Page 79 of Denied

She didn’t say anything. Her hand had stopped on the cup. He looked at it, her hand on a cup at the end of a counter, the hand that had been on his face with the lamp on, and she saw him look, and took it off the cup and put it in her lap.

“Sunny.”

“Don’t.”

“I wasn’t going to. I’m eating.” He put the fork down. “You’ve got your hair down.”

“It’s ten o’clock at night.”

“I know what time it is. You’ve had it up for a week. Every morning, before I’m down. Five months in this house and you never once had it up at the stove till the morning after you told me.” He picked the fork up again. “I’m only saying I noticed. I’m not allowed to say anything else, so I’m saying that.”

She sat there. Her face did nothing at all, and it cost her, he could see it cost her, and he stood six feet off and let it, because he’d asked twice and that was the number, and a man who’d been told no didn’t get to cross a kitchen because a woman had her hair down.

“Goodnight, Brody,” she said, and got up, and took the cold cup to the sink, and went past him to the stairs, a foot off, and he kept his hands on the plate.

A foot. He could have put a hand out flat and had her waist without moving his feet, and she went past slow enough that they both knew he could, and he stood there with a fork in his hand and let her, because he’d asked twice and that was the number. He heard her stop on the third stair. He didn’t look up. She went on.

He washed it. He stood at the sink with the water going and her cup beside his plate, and he didn’t touch the cup.

He found the chart on Tuesday, in his jacket, looking for a pen.

It was in the inside pocket, folded in four. He took it out and opened it, and it was the BBQ page, the one Levi had hosed on the porch rail, a hundred and twenty people and two smokers and Lara’s not lifting a thing in her hand, in blue, with the times down the side and a coffee ring on the corner and PIES underlined twice.

He didn’t know when he’d taken it. He sat on the tailgate at the north fence with the page in his hand and tried to figure out when a man takes a piece of paper off a wall and puts it in his jacket without knowing he’s done it, and couldn’t, and knew it was after the door, because before the door he’d never have needed to.

He folded it in four and put it back.

Clay had the coffee on when he came in Friday at seven, and looked at his face, and turned the pot off.

“Sit down.”

“I’ll stand.”

“Then stand.” Clay sat. He’d sat behind that desk with the pumps going outside it for six years and he looked at his nephew with the face he’d looked at John with across a fence for thirty. “You’ve got a thing to say. You’ve had it since October. I’ve been waiting.”

“Burchall optioned the corridor in March.” Brody said it plainly, the way he’d said it to Greene. “The scrub north of both places. Eleven miles of severed minerals through a Delaware shell they’ve had since spring. They’ve been hauling samples up the county road since August, and the assays are three times your west line. It’s the thickest of the bed and it’s not under you and it’s not under my father, and they’ve had the paper on it since the month they sent me home.” He put the folder on the desk. “You’re the front, Clay. They needed a man with pumps and a state file for the county to look at while they bought the ground next to you. You’re not the deal. You were never the deal.”

Clay didn’t touch the folder.

He sat there a long time with the pumps going outside, and Brody stood there, and neither of them said anything, and then Clay put his glasses on and opened it, and read the first page, and the second, the way Greene had, and took his glasses off.

“How long have you known?”

“Since Odessa.”

“A month.”

“Greene’s had it a month. I’ve had it a month. Dean’s known a week.” Brody didn’t sit. “I’m telling you first, before Houston, before the county, before my father gets it from Greene’s chair Monday. Because you’re my uncle, and you took me on when nobody else in this county would give me a job, and I’m not going to let you find out from a lawyer that you’ve been a front for a company I work for.”

“Worked.”

“Worked. I’m resigning this morning. In writing. I’ll write it at your desk if you’ll let me.”

Clay looked at him.

“Your father know you’re here?”

“No.”