The Triggerman Dance

They ask about Baum and he tells them. She has called him every day since it happened, with a truly transparent mixture of curiosity and sympathy. She simply cannot hear enough about John's time on Liberty Ridge. She is concerned, deeply, with his welfare. He can hear her computer keys clicking as they talk. He five-part series about Vann Holt's death began just yesterday, and is set to run over the next week. Baum has asked him, confidentially, if he would be interested in consulting with the producer she has chosen, or possibly using her agent. She has also arranged for the Journal to begin publishing his "Sporting Life" column; again if he should wish to write them, with the caveat that the Journal actually knows not enough people in the country are interested enough in fishing, hunting and camping to justify the space. She explained that the cost of newsprint has gone up sixty percent in six months and Orange County now is, for better or for worse, an urban environment.

"So basically, my articles wouldn't be worth the paper they're printed on," John explains, "Though for me, the Journal was willing to waste the paper."

Joshua looks at him blankly and Sharon giggles. "What did you say?" she asks.

"I said yes."

Joshua describes his new status at the Bureau, a status borne of the fact that he came awfully close to an internal investigation for the shooting. In the end, he explains, it was easier to endorse him than to question him, and he's now up a pay grade, with a promotion pending. The fact that he was the agent who took down the once-great Holt has left him with admirers as well as detractors in the Bureau ranks. He explains to John that the ranks are split, of course, by age.

Joshua leans back and sighs, smiling. It still isn't much of a smile by joy standards, thinks John. For every angel at Joshua's side, there's a demon on the other.

Josh leans in close. "By the way, John. My ear inside the DA's office says they're not going to press the Fargo matter. Open-and-shut case of self-defense, is what they're thinking."

"Well, that's what it was."

The silence becomes uneasy. "Tell me, Joshua," John says, "When you had Holt in your sights, and he had his revolver aimed at my brains, what made you shoot?"

Joshua shook his head quickly, either needing no thought to answer, or unwilling to entertain thought. "The knowledge that he'd kill you if I didn't."

"And what if he had?"

"I no longer live in the world of what-ifs. Rebecca taught me that."

Johns thinks: Holt. Snakey. Baum. Cost of newsprint. Pay grades. Some guy named Frazee. Open-and-shut. What-ifs.

Who gives a shit? In the beginning there was Rebecca and now she can begin to fade from our memories. Is that all we were in it for?

"To Rebecca," says Josh.

John again remembers the night on the deck of his canyon house when Josh was drunk and convinced that he had loved her more than John ever could. He remembers conceding this point as a way of offering some small victory that Joshua seemed to need far more than he did. In the same spirit he reluctantly raises his glass and considers a toast that to him demeans her memory as much as anything else they might do.

"I can't say that now."

So he puts down his glass and walks out.

By the time he gets to the Canyon house it is raining, hard. John can't remember ever getting this much rain before Thanksgiving and wonders if a record winter is coming. Good for the quail, he thinks.

Inside he takes off his coat and hat and places them over the couch. He goes straight to his answering machine to check messages. He's gotten a total of nine calls since coming back here—five from Baum, three from Joshua and one stranger asking him to subscribe to the Journal.

The message light is on and he wonders if it is a call from Valerie.

He goes back outside and stands in the rain for a long while, letting it get down under his clothes and against his skin, all through his hair. It's softer than tap water, he thinks. Good stuff. The dogs slide around like seals on the wet grass. He thinks of Rebecca in the rain, and then he thinks of only the rain.

Back inside he plays the message. It isn't from Valerie, but someday, he knows, it could be.

THE END