The Two-Bear Mambo

station, and I don't pay it, he'll own the station. More coffee, fellas?'

Leonard and I declined. Tim offered us the pig's feet again, at a slightly reduced price, but we declined those as well.

'Let me ask you something,' I said. 'There anyplace we could rent a room for a few nights in this town?'

'I doubt it,' Tim said. 'I mean, I don't know.'

'You don't know?' Leonard said. 'Then let me ask you this. Where did Florida stay?'

Tim smiled, but the smile looked silly this time, not infectious. 'Why, out at my mother's place.'

Chapter 10

About noon, we bought some sandwich makings, and Tim called his mother, tried to get us a place to stay. Turned out his mother owned a few trailers she rented out, and one was avail­able.

'I like you fellas and all,” Tim said after the phone call,” but way it works, needing money like I do, you pay Mom, and you pay me a little finder's fee.”

'What's a little?' Leonard asked.

'Fifty dollars.”

'That's a little!' I said.

'It's how much it's gonna be you stay at Mom's trailer park.”

Leonard grumbled, paid the fifty in two twenties and a ten.

'Florida pay you a finder's fee?' Leonard asked.

'You betcha,” Tim said, folding his money into his wallet. ”I never claimed I was a philanthropist.'

Tim decided to close up and guide us out to his mom's place. He told us he had planned to stay open Christmas Day, partly out of boredom, and out of the fact he could snag a few extra dollars by being the only place available in town to pick up gas and goods, but the weather being the way it was, that turned out to be a pipe dream.

Still, bad as it was, it had slacked some, and we took the mo­ment to get started. Tim drove an old four- wheel-drive, green, broad wheel-base pickup with gaudy tail flaps. One flap had the silhouette of a naked silver lady on it. The other would have had the same but it was ripped in half, leaving only the lady's head.

We followed in Leonard's heap, and as we drove, Leonard said,” He could have told us up front Florida had been staying with his mother.”

'I think he was just being cautious,” I said. ”Watching out for Florida. Remember, he was mum until he asked if we were kin, boyfriends, or bill collectors? I think he didn't want to bring shit down on Florida, if he could keep from it. Or maybe he was watching out for his mother. Either way, I think he was being considerate. And remember, he didn't have to tell us dick.”

'I don't like the dude.”

'Really? He seems all right. Maybe a little too self-consciously folksy, but okay.”

'A fifty-dollar finder's fee? I don't give a shit about his child­hood money problems. I give a shit about my fifty dollars he's got.”

'You are the most suspicious sonofabitch I have ever known, Leonard. He's a little overly money-conscious, and he strikes me as a would-be cock dog, but neither of those things are exactly criminal.”

'Yeah, well doesn't he make you feel kind of creepy, him talk­ing all that good ole boy bullshit?'

'Only thing creepy is how easy it is for me to do it too.”

'There's some truth.”

'Yeah. Well, what about that cockroaches can't play basket­ball thing?'

'I like that one,” Leonard said. ”But that aside, if Florida stayed out here, you got to bet this guy was sniffing her ass reg­ular like.”

'He may have wanted her, but trust me, my friend, if this gal doesn't want to put up with bullshit, she has a way of dealing with you that'll make you feel knee high to a cricket pretty quick. And maybe it takes a heterosexual to understand what I'm getting at, but this lady, young as she is, pretty as she is, she isn't any babe in the woods. Not about men, anyway. Maybe about other things, but trust me, she's got an A+ in Dealing With Men.”

'All right. There's some more truth. I saw Florida drag you around by your ying-yang some, that's for sure.”

'I ain't proud of it.”

'Nor should you be.”

One minute it was gray and damp, the heater humming, keeping us warm, the wipers thumping almost happily, and sud­denly the sky went black as night and the rain fell down in silver sheets thick as corrugated tin. The air in the car turned cool and the heater moaned as if dying of pneumonia, the wipers swiped at the rain like a drowning victim trying to tread water.

Got so bad, Tim pulled over to the side of the road and sat in his truck. We pulled up behind him and sat too, waited. It was a full forty-five minutes before the rain subsided enough for us to continue, and as we drove on, slowly, I looked out my side, watched as we crawled past an old gray clapboard building. It was long and low-built and the walls were leaning, and you could tell the floor had long since lost its battle against gravity and was lying flat on the ground, the old support blocks having shifted and sunk. Through one of the windows I could see an unlit Christmas tree tilting to port, and an unlit neon sign over the front door that was impossible to read through the slash and thrash of the rain.