Don Winslow is a former private investigator and consultant. He lives in California.1It's a lot of work being me.Is what Frank Machianno thinks when the alarm goes off at 3:45 in the morning. He rolls right out of the rack and feels the cold wooden floor on his feet.He's right.It is a lot of work being him.Frank pads across the wooden floor, which he personally sanded and varnished, and gets into the shower. It only takes him a minute to shower, which is one reason that he keeps his silver hair cut short."So it doesn't take long to wash it" is what he tells Donna when she complains about it.It takes him thirty seconds to dry off; then he wraps the towel around his waist—of which there's a little more these days than he'd like—shaves, and brushes his teeth. His route to the kitchen takes him through his living room, where he picks up a remote, hits a button, and speakers start to blast "Che gelida manina." One of the nice things about living alone—maybe the only good thing about living alone, Frank thinks—is that you can play opera at 4:00 a.m. and not bother anyone. And the house is solid, with thick walls like they used to build in the old days, so Frank's early morning arias don't disturb the neighbors, either.Frank has a pair of season tickets to the San Diego Opera, and Donna is kind enough to pretend that she really enjoys going with him. She even pretended not to notice when he cried at the end of La Bohème when Mimi died.Now, as he walks into the kitchen, he sings along with Victoria de los Angeles: ". . . ma quando vien lo sgelo, "il primo sole e mio "il primo bacio dell'aprile e mio! "il primo sole e mio! . . ."Frank loves his kitchen.He laid the classic black-and-white floor tile himself and put in the counters and cabinets with the help of a carpenter buddy. He found the old butcher block in an antique store in Little Italy. It was in tough shape when he bought it—dried out and starting to crack—and it took him months of rubbing oil to get it back into prime condition. But he loves it for its flaws, its old chips and scars—"badges of honor," he calls them, from years and years of faithful service."See, people used this thing," he told Donna when she asked why he didn't just buy a new one, which he could easily afford. "You get close, you can even smell where they used to chop the garlic.""Italian men and their mothers," Donna said."My mother was a good cook," Frank replied, "but it was my old man who could really cook. He taught me."And taught him good, Donna thought at the time. Whatever else you want to think about Frank Machianno—such as he can be a genuine pain in the ass—the man can cook. The man also knows how to treat a woman. And maybe the two attributes aren't unrelated. Actually, it was Frank who introduced this idea to her."Making love is like making a good sauce," he said to her one night in bed during the "afterglow.""Frank, quit while you're ahead," she told him.He didn't. "You have to take your time, use just the right amount of the right spices, savor each one, then slowly turn the heat up until it bubbles."The unique charm of Frank Machianno, she thought, lying there next to him, is that he just compared your body to a bolognese and you don't kick his ass out of bed. Maybe it's that he really does care so much. She has sat in the car while he's driven back and forth across town, going to five different stores for five different ingredients for a single dish. ("The sausiche is better at Cristafaro's, Donna.") He brings the same attention to detail into the bedroom, and the man can make, shall we say, the sauce bubble.This morning, like every morning, he takes raw Kona coffee beans from a vacuum-sealed jar and spoons them into the little roaster he bought from one of those chef's catalogs he's always getting in the mail.Donna gives him endless crap about the coffee bean thing."Get an automatic maker with one of those timers," she said. "Then it would be ready when you get out of the shower. You could even sleep a few minutes later.""But it wouldn't be as good.""It's a lot of work being you," Donna said.What can I say? Frank thought. It is."You've heard of the phrase 'quality of life'?" he asked her."I have," Donna said. "Usually referring to the te Read Less