“No,” she said.
“Mussolini. I grew up in the Irish Channel with those guys. I worked for some of them. In Vegas and Reno and Montana.”
Her eyes searched his. “Yeah?”
“They broke my hand with a car door. Later, some of them went off-line,” he said.
“You’re a funny guy. I don’t mean like strange. You’re just a different kind of guy.”
Once again Clete felt his old enemy come back. As a boy, he’d hated delivering milk off his father’s truck to the back doors of the rich in the Garden District. He’d hated the welfare store where the clothes he was given were generic and ill-fitting; he’d hated the cops who’d hauled his parents out of the house when they were drunk and fighting; he’d hated his father for beating him with a razor strop and making him kneel all night on grains of rice; he’d hated a nun who’d told him he was unwashed, and a priest who’d shut the confessional window in his face when he was twelve years old. These moments should have disappeared long ago, but every time Clete looked into the eyes of a normal person, the dead coals he had carried for decades burst alight, giving life to every dark memory in his unconscious, telling him once again he was worthless in the sight of God and man.
“I don’t like to talk much about myself,” he said. “Not because I’m humble. On my best day, I never got more than a C-minus. That includes time in the Crotch.”
“I checked you out. You have the Navy Cross.”
“I got it while I was running in the wrong direction. How about we ditch yesterday’s box score?”
He tilted the pitcher to fill her glass, but she covered it with her hand.
“Sometimes I get the blues,” she said. “That’s when I know I shouldn’t drink too much. If I do, I really get the blues. I like Emmylou Harris’s line: ‘I got the rhythm, and I don’t need the blues.’?”
“You’re talking about your husband?”
“He was a West Point graduate. He could have been an academic, but he went to Ranger school. He loved the army. He was killed by friendly fire.”
“I’m sorry.”
He stole a look at her eyes. She was looking at the bar. A man was telling a dirty joke to two women, both of them disheveled, grinning. “You know what I’m saying, don’t you?” she asked.
“I’m not too smart about these things. I’m old, too.”
“So is the earth. Is your guy going to show?”
Clete glanced at his watch, the same one he’d owned since the Corps. The hands had a soft green luminosity. “Probably not.”
“I’ll buy you a fish sandwich and a cup of coffee at McDonald’s,” she said.
“I don’t want to leave Homer alone too long.”
“Sure,” she said.
“Another thing. I was involved with this lady. I’m not now, but it wasn’t long ago, and she’s a nice lady.”
“The social worker?” she said.
“Yeah.”
She nodded.
“You’re beautiful, Miss Sherry. You got guts, too. I mean, working with some of those assholes in your department.”
“I got you. Lay off the personal inventory.”
“I don’t want to walk out of here feeling bad,” he said. Had he just said that? Why did he never have the words that accurately described his feelings? “I didn’t mean—”
“I’ve got to pee,” she said.
When she returned from the women’s room, she filled her glass with beer and drank it. “I’d better get going.”