear, and fully understood.


From a tonal change in the voices, Ryan inferred that the pair below had reached the end of their discussion. Indeed, the man turned away from Samantha.


As the stranger moved, shadows at first clung to him, but then relented. The lunar glow was illuminating yet at the same time misty and mystifying, veiling as much as it revealed.


Tall, slim, moving with athletic confidence, the man crossed the moonshadow-mottled lawn toward the alleyway behind the garage, his hair white and punk-cut, as though he wore a jagged crown of ice.


Spencer Barghest, reputed lover of Rebecca Reach, compassionate and eager guide to the suicidal, was visible for only a brief moment. Moonlight shrank from him, and shadows took him in; the intervening limbs and leaves of the California pepper blocked him from further view.


Below, Samantha turned toward the steps.