"Marshall Weathers," he said, his voice deep and businesslike.

I hung up.

A few moments later the phone rang, echoing through the cavernous room. I jumped and stared at it. I started to reach for it, and changed my mind. I couldn't do it. What if it was him? "You're being ridiculous," I said aloud. The phone continued to ring but I walked away. Calling Weathers was a bad idea.

"I'm making a big deal out of nothing, probably," I said to the empty room. "I'll get my locks fixed. I'll just go over and pick Sheila up after school. Between me and Vernell, we can watch her. If somebody lays a hand on my baby, me and Vernell'll kill him."

That was the right decision. If I left it up to the police, they might not watch her like I could. They might figure I wasn't telling them the truth, and my little girl would be caught in the middle. That is, if Sheila were even in danger. Chances were, it was just a Nosy Parker with too much time on his hands, looking to scare someone.

I ran upstairs, took a quick shower, and threw on a pair of jeans and a purple sweatshirt. Eventually, despite what I'd told Weathers, I was going to have to go back into my house, even if it was only to pick up more of my belongings. I wedged on a pair of tan suede, low-top cowgirl boots and ran down the stairs. Weathers was leaning against my car when I stepped out into the bright fall afternoon.

"Ever hear tell of Caller ID?" he said.

"So, when I hung up you got my number?"

"It ain't rocket science," he said.

I jammed my hands in the back pockets of my jeans and stood on the dock staring at him. It was just as well that we were both wearing sunglasses. I couldn't see those powerful blue eyes and he couldn't look through mine and see what I was feeling. He stood there, his arms folded, smiling. I figured he was feeling right proud of himself.

"So, what'd you want to talk to me about?" he asked.

"It wasn't anything much," I said. I took my time walking down the steps and over toward him. "If it'd been worth bothering you about, I'd have stayed on the line. As it was, I simply changed my mind. So you ran over here for nothing, and I hate it for you."

The smile never left his face but that little muscle began to jump in his jaw. He looked at his watch, then back at me.

"It's past lunchtime," he said. "You eat yet?"

My stomach growled. "No." I was close enough to touch him if I'd wanted to. For an instant the idea crossed my mind. What would it be like to touch him? He stood there, still smiling, waiting and not saying a word. It was up to me, somehow I just knew it.

"You want to go grab a bite?" I said. I didn't look at him when I spoke. It wasn't that obvious; I let my eyes wander to a spot just below his collarbone. The man made me nervous, or else I'd had too much coffee.

"Sure," he said, like a teacher who's been waiting on a student to come up with an obvious answer. "That'd be fine. Where you got in mind?"

Weathers was never going to be a man to use two words when one would do. I tried to think of where to go, and could only remember the last place we'd been, the only place we'd ever been together. "Yum-Yums'll do, I reckon."

He nodded, the decision made. He didn't even ask if I wanted to drive. He simply headed for his car, unlocked the door, and waited.

"I don't feel like driving anyway," I muttered to myself. "Use his gas."

He was talking on his cell phone as we drove off, a series of grunts and "uh-huhs" that gave me almost no indication of whether the call was business or personal. He cut across town, heading for lunch, his driving as clean and spare as his conversation. I was a shameless eavesdropper. I stared out the window, tried to act disinterested, and listened as hard as I could.

"Yeah, uh-huh, well, I know that." He leaned his head to the left, balancing the cell phone while he turned down the radio. "I know that, too," he said, but this time he seemed a little impatient "Here's what you do," he said. "You tell her I said no. She'll understand that." He listened for a moment, grunted something I couldn't make out, and hung up.

For a moment he seemed to have forgotten that I was even in the ear. He had pulled into Yum-Yums, and now sat with the ear in park, his arms folded across the steering wheel, staring at the brick wall in front of him.

"Trouble at work?" I asked after a minute, in which we sat stone silent in his car.

He didn't jump perceptibly, but he came back from wherever he'd been and looked across at me.

"Come on, let's get us a hot dog," he said. He didn't answer the question.

"Must've been personal," I murmured to myself, not that there was any logic involved in that deduction. Just call it woman's intuition. I wondered who the "she" was that he'd said would understand "no."

I wondered about it the whole way up to the counter. I placed my order, almost without having to think, and went back to speculating about Weathers. I knew what I was doing. I was putting off the inevitable. I was going to have to talk about Sheila. I could feel it building up in me like a storm. My mother's intuition told me that the voice on the other end of the phone had meant to scare me, and also to threaten my daughter.

If Weathers knew what I was doing, he didn't comment. He seemed lost in his own thoughts. We took our hot dogs and walked to a booth across the room, under a chart showing a World War II aircraft carrier. He carefully unwrapped his hot dog, grabbed a couple of napkins out of the dispenser and handed me one. Then he focused on eating.

We sat for a couple of minutes in complete silence, until I couldn't stand it any longer. There was no one in the booths nearby, no other conversation to listen in on, and no distractions to keep me from talking.

"So, how'd you come to be at the Golden Stallion the night I auditioned?" I asked. A harmless question.

"Is that what you called me to ask?" He quit eating and sat perfectly still, waiting.

I felt myself turn red. "No, I'm just making polite conversation, that's all." He still didn't say anything. "I mean, you haven't been in since that night, that I'm aware of. I just wondered."

"Keep careful track of the Golden Stallion patrons, do you?"

I gave up. Shook my head in disgust and took a sip of my soda, only to have it misfire and go up my nose. I choked and coughed, my eyes watering with the effort to regain control of my windpipe. He laughed. Laughed so hard, I finally had to join in, and we laughed until I realized I was losing control and on the verge of tears.

"Okay," he said, suddenly reaching across the table, his fingers stretching to cover mine, "why did you call?"

"Someone threatened my daughter. I know you may not believe that, that's why I hung up. I just didn't know who else to call and I had to talk to someone."

He straightened up, his fingers edging back into his lap. It was business now;

"What do you mean?" he asked.

I looked back at him, right into his eyes. He was really listening, and so I told him about the phone call. My voice shook, my hands trembled, and I felt cold, even though the steam from hundreds of hot dogs filled the tiny restaurant. I was so afraid.

He leaned back against the booth, his head cocked slightly to the left, listening as I went through the details of the phone call. He didn't laugh at me or make light of the threat. He just nodded, as if he was all too familiar with threatening phone calls.

"So, do you think this is something I should take seriously, or was it a crank call?"

"I don't know," he said. "Could be either. I don't think you oughta go getting totally paranoid, but I don't think you can just dismiss it, either." He smiled slightly. "You tick anybody off lately?"

I almost came up off of my seat. "Of course I ticked someone off, Weathers," I said. "Someone's so ticked at me that they're trying to make me out to be a murderer! And if that fails, they're gonna flat out kill me! I know that's not exactly what you want to hear, but it's God's honest truth." I didn't give him the opportunity to deny it.