eating nails, in the rain.
“I wA thinking about brunch,” he said to her.
“Maybe Chili’s.”
Raises approached from the rear and wrapped his arms around her. He kissed her neck,
and found it wet, and a little sAy- West didn’t smile or respond or take the nails out of her
mouth. She hammered and didn’t want to be bothefod- He gave up, and leaned against
what she was building- He crossed his arms, and studied her as water dripped off Ac bill
of his Panthers baseball cap.
“I take it you’ve seen the paper,” he said.
He would bring that up, and she had no comment. She measured another space.
“This is an affirmative. Now I know a celebrity. Right there. This big on the front
page.” He exaggerated with his ha^ds, as if the morning paper with West in it was ten
feet tall- “Above the fold, too,” he went on.
“Good story. I’m impressed.”
she measured and hammered.
“Triith i8? I learned stuff even I didn’t know. Like the part about high school. Shelby
High. That you played on the boys’ tennis team for Coach Wagon? Never lost a matfh?
How ’bout that?”
He was more enchanted with her than ever, roaming her with his eyes and not getting
charged a dime a minute. She wA aware of this and feeling ripped off as she tasted metal
Ad hammered.
“Yoi1 go1 aA idea what it does to a guy to see a eood-loo^111^ woman in a tool belt?”
He finally got to his fe^h.
“It’s like when we roll up on a scene and you’re in that goddamn uniform. And I start thinking thoughts I shouldn’t, people bleeding to death. Right now I got it for you so bad
I’m busting out of my jeans.”
She slipped a nail from between her lips and looked at him, at his jeans. She rammed the
hammer into her belt, and it was the only tool that was going to be intimate with her this
day. Every Sunday, without fail, they had brunch, drank mimosas, watched TV in her
bed, and all he ever talked about was calls he had been on over the weekend, as if she
didn’t get enough blood and misery in her life. Raines was a doll, but boring.
“Go rescue somebody and leave me alone,” she suggested to him.
His smile and playfulness fled as rain fell in a curtain from heaven.
“What the hell did I do?” he complained.
Chapter Six.
West stayed outside in the rain alone, hammering, measuring, and building her fence as if
it were a symbol of what she felt about people and life. When her gate opened and shut
again at three p. m. ” she assumed it was Raines trying again. She slammed another nail
into wood and felt bad about the way she had treated him. He had meant no harm, and
her mood had nothing to do with him, really.
“W Niles could have done with the same consideration. He was in the window over the
kitchen sink, looking out at his owner in a flood. She was swinging something that
looked like it might hurt Niles if he got in her way. Niles had been minding his own
business earlier, walking in circles, kneading the covers, finding just the right warm spot
to settle on his owner’s chest. Next thing, he was an astronaut, a circus acrobat shot out of
a cannon. It was just a darn good thing he could land on his feet. He stared through
streaming water at
someone entering the yard from the north. Niles, the watch cat, had never seen this person, not once in his ancient feline life.
%< Brazil was aware of a skinny cat watching him from a window as he trespassed and West hammered, calling out to someone named Raines. "Look, I'm sorry, okay?" she was saying. "I'm in this mood." Brazil carried three thick Sunday papers wrapped in a dry-cleaning bag he had found in his closet. "Apology accepted," he said. West wheeled around, and fixed him in her sights, hammer mid-swing. "What the hell are you doing here?" She was startled and taken aback, and did her best to sound hateful.