Page 42 of Rhodes

The laugh comes out of him like a goose being stepped on. It's loud, a honk and then another honk and then a wheeze that folds him forward over the table and rattles the silverware. The couple next to us turns to look.

I've known Trey for several months. How the hell have I never heard that? Oh, my god. Now I can't unhear it.

There is nothing wrong with him. I could kiss him tonight. I could probably do a good deal more than that. But I know as certain as a tide chart that I could not sit across a table from that laugh for the next forty years.

There's a lot of yapping, but I have no idea what he's saying because all I can think of is that laugh.

He wipes his eyes, still grinning, and says something I miss completely. I nod like I've been listening, although I haven't heard a word since the goose.

"That's a great story." I set my napkin down and give him a rueful smile. "Trey, I have to be honest, I'm running on fumes. We were up at four yesterday to go out to the reefs, and I've been buried in a make-up lab report all afternoon. Would you hate me if we called it a night?"

"No, not at all. I worked today, too, so I'm with you."

He motions for the server, who comes over and asks if we want anything else. He says no and asks for the check. I reach into my bag to get my wallet, but he insists on getting this, referencing the fact that I paid for lunch on Tuesday. I acquiesce, but I do feel slightly guilty letting him pay for such a nice dinner.

The drive back is short and easy. Trey talks about the reef boat's new bilge pump, and I say the right things at the right times. He drives with one wrist draped over the wheel, the radio on softly playing some country song I don't recognize. I watch the streetlights slide across the hood.

He pulls in behind my Cruiser and cuts the engine. The headlights go dark. That sudden hush after a truck engine dies always lands heavier than the noise did, and for a second we just sit in it.

"Hey, could I grab a quick glass of water before I head back?" He says it easy, one hand still on the wheel. "Long drive."

It isn't a long drive, twelve minutes at most.

I get what he's doing. He's not pushing, just seeing if the door's open, the real one and the other kind, and he's left me the room to say no. I'm too tired to read anything into it. "Sure."

We climb out. My keys jangle loudly in the empty street. It's eerily quiet for New Orleans in the Mardi Gras season.

The deadbolt gives easier than it used to, and we step into a dark foyer. I don't hit the overhead, just the little light over the stove, which throws a thin wash across the counters. The place is black and cool and still, the AC humming somewhere, and I know without checking that Rhodes is asleep down the hall.

"Kitchen's this way," I whisper.

I go to the water tank on the counter instead of the tap, pull a red plastic cup off the stack, and fill it. Water hits the plastic, loud in the hush.

Trey looks around while I pour, taking in the range that costs more than my car, the stone counters, the whole quiet money of the place. Then he looks at the cup in my hand.

"You've got, what, mountain spring water in a Solo cup." He grins. "In a mansion. That's a choice."

"It's what we've got." I hand it over. "The man owns nice things and drinks out of the cheap stack. Don't ask me."

He takes the cup and drinks, standing there in the dark kitchen in his good shirt, and I wait for something, a flutter, a pull, some small part of me leaning toward him because he's here, close, in the house where I sleep.

Nothing.

He's just a nice guy drinking water in a kitchen. I could stand here all night and feel exactly this much, which is nothing at all, and that blankness tells me more than the whole dinner did. My answer settled hours ago. This is only the proof.

"Good water," he says, and lowers the cup, and something about his own delivery gets him.

The laugh comes up out of him again, the honk, then the second honk, then that folding wheeze at the end. And it rolls right down the dark hallway toward the sleeping rooms.

The hall light doesn't come on, but I hear him before I see him, bare feet on the floorboards, slow and heavy. Then Rhodes is in the kitchen doorway, one hand braced on the frame, squinting into the thin light over the stove. He's got no shirt on, his sweatpants slung low, his hair wrecked and standing up on one side where the pillow got it. He looks rougher than I usually see him, sleep-heavy and a little raw around the edges, but that's just what a man looks like when a goose honks him awake at eleven o'clock.

I look at him because he's standing there half-dressed and there's no reason I wouldn't. Broad chest, the ink running down over his ribs, the flat plane of his stomach. My body files it the way it files anything true and obvious. The sky is up, water is wet, Rhodes has a good chest. There's nothing to do about any of it.

"What's going on?” It isn't really a question. His voice is thick with sleep.

"Rhodes." Trey reads the room in about half a second and sets the red cup down on the counter with a soft plastic knock. "I should get going. Long day tomorrow."

I don’t say anything.