A Marked Man

“Speak for yourself,” Max said and laughed. Kelly was their half brother, their father’s son by a short first marriage, but most of the time they all forgot that.

Max had called ahead to warn Annie Duhon he’d be arriving with an entourage—they had both decided they wanted to keep their friendship fairly private, at least for now—but Annie hadn’t been in when he’d called and she still hadn’t shown up. He wished he had the right to find out why because during the past seven months he had never visited Pappy’s without finding Annie there.

He knew why he preferred not to advertise their connection. What was her reason? She’d never said, but neither had he.

Kelly clapped his hands over his ears and he was not the only one who did. “Jailhouse Rock,” as only Elvis could sing it, blared through the speakers from the jukebox, cutting off Jellyroll Morton on the sound system.

Max smiled at his diminishing pile of softshell crabs. Folks called Roche “oblivious” and Max guessed they were right, but he liked him the way he was.

“Dammit, he can make me mad,” Kelly said. “Listen to that racket. Who’s the Elvis look-alike over there?” He shifted to see better. “Black wig and a white suit. And damn me if he isn’t wearing blue suede shoes. This place got stuck in a decade I don’t remember. Kitschy doesn’t come close.”

“Loosen up,” Max said, losing patience. “I was told about him. Name’s Carmen. Apparently he’s worked here for years and he’s part of the atmosphere, I guess. He’s around in case someone forgets their manners. When Roche gets over here we’ll listen to whatever’s on your mind and get out. We could have talked at the clinic anyway.” He glanced toward Annie’s office again. The door was still closed. She loved this place and treated it with the kind of care she’d use if it belonged to her. He had seen her yesterday. If she intended to be out today she would have said so.

“The clinic ought to be finished,” Kelly said. “Aren’t you worried about your arteries with all the fried food?” He eyed Max’s crabs and took another bite out of his own toasted cheese sandwich. His basic tastes in food hadn’t progressed much since grade school.

“Sure I’m worried. Don’t you think that lump of yellow goop you’re eating could be a problem, too?”

Max was used to watching his own double walk around. Finally heading in their direction, Roche loped, tall, looselimbed and relaxed, his short black hair mussed. Crossing the dance floor in the middle of the low-lying building, he returned nods from folks he knew only by sight. He rarely smiled because it slipped his memory, but people felt drawn to him anyway.

He sat beside Kelly, opposite Max. “Did you take a look at that jukebox. Wurlitzer ‘1015.’ How do they keep the thing running?”

“Probably a new knockoff,” Kelly said.

Roche swivelled and hooked a thumb in the direction of the machine. “Uh-uh. Take a closer look. They first made those in the forties. There’s nothing new in this place. Anyway, sorry I’m late,” he finished absently.

“You were late before you got here,” Kelly said in a monotone. Max didn’t like the way Kelly looked. It wasn’t like him to be pale under his tan or to have dark marks under his usually clear, hazel eyes.

“I stopped in at Rosebank for the mail,” Roche said. “Nothing but bills.”

All three of them had small apartments at Rosebank, a resort that belonged to Spike Devol, the local sheriff, his wife Vivian and her mother, Charlotte. Green Veil, an antebellum house next door to the resort was the site of the new clinic. Already converted into a plastic surgery clinic a few years earlier, Max had decided that, with work, the place was exactly what he wanted. The work had turned out to be a lot more extensive than he had figured, but despite Kelly’s panicking, Max expected the place to open within months. It had to. Already there were doctors with different plastic specialties from Max’s who had committed to coming on board at Green Veil.

Roche looked around for a waitress. “I ran into Father Cyrus at Rosebank. He and Vivian closeted themselves away and didn’t look so happy.”

“Wonder what that was about?” Kelly said. “Those two don’t go in for closed-door meetings, do they?”

Roche shrugged and asked a waitress in squeaky-bottomed shoes for the same thing Max had ordered. “This is a great place,” he said, hanging his head back to look at a thick layer of mostly yellowing business cards tacked to the ceiling. “It’s got character, atmosphere. I’d like to come when the band plays. Did you see the size of the gator out front? Blue.” The restaurant surrounded a dance hall and the section where the Savages sat was built off one side of the building.

“Blue what?” Kelly said, after considering. “The shoes? Yeah, fucking idiot Elvis impersonator. Jeez.”

“He was talking about the alligator,” Max said. “It’s called Blue. I told you that when we got here.”

“Yeah,” Roche said to Kelly, his tone light and even. “And I’m humoring you, friend. Otherwise I’d tell you to go to hell and take your third-degree with you.”

Time to change the subject. “Wasn’t it great to see Michele Riley yesterday? I knew she’d come for an interview just to be polite, but I wasn’t sure she’d accept the job.”

Roche said, “I was,” and looked too pleased.

“Because she can’t resist your charms?” Max asked. “I don’t think you had much to do with it. She likes the idea of having her own physical therapy department even if it will be small. And she’s damned good, so all the luck is on our side. I’m relieved she wants to come here—there’s nothing much she doesn’t know about me.”

“Oh, yeah?” Roche crossed his arms.

“You know what I mean.”

Roche looked into the distance. “It’s a good sign she’s so positive. She’ll bring others with her—including the fiancé she ought to dump in favor of me. She seems to really like it here.” He and Max had known Michele professionally. At their invitation she had come to Toussaint the day before, expressed delight over the clinic and agreed to coordinate the physical therapy department. Her fiancé was a nurse.

“Just remember Michele’s taken,” Max said to Roche and smiled. “It’s beginning to feel as if we should have done something like this a long time ago,” he observed. “This will be a good place for patients to recuperate.”

“Fucking weather,” Kelly muttered as if he hadn’t heard a word either Roche or Max said. He gulped beer from a sweating glass. “You know you can’t hide forever, don’t you, Max.”

“If I didn’t, I do now,” Max said. “Where did that come from?” He could always rely on their older brother to state the obvious.

“Someone has to remind you what we’re facing. You get off in your own world and forget—”

“Keep it down,” Roche said through his teeth. “We’ve been here a long time now without any problems.”

“You and Roche have been here a fair amount of time,” Kelly said. “Making sure you two can do what you want to do keeps me pretty busy elsewhere.”

“Can it,” Max said. “You don’t have to spend so much time in New York and you wouldn’t if you didn’t like it there. We all like it there, remember? It’s home, or it was. You’re in a rotten mood and it isn’t helping a thing. So we’re gonna get more rain, big deal, it rains plenty here and work doesn’t stop.”

“Delays cost us,” Kelly said. He finished the sandwich rapidly and wiped his mouth on a paper napkin. “You know how hard it is to keep a work crew focused. If the weather gets bad they find inside jobs, and they come back when they damn well please.”

“Dammit,” Max said. He noticed that noise had dwindled at nearby tables and saw patrons lose interest in their own conversations while they listened to the brothers argue. He dropped his voice. “What’s up with you, Kelly? You get jumpier by the day. If you want out of this project, say so. I never imagined we’d have to resort to hiding away to do our work but it’s the best we’ve got—or I’ve got. You two don’t have to be here.”

Roche rolled his eyes and kept quiet.

“You can be an ungrateful son of a bitch,” Kelly said.

“So you say. You push me too far. We’re finally within shouting distance of opening the clinic’s doors and you’re looking for more problems.”

Roche half turned away and pulled an ankle onto the opposite knee. Roche the quiet peacemaker with a steely will said less than he thought, much less. Max was the one man who read his twin regardless of the man’s enigmatic demeanor. Neither of them went in for idle talk.

“Well, hell, it is starting to rain,” Kelly said, looking up at the first big drops on a skylight. He dropped his voice. “I get edgy is all. You’re right, I look for problems. I’ll try to knock it off.”

“Forget it,” Max said. “We’re going to be looking over our shoulders for a bit. We’ll learn to forget about it in time.” He did not say they’d be looking for unnatural deaths that might be blamed on Max the way two others, fifteen years apart, the second one three years ago, initially had been. He also didn’t mention that he hesitated to give the impression that he cared about any woman in more than an offhand way because knowing him well might be dangerous to a lady’s health. Kelly and Roche thought Annie Duhon was just a nodding acquaintance.

“Okay,” Roche said, easing a baseball cap out of his back pocket and tossing it on the table. “Is that it, Kelly? You’re edgy and you wanted us all here so you could talk about it.”

“For a shrink, you have a lousy bedside manner,” Kelly said, jutting his square jaw. “I already said I was uptight, but that isn’t why we’re here. I wanted to go somewhere we could talk without being overheard by the Devols, or those sorry-ass construction workers.”

“Really?” Roche looked at the nearest table where four men instantly got real interested in their food. “So talk. Quietly. And the contractors are doing a great job. Looks like they’ll finish almost on time and that doesn’t happen so often.”

Kelly put his elbows on the table and rested his face in his hands. “I’m not sure about this place anymore, that’s all.”

Roche and Max looked at one another quickly, and Roche shook his head slightly.

Sure, Max thought, as usual they were supposed to consider Kelly’s unpredictable moods and give him space. “What d’you mean?” he asked, unable to resist. “If you’re saying we’re making a mistake opening Green Veil, I wish you’d said something a year or more ago.”

“You were so set on it,” Kelly said, his face still in his hands. “Your buddy, Reb Girard, told you this was a good place to get lost and you believed her. I don’t know what I think about it now.”