Marcy stirred her coffee. “I’m older than you are,” Marcy
said.
“Which gives you the right to offer me advice,” Jesse
said.
“Yes. It’s a rule.”
“And you advise me,” Jesse said,
“to forget about
Jenn.”
“I do,” Marcy said.
Jesse cut off a corner of his omelet and ate it and drank some coffee and patted his lips with his napkin.
“Is there anyone advising you otherwise?”
Marcy
said.
“No.”
“If you resolved this thing with Jenn,”
Marcy said, “maybe you
could put the drinking issue away too, and just be a really good police chief.”
“I’ve never been drunk on the
job,” Jesse said.
“You’ve never been drunk on the job
here,” Marcy
said.
“Good point,” Jesse said softly.
“It got you fired in LA,” Marcy said.
“After you broke up with
Jenn in LA. And you came here to start over.”
Jesse nodded.
Marcy said, “So?”
“So?”
“So Jenn followed you here and you still struggle with booze,”
Marcy said. “Maybe there’s a connection.”
Jesse ate some more of his omelet.
“You think anyone in Mexico ever ate an omelet like this?” he
said.
“Are you suggesting I shut up?”
Jesse smiled at her and drank some coffee from the big white porcelain mug like the ones they had used in diners when he was a kid, in Tucson.
Jesse shook his head.
“No,” he said. “Your advice is
good. It’s just not good for
me.”
“Because?”
“I will not give up on Jenn until she gives up on me,” Jesse
said.
“Isn’t that giving her a license to do whatever she wants to and
hang on to you?”
“Yes,” Jesse said. “It
is.”
Marcy stared at him.
“How does it make you feel that she’s sleeping with other men?”
Marcy said.
