Marino yanks off his silver-dollar necklace and drops it in his beer, and it makes a plopping sound and sinks to the bottom. He slides the mug across the bar, and it stops short of them, and he walks out, hoping he’ll be followed. The rain has let up, and the pavement is steaming under streetlights, and he sits on the wet seat of his motorcycle and waits, hoping he’ll be followed. He watches the front door of Poe’s Tavern, waiting and hoping. Maybe he can start a fight. Maybe they can finish it. He wishes his heart would slow down and his chest would stop hurting. Maybe he’ll have a heart attack. His heart ought to attack him, as bad as he is. He waits, looking at the door, looking at people on the other side of lighted windows, everybody happy except him. He waits and lights a cigarette and sits on his wet motorcycle in his wet rain gear, smoking and waiting.

He’s such a nothing, he can’t even make people angry anymore. He can’t make anybody fight him. He’s such a nothing, he’s sitting out here in the rainy dark, smoking and looking at the door, wishing Shandy or the man in the do-rag or both of them would come out and make him feel he still has something worthwhile left in him. But the door doesn’t open. They don’t care. They aren’t scared. They think Marino’s a joke. He waits and smokes. He unlocks the front fork of his bike and starts the engine.

He opens the throttle, rubber squealing, and rides fast. He leaves his bike under his fishing shack, leaves the key in the ignition because he doesn’t need his motorcycle anymore. Where he’s going, he won’t be riding motorcycles. He walks fast but not as fast as his heart is going, and in the dark he climbs the steps to his dock and he thinks about Shandy’s making fun of his old, rickety dock, saying it’s long and skinny and bent like a stick bug. He thought she was funny and clever with words when she said that the first time he brought her here, and they’d made love all night. Ten days ago. That’s all it was. He has to consider that she set him up, that it’s no coincidence she flirted with him the very night of the very day the dead little boy was found. Maybe she wanted to use Marino to get information. He let her. All because of a ring. The Doc got a ring, and Marino lost his mind. His big boots thud loudly on the pier, and its weathered wood shakes beneath the weight of him as no-see- ums swarm around him like something in a cartoon.