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'Maybe I don't want to be enemies anymore. Maybe we ought to work together.'
'Call him yourself,' I said.
'I get three words out and he hangs up.'
'Write him a letter.'
'What I look like, St. Valentine or something?' He glanced at his wristwatch, then shook it close to his ear. 'You got the time?'
'It's ten to six,' I said.
'Look, why should Hippo and me be always cutting a piece out of each other? We're both in the casino business. Hippo's a good businessman, he'd be a good partner, he doesn't steal from people. I want you to tell him I said that.'
'I think you got some damn nerve, Tommy.'
He took his coffee cup away from his mouth and pointed four stiffened fingers into his chest. 'You come out to my house, you give me a lecture on conscience and responsibility, you hit me in the face with a gun, now I get another lecture?'
'Is there anything else you want to tell me? I have some work to do.'
He pushed a knuckle against his teeth, then clamped his hand across my forearm when I attempted to rise. He took it away and made a placating gesture.
'It's not easy for me to talk to Hippo,' he said. I saw his blue eyes fill with a pained, pinched light. 'He just doesn't listen, he sees it one way, it's always been like that, he'd just walk off when I tried to say I was sorry about his little brother. I tried a whole bunch of times.'
'When?'
'When we were growing up.'
'It's between you and him, Tommy. But why don't you say it to him once more, as honestly as you can, then let it go?'
'He's not. He sees me on the street, he looks at me like I was butt crust.'
'So long, Tommy. About the other day, I didn't want to hit you. I'm sorry it happened.' I nodded to the woman as I got up to go.
He wiped part of a doughnut off his mouth with his wrist.
'We're gonna rent a boat and some gear, do some fishing,' he said. 'If you're around later, we'll buy you lunch.'
'I'm tied up. Thanks, anyway,' I said, and walked up the dock toward my house just as Alafair was coming down the slope, with Tripod on his chain, to get me for breakfast.
At noontime Batist and I were outside in the cool lee of the bait shop, serving our customers barbecue chickens from our split-barrel pit, when I saw Tommy and the woman named Charlotte coming up the bayou in one of our boat rentals. The engine was out of the water, and I Tommy was paddling against the current, his face heated and knotted with frustration as the boat veered from side to side. It had rained hard at midmorning, then had stopped abruptly. The woman's hair and sundress were soaked. She looked disgusted.
A few minutes later they came into the bait shop.
Without asking permission the woman went around behind the counter and unrolled a huge wad of paper towels to dry her hair.
'I owe you some money. I ran the motor over a log or something,' Tommy said.
'It's in the overhead,' I said.
He hit on the surface of his watch with his fingers.
'What time is it?' he said.
I pointed at the big electric clock on the wall.
'Twelve-fifteen. Boy, we were out there a long time,' he said. 'A snake ate my fish, too. It came right up to the boat and sucked it off my stringer. Are they supposed to do that?'
'Take an ice chest next time.'
