Cold Snap by J. Clayton Rogers

for Karen Sylvester, whom he had almost killed in the
parking lot. Luckily, the girl behind the counter was not the same
sales clerk who had witnessed his attack on the deputy marshal.
Elsewise, the police would already be racing to the scene.
    Ari found Rebecca's reasoning for meeting
here both logical and twisted. She could not bring herself to go to
his house because neighbors might see and misinterpret, and she did
not want him at her house for the same reason. Besides, how could
she explain to Diane inviting into her house the very man she had
forbidden her to visit? Best to meet on neutral ground and give the
appearance of a chance encounter. This would give her the
opportunity to explain to her daughter that Mr. Ciminon wasn't so
bad, after all. That Mr. Ciminon, who had chased Diane away from
his house and shown every indication of being a madman was...well,
a bit different, but all-in-all not so bad...for a person of
non-American persuasion.
    This explanation met with mixed success, as
evidenced by Diane's gasp when Ari walked into the parlor and gave
them a startled, pleasant smile.
    "Ah, Yellow Rose Diane!" he had pronounced
grandly. "I see we are both connoisseurs of fine ice cream."
    "I like lots of ice cream," said Diane
tentatively, shading close to her mother.
    "We don't come here very often," said
Rebecca, giving her daughter a tweak on the nose. "Ice cream is
good in moderation."
    She made it sound like opium.
    "How is Marmaduke?" Ari asked, and mentally
shot himself in the forebrain. The cat was the central bone of
contention between Ari and Diane. It was truly a source of
self-discovery, to find one's self drawn to an animal that, in his
meager feline brain, did not care a fig for him. But next to his
wife and son (and Abu Jasim, although the jury was still out on
that particular individual), Sphinx had become central to Ari's
life. A concept so bizarre that Ari wondered at his own sanity.
Animals were things, to be used and discarded as the occasion
arose, the same way hunters cut old beagles adrift to die lost and
alone in the woods. Cats? They weren't even useful, unless one
considered rodent control. And Ari had seen no rats or mice in his
neighborhood. Which might be due, of course, to the cats.
    The impracticality of Rebecca's idea to meet
at the parlor became quickly apparent. There were things she wished
to discuss with Ari that she did not want Diane to overhear. This
would be virtually impossible within the confines of the
window-encased dining area.
    And then luck played its hand. Either that,
or Rebecca was showing a remarkable talent for duplicity. Soon
after Ari arrived, another woman with a small girl arrived. A girl
who just happened to be one of Diane's close friends. A mother who
just happened to give Rebecca a meaningful nod. Diane bounced up
and down in her seat, begging her mother to be allowed to sit with
her friend. Rebecca just happened to acquiesce and Diane ran down
the aisle to the far end of the dining area, her French vanilla
cone balanced precariously in her small hand.
    "Nicely arranged," Ari nodded admiringly once
he and Rebecca were alone. She would have been a suitable candidate
for the SSO.
    "I'm not a devious person," she
responded.
    "Of course not," said Ari, thinking, Forget
Al-Amn al-Khas...what about the CIA?
    "I was misinformed about the divorce," said
Ari as Diane flounced away. He would have scolded her with a frown
had he been given the opportunity.
    "You have to be emphatic with children," said
Rebecca apologetically. "They don't understand gray."
    Ari was a little bit of a novice on gray,
himself. In the Iraq of his upbringing there was either black or
white. You were either alive or dead. Perhaps that was what made
America great. It was spasmodically gray.
    "Diane's father..."
    Curious. Not 'my husband'. Ari wondered if
she was unconsciously announcing her availability. Not to him, but
as a test of what her future might hold. Perhaps clothing stores
should add