George looks coldly at Bob. “I know you got yourself a gun there, Mistah Bob. You got it under your shirt there. I seen it. Seen it when you come in. I sure don’t want nobody gettin’ shot now, and I know you is a good man, and you don’t want nobody gettin’ shot neither, no matter how mad you gets at ’em at the moment. Come tomorrow, Mistah Bob, things’ll cool down some and you won’t be so mad. You don’t want to shoot no one, Mistah Bob. Marguerite, now, she makes her mistakes, sure, but she’s a good woman. And she loves you, Mistah Bob, really loves you. Tol’ me all about it. You don’t hafta worry none about that. I can tell you, she been good to you right from the beginnin’. Ain’t no one else come round here. She been good to you right from the start, so you got no call to get mad.”
“Bob,” Marguerite says coolly. “Go home, Bob. Just go home.”
Bob looks from the woman’s face to her father’s, then back again. “Don’t be afraid,” Bob tells them. “I’ll go.”
“We not afraid of you, Mistah Bob. We jus’ worried ’bout you, that’s all.”
“No, I’ll go. I’ll go.”
He stands, looks down in shame, and leaves.
Marguerite closes the door behind him, quickly locks it and does not look out the window after him. Instead, she walks immediately to the kitchen and commences preparing supper. She and her father never speak of the event again, not to each other and not to anyone else. There’s nothing to say about it to each other that is not already fully understood, so they remain silent about it, almost as if it never happened.
Bob lifts his shirtfront with one hand and pulls out the gun with the other, releases the loaded magazine and lays the gun and magazine down on the glass table in front of Eddie. Eddie looks at the gun, then up at his brother’s somber face, lowers his gaze to the gun again, then moves it back to the
“You wanna drink, Bob?” he asks without looking up. He’s wearing salmon-pink trousers and a cranberry-red short-sleeved shirt and white Italian loafers, sockless. On the tile floor next to his chair is a ceramic pitcher half-filled with gin and tonic. “Sarah!” he barks. “Bring a glass!”
“No, forget it. No drink.” Bob lets himself down slowly into the redwood chair opposite Eddie, who continues to read his paper, or pretends to read it.
Sarah appears at the sliding glass doors of the living room, spots Bob, smiles and crosses the patio to him. “Bob! It’s wonderful about the baby! A boy! Congratulations!”
“Yeah,” Eddie says. “Great about the kid. Congratulations.” He looks pointedly at his watch.
“Thanks.”
“I was over at the hospital this afternoon,” Sarah reports, “to bring some presents and all, and I saw him, and he’s just adorable, Bob! Adorable. I’m glad it was a boy. After all the girls in this family.”
“Yeah. Me too.”
“You want a drink, Bob? Let me bring a glass; Eddie’s got himself a pitcher of gin over there. His nightly dose. I’m sure he’ll share some with you.” She’s suddenly serious again, and she and Eddie exchange looks, quick, superficially wounding slashes, before she gushes on. “And Elaine, she just looks marvelous! Marvelous!”
“Sarah,” Eddie growls, “Bob don’t want a drink.”
Sarah glares at her husband, then, glancing over the low table in front of him, sees the handgun and magazine, and steps away. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she says, suddenly confused. She looks down at Bob. “Are you all right, Bob?”
“Yes, fine,” he says. Then, “No. No, I’m not fine, Sarah,” he says, staring straight ahead at his brother, who continues to look at the paper in his lap as if he were intently reading it.
“Sarah, leave us the fuck alone,” Eddie says.
Turning quickly, she strides from the patio and disappears into the house. Behind Eddie, the pool glimmers in the twilight, and a thatch of palmettos beyond the pool, in a parody of a postcard, raises a silhouette against an orange- and lavender-streaked sky. Folding the paper in half, Eddie slaps it onto the table next to the gun and says, “Too fuckin’ dark to read anyhow.”
Bob says nothing.
