He didn’t want to live in a trailer park, hated the very idea, but it was all he could afford after the divorce. Not that his wife had cleaned him out, she hadn’t; she had merely taken what was hers, which amounted to practically everything of value in the marriage. Except for the cameras. In aggregate, R. J. Decker’s camera equipment was worth twice as much as the trailer where he lived. He took no special steps to protect or conceal the cameras because virtually all his trailer-park neighbors owned free-running pit bulldogs, canine psychopaths that no burglar dared to challenge.
For some reason the neighbors’ dogs never bothered Catherine. Decker was printing film when she dropped by. As soon as he let her in the door, she wrinkled her nose. “Yuk! Hypo.” She knew the smell of the fixer.
“I’ll be done in a second,” he said, and slipped back into the darkroom. He wondered what was up. He wondered where James was. James was the chiropractor she had married less than two weeks after the divorce.
The day Catherine had married Dr. James was also the day Decker had clobbered the burglar. Catherine had always felt guilty, as if she’d lighted the fuse. She’d written him two or three times a month when he was at Apalachee; once she’d even mailed a Polaroid of herself in a black bra and panties. Somehow it got by the prison censor. “For old times,” she’d printed on the back of the snapshot, as a joke. Decker was sure Dr. James had no idea. Years after the marriage Catherine still called or stopped by, but only at night and never on weekends. Decker always felt good for a little while afterward.
He washed a couple of eight-by-tens and hung the prints from a clothesline strung across the darkroom. He could have turned on the overheads without harm to the photographs, but he preferred to work in the red glow of the safelight. Catherine tapped twice and came in, shutting the door quickly. She knew the routine.
“Where’s the mister?” Decker asked.
“Tampa,” Catherine said. “Big convention. Every other weekend is a big convention. What’ve we got here?” She stood on her toes and studied the prints. “Who’s the weight-lifter?”
“Fireman out on ninety-percent disability.”
“So what’s he doing hulking out at Vie Tanny?”
“That’s what the insurance company wants to know,” Decker said.
“Pretty dull stuff, Rage.” Sometimes she called him Rage instead of R. J. It was a pet name that had something to do with his temper. Decker didn’t mind it, coming from Catherine.
“I’ve got a good one cooking,” he said.
“Yeah? Like what?”
She looked great in the warm red light. Catherine was a knockout. Was, is, always will be. An expensive knockout.
“I’m investigating a professional fisherman,” Decker said, “for cheating in tournaments. Allegedly.”
“Come on, Rage.”
“I’m serious.”
Catherine folded her arms and gave him a motherly look. “Why don’t you ask the paper for your old job back?”
“Because the paper won’t pay me a hundred large to go fishing.”
Catherine said, “Wow.”
She smelled wonderful. She knew Decker liked a certain perfume so she always wore it for him—what was the name? He couldn’t remember. Something fashionably neurotic. Compulsion, that was it. A scent that probably wouldn’t appeal to Dr. James, at least Decker hoped not. He wondered if Catherine was still on the same four-ounce bottle he’d bought for her birthday three years ago.
Decker tweezered another black-and-white of the goldbrick fireman out of the fixer and rinsed it down.
“No pictures of fish?” Catherine asked.
“Not yet.”
“Somebody is really gonna pay you a hundred thousand?”
“Well, at least fifty. That’s if I get what he wants.”
She said, “What are you going to do with all that money?”
“Try to buy you back.”
Catherine’s laugh died in her throat. She looked hurt. “That’s not really funny, R.J.”
“I guess not.”
“You didn’t mean it, did you?”
“No, I didn’t mean it.”
“You’ve got a nasty streak.”
“I was beaten as a child,” Decker said.
“Can we get out of here? I’m getting high on your darn chemicals.”
Decker took her to a barbecue joint on South Dixie Highway. Catherine ordered half a chicken and iced tea, he had beer and ribs. They talked about a thousand little things, and Decker thought about how much fun it was to be with her, still. It wasn’t a sad feeling, just wistful; he knew it would go away. The best feelings always did.