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and looked around. "Must be tough to gibe
up all dis."
    Hector was
right. The end of my noble isolation was no great loss. What had once been a
statement had quietly become a question. What had begun, after my divorce, as
an exercise in self-reliance had eroded into little more than a holding action
against the inevitable, a pathetic rear guard massacre of years, whose graves
were marked by only the profusion of chips in the dishes and the build-up of
paint on the familiar walls. He brought his hands down onto my shoulders and
then we embraced. When holding one another became too embarrassing, we stepped
apart and put ourselves back together.
    "I guess
maybe I'm not sure I deserve her," I said.
    He grinned.
"Daf s easy, Leo. Jew shoulda tol me. I can help jew wid dat. Jew
ready?"
    I nodded. He
was still smiling.
    "Okay den,
here eet is. Eef s seemple. Jew right. Jew don't deserve her. No focking way.
Not even close. Mees Duvall eees a great lady, Leo. I doan gotta tell jew
dat." He tapped his temple. "Smart. A doktor." He looked at me
sadly and shrugged. "Jew ... a private deek ..." Thinking about my
career seemed to rob him of words. "She way too good for jew ees what she
ees. Jew just count your blessings ees what jew do."
    "Gee, I
feel better now."
    He clapped me
on the back and headed for the door.
    "Oh, doan
worry, jew not de only one. Nobody really feel like dey deserve what dey got.
Dey spend their whole fock-ing lives waiting for somebody to come and take eet
all back, like eet was all a beeg mistake."
    He stopped at
the door and turned back my way.
    "Jew come
round. We have a beer down at the Red Door."
    "We'll
keep in touch," I said.
    "Jew
bet."
    After he closed
the door, I stood for a moment, listening to my own breath, as if expecting my
door to open again. It didn't.
    I snatched the
phone from the table and punched in Rebecca's number at the medical examiner's
office. No go. She'd left for the day.
    Both pager and
cell phone set to voice mail. I left her the basics of where I was going to be
and headed for the bedroom. With most of my clothes packed away, I was already
living out of a suitcase and a shaving kit. All I had to do was zip them up.
     

Chapter 4
     
    Much like
salmon, professional drunks follow predictable evolutionary and migratory
patterns. Early on, they stay close to the familiar gravel of their home
waters. They limit themselves to cozy fern bars near the office. Some place
they can hit right after work for a bit of shop talk and some serious stress
relief, among cohorts who can be trusted to impound their car keys, call their
wives and stuff them into cabs. Nice places like that.
    Later, when
both wives and car keys are things of the past; when the last of their loved
ones has finally had enough and even the occasional truth is met with stony
silence; when the next step involves sharing an apartment with a telephone pole
and imagining a steady drizzle to be an integral part of any fine dining
experience, then . . . then they're ready for The Zoo.
    I stood in the
doorway and waited for my eyes to adjust to the near darkness. An ornately
carved stand-up bar, complete with brass foot rail, ran the full length of the
room and down around the corner, where the only four stools in the joint looked
back at the door. Stand-up bars keep a guy on his toes. If s no trick for
anybody to drink himself into a stupor with one cheek perched on a padded
stool. Standing up was a whole other matter. A guy had to maintain some shred
of dignity or risk falling among the cigar butts, the peanut shells and the
slick bronchial emissions composting underfoot.
    Bonnie, one of the
owners, was behind the bar. I pointed at her and made a face. She pointed at
her lower back and made her own face. Terry's back was out again. Bonnie was
stuck tending bar. I gave her a two-fingered salute and moved down the
left-hand wall, past the six brown leatherette booths, toward the familiar
noise at the back of the room. Three beer