“Then there’s ‘Vegas syndrome.’ Someone gets so carried away with gambling and running from show to show that he forgets to eat for a whole day or longer. He or she—it happens to women nearly as often as men. Anyway, when he finally gets hungry and realizes he hasn’t eaten, he gulps down a huge meal, and the blood rushes from his head to his stomach, and he passes out in the middle of the restaurant. It’s not usually dangerous, except if he has a mouthful of food when he faints, because then he might choke to death.

“But my favorite is what we call the ‘time-warp syndrome.’ People come here from a lot of dull places, and Vegas is like an adult Disneyland. There’s so much going on, so much to see and do, constant excitement, so people get out of their normal rhythms. They go to bed at dawn, get up in the afternoon, and they lose track of what day it is. When the excitement wears off a little, they go to check out of the hotel, and they discover their three-day weekend somehow turned into five days. They can’t believe it. They think they’re being overcharged, and they argue with the desk clerks. When someone shows them a calendar and a daily newspaper, they’re really shocked. They’ve been through a time warp and lost a couple of days. Isn’t that weird?”

Michael kept up the friendly patter while he got his cone of ice cream. Then, as they stepped out of the rear entrance of the hotel and walked along the edge of the parking lot in the seventy-degree winter sunshine, he said, “So what did you want to talk about?” Tina wasn’t sure how to begin. Her original intention had been to accuse him of ripping apart Danny’s room; she had been prepared to come on strong, so that even if he didn’t want her to know he’d done it, he might be rattled enough to reveal his guilt. But now, if she started making nasty accusations after he’d been so pleasant to her, she would seem to be a hysterical harpy, and if she still had any advantage left, she would quickly lose it.

At last she said, “Some strange things have been happening at the house.” “Strange? Like what?”

“I think someone broke in.” “You think?”

“Well . . . I’m sure of it.” “When did this happen?”

Remembering the two words on the chalkboard, she said, “Three times in the past week.” He stopped walking and stared at her. “Three times?”

“Yes. Last evening was the latest.” “What do the police say?”

“I haven’t called them.” He frowned. “Why not?”

“For one thing, nothing was taken.”

“Somebody broke in three times but didn’t steal anything?”

If he was faking innocence, he was a much better actor than she thought he was, and she thought she knew him well indeed. After all, she’d lived with him for a long time, through years of happiness and years of misery, and she’d come to know the limits of his talent for deception and duplicity. She’d always known when he was lying. She didn’t think he was lying now. There was something peculiar in his eyes, a speculative look, but it wasn’t guile. He truly seemed unaware of what had happened at the house. Perhaps he’d had nothing to do with it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But if Michael hadn’t torn up Danny’s room, if Michael hadn’t written those words on the chalkboard, then who had?

“Why would someone break in and leave without taking anything?” Michael asked. “I think they were just trying to upset me, scare me.”

“Who would want to scare you?” He seemed genuinely concerned. She didn’t know what to say.

“You’ve never been the kind of person who makes enemies,” he said. “You’re a damn hard woman to hate.”

“You managed,” she said, and that was as close as she could come to accusing him of anything.

He blinked in surprise. “Oh, no. No, no, Tina. I never hated you. I was disappointed by the changes in you. I was angry with you. Angry and hurt. I’ll admit that, all right. There was a lot of bitterness on my part. Definitely. But it was never as bad as hatred.”

She sighed.

Michael hadn’t wrecked Danny’s room. She was absolutely sure of that now. “Tina?”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have bothered you with this. I’m not really sure why I did,” she lied. “I ought to have called the police right away.”

He licked his ice-cream cone, studied her, and then he smiled. “I understand. It’s hard for you to get around to it. You don’t know how to begin. So you come to me with this story.”

“Story?”

“It’s okay.”

“Michael, it’s not just a story.” “Don’t be embarrassed.”

“I’m not embarrassed. Why should I be embarrassed?” “Relax. It’s all right, Tina,” he said gently.

“Someone has been breaking into the house.”

“I understand how you feel.” His smile changed; it was smug now. “Michael—”

“I really do understand, Tina.” His voice was reassuring, but his tone was condescending. “You don’t need an excuse to ask me what you’ve come here to ask. Honey, you don’t need a story about someone breaking into the house. I understand, and I’m with you. I really am. So go ahead. Don’t feel awkward about it. Just get right down to it. Go ahead and say it.”

She was perplexed. “Say what?”

“We let the marriage go off the rails. But there at first, for a good many years, we had a great thing going. We can have it again if we really want to try for it.”

She was stunned. “Are you serious?”

“I’ve been thinking about it the past few days. When I saw you walk into the casino a while ago, I knew I was right. As soon as I saw you, I knew everything was going to turn out exactly like I had it figured.”

“You are serious.”

“Sure.” He mistook her astonishment for surprised delight. “Now that you’ve had your fling as a producer, you’re ready to settle down. That makes a lot of sense, Tina.”

Fling! she thought angrily.

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