Loving Jessie by Dallas Schulze

amnesia about his injury. God knew he would like nothing better than to forget about it himself.
    “I thought journalists were supposed to get a Do Not Shoot Me pass,” Reilly said. “What happened?”
    Matt lifted his shoulder in a half shrug. “Bad luck. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time and didn’t duck fast enough.”
    It was the same answer he’d given everyone, from his bureau chief to the endless stream of doctors who’d poked and prodded at him. It was the truth, or at least as much of it as he was willing to give, but this time Matt was aware of a surprising urge to say more, to tell Reilly everything. If they’d been alone… But they weren’t, and it was just as well, he decided. He’d come home to put that time behind him, not to pull it out and examine it.
    “So tell me what’s been happening in your life.” As attempts to change the subject went, it wasn’t exactly subtle, and he knew that Reilly, at least, was perfectly capable of ignoring the hint and pursuing the topic. But after slanting a quick glance down at his wife, Reilly accepted Matt’s lead and the subject of his injury was dropped.
    There were plenty of other things to talk about. Reilly caught Matt up on news of old friends—old marriages, new divorces, who’d moved away, who’d moved back, babies born, kids in high school. After five years in Millers Crossing, Dana knew most of the people Reilly mentioned, and she filled in gaps when his memory fell short. Listening to them, Matt found himself suddenly, painfully aware of his age.
    In a couple of years he would be forty, and what did he have to show for it? A string of awards that had never meant a whole lot to him, thousands of dollars’ worth of cameras he couldn’t bring himself to touch, a bullet hole in his shoulder and enough frequent flyer miles to get him a seat on the space shuttle. While he’d been slogging through jungles or freezing his ass off in various godforsaken parts of the world, photographing starving childrenand megalomaniacal dictators and trying to avoid a vicious assortment of tropical diseases, the people he’d gone to school with had been getting married, having children. Building lives.
    Not that marriage was a one-way ticket to fulfillment. Matt sipped his beer as he watched the couple sitting across from him. They looked almost too good to be true. Reilly with his dark blond hair and clear green eyes and features that a smitten cheerleader had once called Costneresque, and Dana, all cool blond perfection. In his mind’s eye, he snapped the photo and labeled it Perfect Couple. But the more he watched them, the less the title seemed to fit.
    It was nothing obvious. It was little things. Though Reilly sat on the arm of her chair, his arm lying along the back of it, Matt noticed that Dana sat in such a way that she didn’t brush against him. And Reilly didn’t touch her. He didn’t brush his hand over her shoulder or smooth it over her hair. He looked at her frequently, but he didn’t once touch her. And despite his closeness, Dana managed to avoid ever looking at him.
    Maybe it was nothing, Matt told himself. Probably it was nothing. Or if it was something, it could be something small. Maybe they’d argued. Even happily married couples argued from time to time. But would an argument account for the shadows in Reilly’s eyes? Whatever Dana was thinking or feeling, she hid it behind that coolly perfect smile, but he knew Reilly well enough to see the shadows.
    Then again, what did he know about marriage? He’d never even come within spitting distance of committing it himself.
    “You remember Bull Mueller?” Reilly asked, and Matt let himself be pulled away from his thoughts.
    “Sure. Left tackle when we were at UCLA. Biggest living thing I’ve ever seen outside a zoo,” he said reminiscently. “And the meanest.”
    “He came out of the closet last year, and he’s living with a garden contractor named Chuck down in Long