Looking into her sleepy brown bedroom eyes. Shit.

"Was it a girl?"

"It was nobody. Eleven's when I felt the need to start kissin'. It wasn't till I was in Young Boys, twelve going on twenty-one, I had any pussy. You in Young Boys you have pussy in your face all the time, big-girl pussy. You ain't had none by the time you thirteen, you homasexual."

"You think you talk street it turns me on." "Doesn't it?"

She said, "Come on," and took him by the arm into the sitting room-Robert checking out the bottle of white in the ice bucket, two bottles of red and the basket of popcorn on the table where the lamp was on low-taking him toward the sofa in her kimono, this girl who could stride down a runway to the disco beat and turn you on.

"Did you see Jerry?"

"He's playing dice. Winning." "He always wins."

"Wuz wrong with that?" Robert smiling again. "You ever see that interview with Miles-the man goes, `Then we come to the lowest point in your career, when you were pimping,' and Miles says in his voice, 'Wuz wrong with that?' "

The door to the balcony was open. Robert steered Anne toward it saying, "Let's see what's happening," looked out at the night, the ladder a gray shape against the sky, the grounds around the tank dark, and said, "Nothing." Somebody was down there, maybe Dennis, but Robert couldn't make him out for sure.

Anne's hand was under his sweater again moving over his back. "Was he winning big?"

"Not enough that he'd stop."

"You think we have time?"

Across the lawn spotlights came on and Robert said, "There it is," the ladder and tank lit up top to bottom now. He saw Dennis in his red trunks and almost said his name and pointed to him. Instead, he said, "We got time."

Anne said, "It doesn't look so high."

" 'Cause we're as high as it is. Get down on the ground and look up, it's high."

She said, "What if Jerry walks in?"

"Put the chain on the door."

"Then he'd know for sure."

"You're in there taking a nap. I'm out on the balcony watching the show. He won't say nothing, he trusts me."

She kept staring at him with those eyes, liking the idea.

"We ever been caught? He trusts me," Robert said,” 'cause he needs me to make things happen."

He kissed her on the cheek and said, "Go on get in the bed."

She slipped her hand from under his sweater and gave his butt a pat as she walked away, Robert looking out at the tank again.

He saw lights come on in the pitching cage, Chickasaw Charlie standing there with a young woman-the TV woman, 'cause now a dude with a video camera had come out of the cage and another one carrying a couple of black cases, yeah, the TV woman's soundman. Now all four of them were heading toward the tank.

Robert looked at his watch. Five of nine, the show in twenty minutes. He walked out on the balcony to stand at the rail and looked down to see a good crowd on the patio having drinks and people straggling out on the lawn and coming out of the trees from the parking lot, some of them carrying their lawn chairs. Chickasaw Charlie was talking to Dennis now in his red trunks, the TV woman and her technicians waiting close by to interview him.

Anne's voice reached him from the bedroom. "Hey-are we gonna do it or not?"

Annabanana's Indian love call. It was funny how his mind was always on something else when she called and he always called back, "I'm halfway there, baby."

9

DENNIS SAID, "I'M STUCK WITH YOU calling the dives again? Tell me you're kidding."

Charlie shook his head. "She's too nervous, afraid she'll screw up. You don't know Vernice like I do," Charlie said. "She has to do things her own way, how she's always done it. You give her something different, she gets confused." Charlie stepped to one side then saying, "Dennis, say hello to Diane Corrigan-Cochrane, the anchor lady at Channel Five, the Eyes and Ears of the North Delta. Diane, meet the world champion high diver, Dennis Lenahan."

Dennis smiled at her saying, "You ever call dives?"

Diane said, "Like announce what you're doing?"

Quick and perky, a cute blonde not more than thirty in her khaki shorts and white blouse, slim legs, tan feet in sandals.

"All there is to it," Dennis said. "You want to? I think Charlie has the script." Dennis turned to him. "Charlie, please tell me you brought it."

Charlie pulled the script, folded the long way, from his waist in back. "I can help her, show her what to say." He handed the script to Diane. "You read the parts that're checked. Like you tell everybody to stand back from the tank, so they don't get splashed? He's got his dives, what he'll do, numbered, one, two, three…"

Diane was looking at the script now. "Where will I be?"

"About where you are," Dennis said.

"I won't be on camera, will l?"

"You can have the camera go to you if you want."

She looked up from the script. "You're the show, Dennis, not me. I have a camera on me every day."

He liked her anchor-lady voice, calm and just a touch nasal. She had a cute nose and some freckles, a country girl. "You from around here, Diane?"

" Memphis. I was a deejay with a hard rock station. I hated all that chatter, so I quit."

"I trained as a blackjack dealer once," Dennis said, "but only worked a few days. I didn't like the outfit they made you wear." Letting Diane know he was as independent as she was.

"You'd rather show off your body," Diane said. "Why not? I know the girls think you're hot." She glanced at the script again. "Okay, I'll do it-if I can have a few minutes alone with you first."

"For an interview," Dennis said.

She gave him a flirty look, having fun with him. "What else would I have in mind? I'll ask how you got into high diving. What it's like to go off from up there… "

He said, "You know what the tank looks like?"

"I'd imagine about the size of a teacup," Diane said, "but save it till we're on."

Another teacup. It made him think of Billy Darwin and wonder if she had talked to him. But now she was walking over to the side of the tank, looking at the scaffolding that supported the threemeter board. She turned to him saying, "Is that where the guy was shot? Under there?"

Dennis hesitated. "It's what I was told."

She said, "Oh? I thought you were up on the ladder, you saw the whole thing."

"No, uh-unh. Where'd you hear that?"

She seemed to think about it before saying, "Someone heard it in a bar and told someone else. You know, passed it along. I'm trying to remember who told me. It might've been someone in the sheriff's office. I talk to the staff there a lot." Diane the TV lady kept staring at him. "If it was true-boy, wouldn't that be a story."

Robert had opened the bottle from the ice bucket and poured two glasses, Pouilly-Fuisse, Anne's drink. The red was Jerry's. They were on the balcony now, the show already going on.

Across the way in the lights, Dennis, in black Speedos, stood on the three-meter board. Over the speakers a woman's voice was telling the crowd, "Next, a three and a half forward somersault… And there he goes."

Robert said, "How's he have time to do all that in the air?"

"Perfect execution," the woman's voice said. "Wait until he's out of the pool… Okay, and now let's hear it for our world champion Dennis Lenahan, the pride of the Big Easy, New Orleans, Louisiana, where Dennis prepped at Loyola before turning professional. Dennis is going up to the forty-foot level now. I'll warn you, anyone within ten feet of the tank may be splashed. That will be our splash zone here at Tishomingo Lodge and Casino's inaugural high dive show. Dennis is ready now. And there he goes."

"Beautiful," Robert said.

Anne sipped her wine. "How would you know?"