Hornet`s Nest

Chapter Twenty-four

West had missed the Sunset East exit deliberately. Retrieving Brazil's BMW was not what she intended to take care of first. It was quarter past eleven, and most of the world sat in church and wished the minister would hurry up and end the sermon. West was deep inside her preoccupations. She felt a terrible heaviness that she could not explain, and she wanted to cry, which she blamed on the time of month, which, of course, had passed.

"You all right?" Brazil felt her mood.

"I don't know," she said, depressed.

"You seem really down," he said.

"It's weird." She checked her speed, glancing around for sneaky state troopers.

"It just hit me all of a sudden, this really bad feeling, as if something is horribly wrong."

"That happens to me sometimes, too," Brazil confessed.

"It's like you pick up on something from somewhere, you know what I mean?"

She knew exactly what he meant, but not why she should know it. West had never considered herself the most intuitive person in the world.

"I used to get that way about my mom a lot," he went on.

"I would know before I walked in the house that she was not in good shape."

"What about now?"

West was curious about all this, and not certain she knew what was happening to her. She used to be very pragmatic and in control. Now she was picking up extraterrestrial signals and discussing them with a twenty-two-year-old reporter she had just made out with in a police car.

"My mother's never in good shape now." Brazil's voice got hard.

don't want to sense much about her anymore. "

"Well, let me tell you a word or two, Andy Brazil," said West, who did know about some things in life.

"I don't care if you've moved out of her house, you can't erase her from the blackboard of your existence, you know?" West got out a cigarette.

"You've got to deal with her, and if you don't, you're going to be messed up the rest of your life."

"Oh good. She messed up all my life so far, and now she's going to mess up the rest of it." He stared out his window.

"The only person who has the power to mess up your life is you. And guess what?" West blew out smoke.

"You've done a damn good job with your life so far, if you ask me."

He was silent, thinking about Webb, the memory of what had happened washing over him like icy water.

"Why, exactly, are we going to my house?" Brazil finally got around to asking that.

"You get too many hang-ups," West replied.

"You want to tell me how come?"

"Some pervert," Brazil muttered.

"Who?" West didn't like to hear this.

"How the hell do I know?" The subject bored and annoyed him.

"Some gay guy?"

"A woman, I think," said Brazil.

"I don't know if she's gA-' " When did they begin? " West was getting angry.

"Don't know." His heart constricted as they pulled into the driveway of his mother's home, and parked behind the old Cadillac.

"About the time I started at the paper," he quietly said.

West looked at him, touched by the sadness in his eyes as he looked out at a dump he had called home, and tried not to think of the terrible truths it held.

"Andy," West said, 'what does your mother think right now? Does she know you've moved out? "

"I left a note," he answered.

"She wasn't awake when I was packing."

By now West had ascertained that awake was a code word for reasonably sober.

"Have you talked to her since?"

He opened his door. West gathered the Caller ID system from the backseat and followed him inside the house. They found Mrs. Brazil in the kitchen, shakily spreading peanut butter on Ritz crackers. She had heard them drive up, and this had given her time to mobilize her defenses. Mrs. Brazil did not speak to either one of them.

"Hello," West said.

"How ya doing, Mom?" Brazil tried to hug her, but his mother wanted none of it, and waved him off with the knife.

Brazil noticed that the knob had been removed from his bedroom door, and he looked at West and smiled a little.

"I forgot about you and your tools," he said.

"I'm sorry. I should have put it back on." She looked around as if there might be a screwdriver somewhere.

"Don't worry about it."

They walked inside his bedroom. She took off her raincoat, hesitating, looking around as if she had never been here before. She was disturbed by his presence in this intimate corner of his life, where he had been a boy and turned into a man, and where he had dreamed. Another hot flash was coming on, her face turning red as she plugged the Caller ID system into his phone.

"Obviously, this won't help when you get your new phone number at your apartment," she explained.

"But what's more important is who has been calling this number." She straightened up, her work complete.

"Does anybody besides your mother and me know you've moved?"

"No," he replied, his eyes on her.

There had never been a woman in his room before, excluding his mother.

Brazil glanced about, hoping there was nothing here that might embarrass him or reveal something to her that he did not want her to know. She was looking around, too, neither of them in a hurry to leave.

"You've got a lot of trophies," she remarked.

Brazil shrugged, moving closer to look at crowded shelves he paid no mind to anymore. He pointed out especially significant awards and explained what they were. He gave her a few highlights of dramatic matches, and for a while they sat on his bed as he reminisced about days from his youth that he had lived with no audience, really, but strangers. He told her about his father, and she gave him her own vague recollection of Drew Brazil.

"I only knew who he was, that was about it," she said.

"Back then I was pretty green, too, just a beat cop hoping to make sergeant. I remember all the women thought he was good-looking." She smiled.

"There was a lot of talk about that, and that he seemed nice."

"He was nice," Brazil told her.

"I guess in some ways he was old-fashioned, but that was the time he lived in." He picked at his fingernails, his head bent.

"He was crazy about my mother. But she's always been spoiled. She grew up that way. I've always thought the biggest reason she couldn't deal with his death is she lost the person who doted on her the most and took care of her."

"You don't think she loved him?" West was curious, and she was very aware of how close they were sitting on his bed. She was glad the door was partially open, the knob off.

"My mother doesn't know how to love anybody, including herself."

Brazil was watching her. She could feel his eyes like heat. Thunder and lightning played war outside the win dow as rain came down hard.

She looked at him, too, and wondered if life would ruin his sweetness as he got older. She felt sure it would, and got up from the bed.

"What you've got to do is call the phone company first thing in the morning," she advised him.

"Tell them you want Caller ID. This little box won't do you a bit of good until they give you that service, okay?"

He watched her, saying nothing at first. Then it occurred to him, "Is it expensive?"

"You can manage it. Who's been hitting on you at work?" she wanted to know as she moved closer to the door.

"Axel, a couple women back in composing." He shrugged.

"I don't know, don't notice." He shrugged again.

"Anybody able to get into your computer basket?" she said as more thunder cracked.

"I don't see how."

West looked at his computer.

"I'm going to move that to my apartment. I didn't have room in my car the other day," he volunteered.

"Maybe you could write your next story on it," she said.

Brazil continued to watch her. He lay back on the bed, hands behind his head.

"Wouldn't do any good," he said.

"Still has to go into the newspaper computer one way or another."

"What if you changed your password?" West asked, slipping her hands in her pockets and leaning against the wall.

"We already did."

Lightning flashed, rain and wind ripping through trees.

"We?" West said.

W Brenda Bond was sitting at her keyboard in her room of mainframes, working on Sunday because what else did she have to do? There was little life held for her. She wore prescription glasses in expensive black Modo frames, because Tommy Axel looked good in his. She imitated him in other ways, as well, since the music critic looked like Matt Dillon, and was clearly cool. System Analyst Bond was going through miles of printouts, and was not pleased by whatever she was finding.

The general architecture of the newspaper's computerized mail system simply had to be reconfigured. What she wanted was plain and not so much to ask, and she was tired of trying to convince Panesa through presentations that the publisher obviously never even bothered to look at. Bond's basic argument was this: When a user sent a mail message for the UA to relay to the local MTA, the MTA then routed the message to the next MTA, which then routed it to the next MTA, and the next, until the message reached the final MTA on the destination system. With a Magic Marker, Brenda Bond had vividly depicted this in Figure 5. 1, with colorful dashed lines and arrows showing possible communication paths between MTAs and UAs.

Bond's ruminations crystallized and she stopped what she was doing.

She was startled and confused as Deputy Chief Virginia West, in uniform, suddenly walked in at quarter past three. West could see that Bond was a cowardly little worm, middle-aged, and exactly fitting the profile of people who set fires, sent bombs by mail, tampered with products like painkillers and eye drops and harassed others with hate notes and anonymous ugly calls over the telephone. West pulled up a chair, and turned it backwards, straddling it, arms resting on the back of it, like a guy.

"You know it's interesting," West thoughtfully began.

"Most people assume if they use a cellular phone, the calls can't be traced. What they don't realize is calls come back to a tower. These towers cover sectors that are only a mile square."

Bond was beginning to tremble, the bluff working.

"A certain young male reporter has been getting obscene phone calls," West went on, 'and guess what? " She paused pointedly.

"They come back to the same sector you live in, Ms Bond."

"I, I, I…" Bond stammered, visions of jail dancing through her head.

"But it's breaking into his computer basket that bothers me." West's voice got harder, police leather creaking as she shifted in the chair.

"Now that's a crime. Leaking his stories to Channel Three. Imagine! It would be like someone stealing your programs and selling them to the competition."

"No!" Bond blurted.

"No! I never sold anything!"

"So you gave stories to Webb."

"No!" Bond panicked.

"I never talked to him. I was just helping the police."

For an instant, West was quiet. She wasn't expecting this.

"What police?" she asked.

"Deputy Chief Goode told me to." Bond confessed all, out of fright.

"She said it was part of an undercover departmental operation."

The chair scraped as West got up. It was when she called Hammer's home that she learned the terrible news about Seth and felt sick.

"Oh my God," West said to Jude, who had answered the phone.

"I had no idea. I don't want to bother her. Is there anything at all I can do?"

Hammer took the phone away from her caretaking son.

"Jude, it's all right," she said to him, patting his shoulder.

"Virginia?" she said.

W Goode was watching a videotape of True Lies, and relaxing on the couch with her gas fire lit and the air conditioning on high, waiting for Webb to call. He had promised to sneak by before the six o'clock news, and she was getting anxious. If he didn't show up within minutes, there wouldn't be time to do or say a thing. When the phone rang, she snatched it up as if all in life depended on whoever it was.

Goode was not expecting Chief Hammer. Goode was not expecting Hammer to somberly tell her that Seth had died, and she, the boss, would see Goode in Goode's office at four-thirty sharp. Goode jumped off the couch, energized and euphoric. This could mean but one thing.

Hammer was taking a long leave to get her pathetic affairs in order, and she was naming Goode acting chief.

Hammer had quite another scenario in mind for Deputy Chief Jeannie Goode. Although those around Hammer did not entirely understand how she could think of work at a time like this, in fact, nothing could have been more therapeutic for Hammer. Her mind cleared. She woke up, anger a blue flame burning through her veins. She felt she could vaporize someone just by looking at him, as she dressed in gray polished cotton slacks and blazer, a gray silk blouse, and pearls. She worked on her hair, and sprayed a light mist of Hermes on her wrists.

Chief Judy Hammer went out to her midnight-blue police car, and flicked on wipers to slough out leaves knocked down by rain. She backed out of her drive, and turned onto Pine Street as sun broke through moiling clouds. A lump formed in her throat, and she swallowed hard. Tears burned her eyes, and she blinked and took a deep breath, as she saw her street and the world around it, for the first time, without him. Nothing looked different, but it was. Oh, it was. She took deep breaths as she drove, and her heart felt bruised while her blood roared for righteous revenge. Goode could not have picked a worse time to pull such a stunt and get caught, of this Hammer was certain.

Goode was filled with confidence and self-importance, and she didn't see any point in putting on her uniform or a suit that might have suggested respect and consideration for her troubled leader. Instead, Goode drove back down town, dressed in the short khaki skirt and T-shirt she had been in all day, waiting for Webb, who was busy working in the yard, his wife keeping a close eye on him these days. Goode parked her Miata in her assigned spot, and was more arrogant than usual to all she met as she took the elevator to the third floor, where her fine office was just around the corner from the suite that soon would be hers.

She shut her door and began her usual routine of dialing Webb's number and hanging up if someone other than the handsome news reporter answered. Goode enjoyed a feature on her police line that scrambled signals and rendered Caller ID useless. She was hanging up on Webb's wife when Goode's door suddenly flew open. Chief Hammer walked in, about to live up to her name. Goode's first reaction was how sharp her boss looked in gray. Goode's second and final reaction was that Hammer did not seem to be in mourning as she strode to the desk and snatched up Goode's brass nameplate.

"You're fired," Hammer said in a voice not to be questioned

"I want your badge and gun. Your desk gets cleared out now. Let me help you start."

Hammer threw the nameplate into the trash. She turned without another glance and walked out. Hammer was fury traveling down the corridors of her department, yet she was forthcoming in her nods and salutations to troops she passed. Word was already out on the radio about her husband, and members of the Charlotte Police Department were overwhelmed with sorrow and newfound respect for their leader.

Throughout it all, she was here, damn it, and she wasn't going to let them down. When a sergeant saw Goode sneaking out to her car with her office crammed in bags and boxes, there was rejoicing throughout Adam, Baker, Charlie, and David response areas, and investigations and support. Cops high-fived and low-tenned in the parking deck and the roll call room. The duty captain lit a rum crook cigar in his nonsmoking office.

w Brazil got the good word by pager as he was out in the parking lot changing the oil in his car. He went inside and dialed West's home number.

"Bond won't be bothering you anymore." West tried to be cool, but she was intensely proud of herself.

"Goode won't be getting your stories from the little shit and leaking them to Webb."

Brazil was shocked and ecstatic.

"No way!"

"Oh yeah. It's done. Hammer's fired Goode and Bond is in a state of paralysis."

"Bond was making those calls?" To Brazil, this seemed incongruous.

"Yup."

He was oddly disappointed that it wasn't someone more dynamic and attractive thinking such thoughts about him.

West sensed this and told him, "You aren't looking at this the right way."

"Looking at what?" He played dumb.

"Andy, I see this kind of thing all the time, doesn't matter whether it's a man or woman doing it, except that women aren't likely to expose themselves to you, so at least you can be grateful for that," she explained.

"This sort of thing is not about sex or being attracted to someone in the normal sense of things. It's all about control and power, about degrading. A form of violence, really."

"I know that," he said.

He still wished his verbal assailant had been someone halfway pretty, and he couldn't help but wonder what it was about him that prompted people like the creep at the car wash, and now Brenda Bond, to select him. Why? Did he send out signals that made them think they could take advantage of him? He bet that no one dared do such a thing to West or Hammer.

"Gotta go," West said, leaving Brazil disappointed and irritable.

He got back to changing his oil, in a hurry to finish now. He had an idea.

tv West had one, too. She called Raines, and this definitely was unexpected and abnormal. West never called him or anyone, except Brazil, as all around her knew and accepted as fact. Raines had the night off and was looking forward to watching a just-released sports bloopers video he had acquired over the weekend. West was thinking about pizza. They decided they probably could collaborate on this quite nicely, and he headed over to her house in his rebuilt, fully loaded, black on black '73 Corvette Stingray, with headers, tinted glass top, and window sticker. West usually could hear him coming.

"W Brazil thought he should come up with a way of showing his appreciation to West for resolving his life's crisis. He also imagined the two of them celebrating, and why not? This was a big day for both of them. She had rid him of Bond and Webb, and she and the entire police department were free of Goode. Brazil sped to the nearest Hop-In and picked up the nicest bottle of wine he could find in the glass cooler, a Dry Creek Vineyard 1992 Fume Blanc, for nine dollars and forty-nine cents.

She would be surprised and pleased, and maybe he could pet Niles for a while. Maybe Brazil could spend a little more time inside West's house and learn something more about her. Maybe she would invite him to watch TV with her, or listen to music, the two of them sipping wine in her living room, talking, and telling stories about their early years and their dreams.

Brazil drove toward Dilworth, overflowing with happiness that his problems had cleared up, and he had a friend like her. He thought about his mother, wondering how she was doing, and was pleased that she didn't seem to get him down so much anymore. He didn't seem to feel that her choices were because of what he did or did not do for her.

The lights were out, the TV on in West's living room. She and Raines were on the couch, eating a Pizza Hut triple decker. Raines was perched on the edge of his cushion, drinking a Coors Light, and crazed over his new videotape. Without a doubt it was the best yet, and he wished West would let him watch it undistracted. She was all over him, kissing, nibbling, running her fingers through his thick, curly black hair. She was getting on his nerves, really, and acting out of character, in general.

"What the hell's gotten into you?" he absently said.

He tried to look around her as he twirled her hair with the creative enthusiasm of Niles kneading the rug.

"Yes! Yes! What a dunk! Rip that backboard down! Oh shit! Ahhhh! Look at that! Christ! Right into the pole. Oh, man." Raines sat back down.

The next five minutes was ice hockey. The goalie got a stick between his legs. A puck ricocheted off two face masks and hit a referee in the mouth. Raines was going wild. There was nothing he liked better than sports and injuries, especially if the two went together. With each tragedy, he imagined rushing in with his medical kit and stretcher, Raines to the rescue.

West was unbuttoning her blouse. She threw herself on top of him, devouring his mouth, and desperate. Raines put down his pizza.

"Hormones again?" He had never seen her this frustrated.

"I don't know." She worked on more buttons and hooks.

tw They seriously made out on the couch while Niles remained in his sanctuary above the sink. He was not a fan of Tire Man, as Niles called Raines, after noticing some radial ad in the newspaper lining his litter box. Tire Man was offensively loud and never warm and appreciative of Niles. Several times. Tire Man had launched Niles off the couch, and this would have been one of those times, should Niles have tested his luck, which he did not.

He looked adoringly at his distant, sad King. I'll help you. Fear not.

My owner knows about laundry money. She is very powerful and will protect you and all Usbeeceeans. Niles twitched an ear, detecting another engine sound, this one a pleasant, deep purring that he recognized. It was Piano Man, the nice one who played his fingers over Niles's spine and ribs, and right behind his ears, until Niles fell over from sheer pleasure, rattling window panes. Niles got up and stretched, excited that Piano Man seemed to be slowing behind the house, where he had parked in the past, on the few times he had stopped by for one reason or another.

West and Raines were not in a good space when the doorbell rang. By now, Raines was completely focused on what he was doing, and was within minutes, at most, of victory. It was most inconvenient and inconsiderate for someone to dare and drop by, unannounced. Raines experienced an intense wave of homicidal rage as he withdrew to his end of the couch, sweating and out of breath.

"Goddamn son of a bitch," he furiously blurted.

"I'll get it," West said.

She got up, pulling, zipping, and buttoning, as she walked and combed her fingers through her hair. She was a mess, and as the bell rang again, she hoped it wasn't Mrs. Grabman from two doors down. Mrs. Grabman was a nice enough old woman, but she tended to drop by every weekend West was home, usually offering vegetables from her garden as an excuse to meddle and complain about someone suspicious in the neighborhood. West already had a long row of ripening tomatoes on the counter, and two drawers full of okra, green beans, squash, and zucchini in the refrigerator.

Safety-conscious West, who had never gotten around to installing a burglar alarm, yelled through the door, "Who is it?"

"It's me," Brazil said.

From the bottom of the steps, where he waited with wine, he was excited, and clueless. He assumed the old black Corvette on the street belonged to a neighborhood kid. It had never occurred to him that Denny Raines might drive anything besides an ambulance. West opened the door, and Brazil lit up at the sight of her. He offered her} the bottle of wine in its brown paper bag.

"I thought we should at least drink a toast…" he started to say.

West awkwardly took the wine from him, acutely conscious of his reaction to her tousled hair, to the red marks on her neck, and her blouse buttoned crooked. Brazil's smile faded as his eyes wandered around her crime scene. Raines appeared behind his woman, and looked down the steps at Brazil.

"Hey, what'cha know, sport?" Raines grinned at him.

"Like your stories."

Brazil ran back to his car as if someone were chasing him.

"Andy!" West yelled after him.

"Andy!"

She hurried down the steps as his BMW roared off into the setting sun.

Raines followed her back into her living room as she buttoned her blouse properly, and nervously smoothed her hair. She set the wine on a table, where she did not have to look at it, and be reminded of who had brought it.

"What the hell's his problem?" Raines wanted to know.

"Temperamental writer," she muttered.

Raines wasn't interested. He and West had several downs yet to go, and he tackled her from behind, grabbing, fondling, and working his tongue into her ear. The play was incomplete as she broke free, leaving him yards behind, and taking the ball with her.

"I'm tired," she snapped.

Raines rolled his eyes. He'd had enough of her poor sportsmanship and penalty flags.

"Fine," he told her as he ejected his bloopers tape from the VCR.

"Let me just ask you one thing, Virginia." He furiously strutted to the door, pausing long enough to fix smoldering eyes on hers.

"When you're eating and the phone rings, what happens after you hang up? Do you go back to your meal, or do you forget that, too? Do you just quit because you had a tiny interruption?"

"Depends on what I'm eating," West told him.

Brazil's dinner was late and spent at Shark Finn's, on Old Pineville Road, at Bourbon Street. After roaring away from West's house, he had driven around, getting angrier by the moment. It had not been one of his wiser moves, perhaps, to stop by Tommy Axel's Fourth Ward condominium with its blush rose front door. Brazil noticed a number of men noticing him during his approach from the parking lot.

Brazil wasn't especially friendly to them, or even to Axel.

What Axel considered a first date and Brazil considered revenge began in Shark Finn's Jaws Raw Bar, where a mounted sailfish caught in a net protested with an open mouth and startled glass eyes. Wooden tables were uncovered, the plank floor unvarnished. There were faces carved on coconuts, and curled starfish and stained glass. Brazil nursed a Red Stripe beer and wondered if he might be going insane as he considered the senseless and impulsive behavior that had landed him here in this place at this moment.

Axel was burning holes in him, living a fantasy, and fearful the vision would vanish if he looked away for even a second. Brazil was certain that other people slipping down raw oysters and getting drunk had figured out Axel's intentions and were miscalculating Brazil's.

This was unfortunate since most of the men drove pickup trucks and believed it was their higher calling to get women pregnant, own guns, and kill queers.

"You come here a lot?" Brazil swirled beer in its dark brown bottle.

"Whenever. You hungry?" Axel grinned, displaying his very nice white teeth.

"Sort of," Brazil said.

They got up and moved into the crab shack, which was no different than the raw bar, except there were captain's chairs at the tables, and the ceiling fans were working so hard they looked like they might take off. Jimmy Buffet was playing over intercoms. A candle and Tabasco sauce were on their table, which rocked, requiring Brazil to fix it with several packets of Sweet amp; Low. Axel started by ordering a Shark Attack with lots of Myers's rum, and he convinced Brazil to try a Rum Runner, which had enough liquor in it to turn the lights out in half of Brazil's brain.

As if Brazil were not in enough trouble already, Axel ordered a tin bucket filled with iced-down bottles of Rolling Rock beer. This was going to work just fine, the music critic was sure of it. Brazil was a puppy and could be trained. Axel was stunned to suspect that the guy might never have been drunk in his life. Incredible. What did he grow up in, a monastery, the Mormon church? Brazil was wearing another pair of slightly too-small jeans left over from high school days, and a tennis team T-shirt. Axel tried not to think about what it might be like to get those clothes off.

"Everything here's good," Axel said without looking at the menu, as he leaned into candlelight.

"Conch fritters, crab cakes, Po-Boy sandwiches. I like the baskets, and usually get fried scallops."

"Okay," Brazil said to both Axels sitting across from him.

"I think you're trying to get me drunk."

"No way," Axel said, signaling for the waitress.

"You've hardly had a thing."

"I don't usually. And I ran eight miles this morning," Brazil pointed out.

"Man," Axel said.

"You're sheltered. Looks like I'm gonna have to educate you a little, pull you along."

"I don't think so." Brazil wanted to go home and hide in bed. Alone.

"I don't feel too good. Tommy."

Axel was insistent that food would prove the cure, and what he said was true to a point. Brazil felt better after he threw up in the men's room. He switched to iced tea, waiting for his internal weather to clear.

"I need to go," he said to an increasingly sullen Axel.

"Not yet," Axel said, as if the decision was his to make.

"Oh yes. I'm out of here." Brazil was politely insistent.

"We haven't had a chance to talk," Axel told him.

"About what?"

"You know."

"Do I have to guess?" Brazil was getting annoyed, his mind still in Dilworth, really.

"You know," Axel said again, his eyes intense.

"I just want to be friends," Brazil let him know.

"That's all I want." Axel couldn't have agreed more.

"I want us to get to know each other real well so we can be great friends."

Brazil knew a line when he heard one.

"You want to be better friends than I want to be. And you want to start right now. No matter what you say, I know how it works. Tommy. What you're saying is insincere. If I told you this minute that I'd go home with you, you'd go for it like that." He snapped his fingers.

"What's so wrong about it?" Axel liked the idea quite a lot, and wondered if it were remotely possible.

"See. A contradiction. That's not called being friends. That's called being laid," Brazil enlightened him.

"I'm not a piece of meat, nor do I care to be a one-night stand."

"Who said anything about one night? I'm a long-term kind of guy," Axel assured him.

Brazil could not help but notice the two guys with bulging muscles and tattoos, in greasy coveralls, drinking long-neck Budweisers, glaring at them as they eavesdropped. This didn't bode well, and Axel was so obsessed, he wasn't picking up on the stubby fingers drumming the table and toothpicks agitating in mean mouths, and eyes cutting, as plans were being made for the dark parking lot when the fags returned to their vehicle.

"My feelings for you are very deep, Andy," Axel went on.

"Frankly, I'm in love with you." He slumped back in his chair, and dramatically threw his hands up in despair.

"There. I've said it. Hate me if you want. Shun me."

"Puke," said Rizzo, whose visible tattoo was of a big- breasted naked woman named Tiny.

"I gotta get some air," agreed his buddy, Buzz Shiftier.

"Tommy, I think we should be smart and get out of here as fast as we can," Brazil suggested quietly, and with authority.

"I made a mistake and I apologize, okay. I shouldn't have come over and we shouldn't be here. I was in a mood and took it out on you. Now we're going to make tracks or die."

"So you do hate me." Axel was into his crushed, you have-deeply-wounded-me routine.

"Then you stay here." Brazil stood.

"I'm pulling your car up to the front porch, and you're going to jump in. Got it?" He thought of West again, and anger returned.

Brazil was looking around, as if expecting a gunfight any moment, and ready for one, but aware of his limitations. There were rednecks everywhere, all drinking beer, eating fried fish with tartar and cocktail sauces, and ketchup. They were staring at Axel and Brazil.

Axel saw the wisdom in Brazil getting the car by himself.

"I'll pay the bill while you do that," Axel said.

"Dinner's my treat."

Brazil was completely cognizant of the fact that the two big boys in coveralls were this very second out in the dark parking lot, waiting for the two queers. Brazil wasn't especially concerned by their erroneous impression of him and the choices he made in life, but he was not interested in having the shit beat out of him. He thought fast, and tracked down the hostess in the raw bar, where she was parked at a table, smoking and writing tomorrow's specials on a chalk board.

"Ma'am," he said to her.

"I wonder if you could help me with a serious problem."

She looked skeptically at him, her demeanor changing somewhat. Guys said similar words to her every night after they'd been through buckets of beer. The problem was always the same thing, and so easy to remedy if she didn't mind slipping off behind the restaurant for maybe ten minutes and dropping her jeans.

"What." She continued writing, ignoring the jerk.

"I need a pin," he said.

"A what?" She looked up at him.

"You mean, something to write with?"

"No, ma'am. I mean a pin, a needle, and something to sterilize it with," he told her.

"What for?" She frowned, opening her fat vinyl pocketbook.

"A splinter."

"Oh!" Now that she understood.

"Don'cha hate it when that happens?

This place is full of 'em, too. Here you go, sugar. "

She fished out a small sewing kit in a clear plastic box that she'd gotten from the last hotel some rich guy took her to, and she slid out a needle. She handed him a bottle of nail polish remover. He dipped the needle in acetone, and bravely retreated to the porch. Sure enough, the two thugs were prowling near cars, waiting. They lurched in his direction when they spotted him, and he quickly stabbed his left index finger with the needle. He stabbed his right index finger and thumb. Brazil squeezed out as much blood as he could, and smeared in on his face, which he then held in his hands, as if he were reeling.

"Oh God," he moaned, staggering down steps.

"Jesus." He fell against the porch railing, groaning, holding his disgusting, gory face.

"Shit." Rizzo had gotten to him, and was completely taken aback.

"What the fuck happened to you?"

"My cousin in there," Brazil weakly said.

"You talking about that fag you was sitting with?" asked Shifflet.

Brazil nodded.

"Yeah, man. He's fucking got AIDS, and he threw up blood on me! You believe that! Oh God."

He staggered down another step. Shiftier and Rizzo moved out of the way.

"It went in my eyes and mouth! You know what that means! Where's a hospital around here, man? I got to get to the hospital! Could you drive me, please?"

Brazil staggered and almost stumbled into them. Shifflet and Rizzo ran. They leapt into their Nissan Hard Body XE with its four-foot-lift oversized tires that spun rocks.