Heat by Michael Cadnum

P said, putting a paper clip into its box. “Just don’t lie to yourself. Every hour that goes by and you aren’t working, there are competitors out there in Denver and Salt Lake City and El Centro relieved to hear it. Because they’re hard at work right now, Bonnie.” She gave me some silence. Then she said, “And you aren’t.”
    â€œSubtle,” I said.
    She was studying me, trying to read my expression. Dad always said, look them right between the eyes. “I’m going to tell you something I don’t want you to discuss with anyone. This is just between you and me.”
    I waited.
    Miss P likes sappy movies, the kind Mom likes, The Sound of Music, ET . One of her favorite movies was about a dog and a cat and a pig who traveled three hundred miles through raging rivers and snowbound hell to find their owners. “I’m starting to consider early retirement,” she said.
    I was glad she kept talking—I wasn’t ready to make a sound.
    â€œWhat gets harder is caring about scores and wondering what coach is deploying what computer program to teach center of gravity and angle of descent.”
    I kept quiet, letting my emotions rise to the surface and sink.
    â€œI want you to see that life is more than endurance conditioning,” she said, “and one-half twist layouts.”
    â€œBut you still care,” I said.
    â€œDo I?”
    For a few heartbeats we just looked at each other.
    â€œMy attitude isn’t the point. I’ll tell you what matters.”
    At last the conversation was on solid, familiar ground.
    â€œIf you care, Bonnie,” she was saying. “If you still want to dive, the first thing you do on Monday is run three miles. You come here, nine o’clock, and we start you off on the springboard.”
    â€œThe springboard!” I protested.
    â€œYou’re too proud for that?”
    Swimming I could handle. Maybe I could talk her into letting me swim laps all morning Monday. Maybe I could take up swimming, the two-hundred-meter breaststroke, and be realistic about my future.
    I was going to say that my father was facing his arraignment on Monday. I couldn’t possibly be here.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
    â€œI heard you up again in the night,” said my mother from the dining room.
    She doesn’t mind holding a conversation with someone she can’t see. She’ll talk to a closed door, right at you, or through earphones. It was the next morning, after a night of bad dreams.
    â€œI wake up a lot,” I said.
    I was slicing a banana. The banana sections looked like primitive coins.
    â€œWhy are you eating it like that?” Mom demanded, bustling through the kitchen.
    I said something about it being good practice in lab technique. She had a folder marked “Immigration Service” in her hand. An employee had been using the Social Security number of a deceased cousin. She would spend the morning selecting letter formats on her word-processing menu: Business Letter, Personal Letter, Death Warrant.
    I had been wondering what role she would adopt: distant but still caring ex-wife, indifferent, nosy. She had opted this morning for the frantic, business-as-usual ploy she used when a cat has died or an unexpected envelope has arrived from the IRS. She said, as she hurried off to the Spartan shelves and drawers of her home office, “I forgot to tell you—there’s a postcard for you, from Georgia. Under the wooden fruit.”
    A sweeping panorama, a beach with gigantic driftwood, the ocean-cured logs of the north coast. “Thinking of you, Egg Head!” she had written in her graceful, feminine hand.
    â€œI called her last night and told her about your father,” Mom said.
    I asked what Georgia had said.
    â€œShe’s worried about you,” Mom said. “She always said you and your father are like this,” she added, holding up two fingers side by side.
    Georgia once said the