I nodded and watched tiny tremors ripple the skin along her arms. She kept glancing at my face as if it might reveal something to her, then looked away when it didn’t, only to come back to it a second later. She reminded me of a kid with no money standing in a group of kids with plenty at an ice cream truck, as if she were watching cones and chocolate eclairs pass over her head into other hands, and half of her knew she’d never get one, and the other half held out hope that the ice cream man might hand her one out of error or pity. Bleeding inside from the embarrassment of wanting.

I pulled out my wallet and extracted a business card.

She frowned at it, then looked at me. Her half-smile was sarcastic and a bit ugly.

“I’m fine, Patrick.”

“You’re half in the bag at ten in the morning, Kara.”

She shrugged. “It’s noon somewhere.”

“Not here, though.”

Micky Doog stuck his head out the door again. He looked directly at me and his eyes weren’t as bleary, emboldened by some blow or whatever else he was selling these days.

“Hey, Kara, you coming back inside?”

She made a little movement with her shoulders, my card dampening in her palm. “Be right in, Mick.”

Micky seemed ready to say more, but then he patted the door in a drum beat, nodded once and disappeared inside.

Kara glanced at the avenue, stared at the cars for a long time.

“You leave a place,” she said, “you expect it to look smaller when you come back.” She shook her head and sighed.

“It doesn’t?”

She shook her head. “Looks just the fucking same.”

She took a few steps backward, tapping my card against her hip, and her eyes widened as she looked at me and rolled her shoulders elaborately. “Take care, Patrick.”

“You too, Kara.”

She held up my card. “Hey, now that I got this, right?”

She tucked it into the back pocket of her jeans and turned toward the open doorway of The Black Emerald. She stopped then, turned and smiled at me. It was a wide, gorgeous smile, but her face seemed unaccustomed to it; her cheeks quivered around its edges.

“Be careful, Patrick. Okay?”

“Careful of what?”

“Of everything, Patrick. Everything.”

I gave her what I’m sure was a quizzical look and she nodded at me as if we shared a secret, and then she ducked into the bar and was gone.

8

My father, even before he entered the arena himself, had been active in local politics. He was a sign holder and a door knocker, and the bumpers of the various Chevys we’d owned throughout my childhood and adolescence had always borne stickers attesting to my father’s partisan loyalty. Politics had nothing to do with social change to my father, and he didn’t give a shit what most politicians promised in public; it was the private bonds that drew him. Politics was the last great tree house, and if you got in with the best kids on the block, you could roll the ladder up on the fools below.