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“Or one very simple one. Somebody went through his pockets before they chucked him over into the drink.”
“And anyway this isn’t my problem. I’m not James Bond, Nicky. I take people fishing.”
Nicky just shook his head. “You can’t fight it, Billy. You’re already in this. You may not know it yet, but you’re hooked.” And he settled back with a smug look on his face.
I got a very ugly suspicion. “Nicky,” I said.
“Yeah, mate?”
“Why did you get yourself arrested?”
He tried to look surprised. “To wake you up, Billy. To get your attention. To get you involved.”
I felt like I was in one of those old cartoons. I was Elmer Fudd with steam coming out of my ears while Bugs Bunny calmly chewed one of my prize carrots in my face. “You went to jail just to get me involved?”
Nicky smirked. “And here you are. The hook is set. You’ll fight it, but it’s too late. You’re in.”
I came as close to hitting Nicky as I’d ever been since I’d met him. But nothin
g I could think of to say made a dent in his cast-iron smug certainty that I was going to get involved and fix everything.
I got him home without strangling him, but that may be because the hangover had slowed me down. I told Nicky there was a lot in what he said and I would think about it. Then I made him promise not to do anything more about making people aware of the problem without telling me first. That cheered him up. It meant I was involved. He agreed, and was happily opening a couple of beers when I closed his front door and hopped the short coral wall to my own yard.
I spent most of that day circling around my living room until I couldn’t stand it any longer. I rode my bicycle over to the marina, dodging around Art’s dockmaster shack. I didn’t want to listen to a list of my shortcomings right now.
Nobody had stolen my boat. Nobody had cleaned the moss off the bottom, either. I sat and looked at it for a while. I could almost see the barnacles grow.
This was supposed to be what I wanted. This was why I had come here. To take a small boat out onto the flats and catch fish every day. Lately every day had turned into every now and then, but the desire to do it was still there. Wasn’t it?
I didn’t know. There was a hollow place where hope and desire had been carved out of me. Maybe it would grow back. Maybe it was dead, burned away by the August heat.
I wondered if Nancy was happy.
Chapter Eight
It was about an hour from sunset when I got back to my house. Nicky waited for me in my kitchen. “Mate,” he said pleasantly. “Have a cold one.” He generously handed me one of my own beers.
“Thanks,”
“So,” he said casually. “What’re your plans for the evening, mate?”
“I’m off duty tonight. I don’t feel up to saving the world.”
Nicky gave me a look of complete and permanent innocence. It was one of his best. “What’s that, eh? Did I say fetch the Batmobile? Put on the cape? Didn’t I say have a beer? Your name’s Billy, not Silly.”
He said that last like it solved everything, with the complete satisfaction of an Australian who has ended an argument with a rhyme. I don’t know why they feel that way about putting two rhyming words together, but they do. Rhymes had a magical power for Nicky and his countrymen. Even if it doesn’t mean anything, an Australian hit with a rhyme will back off, mutter, “Right, sorry,” and call for another round, on him. Maybe it comes from living in a place where all the towns have names like “Woolamaroo,” “Kalgoorlie,” and “Wollongong.” In a landscape littered with impossible sounds, putting two of them together is so unlikely it must call for an automatic celebration.
“You’ve gone all sour,” he told me, grabbing himself another beer.
“I know,” I said. “Art already told me.”
“It’s more than Nancy. Though that might have turned it loose. But it was already there.”
“Think so?”
“Too right. I think Nancy sensed it first, and that may have had something to do with why she pulled out.”
“Good to know.”
