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“I only do as ka wills,” Roland said.

“Ka!” she cried, and her lip lifted. A sneer transformed her good looks to an ugliness that was almost startling. It would have frightened the boys. “Every troublemaker’s excuse! Put it up your bum with the rest of the dirt!”

“I do as ka wills and so will you,” Roland said.

She looked at him, seeming not to comprehend. Roland took the hot hand that had gripped him and squeezed it, not quite to the point of pain.

“And so will you.”

She met his gaze for a moment, then dropped her eyes. “Aye,” she muttered. “Oh, aye, so do we all.”

She left him for the house.

Blood Doesn’t Come Out

By MICHAEL CRICHTON

A man can only be pushed so far—especially

when his mother is the one pushing.

It wasn’t my day. When I hit him in the mouth, I cut my hand and the blood dripped onto my new mauve Lauren tie. And blood doesn’t come out. It made me mad so I kicked him a couple of times while he rolled on the ground in the alley, swearing in Spanish. Nobody saw us. The alleys of Beverly Hills are pretty deserted at eight in the morning. The stores don’t open until ten.

I got back in my new Mustang and tossed the digital camera on the passenger seat. I stuck a Kleenex on my knuckles and started the ignition. The guy was on his feet by then, shaking his fist at me as I drove away, but he had only himself to blame. He shouldn’t have been stealing all those nice leather jackets from the store. The client wanted pictures and now I had them. A dozen digital hi-res snaps showing the guy taking stuff out of the truck in the early morning sun and putting it into his car. I figured I’d earned my money. Wrongful termination suits are expensive and I’d nipped this one in the bud.

I called the client on my cell phone and left a message on his answering machine. By now it was time for breakfast. I would have gone around the corner to Nate ’n Al’s except I had blood on my tie. So I went home.

I had one of those small houses in the flats south of Pico. Beverly-wood, they call it. It’s a good neighborhood, real people with real jobs live there. I’ve had the same house for forty years, now. It was reasonable when my mother bought it in the sixties. Now it’s north of half a million for eighteen hundred square feet, two baths, and a backyard the size of a walk-in closet. You’ve got to wonder. My mother lived in it with me until I came back from college. But she’s been in a home for years now. I hardly ever see her. Sometimes I feel guilty, but not often.

The client called back right as I pulled into the driveway. He was screaming. He said I’d got the wrong guy, and what the fuck was I doing beating up poor Fernando? I told him I had the pictures to prove it, but he wasn’t listening. I could see my fee slipping away. The client never wants to hear that his lover is a thief. Not while he’s in love, anyway. Afterward, of course, he wants to kill. But I could tell this guy was still in love.

All his yelling at me was making me feel bad. Losing the fee was making me feel worse. I was already behind on my car payments. I pretended my connection was going bad, and hung up. Clearly, it wasn’t my day. I stripped off my tie and went in the house. I noticed I had a couple of blood spots on my shirt, so I started unbuttoning it as I went into the bedroom. I felt like a drink, but it was a little too early.

There was a suitcase lying open on the bed. Janis’s clothes were folded in neat piles around the room. The closet door was open and some of her clothes were already gone. I looked in the bathroom but she wasn’t there so I went into the kitchen. It was time for that drink after all.

Through the windows I saw Janis in the backyard, pacing back and forth with the portable phone to her ear. She was wearing a halter top and sweatpants. The perpetual exerciser. Janis picked up an acting job about three days a year, just enough to keep her health insurance. The rest of the time she exercised. She was in good shape for thirty-five. We’d been together two years, off and on.

She hadn