Unencumbered by the blue plastic case in which legality demanded he keep it, the pistol lay, where he had left it, after his more-or-less regular time at the range with Ian.

Ian, like him, but for different reasons, didn’t fit what he perceived to be the vague, generalized profile of Gun Owner.  Slender, bespectacled, and from every angle the intellectual, he was in fact not only an owner of a handgun, but an expert in its use.  And with that expertise came a quiet, unyielding focus; an ability to — unlike Chris — either shove aside whatever anger resided in him, or to somehow talk him out of it.  And like Chris, he had much surrounding him, dogging his every step, in fact, to poke at the ashes of that anger; to probe as if stoking a bonfire until the right log shifted and let in a gust of air that emboldened the bright red embers to burst into dancing, unpredictable flames.