'Not really. What I know so far I like.'

'Not a thing, huh?'

'Can't think of anything off the top of my head right now.'

'Let me go ahead and get it out of the way, then, all right? My mother was Puerto Rican and my father was black. I'm comfortable in a few different worlds and sometimes I'm not comfortable in any of them.'

'I didn't ask you that.'

'You didn't ask me that yet.'

'What I mean is, I don't care.'

'You don't care tonight. Tonight there's only attraction and do we connect. But this world we got out here and the people in it, right now, they're not gonna let us not care. Like those two guys over there, been staring at us all night.'

'How about we deal with it as we go along?' Quinn signaled the barrel-chested man with the gray mustache behind the bar. 'Sir? You wanna shuck us a dozen more?'

'Thanks, Tuh-ree,' said Juana.

Tuh-ree. He liked the way she said that, too.

On their way out the door, Juana noticed Quinn glance over his shoulder at the two men who had been staring at them all night and give them both a short but meaningful look.

Out on the street Juana put her arm through his as they walked to her black Beetle, parked in the lot of a tire store. She was cold and it warmed her to be close to him, and it felt natural to touch him, like they had moved past something and were onto something else. He was easy to talk to and he listened, didn't seem to be the type of man who was always thinking of what he'd say next. He didn't boast, either, didn't talk about his big plans, hadn't tried too hard to impress her in any way, in fact, which had made an impression in itself.

'Where do you live?' she asked.

'I got a place down off Sligo Avenue. What about you?'

'I'm over on Tenth Street in Northeast. Near Catholic University?'

'You mind dropping me off before you head back?'

'What're you, kiddin'?'

"Cause I could walk.'

'Yeah, I heard you like to walk at night.'

'Raphael told you, huh?'

'And that you like westerns. He said you were reading one the first time he went into your shop, and every time since.'

'So what was all that "It's not fair, I don't know a damn thing about you" stuff?' Quinn laughed. 'You're a liar!'

'All right, I lied,' said Juana. 'But I promise you, I'll never lie to you again.'

She stopped the Volkswagen out front of his place, a small brick apartment building, and let it idle. A convenience store and beer market sat closed and dark across the street, and boys in parkas were standing around outside its locked front door. The apartment units were dark as well.

'Here we are,' he said.

'Thanks for everything. It was nice.'

'My pleasure. I'll see you around, okay?'

'Okay.'

He squeezed her hand and it felt like a kiss. Then he was out of the car and crossing the unlit street, his jacket black and flat against the night.

She drove home listening to a Cassandra Wilson tape, thinking of him all the way.

Quinn washed and got under the covers of his bed. He tried to read a Max Evans sitting on his nightstand but found it hard to concentrate on the plot. He turned off the light, thinking of Juana, trying not to expect too much, hoping it could work.

Just before dawn he dreamed that he had gotten into a violent argument with a black man in a club. Punches were thrown and a gun was drawn. Then there were screams, blood, and death.

When he woke he was neither startled nor disturbed. He'd been having dreams like this for some time.

5

Ray Boone's jaw was tight from the thick line of crank he'd done. He unglued his tongue from the roof of his mouth and licked his dry lips. Ray went behind the long mahogany bar he and his daddy had built themselves, looking to fix himself a drink.

'Daddy, where's that Jack at?' he hollered.

Ray couldn't hear his own voice above the old Randy Travis number that was coming from the Wurlitzer jukebox he'd bought at an auction of the furnishings from a bankrupt restaurant. Edna had turned up the volume, way high.

Earl Boone was sitting in front of a video screen playing electronic poker. He took a sip from a can of Busch beer and dragged on his cigarette.

He tapped ash off the cigarette into a tray without taking his eyes off the screen. 'Wherever the hell you left it, Critter, last time you took a drink.'

'I see it,' said Ray. The Jack was on a low shelf beside the steel sink, in front of a Colt automatic his daddy had hung on a couple of nails he'd driven into the wood behind the bar. Ray grabbed the black-labeled bottle and a tumbler, filled the glass with ice from a chest beside the sink, and free-poured sour mash whiskey halfway to the lip. He filled the rest of the glass with Coke and stirred the cocktail with a dirty finger.

'Ain't you gonna fix me one, baby?' asked Edna Loomis, sitting at a card table covered in green felt. Edna was speed wired, her usual condition this time of the afternoon. She was stacking and restacking a pile of white chips with one hand and playing with her feather-cut shag with the other.

'Don't want you gettin' wasted too early, now,' said Ray, talking to her as he would to a child.

'I won't. Just want a little somethin' to sip while I'm back at the house watching my shows.'

Ray mixed a weak one and walked it over to Edna, who stood to take it from his hand. She reached for the glass, running her long fingers over the backs of his, and clumsily licked her lips. He felt a stirring in his jeans.

'We got time?' she said, looking over his shoulder briefly at the old man.

'Uh-uh,' said Ray. 'Me and Daddy are about to make a run into D.C.'

'When you get back, then,' she said, tossing a head of damaged orange-blond hair off her shoulder, winking as she took a sip of her drink. She moved her hips awkwardly to the Travis tune as she drank, keeping her eyes on him over the glass, and sang as the chorus returned to the song, '"Forever and ever, ay-men.'"

Ray looked her over. Boy, she thought she was so sexy. He wondered what she saw when she looked in the mirror. She was getting up around thirty, and it was showing in the lines around her mouth. Dimples had begun to pucker below her ass, too, and she'd never had young eyes. She did have a nice set, though, the kind that stood at attention, with sharp pink button-nips. She ever let those bad boys go to seed like the rest of her was doin', Ray'd have to think about trading her in for a new model.

'Huh?' she said. 'I asked you a question, Critter. We gonna make like bunny rabbits and do the deed when you get back, or what?'

Her mouth, that was the other thing. Proud titties or no, she didn't learn to shut her mouth some, he might trade her in sooner than she knew.

'Don't call me Critter,' said Ray. 'Only Daddy can call me that.'

'Well, are we?'

'Maybe,' he said. But she'd be sloppy as hell by the time he came back from the city, cooked on crank and drunk as a sailor on shore leave, too. He couldn't stand to fuck her when she got like that.

'Ray?'

'Huh?'

'You're gonna be gone a few hours, right?'

'Uh-huh.'

'Whyn't you leave me some of that ice?'

'You know you're likin' that stuff too much.'

'Please, baby?'

'A little bit, then. All right.' He looked past her and said, 'You about ready, Daddy?'

Earl Boone said, 'Yep,' and flicked ash into the tray.

Ray went to a large door at the back of the barn. The door was steel fortified and it was set in a fortified, fireproofed wall. He took the set of keys he hung from a loop of his jeans and opened the door, which he kept locked at all times. He went in, closed the door behind him, and threw the slide bolt.