Free 13 1/2 by Nevada Barr Page A

described, only experienced. She wondered if she were not sensing its first tingles.

    The sweet of the evening poured through the open windows on a gentle breeze. Lights in the square were coming on. The glow of the candles warmed Mr. Marchand’s liquid-brown eyes, until she felt she might immerse herself in them. Polly sensed she was being set up by some—possibly malevolent—spirit, the muse of Barbara Cartland or Danielle Steele.

    As an English professor and a lover of the classics, a part of her noted with interest how this frisson of emotions flowing through her with the subtlety of velvet-wrapped electricity informed the sonnets she had taught, the romances of Shakespeare and Molière. She reminded herself that the life she had built with her daughters was perfect and precious. A man would scatter dirty undershorts and oversized shoes throughout their orderly universe. The thought of Mr. Marchand’s undershorts sent a thrill through her, and she knew she was undoubtedly going to make a fool of herself in the not-too-distant future.

    Two teenagers in high-heeled mules, both on cell phones, clattered by the open window. One had the smallest Chihuahua Polly had ever seen. It was pure white, the ghost of dogness, and was being towed on a leash. The little creature stumbled on its two-inch legs, fell, then was dragged up again, as its oblivious mistress chattered on.

    “They buy them as accessories, like a purse or a scarf,” Marshall said disgustedly. “Miss,” he called through the window. “Miss.”

    The girl turned a blank look in their direction.

    “Your dog,” Marshall said to her. “Would it like a drink of water? The poor little guy looks pretty tired.”

    The girl shook her head and, still talking on the phone, picked the Chihuahua up and tucked it under her arm.

    Polly hadn’t been raised to respect life or practice kindness. When she’d escaped Prentiss, all she’d known was she hated cruelty. In the intervening years she’d been both cruel and kind and, like Sidney Poitier in A Patch of Blue, come to believe tolerance was the greatest human virtue.

    “You are a good man,” she said.

    “A virtual god to dogs,” Marshall mocked himself. “An old girlfriend of mine—the one I get credit for almost marrying—used to have a white Chihuahua, Tippity.” His lips closed tightly on the dog’s name as if he wished he’d never mentioned it.

    “Did it die?” Polly asked impulsively.

    For a minute, she didn’t think he was going to answer. Before the ease of their camaraderie could leak away, he began to speak. “I was renovating a shotgun near Magazine. The place was more or less just a shell. Danny and I had a falling out, and I was camping there. Occasionally, Elaine and her dog would stay over. One Friday Danny brought us a bottle of champagne as a peace offering. Our argument had been over Elaine. It wasn’t that he didn’t like her, so much as he didn’t like the fact of her, if you know what I mean.”

    Polly hadn’t the foggiest idea what he meant, but she nodded. She hadn’t wanted to know this much about somebody else’s dog, but Marshall seemed to need to tell the story. Though she’d dragged it out of him, he now spoke as if he had to tell it beginning to end, all the words in the proper order.

    “So, anyway, the champagne. When we woke up in the morning Tippity was missing. Elaine flipped out; I flipped out. She finally went to work. To make a long story shorter, I found the dog in the freezer. Evidently, Elaine had gotten up during the night for ice cream, or whatever, and opened it. The freezer was the drawer kind at the bottom of the refrigerator, and Tippity had jumped in. When I got to her, she’d about run out of time.”

    “Time! Oh, my Lord!” Polly exclaimed. “The time! I forgot my children!” Caught up in Marshall, she had put all thought of Emma and Gracie from her mind. Maternal guilt had her reaching for purse and cell phone before she’d