?I?ll try to honor his wishes. You don?t want a glass of wine or a beer??
?No.?
?It doesn?t bother me.?
?I didn?t say it did. I just don?t want any.? She wiped her mouth with her napkin and looked away irritably, then back at him again, her gaze wandering over the stitches in his scalp and the bandage across the bridge of his nose and the half-moons of blue and yellow bruising under his eyes.
?Would you stop that?? he said.
?I?m going to fix that bastard.?
?Don?t give his kind power, Pam.?
?Is there anything else I?m doing wrong??
?I?ll think about it.?
She set down her knife and fork and kept staring at him until she forced him to look directly at her. ?Lose the cavalier attitude, boss. Collins is going to be with us for the long haul.?
?I hope he is.?
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?You still don?t get it. The feds are using Nick Dolan as bait. That means they?re probably using us, too. In the meantime, they?re treating us like beggars at the table.?
?That?s the way it is. Sometimes the feds are??
?Assholes??
?Nobody is perfect.?
?You ought to get yourself some Optimist Club literature and start passing it out.?
?Could be.?
She pulled at an earlobe. ?I think I?ll have a beer.?
He fought against a yawn.
?In fact, a beer and a shot of tequila with a salted lime on the side.?
?Good,? he said, filling his mouth with a tortilla, his attention fixed on the mariachi band blaring out Pancho Villa?s marching song, ?La Cucaracha.?
?You think I should go back to school, maybe get a graduate degree and go to work for the U.S. Marshals? office??
?I?d hate to lose you.?
?Go on.?
?You have to do what?s right for yourself.?
She balled her hands on her knees and stared at her plate. Then she exhaled and started eating again, her eyes veiled with a special kind of sadness.
?Pam?? he said.
?I?d better eat up and hit the hay. Tomorrow is another day and another dollar, right??
HACKBERRY WOKE AT one A.M. in his third-story motel room and sat in the dark, his mind cobwebbed with dreams whose details he couldn?t remember, his skin frigid and dead to the touch. Through a crack in the curtains, he could see headlights streaming across an overpass and a two-engine plane approaching the airport, its windows brightly lit. Somehow the plane and cars were a reassuring sight, testifying to the world?s normality, the superimposition of light upon darkness, and humanity?s ability to overcome even the gravitational pull of the earth.