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I stepped a little inside the punch and caught it on my left forearm. I caught the second one on my right. “Or here,” I said and patted him rat-a-tat with both hands on each cheek. The way a grandma pats a child. I stepped back away from him. He was already starting to breathe hard. “Some shape you’re in, kid. In another minute you won’t be able to get your arms up.”
    “Back off, Eddie,” Rudy said from behind the bar. “He’s a pro, for crissake, he’ll kill you if you keep shoving him.”
    “I’ll shove the son of a bitch,” Eddie said and made a grab at me. I moved a step to my right and put a left hook into his stomach. Hard. His breath came out in a hoarse grunt and he sat down suddenly. His face blank, the wind knocked out of him, fighting to get his breath. “Or there,” I said.
    Eddie got his breath partially back and climbed to his feet. Without looking at anyone he headed, wobbly legged, for the men’s room. Rudy said to me, “You got some good punch there.”
    “It’s because my heart is pure,” I said.
    “I hope he don’t puke all over the floor in there,” Rudy said.
    The other people in the room, quiet while the trouble had flared, began to talk again. The two college girls got up and left, their drinks unfinished, their mothers’ parting fears confirmed. Eddie came back from the men’s room, his face pale and wet where he’d probably splashed it with water.
    “The boilermakers will do it to you,” I said. “Slow you down and tear up your stomach.”
    “I know guys could take you,” Eddie said. There was no starch in his voice when he said it and he didn’t look at me.
    “I do too,” I said. “And I know guys who can take them. After a while counting doesn’t make much sense. You just got into something I know more about than you do.”
    Eddie hiccupped.
    “Tell me about how you left each other in the morning,” I said. We were sitting at the bar again.
    “What if I don’t?” Eddie was looking at the small area of bar top encircled by his forearms.
    “Then you don’t. I don’t plan to keep punching you in the stomach.”
    “We woke up in the morning and I wanted to go one more time, you know, sort of a farewell pop, and she wouldn’t let me touch her. Called me a pig. Said if I touched her she’d kill me. Said I made her sick. That wasn’t what she said before. We were screwing our brains out half the night and next morning she calls me a pig. Well, I don’t need that shit, you know? So I belted her and walked out. Last I seen her she was lying on her back on the bed crying loud as a bastard. Just staring up at the ceiling and screaming crying.” He shook his head. “What a weird bitch,” he said. “I mean five hours before she was screwing her brains out for me.”
    I said, “Thanks, Eddie.” I took a twenty-dollar bill out of my wallet and put it on the bar. “Take his out too, Rudy, and keep what’s left.”
    When I left, Eddie was still looking at the bar top inside his forearms.

Chapter 7
    I had lamb stew and a bottle of Burgundy for supper and then headed into my room to start on the box of bills and letters Shepard had given me. I went through the personal mail first and found it sparse and unenlightening. Most people throw away personal mail that would be enlightening, I’d found. I got all the phone bills together and made a list of the phone numbers and charted them for frequency. Then I cross-charted them for locations. A real sleuth, sitting on the motel bed in my shorts shuffling names and numbers. There were three calls in the past month to a number in New Bedford, the rest were local. I assembled all the gasoline credit-card receipts. She had bought gasoline twice that month in New Bedford. The rest were around home. I catalogued the other credit-card receipts. There were three charges from a New Bedford restaurant. All for more than thirty dollars. The other charges were local. It was almost midnight when I got through all of the