‘I stand corrected. Now drink your beer.’
Billy takes a swig and tilts his head toward the house where the shower is running. Again. ‘How was she on the shopping trip? Okay?’
‘Mostly. Before we went into Common Threads to buy you a cowboy hat – forgot to show it to you, it’s a fuckin beaut – she had a little bit of a breathing problem and sang something under her breath. I couldn’t make out what it was, but after that she was all right again.’
Billy knows what it was.
‘At the used car lot she rocked the house. Spotted that truck and bargained Ricky down from forty-four hundred to thirty-three. When he tried to hold steady at thirty-five she grabbed me and said “Come on, Elmer, he’s nice but he’s not serious.” You believe that?’
‘Actually I do,’ Billy says. He laughs, but Bucky doesn’t laugh with him. He’s grown serious. Billy asks him if something’s wrong.
‘Not yet, but there could be.’ He puts his beer bottle down and turns to look Billy square in the face. ‘The two of us are outlaws, okay? People don’t use that word so much these days, but that’s what we are. Alice isn’t, but if she keeps running with you, she will be. Because she’s in love with you.’
Billy puts his own bottle down. ‘Bucky, I’m not … I don’t …’
‘I know you don’t want to jump in the sack with her and maybe she doesn’t want to jump in the sack with you, not after what she’s been through. But you saved her life and put her back together—’
‘I didn’t put her back—’
‘Okay, maybe you didn’t, but you gave her the time and space to start doing it herself. That doesn’t change the fact that she’s in love with you and she’ll follow you as long as you let her and if you let her you’ll ruin her.’
Having delivered himself of what Billy now believes he came out here to say, Bucky pauses for breath, picks up his beer, downs half of it, and gives a ringing belch.
‘Argue me back if you want. Giving you a place to stay for a few days doesn’t give me the right not to hear opposing arguments, so go on and argue me back.’
But Billy doesn’t.
‘Take her to Nevada with you, sure. Find a cheap place to stay outside the city and leave her there while you take care of your business. If you get out clean and with your money, give her a bunch of it and send her back east. Tell her to stop and see me and remind her those false papers are just short-term camouflage. She can go back to being Alice Maxwell again.’
He raises a finger, which is starting to show the first twists and gnarls of arthritis. ‘But only if you keep her out of it. Capisce?’
‘Yes.’
‘If you don’t get out clean you probably won’t be getting out at all. That will be hard for her to hear, but she has to know. Agreed?’
‘Agreed.’
‘Tell her that if a few days go by and she hasn’t heard from you, you pick how many, she should come back here. I’ll give her some money. A thousand, fifteen hundred maybe.’
‘You don’t have to—’
‘I want to. I like her. She’s not a whiner, and given what happened to her she’d have a right to whine. Besides, it’d be money you made for me. You’re my only client now. Have been for the last four years. No more bankrolling stickups for this kid. Too easy for one of them to come back on me if something went wrong, and I’m too old for prison.’
‘All right. Thank you. Thank you.’
The shower goes off. Bucky leans toward Billy again over the arm of his rocker.
‘You know, a baby kitten will take to a dog that decides to groom it instead of chasing it or eating it. Hell, a baby duck will. They imprint. She’s imprinted on you, Billy, and I don’t want her to get hurt.’
The bathroom door opens and Alice comes out on the porch. She’s wearing an old blue bathrobe that must be Bucky’s; it’s so long it brushes the tops of her bare feet. Her hair is put up, held with what looks like a dozen barrettes, and covered in transparent plastic. She’s not going to be even close to platinum, maybe because her hair was so dark to begin with, but it’s still a big change.
‘What do you think? I know it’s hard to tell right now, but …’
‘Looks good,’ Bucky says. ‘I was always partial to a dirty blonde. My first ex was a dirty blonde. I saw her hanging by the jukebox and knew I had to have her. More fool me.’