Swan Peak (Dave Robicheaux 17)

“You never called me that before.”

“You mind?”

“I’ve answered to a lot worse.”

She propped herself on her elbow and looked straight into his face. “You want me to rub your back?”

“I think the world of you, Candace. I just got problems sometimes.”

“Did you get hurt in the war?”

“I worked at a jail outside Baghdad. The army sent me back home ’cause of some things I did there. It wasn’t a dishonorable discharge but right close to it.”

“What things?”

“Giving some prisoners the worst day I possibly could.”

“That doesn’t sound like you.”

He picked up a pack of cigarettes from the nightstand, then replaced it. “I was raised by an uncle who ran a truck-repair shop on the highway outside Del Rio. When I was about eleven years old, him and a couple of his friends come back from drinking all night in Coahuila. One of the friends took me in the bedroom and entertained me proper while my uncle and the other guy was playing cards. Then my uncle and the other guy had their turn. I can still smell them in my sleep sometimes. It’s like a fog in the darkness, like stale sweat and mechanic’s grease. I run away the next day, but my uncle brought me back, and the next week two different guys did it to me.”

She laid her head on his shoulder and picked up his right hand in hers. “You like me?” she said.

“Sure I do.”

“You trust me?”

“Ain’t many like you, Candace.”

“You didn’t answer me.”

“I trust you ’cause you don’t want anything. ’Cause you accept folks for what they are.”

“I want you.” She took off her top and placed his hand on her breast. “You feel my heart? You feel how it beats when your hand touches my skin? It’s going too fast to count the beats, isn’t it?”

She could see the surprise, the puzzlement, in his face as he held his hand to her breast.

“You know what that means? It means I can never lie to you,” she said.

“No, I don’t believe you ever will.”

“People like us are different, Troyce. It’s in our hardwiring. It doesn’t mean we’re bad. We didn’t get to vote about the kind of homes we grew up in. But here’s the big joke. People taught us the homes we grew up in were normal. It’s like somebody doing a double mind-fuck on you.”

“What’s that got to do with you and me?”

“It means I’m here whenever you want me.”

He brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes. “I ever tell you you’re always pretty when you wake up in the morning?”

“I got to ask you something, Troyce.”

“About Baghdad?”

“Did you come out here to kill a man?”

“There’s things I keep hid around a corner in my mind. When I get to them, I can make my choices and do what I need to do. It beats fretting your mind about events that ain’t real yet. Would you not like me if I told you I got a long memory for people who do me harm?”

“Who hurt you so bad, Troyce?”