LITMIR.BIZ

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about dying.

      "Oh, my God," said Joleen Chau, standing between the cadavers, "I've never seen a real dead person before!"

      chapter four Isabelle Street

      Miranda was luxuriating in the warmth of her overheated apartment, lying in on a leisurely Saturday off work. She rolled over languidly, shifting the flannel sheet off and away, and stretched until her muscles tingled through every part of her body. She arched against the bed, feeling wonderfully lithe and sexual, emotionally vague, intellectually drifting, like she had been making love for hours.

      Damn it, she thought. I wish I could remember my dreams.

      Suddenly, a loud thumping on the door wrenched her out of her reverie. My God, she thought. What's Morgan doing here at a time like this?

      It had to be him. The building superintendent would have knocked deferentially, and the few people she knew in neighbouring apartments would telephone first. He must have slipped past the security door. She looked around for a robe. In movies there is always a dressing gown within hand's reach of the bed.

      The hell with it, she mumbled to herself. I pay the heating bills, I'll wear what I want. By the time she got to the door, she was having second thoughts. What if it's Girl Guides selling cookies, or Jehovah's Witnesses? She glanced at herself in the full-length mirror. She was wearing an oversized T-shirt and nothing else. She looked good. If it's a couple of fresh-faced Mormons, I might let them in.

      It was Morgan.

      Through the peephole he looked grotesquely distorted. He was leaning so close, all she could see was the smile. His version of the Cheshire Cat; he had done it before, with full explanation. She opened the door. His face become solemn, then shy.

      "I love your outfit," he said.

      "Come in, Morgan."

      She turned and walked barefoot into the living room as if she were wearing heels.

      "What on earth are you doing here," she asked. "It's the middle of the night, my time, and I was having lovely dreams."

      He plunked himself down on the sofa, admiring the full length of her legs before her lower half disappeared behind the kitchen counter. He had kicked off his snow-drenched shoes in the hall but he was still wearing his sheepskin coat.

      "It's two in the afternoon," he announced.

      "It's not."

      She put on the coffee and came back around the counter, still feeling a little flirtatious, even though it was only Morgan. She walked across to her bedroom door, swaying her hips just enough to set the lower edge of her T-shirt astir. He peered into the fluttering shadows and immediately glanced away.

      "Why don't you take your coat off and get comfortable," she murmured in a sultry voice as she turned to face him.

      "No hurry." He seemed to be searching for something to say. "I was with you when you bought that T-shirt."

      "Oh, yeah."

      "Yeah," he said, giving her his most inscrutable smile. Not out of Alice in Wonderland, she thought. It's his Buddha smile. No, his post-coital Mona Lisa smile. No, his Jesus smile — endearing and infinitely dangerous.

      He smiled so seldom, but when he did he had a range she found thrilling.

      Still in the doorway, standing in opaque silhouette with the daylight from the bedroom behind her, she asked, "What are you doing here, anyway? It's too early for a gentleman caller — or too late."

      They both smiled.

      "It must be business, except you seem cheerful."

      "Do you want to get dressed?"

      "Do I need to?"

      "Yes."

      "Oh, dear."

      She walked through into her bathroom, leaving the doors open.

      "Has this got something to do with the boss working last night?"

      He followed her as far as the bedroom door; then, leaning against the frame, he admired the play of shadow and light as she attended to her tantalizing ablutions just out of sight.

      "I think he's had a fight with his wife."

      "You mean there's no city-wide disaster? He's just hiding out?"

      "Yeah."

      "His wife's a lawyer."

      "Yeah."

      "Lawyers should only marry lawyers, and cops, cops."

      "How do you figure?"

      "A functioning lawyer is adversarial —"

      "What's an unfunctioning lawyer?'

      "I've known a few."

      "Yeah," Morgan said, remembering one in particular she had dated a couple of years ago. Another lawyer, ineffectual and lethal, occupied a more sinister place in their recent past: he of the Jaguar, of posthumous infamy.

      "At least with two lawyers, they understand the rules."

      She turned on the shower.

      He raised his voice.

      "I'm not sure what that means."

      "What?"

      Splattering water drowned out his words, but not hers.

      "About the rules," he shouted.

      "Stand where I can hear you, Morgan! The shower's steamed up — you couldn't see me for looking."

      He stopped at the bathroom door. She was wrong; she was absorbed in washing and her body was revealed in waves as water sheeted against the glass door. It was full and lean, the body of a mature woman in splendid condition. He remembered her from the night they made love; she had seemed almost girlish then. He backed away and sat down on the chair by her bedroom window.

      "Can you hear me?" she shouted. "Where'd you go?"

      "I'm here."

      She shut off the water and for a moment there was silence.

      "Why do you think lawyers have all the power, Morgan?"

      "Because they know the law."

      "Because they know its limitations."

      Morgan thought about that.

      "The rest of us live in moral chaos," she continued. "And we grasp at the law to make sense of it all. Not lawyers. They don't give a damn about sense and morality. That's why so many of them are politicians; they want order — they're inherently fascist. Think of the utter stupidity of ‘yes' or ‘no' answers in the witness box. There are no ‘yes' or ‘no' answers."

      "Now you're sounding like me."

      "I could do worse."

      Suddenly she was at the door, wrapped in a towel.

      "Get out of here, Morgan. The lady is about to get dressed."

      He regarded her with mild exasperation, got up, and ambled back to the living room.

      Cops should marry cops, she had said. Given her splenetic response about lawyers he decided that was not something to pursue.

      "Aren't you curious about why you're being hauled into action on a day off?" he asked.

      "Well, let's see," she said. "Since it isn't a major metropolitan catastrophe, and you seem in a rare good mood, I would say it has something to do with our lovers last night. Am I right?"

      He stood in the middle of the living room, still in her sightline, hands in his pockets, with his back to her, slouched in a waiting posture. He still had on his sheepskin coat, although it was unbuttoned and hanging loosely on his shoulders, rather like a cape, she thought. He was lean and muscular, more with the air of a soldier than an athlete: a man comfortable in his body who carried himself with the pride of

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