Blue Moon   ::   Гамильтон Лорел

He sat down on the side of the bed and plugged in the blow-dryer. "You're always short of money on a project like this, but it's not money we need. It's good press."

I frowned at him. "Why do you need good press?"

"Have you been reading the newspaper lately?" he asked. He removed the towel from his head. His hair was dark and brown with moisture, heavy, as if there was still water to be squeezed from it.

"You know I don't read the newspaper."

"You didn't own a television, either, but you do now."

I leaned my butt against the edge of his desk, as far away from him as I could get and not leave the room. I'd bought the television so that he and I could watch old movies and videos.

"I don't watch much television anymore."

"Jean-Claude not a fan of musicals?" Richard asked, and there was that edge to his voice that I'd heard in the last few weeks: angry, jealous, hurt, cruel.

It was almost a relief to hear it. His anger made everything easier. "Jean-Claude's not much of a watcher. He's more a doer."

Richard's face thinned out, anger making his high, sculpted cheekbones stand out underneath his skin. "Lucy isn't much of a watcher, either," he said, voice low and careful.

I laughed, and it wasn't a happy sound. "Thanks for making this easier, Richard."

He stared down at the floor, his wet hair tucked to one side so his face was in full profile. "I don't want to fight, Anita. I really don't."

"Could have fooled me," I said.

He looked up, and his chocolate brown eyes were dark with more than just color. "If I'd wanted a fight, I could have just given in to Lucy. Let you find us in the bed together."

"You're not mine, anymore, Richard. Why should it bother me what the hell you do?"

"That is the question, isn't it?" He stood and started walking towards me.

"Why did they frame you?" I asked. "Why did they want you in jail?"

"That's you, Anita. All business."

"And you let yourself get distracted, Richard. You don't keep your eye on the ball." Geez, a sports metaphor. Maybe it was contagious.

"Fine," he said, and that one word was so angry that it almost hurt. "The troll band that we're studying has broken into two bands. Their birth rate is so low that they don't do that very often. It's the first recorded offshoot for a North American troll troop in this century."

"This is all fascinating, but what does it have to do with anything?"

"Just shut up and listen," he said.

I did. That was a first.

"The second smaller troop moved out of the park.