'You got it,' he said and reached under the bar.
'Ice?'
'Yeah. Lot of people hear him?'
'Pony?'
'Yeah.'
'When he threatened Steve Buckman?'
'It's my only hundred,' I said.
The bartender grinned.
'Can't blame me for trying,' he said. 'Sure, lot of people heard him. Bar was full. All the regulars.'
'J. George?' I said.
'Taylor?'
The bartender glanced at Bebe across the room and lowered his voice.
'Yeah he was here, and his crew. Barnes, Brown, the mayor.'
'Who else?' I said.
'Christ what am I, a computer? Billy Bates was here with his wife. Mr. and Mrs. Gordon. Ratliff the producer. Tom Paglia.'
He put my Perrier down on the little doily. I put a ten on the bar. He grinned.
'On the house,' he said.
The woman across from Bebe stood up. They shook hands. The woman took some of the papers and left. I moved over to her table as Bebe was sliding the remaining papers into her briefcase. She looked up as I sat down across from her.
'Well, hello,' she said.
'Hello.'
'I just sold a nice Spanish-style ranch to that woman,' Bebe said. 'She's from Flagstaff. Sick of the snow, I guess.'
'Hideous,' she said. 'Nearly everybody wants to sell, and nobody wants to buy, unless they're from out of town and don't know about the Dell.'
'And you don't feel obligated to tell them.'
'No, I don't,' she said. 'Real estate prices are dropping like a stone. They used to be really high, because there was nowhere to expand.'
'You're in the middle of nowhere,' I said. 'Why can't you expand?'
'It's all desert,' Bebe said. 'We've expanded to the limit of our water supply already.'
'What if you had enough water?'
'The Dell would ruin sales anyway.'
'What if the Dell were gone?'
Bebe smiled at me.
'I'd be selling real estate from early in the morning to really late at night,' she said.
'Anybody buying property these days?'
'George made a couple of sales to some developer,' she said. 'I think they'll lose their shirt.'
She paused and smiled and shrugged.
'But they're consenting adults,' she said.
'Caveat emptor,' I said.
The papers were stashed in her little black briefcase. She zipped the top closed and looked up at me from under her eyebrows.
'I was a little fuzzy, the last time I saw you,' she said. 'I shouldn't drink on a light breakfast.'
'None of us should,' I said. 'But sometimes we do.'
'Did we have a good time?' she said.
I tried to put a lecherous gleam in my eyes. It wasn't hard. I was good at lecherous.
'How quickly they forget,' I said.
'Was I alright?'
'You certainly were,' I said.
I wasn't as good at enthusiasm. But she didn't seem to notice.
'I hate not remembering. Maybe we should go over it again sometime.'
