The Conspiracy Club by Jonathan Kellerman Page A

driven out to the plains often, speeding alone on a soporific highway, wondering how many flat miles you’d have to travel before the earth shrugged itself a hillock.
    Their relationship grew in mundane soil: a quintet of quiet dinners at five separate, quiet, serviceable restaurants: two Italian, one Spanish, a quasi-French place that termed itself “Continental.” After Angela let loose her affection for Hunan cuisine, Jeremy found a blue-lit Chinese café that had gotten good reviews in the
Clarion
. More money than he was used to spending, but the smile on her face made it worth it.
    Decent food, earnest conversation, a brushing of fingertips now and then, very little in the way of flirtation or sexual suggestion.
    So different from the way it had been with Jocelyn. Jeremy knew comparisons were destructive, but he didn’t care. Comparison was what came naturally, and he wasn’t even sure he wanted a clear shot at something new.
    Jocelyn had been sex and perfume, the perfume of sex. The serpentine duet of tongues, moist panties on their first date, hips lifted, a musky delta the gift proffered.
    His first date with Jocelyn had ended before dessert. The frantic drive to her place, ripping each other’s clothes off. Someone so petite, but so strong. Her small, hard body had slammed against Jeremy’s with a force that thrilled him and left his bones bruised.
    Jocelyn had always left him breathless.
    Angela was polite.
    On the second date, she said, “I hope this doesn’t sound rude, but can I ask how old you are?”
    “Thirty-two.”
    “You look a lot younger.”
    Not flattery, the truth, and offered as such.
    Jeremy had looked twelve at sixteen, didn’t need to shave until he entered college. He’d hated the reticence of his hormones, all those girls he desired regarding him a kid.
    By his thirties, he’d ended up with one of those smooth, angular faces that resists aging. His hair was fine and straight, an unremarkable light brown, and no bald spots or gray strands had intruded. He wore it parted on the right, and unless he used some kind of hair product, it flopped over his forehead. He believed his complexion to be sallow, but women had told him he had great skin. One, a poet, had taken to calling him “Byron,” and insisted that his unremarkable brown eyes were well beyond intense.
    He was medium-sized, medium weight, not muscular, wore 10D shoes and a 40 regular suit.
    To his mind, about as average as you could be.
    Angela said, “I mean it. You look really young. I figured you had to be about that because you told me you’ve been on staff at Central seven years. But you could easily pass for my age, or even younger.”
    “Which is?”
    “Guess.”
    “Two years post M.D. means twenty-eight.”
    “Twenty-seven. I skipped third grade.”
    Same age as Jocelyn. He said, “I’m not surprised.”
    Angela said, “I was just a precocious brat,” and began talking about the rigors of residency.
    Jeremy listened. You never knew when professional training would come in handy.
     
     
    The good-bye pattern begun on the first date continued: walking Angela to her door, the silence, the smile, the outstretched hand.
    Then: a hard, defensive peck on the cheek and her claim, a bit too emphatic, of having had a wonderful time.
    Jeremy began wondering what she wanted.
     
     
    After the fifth date, both of them filled with Chinese food, she invited him into her compulsively neat but shabbily turned-out apartment, showed him to a secondhand sofa that still smelled of disinfectant, poured wine for both of them, excused herself, and slipped into the bathroom.
    Jeremy looked around. Angela had a good eye. Each component was cheap, scarred, and conspicuously temporary. A sorry houseplant struggled for life on a chipped windowsill. Yet the composite was pleasing.
    Still, he wondered: two physician parents. Surely, she could have afforded better.
    She emerged from the bathroom wearing a long, green robe — silk or