Then there was the business with the pool table. Couth got to feeling badly for Dante, who felt so miserably awkward hanging around in the house, afraid of the fierce outdoors, wondering if he should call his wife, and whether he should tell the limousine service about the delay or just drive back to New York quick.
'Sir?' he asked Trumper, who was waiting for Biggie to come downstairs. 'Should I go?'
But Trumper didn't know what was what. 'I don't know, Dante,' he said. 'Should you?'
Then Biggie came back down and gave a kind of brave smile to Couth and a hard nod to Trumper, who followed her outside and out on to the night-black dock.
Then Couth asked Dante if he shot pool. This brought Dante out of trauma for a while; he shot a lot of pool, in fact. He took eight straight games from Couth and then, after secretly devising a handicap system, won three of the next four. But they weren't playing for money. The way everyone in that house acted, Dante couldn't even think about money. Actually, though, whenever he bent over to address the cue ball, he felt the hundred-dollar bill in his underwear.
'That Mr Pillsbury,' he said to Couth, still thinking that Bogus was named Pillsbury. 'What's he do for all his money?'
'He opens his mail once a month,' Couth said, thinking that Dante meant the Mr Pillsbury. Dante whistled, swore softly and sank the fiveball in the sidepocket, the cue ball gliding back to where he wanted it. Couth, who was wondering how Bogus could afford a chauffeur, said, 'That Mr Trumper, Dante - what's he do for all his money?'
'Twelveball down in the right corner,' Dante said. He never heard anything when he was planning a shot.
Couth was confused; he thought that perhaps Dante was being evasive. Looking out the picture window, he saw Biggie on the end of the dock, facing the ocean; by her moving hands he knew that she was talking. Ten feet away, leaning against the dock's mooring post, Bogus sat as still and silent as a barnacle - growing there, taking root.
Dante sent the cue ball whistling down the length of the table and socked the twelveball into the corner pocket, but Couth never turned from the window. Dante watched the cue ball nudge the ten away from the eight, then roll up cosily behind the fourteen, leaving him a perfect shot for the opposite corner. He was about to call it when Couth said something to the window.
'Tell him no,' Couth said. It was almost a whisper.
Dante watched Couth standing there. Jesus, he thought, he opens his fucking mail once a month and they're all crazy here, the two of them nutty for that big broad. I'm not shutting my eyes tonight, baby, and I'm not letting the fuck go of this pool cue, either ... But all Dante said was, 'It's your shot.'
'What?'
'It's your shot,' Dante said. 'I missed.'
Lying was the handicap system which Dante Calicchio had devised for himself.
I threw a snail off the dock. It went ploink! in the water, and I thought of how long it would take that snail to get back to dry land.
And you went on and on, Biggie.
Among all the other things, you said, 'Of course I can't stop caring for you. I care about you, Bogus. But Couth really cares about me.'
I threw three snails rapid-fire: Ploink! Ploink! Ploink!
You went on, Big. You said, 'You were gone such a long time! But after a while it wasn't the time you were gone that got to me, Bogus; it was the time when you were with me, as I remembered it, that I didn't like ...'
I found a cluster of barnacles with the heel of my hand and ground my palm down on them, grating it against them as if it were a cheese.
I said, 'I'll give you time, Big. All the time you want. If you want to stay here a while ...'
'I'm here for good,' you said, Big.
I ploinked! another snail. Then a fish slapped, a tern cried, an owl spoke, and, carried on that resonant air, across the bay a dog barked.
'You say,' I said, 'that Couth cares for you, and for Colm too. But what do you feel for Couth, Big?'
'It's hard to say,' you said, and you turned away and faced the bay. I thought you meant it was hard because you didn't have much feeling for him, but then you said, 'I care for him a lot.'
'Sex?' I said
'A lot,' you said. 'It's OK there, too.'
Ploink! Ploink!
'Don't make me tell you how much I love him, Bogus,' you said. 'I don't feel like hurting you. It's been a long time, and I don't feel so angry now.'