THAT NIGHT I drifted off to sleep while watching the local news. When I woke, I realized I was listening to the voice of Jimmy Nightingale. He was confessing to the satchel bombing of the Indian village in South America. There were tears in his eyes. He could have been a character actor in a medieval Everyman play. Out on the salt, he had told me the same story; I believed then and I believe now that he was at least partially contrite. But the man I saw on television that night was a man who could sell snow to Eskimos and electric blankets to the damned.
* * *
I DROVE TO baron’s Health Club in New Iberia at five-thirty the next morning and went to work on the speed bag.
“I’m glad that’s not my face you’re hitting,” a voice behind me said.
I turned around. “Visiting with the lumpen proletariat?”
“I’ll buy you breakfast at Victor’s,” Jimmy said.
“Forget it.”
“What’d I do now?”
“I caught your performance on the news last night.”
“Performance?”
I let my hands hang at my sides, my bag gloves tight on my knuckles, the blood hammering in my wrists. I could smell my own odor. “You and I talked about that situation in South America. I thought you were genuinely sorry for the bad choice you made.”
“I like that terminology. Yeah, bad choice. It’s the kind of crap you hear in Hollywood.”
“I didn’t finish. I think you’re using the suffering of the people you maimed and killed to further your career. That takes a special kind of guy.”
“That’s pretty strong, Dave.” He rested one hand on my shoulder, even though my T-shirt was gray with sweat.
“I don’t like people touching me.”
He lowered his hand. “Take a shower. We’ll eat breakfast and talk. I always looked up to you. You know that.”
“I have to go to work.”
A kid was hitting the heavy bag, hard enough to make it jump on the chain.
“Can you give us a minute?” Jimmy said.
“Sure,” the kid replied awkwardly, as though he had done something wrong.
“Hang on, podna,” I said. “Mr. Jimmy and I are going outside.”
“I got to get to class at UL,” the kid said. “It’s all right.”
After we were alone, Jimmy said, “You look like you want to drop me.”
“You know the chief sign of narcissism, don’t you? Entitlement. That’s another word for self-important jerk.”
“I want to offer you a job. Maybe Purcel, too.”
“Doing security?”
“That’s part of it.”
“What’s the other part?”
“Arguing with me and telling me when I’m wrong. You know what LBJ said to Eric Sevareid when the two of them were watching Nixon’s inauguration on the tube?”
“No.”