“I felt the warm brush of his fingers pushing the key into mine all the way to my heart. I focused on the key because if I looked up, I'd see what he was feeling. Worse, he'd see what I wasfeeling -- in a minute what I was feeling was going to be spilling out of me, and it didn't make any sense. It had been over long ago; we had just finally got around to saying good-bye, that was all.”

“He was right. I knew the score. He’d never pretended it was other than it was--whatever the hell that was. I’d never kidded myself there was any chance for us. Well, not often anyway.I guess my mistake had been in believing he was too smart and too honest not to eventually realize…Not his feelings for me--because I didn’t think what he felt for me was that significant--but his own true nature. How could he deny what he was? How could he choose to live such a profound and cancerous deception?”

“A Pause followed my greeting. Then, 'We're watching you,' whispered the voice on the other end.'Yeah? Did you see what I did with my keys?”

“I turned back to the television. After a while what I was staring at registered. “Hey, this is The Long Goodbye."Jake opened his eyes. “What?""This movie. It's Robert Altman's take on Chandler's The Long Goodbye. ‘Nothing says good-bye like a bullet.’”"I don't know,” said Jake. “Sometimes the words are enough.”

“We ate in the dining room alcove looking over the hillside and the silent dark rooftops of my neighbors. The lights of the valley glittered below.We were both tired but we smiled at each other, and I felt a kind of happiness growing inside me. It was good to look across the table and see someone, and I thought maybe it was time to start thinking about that again—about finding someone. Sharing my life maybe.Or maybe just getting more friends around. Except when I pictured the friends I wanted around, they all looked like Dan, and when I thought about trying to find someone to share my life with, he too looked a little too much like Dan for comfort.”

“Max's scarred brow crinkled. He reached for the coffee mug on his desk. “Motive is tricky. See, what might be a good reason for me to kill someone might not be a good enough reason for you to kill someone."Swift stared at his hands loosely clasped around his ankle. “I wouldn't. Deliberately hurt anyone.""And my impulse is to hurt anyone who hurts you.” When Swift's gaze lifted to his, Max said, “See how that works?"He did, and while it wasn't intended as a compliment, it did warm his heart in a funny way. He managed to joke, “Why, I think that's the most romantic thing anyone's ever said to me.”

“And I thought maybe I didn't need to worry about my heart anymore because it had stopped beating a couple of seconds earlier, and I was still sitting there living and breathing-though admittedly I wasn't feeling much of anything.”