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"Dave, I don't think you should be troubled like this," she said. "You tried to arrest him, and he tried to kill you for it."
I looked at the shadows of the wood-bladed fan turning on the ceiling.
"Look, I know New Orleans cops who would have just killed the guy and never given him a chance. Then they'd plant a gun on him. They've got a name for it. What do they call it?"
"A 'drop' or a 'throwaway'."
"You're not that kind of cop. You're a good man. Why do you want to carry this guilt around?"
"You don't understand, Robin. I think maybe I'm going to do it again."
Later I called the office and told them I wouldn't be in that day, then I put on my runnin
g shorts and shoes, lifted weights under the mimosa tree in the backyard, and ran three miles along the bayou road. Wisps of fog still hung around the flooded roots of the cypress trees. I went inside the paintless wood-frame general store at the four-corners, drank a carton of orange juice and talked French with the elderly owner of the store, then jogged back along the road while the sun climbed higher into the sky and dragonflies dipped and hovered over the cattails.
When I came through the front screen, hot and running with sweat, I saw the door of Annie's and my bedroom wide open, the lock and hasp pried loose from the jamb, the torn wood like a ragged dental incision. Sunlight streamed through the windows into the room, and Robin was on her hands and knees, in a white sun halter and a pair of cutoff blue jean shorts, dipping a scrub brush into a bucket of soapy water and scouring the grain in the cypress floor. The buckshot-pocked walls and the headboard of the bed were wet and gleaming, and by a bottle of Clorox on the floor was another bucket filled with soaking rags, and the rags and the water were the color of rust.
"What are you doing?" I said.
She glanced at me, then continued to scrub the grain without replying. The stiff bristles of the brush sounded like sandpaper against the wood. The muscles of her tan back rippled with her motion.
"Damn you, Robin. Who gave you the fucking right to go into my bedroom?"
"I couldn't find your keys, so I pried the lock off with a screwdriver. I'm sorry about the damage."
"You get the fuck out of this room."
She paused and sat back on her heels. There were white indentations on her knees. She brushed the perspiration out of her hairline with the back of her wrist.
"Is this your church where you go every day to suffer?" she said.
"It's none of your business what it is. It's not a part of your life."
"Then tell me to get out of your life. Say it and I'll do it."
"I'm asking you to leave this room."
"I have a hard time buying your attitude, Streak. You wear guilt like a big net over your head. You ever know guys who are always getting the clap? They're not happy unless some broad has dosed them from their toenails to their eyes. Is that the kind of gig you want for yourself?"
The sweat was dripping off my hands onto the floor. I breathed slowly and pushed my wet hair back over my head.
"I'm sorry for being profane at you. I truly am. But come outside now," I said.
She dipped the brush in the bucket again and began to enlarge the scrubbed circle on the floor.
"Robin?" I said.
She concentrated her eyes on the strokes of the brush across the wood.
"This is my house, Robin."
I stepped toward her.
"I'm talking to you, kiddo. No more free pass," I said.
She sat back on her heels again and dropped the brush in the water.
"I'm finished," she said. "You want to stand here and mourn or help me carry these buckets outside?"
