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mister.”
    It was Bremen’s turn to blink. The man’s anger pulsed at him like a hot, red light. Through the static of neurobabble, he could sort out a few images.
    Fucking druggies killed Norm Jr. as sure as if they’d put a gun to his head. Boy never had no discipline, no common sense. If his mommy’d lived, mighta been different.…
Images of a child on a tire swing, the seven-year-old boy laughing, front tooth missing. Images of the boy as a man in his late twenties, eyes darkened, pale skin slick with sweat.
Please, Dad … I swear I’ll pay you back. Just a loan so I can get on my feet again
.
    You mean get on your feet until you can score another hit of coke, or crack, or whatever you call it now
. Norm Sr.’s voice. When Norm Sr. had gone into Dade County to see the boy. Norm Jr. shaking, sick, deep in debt, ready to go infinitely deeper in debt to keep up his habit.
Over my dead body you’ll get more money for this shit. You wanna come home, work at the store … that’s all right. We’ll get you into the county clinic
.… Images of the boy, the man now, sweeping dishes and coffee cups from the tabletop and stalking from the café. Memory of Norm Sr. weeping for the first time in almost fifty years.
    Bremen blinked as Norm Sr. handed him his change.“I …” began Bremen, then realized that he could not say that he was sorry. “I’m not a drug dealer,” he said again. “I know how it must look. The teller gave me the balance in fifties and twenties … our savings.” Bremen popped the top off the RC Cola and took a long drink. “I just flew down from Philadelphia,” he said, wiping his chin with the back of his hand. “My … my wife died last Saturday.”
    It was the first time Bremen had said those words and they sounded flat and patently false to him. He took another sip and looked down, confused.
    Norm’s thoughts were churned, but the red heat was gone.
Maybe. What the hell … fella can be strung out from his missus dyin’ as much as from drugs. Suspicious of everybody these days. He looks like I did when Alma Jean passed on … he looks like hell
.
    “You thinking of doin’ some fishin’?” said Norm Sr.
    “Fishing …” Bremen finished the drink and looked up at the shelves stocked with lures, small cardboard boxes of bobbers, and reels. He saw cane and fiberglass rods stacked against the far wall. “Yesss,” he said slowly, surprising himself with his answer, “I’d like to do some fishing.”
    Norm Sr. nodded. “You need any tackle? Bait? A license? Or you got that already?”
    Bremen licked his lips, feeling something returning to the insides of his skull. His scoured, bruised skull. “I need everything,” he said, almost in a whisper.
    Norm Sr. grinned. “Well, mister, you got the money for it.” He began moving around, offering Bremen choices on tackle, bait, and rental rods. Bremen wanted no choices; he took the first of everything that Norm Sr. offered. The stack on the countertop grew.
    Bremen went back to the cooler and fished around fora second bottle, feeling somehow liberated at the thought of that also going on his growing tab.
    “You need a place to stay? It’s easier if you stay out on one of the islands if you’re gonna fish the lake.”
    Was that swamp he’d mistaken for the Everglades a lake? “A place to stay?” Bremen repeated, seeing in the reflecting glass of Norm Sr.’s slow thoughts that the man was sure that he was retarded in his grief. “Yes. I’d like to stay here a few days.”
    Norm Sr. turned back to the silent, seated man. Bremen opened his thoughts to the dark figure there, but almost no language came through. The man’s thoughts churned like an infinitely slow washing machine turning a few rags and bundles of images, but almost no words at all. Bremen almost gasped at the newness of this.
    “Verge, didn’t that Chicago fella check out of Copely Isle Two?”
    Verge nodded, and in a sudden shift of light from the