Page 98 of Wreckage and Rain

She laughs, wet. "Stepbrother."

"Worse. Found brother. No legal way out of it for him." I squeeze her hand once and let go. "Now drink your bourbon before the ice gives up on it."

***

I pour us each a fresh round. Bourbon for Summer. Whiskey for me. We don't talk for a minute. We just sit there with the bar between us. The kind of sitting that happens between two people who have agreed on something difficult and need a moment to let the agreement settle.

The front door of the club opens. The bell does its small tinny thing.

Dominic.

He comes up to the bar like he has a reason for being here at the tail end of the night, after the show, with the chairs already starting to go up. He doesn't. The room is mostly empty. There are four other people in the building including the two of us. He slides onto the stool next to Summer and nods at me and orders a bourbon and asks me about a permit issue he has no business asking about. Then he asks Summer how the manuscript is going. He is, by every observable metric, performing the role of a man who has casually wandered in.

Dominic Vargas doesn't casually wander.

I pour the bourbon. Slide it across. He reaches for his wallet to pay because Dom always pays even when I tell him not to.He pulls the wallet out of his back pocket and a folded piece of construction paper flutters out with it and lands on the bar in front of Summer.

Crayon. Green and purple. A person, if you're being generous.

Summer picks it up.

Dom goes very still.

She unfolds it. In the bottom corner, in the wobbly hand of someone who has just figured out the letter D, four words: TO DOMMY. WITH LOVE.

She looks up at him.

She looks at me.

I have set down the glass I was polishing.

Dom is looking at the bar between us like the wood grain might save him. His jaw has gone tight. His ears have gone red. In the weeks I have known this man I have never seen the ears.

"Dom," Summer says.

"Don't."

"I am asking the question."

"I know you are asking the question, Summer. I am asking you not to ask it tonight. I have had a long week. Marisol talked to me for nine minutes today, the child made me a dinosaur and she signed it. I have been carrying it around since Wednesday because I haven't yet found a structurally appropriate place to put it. I don't want to talk about it. I want you to give it back to me. I want both of you to pretend you didn't see anything."

I say, very calmly, "Sixty-four crayons? The big box. With the sharpener."

Dom closes his eyes.

"Sixty-four."

"That is all I needed."

He doesn't say anything. The red has reached his hairline now. He has gone the color of a man whose feelings have ambushedhim in a public venue and who is genuinely working out whether to leave the country.

Summer smooths the drawing on the bar. Hands it back to him.

He folds it. Slides it into the wallet. Slides the wallet into the back pocket. Pats his back pocket twice, drinks his bourbon and doesn't say another word for a long minute.

When he finally speaks, it is to the empty glass.

"Marisol told me not to get any ideas."