“He asked me to leave, but I know I rattled him.”

“Did you mention me?”

“Not by name.”

“Shit, Les.” I laughed again.

“You can tell he’s used to giving orders all day long too. I think you were right—he probably buys up seized property just to make a killing. I did the right thing. He’s scum.”

“You think he’ll call the department?”

“Not really. It’s his word against mine. Besides, as far as he knows, I’m a Mexican named Gonzalez.”

We both laughed hard, though what he said wasn’t that funny. I was starting to feel like anything was possible again, and I think he probably did too. And that’s what we seemed to have with each other, wasn’t it? The feeling we could start out new again, clean, all our debts cleared.

At the storage shed in San Bruno, he held the flashlight while I went through my things for all we needed. We could hear a live band at the truck-stop bar next to the El Rancho Motel, a woman singing at the mike. I put the pillows and folded sheets in the backseat, and everything else in the trunk. My fingers were black from the hibachi and I went back inside the shed and wiped them off on some newspaper. I called out to Lester that I didn’t want to go back to the camp yet. He said he didn’t either but he couldn’t go anywhere in his uniform. I took his flashlight and found one of Nick’s blue button-down shirts. It was wrinkled and probably too big for Lester but he put it on anyway, the waist baggy when he tucked it in, the sleeves too short. He took off his gun belt and put it in the trunk, then stood there in just his police pants and those black shoes and that wrinkled shirt. I laughed. “You look like a laid-off security guard.”

He laughed back, put me in a gentle headlock, and kissed my forehead.

We didn’t drive far, just across the street to the truck-stop bar, which was crowded for a Monday night, mainly with truckers in work jeans, their T-shirts stretched tight at the gut. Some of them sat at small black cocktail tables with the wives or girlfriends they kept on the road, women who were dressed just like the men, some in matching T-shirts from rodeos or traveling carnivals. The floor, walls, and ceiling were painted black and the main light came from the theater lamps hanging over the band and the short plywood stage and small parquet dance floor. That end of the room was all red, orange, and green and the rest of us were in the shadows.

Les and I sat at one of the tables against the wall not far from the band, which was playing an up-tempo country song. He went up to the bar to get us something, and I lit a cigarette, a little preoccupied with what he’d bring me back to drink, and I watched a couple dancing out on the floor, a heavy man and woman, both in cowboy boots, jeans, and dark T-shirts, moving fast to the music.

Les came back to the table with a full pitcher of beer and two glasses. He poured me some until the foam started to flow over the top and I had to sit back and drink a third of it down. It was ice-cold and washed the cigarette taste from my mouth and throat. Les finished pouring for himself and he smiled at me, clinking his glass to mine, but the band was too loud for us to talk over so he turned sideways in his chair and we both watched the older couple dance. The band’s lead singer was pretty, only twenty-five or-six years old. She had curly red hair—or at least it looked that color under the stage lights—and she wore tight jeans and her singing voice was really strong. The bass player was bald, closer to forty than thirty; I tried to picture Nick playing in a band like this, in a place like this, but I couldn’t. One of the nights when I told him he should try and get a job with a local group, maybe play in the clubs, he just shook his head at me and asked if I’d already forgotten what the B in BEAST stood for. I told him no, I hadn’t, but I felt ashamed of myself. Clubs were nothing but a Boozing opportunity. But now, as I finished my first mug of beer and Les filled my second, my head loose on my neck, I was sure fear of drinking had nothing to do with why Nick never took his bass guitar out to an audition; like most addicts, he had the worst fear of all, that his dreams would actually come true.

And I hadn’t been in a barroom—warm and dark, loud and full of smoke—since I was a user working at the Tip Top with Jimmy Doran. But I felt okay because there wasn’t a white snake in sight and that time seemed so long ago anyway, almost like somebody else had lived it, and now I had a mature man in my life, and not some addict trying to hang his own recovery on me. I looked at Lester’s dark profile against the tangerine light in front of us, his deep eyes and small nose, the mustache under it. I drank most of my second beer and refilled my mug. The pitcher was getting light and I wanted Les to get us another one. He was such a serious man, and I knew he would get me back into my house and I wanted to make it worthwhile to him. I knew he was hurting over his kids. I wondered what it must be like to have children you have to live away from now because you no longer wanted their mother or father, and I got a nice picture in my head of his son and daughter visiting us at my house, sleeping in the guest room, or maybe even with us. I finished my beer, then poured myself some more, Lester too. He smiled at me and I held up the empty pitcher, but Les nodded at the dance floor that now held two more couples, and he stood up and took my hand and I was already feeling the alcohol, and I followed Lester Burdon out to the middle of the floor.

I WOKE UP to a patch of sunlight on my face. It came through the tree branches outside the loft window, and I turned over and kicked the sheet away. I was naked, sweating, and my mouth was so dry that when I tried to swallow, my tongue clicked a second to the roof of my mouth. I smelled coffee, which turned my stomach, and I could hear the crack of the woodfire going in the stove downstairs. I didn’t hear Les moving around anywhere. I had to pee, but I wanted something very cold and sweet to drink, watermelon juice or mango. I remembered Lester driving the Bonneville after we left the bar long after midnight. I was sitting low in the passenger’s seat, watching his face in the light of the speedometer as he drove, as he kept saying he was drunk but he wanted me, he wanted me so badly. Then we were parked off the Cabrillo Highway in the dark behind a beach shop, making love in the front seat. I must’ve been dry, because now I felt chafed, and I didn’t remember getting from there to here. When I sat up, my head felt topheavy and my eyes hurt.

I pulled on my underwear, shorts, and Nick’s button-down shirt Lester wore last night and I went barefoot downstairs. The tin pot of coffee was on the cool half of the stove, though it was still steaming, and I took a paper napkin and stepped out onto the porch. Lester wasn’t anywhere, the sun bright on the trees and brush. I only walked as far as the woodpile before I squatted and peed, closing my eyes to all the daylight, smelling the split wood. I wanted four aspirin and a Coke, an air-conditioned movie. It was Tuesday, my day off from cleaning. Maybe Les would want to go with me, maybe even see two back to back.

I was brushing my teeth on the porch, using a cup of ice water from the cooler to rinse, when he walked up the trail from the river. He was bare-chested, his black hair wet and dripping, an empty coffee cup in one hand, his T-shirt in the other. He smiled and asked me if I slept well. I was rolling water and toothpaste foam around in my mouth, and I turned away from him to spit it over the porch railing. I wanted to be in a bathroom. I wanted a hot shower, a clean mirror, and a locked door. I didn’t know how I looked when I turned back to him, but I hoped it was better than I felt. I wondered if he had a hangover like I did, but I didn’t want to ask; I didn’t want to draw any attention to my drinking. “I slept like a dead person. You?”