The Two-Bear Mambo (25 page)
Read The Two-Bear Mambo Online
Authors: Joe R. Lansdale
Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Mystery, #Collins; Hap (Fictitious character), #Mystery & Detective, #American Mystery & Suspense Fiction, #Pine; Leonard (Fictitious character), #Suspense, #Texas, #Mystery fiction, #Mystery & Detective - General, #Private investigators, #Gay, #Gay men, #Fiction - Mystery, #Private investigators - Texas, #Racism, #Detective, #Mystery & Detective - Series, #Friendship
It's a week later and it's still raining. Nothing serious. Just a steady, easy spring rain, but I still can't sleep. I wake up every night and pad to the kitchen window for a look out back. There's only the woods out there, but I can't sleep. I sit up and drink coffee till morning, watch the late movies. Sometimes I play the L.C. Soothe boxed set I borrowed from Leonard. I play it and think about how this man, long dead, got this whole thing started.
Might as well. I go back to bed, I lay there and wait for the floodwaters to come hurtling down with Florida at the crest, pinned to the top of a wave like a Christmas tree ornament for the devil.
Just lay there and listen to the beating of my heart, counting the seconds gone from my life, anticipating less of the same.