'Sure. You know, he's healing up fast. Moving around pretty good. 'Cept for his leg. You should go by and see him.'
'I will.'
Charlie sipped the last of his coffee, put the cup in the sink, said, 'Sometimes, under stress, guys close as skin and bone can feel a kind of, I don't know, postpartum-style depression.'
'Neither Leonard nor I have recently given birth, Charlie.'
'Postpartum Scary Event Syndrome.'
'What?'
'I just made that up. Say something bad happens to a couple guys and they survive it, and these guys are real close, and danger makes them even closer. Am I goin' too fast?'
'I think I can manage, if I concentrate real hard.'
'This scary business is over, these two guys, they kind of divorce each other, find reasons not to be together, blame each other, outside sources, 'cause when the two them get together, they connect with a bad memory.'
'You trying to say something about me and Leonard, Char¬lie?'
'I'm sayin' maybe you and Leonard have seen something in each other or yourselves you didn't know was there. It's like them movie star marriages.'
'Now there's a jump.'
'Woman marries some guy wants to be an actor, big star. She knows him when he's down and out, crying at night 'cause he can't make it in the industry, or maybe he can't get a hard-on he's so depressed. She knows he cuts big ones in the toilet and fills their little two-room apartment with shit stink, and they can't even afford the goddamn matches that need to be struck to burn out the smell. Then, this guy, who wipes his butt just like everyone else, he hits the big time. Feels he's got to get rid of the old wife on account of she knew him when he wasn't quite so glamorous. Now he's got the big house and a shitter in a room about the size of the old apartment, got some blowers, de-stinkers, whatever that stuff is, and he's able to separate himself from some of the human problems. Stays hard all the time 'cause he's got nothing but big-tittied young blondes coming in and out of his bed trying to see who best can grease his sausage. Everyone tells him he's wonderful, a goddamn god. So he don't want someone around who's seen him at his worst, his most human, knows what he knows—that he ain't no god. He's just a regular guy and no better than anyone else.'
'I've known Leonard for years, and I know his shit stinks. I've been with him through thick and thin and neither one of us has hit the big time, so we don't have to worry about that angle. I'm just worn down, that's all. I don't feel like visiting. Fact is, I'm sort of waiting on you to leave.'
'Sure you haven't got some kind of tobacco?'
'I'm sure.'
Charlie nodded, scratched his temple, looked at some dandruff under his fingernail, wiped it on his pants and leaned against the sink. 'Let me see now,' he said. 'I had some kind of point. Oh yeah. Thing is, instead of the big time, two of you thought you were invincible.'
'I never said that I was invincible.'
'No, but you thought it. Leonard did anyway, and I think you thought he was invincible on some level. Could take anything and come out on top. And when the two of you are together, well, you're like the biggest dogs in the junkyard. But you ain't. You're just two dogs and there's always someone bigger, smarter, and meaner.'
'I owe you for this session?'
'First session's free. Maybe you've seen little shadows, chinks in your and Leonard's armor, and you don't like it. It's nothing to be ashamed of. No one is anything better than human. Just some humans are better humans than others, but the best humans are still just human. In the end, we all end up like that squirrel out there.'
'Save it for the Rotary, man.'
'Sometimes you got to look shadows in the eye, or see if they've got eyes. You don't, they flutter around you from then on.'
'You're hittin' all over the place, and isn't any of it on target.'
'Keep a gun around at night, Hap? I don't mean in the house, I mean close by. You do that, man? Something you're constantly aware of, this gun?'
'Hell no. Why would I?'
'It's just I saw one stuffed under the couch cushion. You got to not get in such a hurry, you hide somethin', Hap. Got to take your time and do it right.'
'You don't know everything, Charlie.'
'Yeah, you're right, I'm an asshole. I know this though, you throw a shovelful of dirt over that squirrel, when the rain stops and the wind's blowin', he won't stink so much.'
There was a sudden hard wave of rain. It washed over the house in a torrent, sounded goddamn spooky. Charlie looked at the ceiling, as if he might actually see the rain pounding the roof, said, 'God, it keeps coming and no end in sight. Think this rain'll ever stop?'
I shook my head. 'No, Charlie. I don't.'
Chapter 26
I didn't call Leonard after Charlie left. I didn't call him all that day, and didn't call him the next either. I sat with my gun and went through my routine. I thought about what Charlie had said and got real mad, then realized he was closer to the truth than I wanted to believe.
