“Nothing.” He said this as a sulking challenge.

“Don’t give me your moods, okay?” West replied, refusing to play games because, frankly, she was too old for them.

Brazil threaded a patch through his rod and dipped it in Hoppes. He loved the smell and had no intention of confessing anything else to her. But the beer had a tongue of its own.

“Let’s talk about this wife-shit again,” she pushed him.

“What do you want me to say?” Brazil, the man, replied.

“You tell me what it means.” She really wanted to know.

“In theory”—he began to clean the barrel of the .380—“I’m not entirely sure. Maybe something to do with roles, a caste system, a pecking order, a hierarchy, the ecosystem.”

“The ecosystem?” She frowned, blasting her barrel and other parts with Gunk Off.

“Point is,” he explained, “that being a wife has nothing to do with what you do, but with what someone thinks you are. Just like I’m doing something you want me to do right now, but that doesn’t make me a slave.”

“Don’t you have the roles a little reversed here? Who was giving who firearms instruction?” She scrubbed the inside of the barrel with a toothbrush. “You’re doing what you want to do. I’m doing what you want me to do. For nothing, for the record. And who’s the slave?” She sprayed again and handed him the can.

He reached for his beer. It was his limited experience that the warmer beer got, the worse it got.

“So let’s say you grow up and get married someday,” she went on. “What are you going to expect of your wife?”

“A partner.” He tossed his bottle into the trash. “I don’t want a wife. I don’t need anybody to take care of me, clean for me, cook for me.” He got out two more beers, popped them open, and set one within her reach. “Saying I’m too busy to do all that shit for myself someday? I’ll hire a housekeeper. But I’m not going to marry one,” he said as if this was the most ridiculous notion society had ever devised.

“Uh huh.”

She reached for the barrel of the .380, checking his work. Man talk, she thought. The difference was, this one could put words together better than most. She didn’t believe a thing he said.

“It should look like a mirror inside.” She slid the barrel in front of him. “Scrub hard. You can’t hurt it.”

He picked up the barrel, then his beer. “See, people should get married, live together, whatever, and do things just like this,” he went on as he dipped a brush in solvent and resumed scrubbing. “There shouldn’t be roles. There should be practicalities, people helping out each other like friends. One weak where the other’s strong, people using their gifts, cooking together, playing tennis, fishing. Walking on the beach. Staying up late talking. Being unselfish and caring.”

“Sounds like you’ve thought about this a lot,” she said. “A good script.”