Suitcase City. Sterling Watson

over the plate of waffles and strawberries. The fork dipped and rose with a mechanical rhythm. Teach walked over and knelt with the bowl and towel at his daughter’s feet.

      “Dad, what are you doing?”

      Teach lifted the bleeding foot and examined it. Dean tried to pull it away. He held it, his head bent, hearing the fork settle to the plate. “Dad?”

      Teach didn’t answer, couldn’t speak now. Not yet. In a minute. He put the bowl under her foot and began to lift warm soapy water to it. He wanted Dean back. Back from that place where adolescent girls went for a while to get away from their parents. He couldn’t look up at his daughter now, couldn’t show her his red eyes, couldn’t say any of the necessary things he carried with him for her and for her lost mother. Well, he would say them later. To say them was the thing he wanted most. Now he would wash this poor bruised foot.

      Dean did not resist his hands, but he knew that if he looked up he would see her blushing face, a daughter’s eyes darting around in the improbable fear that someone was watching this. He said, “Deanie, I wish you could dance without hurting yourself so much. Look, this is infected. After I wash it, I’ll have to put iodine on it.”

      Dean said, “DADDY, get up, will you? I don’t know what you’re doing down there.” But Teach could hear it, her voice softening. The years slipping away. When she said, “You know, that feels kind of good, actually,” he finally looked up at her.

      He wished his eyes were not what they were, red and swollen, but there was nothing he could do about that.

      “What’s wrong, Dad?”

      “Nothing, honey.” Teach dried her foot and began to wash the other one. It wasn’t bleeding, but it was covered with horned callouses and raw scrapes. The cruelty, he thought, of the things we love.

      “Dad, are you okay? Did something happen last night?” Her voice was slow and warm now like the water that dripped from Teach’s hands. The child was little again, putting her world in order. Sighting bodies in the firmament of home. Daddy, are you okay?

      It was easy for Teach to say, “I’m okay, Deanie. Nothing happened.” Drying his daughter’s beautiful, skillful, wounded foot, he thought, And I want us both to be okay. This Saturday morning is what I want. He rose and took the bowl of soapy water to the kitchen and said, “Now don’t you move. I’ll be right back with the iodine.”

       ELEVEN

      Teach sat in the Grille Room at the Terra Ceia Country Club sipping his second beer. He had purchased a pitcher. He felt rank and grubby and knew he looked it. He hoped the members who glanced at him as they passed through would conclude that his greasy hair and thirty hours of beard were simply the Saturday-morning rebellion of a successful man who’d already played a relaxing nine. The eleven o’clock beer would just have to puzzle them.

      After breakfast, Dean had gone up to her room for the friend phoning that was her Saturday-morning ritual. Teach had gone out to the garage and slipped on the polo shirt he kept in the LeSabre’s trunk for the times when he stopped at the driving range after work. In the club parking lot, he’d put on his golf shoes and a white visor, and walked to the Grille Room to order the beer and wait for attorney Walter Demarest.

      Walter teed off at seven o’ clock Saturday mornings, sun or rain, no matter what the condition of the Great Republic or the needs of his well-heeled clients. Teach knew Walter’s patterns, knew he would pass through the Grille Room on his way home. He trusted Walter as much as he trusted anyone on the narrow social shelf that housed Paige’s friends. Walter played good golf, didn’t cheat, and had never said a word to Teach about any of his clients.

      When Walter Demarest walked in, Teach was on his third beer and believed he might be looking exactly like a guy who’d played a pleasant early round. Walter went to the bar for his usual Amstel Light. With the bottle in his hand, he turned and surveyed the room. Teach waved. “Walt, join me, why don’t you?”

      Walter Demarest glanced around the Grille Room as though he might get a better offer, saw nothing, smiled, and ambled over to Teach’s table. He was tall, round at the middle, and as pale as the belly of a catfish. He had coffee-black hair and the sort of chinless, hook-nosed look that reminded Teach of the British royal family. He had been president of his chapter of Alpha Tau Omega at Florida, and Teach had known him in one way or another for a long time.

      Walter looked Teach over, sighting down the brown barrel of the Amstel bottle. “So, Teach old buddy, you get around already? How’d it go out there? I didn’t think you were an early bird.” Walter lowered the bottle from a mouth that was small and too crowded with chalky-looking teeth. Inbreeding, Teach thought, not for the first time.

      Teach considered lying about a golf game. Why bother? Walter would question him about his deportment on the evil twelfth hole, a par five that required a drive and a long iron over water to a narrow landing, and he would have to invent golf shots and be questioned with legal precision about the lie of his ball and his choice of clubs. “Actually, Walter, I didn’t play this morning. I’ve been sitting here waiting for you. I need to talk to you about something important.”

      Walter put the Amstel bottle on the table and shrugged on the mantle of his profession. Clearly, he did not want to wear it: not here, not now. He examined Teach carefully, noting in his mental ledger Teach’s greasy hair, the clean golf shirt, the haggard, unshaven face. His eyes lingered on the half-empty beer pitcher, then met Teach’s frankly. “Rough night?”