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Show Blue Run/23 can of Pabst and asks if I ever got sober after that last charter trip. I met him during the three-day debauch that was Bet and Rocky's wedding, when we all got beer buzzed on the head boat Cap chartered, fishing all day for grouper out on Twenty Mile Reef. That night I accompanied the groomsmen to Tootsie's Nightlife, where aerobic beach queens lapdanced one and all and I got too drunk to sign the bill, so Mark scribbled my name for me. "Can you rephrase the question?" "You been fishing?" "A little You?" "We're pregnant. I fish every goddamn chance come around." "Good for you." "Yea," Mark says He looks up from the dirt into my eyes. "I'm real sorry " "Does everyone know." "Yea. Rock told us." The crowd visibly straightens when Cap and Meg cruise in, the Ford Explorer's windshield covered with plastic decals that make guards go into triple salute conniptions whenever he drives into Patrick Air Force Base to stock up on vodka and Prozac Meg's socks are bright white, cuffed over the ankle. She puts on her people face and works her way to the gift table where Renee and I've wrapped up a baby backpack with a fifth of Stolachnaya. Cap shakes my hand and looks me in the face. It's hard to say how he feels, but I know he means it, that he's had to tell many, many men, out on those destroyers in gray seas, that their mothers have passed away, their wives have left them for their best friends His own mother died of cancer-no piece of cake, saying the long goodbye Anyway, I register this and feel |