'How are you?'
They shook hands, and she put her cheek out. Jesse kissed it lightly.
'Fine,' Jesse said.
'You look great.'
Behind her Jesse could see the guy in the seersucker suit order drinks from a waitress. He was nearly bald, with what remained of his hair cut short.
'Thanks, you too. How are you and Jenn getting on?'
Jesse shrugged.
'She came back because I was in trouble. Now I'm not in trouble. She hasn't been around much. Suit tells me he saw her doing the weather on Channel Three.'
'So you're not together?'
'God no,' Jesse said.
'But you're not fully apart,' Abby said.
'Are you?'
'I guess not,' Jesse said.
'That the new boyfriend?'
'Chip? Maybe. We've been dating for a while.'
'Chip?' Jesse said.
'I know, but he's really nice. He knows about us. Want to meet him?'
'No,' Jesse said.
The young waitress with the tight cutoffs came out of the kitchen with a basket of clams and walked past them toward the deck. Jesse watched her. Abby smiled.
'Good to see you've not lost all interest,' Abby said.
'I don't think that's possible,' Jesse said.
'Well...' Abby paused a moment, thinking of what to say.
'I
| hope you and Jenn work it out, whatever way is best for you.'
'When we got divorced I thought we had,' Jesse said.
'One would have thought that,' Abby said and patted his hand | lightly where it rested on the bar.
'Take care of yourself.'
'You too,' Jesse said.
He watched her as she walked back to sit down with Chip. Chip | looked over at him and nodded in a friendly way. Fuck you, Chip.
'Better hit me again, Doc,' Jesse said.
The second drink tasted better than the first. Jesse held it up so that the light shown through it. The ice cubes were crystalline. The IF I drink was golden with scotch and quick with carbonation.
'You know a family in town named Hopkins?'
'Yeah. He's some kind of financial consultant, I think.'
'Kids?'
'They got a couple,' Doc said.
'Kids are real assholes.'
'Lot of that going around,' Jesse said.
'Yeah, all fifteen-year-old kids are probably assholes,' Doc said.
'But these kids are worse. You know I got a lobster boat.'
Jesse nodded.
'I caught them one day stealing lobsters out of my boat while II was in the wharf office for a minute.'
'Maybe they were having a clam bake,' Jesse said.
'They weren't taking them. They weren't even throwing them back. They were stealing them and throwing them up onto the deck | of some guy's Chris-Craft.'
'So the lobsters die and the guy's boat gets messed up and you lose money and all they get out of it is the pleasure of being pricks,' Jesse said.
' Jesse, you're wasting your time as a cop. You should be a child psychologist,' Doc said.
'I wanted to drown the little fuckers.'
