Once upon a time I’d have sensed their beasts through the office door, but I was getting more control and so were they, so it was like with normal folks. They could surprise me if they wanted to.

Jason, aka Ripley, smiled, and it filled his face with that cheerful, hail-fellow-well-met that he could turn on and off. “I don’t remember seeing you at the club, Mr. Bennington.”

“I haven’t been, but as I said my wife visited you once or twice.” He hesitated, then got his phone out of the inside pocket of his suit coat. It was one of those phones with the big screen so you could watch video on it, if you didn’t mind having the picture be the size of your palm. Bennington pushed some buttons and held the phone out to Jason. “Do you remember her?”

Jason smiled, but shook his head. “It must have been on a night I wasn’t working. I’d have remembered her.”

Bennington held it out to Nathaniel. He didn’t touch the phone, but looked at it, face solemn. He shook his head. “She’s very beautiful.”

“Was, Brandon, was beautiful.” He held the phone out to me. The woman was blond, and beautiful in that Hollywood way, so that she was truly beautiful but there was nothing to make her stand out from a dozen other blond beauties. It was a type of attractiveness that always seemed artificial, as if they were all made at the same factory and sent out into the world to seduce and marry well.

Nathaniel said, “I’m sorry.”

“Why are you sorry?” he asked, and that flash of anger was back.

“Anita said she was sorry for your loss; isn’t your wife who you lost?”

Bennington nodded.

“Then I am sorry.” I knew Nathaniel well enough to know that his emotion was a little stronger than just normal condolences, but I’d ask later when Tony Bennington was far away.

I was still trying to usher him out, but I had one last boyfriend outside the door.