The Emerald Lizard
Page 22
Since all this happened, commercial fishing of redfish has been banned in Louisiana. But there are other species of fish, and other kinds of nets. And there will always be pirates. What they can't profit from, they throw away. So dead redfish still wash up on the barrier islands. That's right, the ones that are now protected under the law.
It does no good to rage. But somebody has to do it.
Anyway, Larry Silva seems to be enjoying good health and Pam is definitely enjoying all his money. The best part is that Pam's little boy Jason thinks Larry is better than TV. Larry likes that.
And then there is Jeffrey Bonage who had the hiccups for two weeks, and that's all I intend to say about him.
Maurice. I can't really talk about Maurice yet. I'll just tell you what you already know—that he'll never be the same again any more than I will be—and let it go at that.
Of course, my theories about violence can always be expanded. My latest one is that witnessing an act of violence with another person, experiencing terror together, creates a bond closer than family.
I worried about Pinkie. She wasn't the same either, not that I expected her to be, but that quality I like to call youthful exuberance had left her. It made me sad that Pinkie couldn't hold on to her exuberance a while longer, but it was replaced by a kind of quietness, a serenity I found extremely compelling and attractive. And, as always, youthful resilience counts for a lot.
It was Pinkie who held Maurice's law office together in the weeks that followed Nita's death, and it was Pinkie who found me a place to live when the new owners of the Euclid were threatening to move me out with the furniture.
The place was uptown, a large apartment on the second floor of a giant old cypress house that hadn't seen paint for many years. Trees grew up close around it, a low rusted wrought iron fence separated it from the rest of the neighborhood. It looked, in a word, haunted. There was a turret on it, and that turret, its rounded interior space, was part of my living room. There were also fourteen-foot ceilings, mantel pieces, and the smell of musk that becomes part of all these old New Orleans dwellings.
I recognized something about the place right away, a feeling of comfort, a smell of the past, a vision of the future with old photographs decorating the mantelpieces.
The night before the movers were due to arrive Pinkie and I built a fire in the living room fireplace. We sat on the floor, our backs against the wall, our shoulders touching with all that empty space around us, and watched the flames dance and spark and glow hotter, and for the first time in several weeks I began to believe that things were going to get better.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2012 by Chris Wiltz
ISBN 978-1-4976-5573-7
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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