82 Desire

heavy with judgment—against the company (small-thinking and poorly organized), against his father’s friend (stubborn, old-fashioned, closed-minded, and stupid), even against the city (corrupt and backward).
    The miracle was, they’d actually kept him for nineteen years before dumping him. He’d found other jobs and eventually retired to North Carolina. He’d even found a second wife after Russell’s mother died, though why anyone would want the old goat was unclear to his son.
    The self-appointed guardian of righteousness in every respect, Thomas Fortier delighted in getting in the fast lane and driving the speed limit, just to make the other drivers obey the law. When Russell was a child, it had embarrassed him so thoroughly his shirt was usually soaked with sweat by the time they got where they were going. In retrospect, embarrassment seemed less appropriate than fear; it was a wonder his father hadn’t been killed by some outraged citizen.
    Now that Russell was a grown man, that story should be amusing. He was aware that it should be amusing. He told it to friends and they laughed. Bebe had laughed. Russell never did. Instead, he always found himself shaking his head and rolling his eyes.
    Bebe had said, “Why can’t you get over it?”
    “When you live with something like that,” he replied, “it’s just not a laugh riot.”
    “So, I guess little Russell’s report card was never good enough? If you’re not valedictorian, it’s the same as not graduating? That sort of thing?”
    “You can’t even imagine.”
    Not a single thing Russell had ever done had pleased his father, so far as he could tell. And yet his father had given him a check for $300,000 on his deathbed. He didn’t approve of probate—it was that simple. The only good thing he’d ever done for Russell, he’d done—as he’d done most things—to show the world how wrong it was.
    (Though his father wouldn’t view it that way—he would probably say putting Russell through Harvard was a good thing, a paternal thing. But Russell had wanted to go to Tulane.)
    Old Thomas had actually sent Russell the check the same day he entered the hospital. If she’d known about it, Bebe might have said it was a guilt thing, to get Russell to go to his bedside, but Russell didn’t think so. Thomas had his second wife and wasn’t much on mushy family stuff anyway. Besides, guilt wasn’t his thing.
    Being right was; control was. His wife had also been left a liquid sum, with explicit instructions as to how Thomas wanted to be buried, down to how the headstone should read.
    When Russell got the check, this thing with Ray Boudreaux and the Skinners was just starting to break. Ray was just beginning to contact them, trying to get something going, some kind of negotiation. The others were all for ignoring him, but Russell had a feeling things were about to escalate.
    A plan formed in the back of his head. Even then, he was thinking about a run for freedom. He deposited the check in a bank he and Bebe didn’t use, waited for it to clear, and then withdrew the money in the form of a cashier’s check. Bebe never even knew about it.
    He turned that into cash once he got to Fort Lauderdale and bought the boat with a big fat chunk of it.
    The check thing, so like his father, did make him smile.
    He was in a mood to smile. The Cuban girl’s drink had looked so festive he’d switched to margaritas after his beer, and by now he’d had two.
    I wonder how Mother stood him, he thought, and, as always, the memory of his mother made him feel warm and loved. She was as generous, as kind, as sympathetic and understanding as his father was arrogant and hard-nosed, righteous and punishing.
    He was starting to go all mushy when another woman talked to him, this one about thirty-five, also dressed like live bait, and for some reason wearing a baseball cap.
    Her face was shiny with the heat. She wore pearl stud earrings with her baseball cap and tube top, and she was on the short, chunky side. But pretty.
    Undeniably pretty. He supposed they didn’t come out to this sort of bar unless they were.
    For some reason, she was asking him where he went to college. “Harvard,” he said, and that seemed to stop her cold.
    Finally, she said, “What was it like?”
    “You’re asking the wrong person.” He gave her what he hoped wasn’t too paternal a smile. “I hated its guts. My dad wanted me to go, so I did. Barely scraped through, but did graduate, and then