It took me less than half a lifetime to realize that regret is one of the few guaranteed certainties. Sooner or later everything is touched by it, despite our naive and senseless hope that just this time we will be spared its cold hand on our heart. The day after we met, Maris York told me I had saved her life. We were in a café, and she said Page 1 this through the folds of a black sweater she was pulling over her head. I was glad she was lost in the middle of that pullover because the statement, although true, made me feel much too brave and adult and embarrassed. I didn't know what to answer. "It's quite true, Walker. The next time I saw him he would have killed me." "Maybe he just wanted to go on scaring you." "No, he would have tried to kill me." The voice carried no emotion. Her big hands lay open and still on the pink and blue marble table. I wondered if the stone was cold under her palms. If I had been really brave I would have covered her hand with mine. I didn't. Every once in a while my friend Nicholas Sylvian calls, in a huff, and says he wants us to make another movie together.
