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you,” Charley said.
    “Perish the thought. I just thought you might like to know where he was.”
    “Are you always so dramatic?” Charley asked, mimicking his voice on the phone. “I have your brother. You know where to find me.”
    Glen laughed. “Just having some fun. You already think I’m a gangster. Figured I might as well act like one.”
    “I believe the term I used was ‘hoodlum wannabe.’ Not quite in the same league as ‘gangster,’” Charley corrected.
    “Ouch.” Glen clutched his chest, as if he’d been mortally wounded.
    “ Are you a gangster?” Charley asked seconds later, curious in spite of herself.
    “Off the record? Promise I’m not going to read about this conversation in next week’s paper?”
    “I thought you never read my columns.”
    Glen smiled. “I’m not a gangster.” He looked toward her sleeping brother. “He do this kind of thing often?”
    “That’s really none of your business.”
    “No, but it’s my sofa. You could at least try to make nice until he wakes up.”
    “Sorry. I’ve never been very good at making nice.”
    “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”
    “Because you’re a man of great intelligence and perception. How’s that for making nice?”
    “A little heavy-handed.”
    “Take it or leave it.”
    “Oh, I’ll take it. Does this mean you’ll reconsider sleeping with me?”
    “Not a chance.”
    Another bolt of lightning. Another crash of thunder.
    “Storm’s getting closer,” Glen observed.
    “Great,” Charley said sarcastically. “I always loved driving I-95 in the pouring rain.”
    “I don’t think you’re going anywhere for at least a little while.”
    Charley looked from the window to her brother, now snoring contentedly beside her. “Great,” she said again.
    “How about reconsidering that cup of coffee?”
    “Why are you being so nice to me?”
    “You have a problem with people being nice to you?”
    Charley lifted her hands into the air, in a gesture of surrender remarkably similar to that of the faceless bronze statues in the other room. “Sure, let’s have coffee,” she said. “Why not?”
    “Why not indeed?” Glen echoed, going to the door. “How do you take it?”
    “Black.”
    “Thought you’d say that. Back in a flash,” he said, as another bolt of lightning shot through the sky. It was immediately followed by a spectacular crack of thunder.
    “You’re missing quite a display,” Charley said to her sleeping brother, as she pushed herself to her feet and walked to the window. She opened the blinds with a flick of her fingers and stared at the ferocious downpour. The rain in Florida was like nowhere else in the world, she was thinking, watching huge drops, like angry fists, pound against the panes of glass. It came at you relentlessly, obliterating almost everything in its path, blinding you. If she’d been driving, she’d have been forced to pull over and wait it out.
    Could that be any more uncomfortable than waiting it out in the office of the man she’d disparaged in print as a “hoodlum wannabe,” while her brother slept off a drunken stupor on that same man’s red velvet couch? “Why do you do these things to me?” she asked him, as another bolt of lightning lit up the sky, illuminating her dented, silver Camry in the parking lot next to Bram’s ancient, impeccably maintained, dark green MG. “You always loved that car more than anything else on earth,” she muttered as another clap of thunder rattled the palm trees and shook the premises. “God, Bram. What’s the matter with you? Why do you keep screwing up?” She returned to the sofa, sank down beside him. “Bram, wake up. Come on. Enough of this crap. Time to grow up and go home. Come on, Bram,” she said again. “Enough is enough.”
    Bram said nothing, although his long, dark lashes fluttered provocatively, as if he might be persuaded, with a few well-chosen words, to open his eyes.
    “Bram,” Charley said, impatiently poking at