"Who the hell are you?" I said. She just shook her head and went over and sat very efficiently on a broad leather ottoman. Her bottle-blond hair was almost white against the black leather of her riding suit. For the first time, her helmet gone, I could see her face, the broad, lopsided mouth, the earnest blue eyes, the freckles that somehow made her seem younger than the lines around her mouth and eyes indicated she was. She put her head down, like an athlete who has just finished a long run, but the one time I squirmed to lift weight off one buttock and put it on the other, her head snapped up and she pointed the .45 in the approximate vicinity of my forehead. Then she put her head back down again and it was then I sensed it, that certain but special air the insane exude. I'd experienced it once while visiting a cop friend on a psych ward, felt it in the vivid stares that followed me with both fear and ferocity, in the curious inexplicable smiles some odd gesture would suddenly evoke.
