He nodded. “You’re goddamned right. I didn’t like the way you spoke to me at the studio today, and I don’t like the way you’re speaking to me now. I’m Peter Alan Nelsen and I don’t take shit.”

I looked at Dani. She said, “Why don’t we just leave, Peter? He doesn’t want to party. We can go somewhere and party without him.”

Peter said, “Hey, Dani, you wanna leave, leave, but I’m calling this sonofabitch out.” Peter sort of swayed forward, squinting the way you do when you’re seeing three or four of something that there’s only one of.

He said, “C’mon, goddamnit, I’m serious,” and put up his fists. When his fists went up the cat howled loud and mournful and flashed out from under the couch. He grabbed Peter’s ankle and bit and screamed and clawed with his hind legs. Peter yelled, “Sonofabitch,” jumped sideways, stumbled into the chair, and fell over backward. The cat sprinted back under the couch.

I said, “Some cat, huh?”

Dani helped Peter up, then righted the chair. Peter said, “Lemme alone,” and pulled away from her. When he did he fell to his knees. He said, “I’m all right. I’m all right.” Then he passed out.

I said, “Is he like this a lot?”

Dani said, “Pretty much, yeah.”

“I’ll help you get him outside.”

“No, thanks. You could get the door, if you want.”

“You sure?”

“I can bench two-thirty. I squat over four.”

Nope. She wouldn’t need the help.

Dani lifted him into the chair, then squatted in front of him and pulled him onto her shoulders and stood up. She said, “You see?”

I got the door.

She moved out past me and stopped on the porch and looked back at me. “I know it doesn’t show, but he really likes you. You’re all he talked about this afternoon.”

“Great.”

She frowned, maybe looking a little angry. Defensive for him. I liked that. “It’s not easy being him. Here’s a guy with all he has going, and he can’t just go hang out, you see?”

“Sure.”

“Everybody in his life is there because they want to screw him. Any time there’s a woman, he’s thinking it’s because she wants to rip him off. Any time a guy says he’s Peter’s friend, it’s because he wants to be in business with Peter Alan Nelsen, the big deal, not with Peter Nelsen, the guy.” She said it as if we were just standing there, as if Peter Alan Nelsen wasn’t an outsized yoke across her shoulders.

I said, “He’s got to be getting heavy.”

She smiled softly. “I can hold him all night.”