Chapter 15: Pay Up

On Friday night Dell slept on Carys's couch with a pistol she had lent him, unloaded, on his chest.

I did not trust him, but I trusted her house.

At midnight I found Carys in the kitchen in the flannel shirt, looking at a pencil drawing of the arena.

Her young hand had made it that afternoon.

He had a cousin who ran the sound board in the arena booth, and the cousin could put one video file on the big screen.

"Tomorrow, at the finals," Carys said, without looking up. "Seven o'clock, the grand entry."

"I know."

"Say it back."

"The file goes up when the announcer says Brody's name," I said.

"Good."

"The catwalk above the chutes is open to stock contractors," she said. "Your rifle goes up the ladder with my hay."

"It's your husband's rifle."

"It's yours tomorrow," she said.

She finally lifted her eyes.

She looked tired, and she looked at my mouth.

"I'm not going to sleep," she said.

"Neither am I."

"Come here, then."

I stayed where I was.

"Your rule," I said. "You don't sleep with a man who owes you."

"We settled that. We're even."

"We were even until the barn," I said. "You put a bullet in that stock to keep me alive. By your rule, now you owe me."

She stared at me, and her mouth began to curve.

"That's a terrible argument."

"You can't sleep with a man you owe," I said. "So pay it."

"How?"

"Take the shirt off."

She laughed, low in her throat, and pulled it over her head.

She had nothing on under it.

I crossed the kitchen in two steps and picked her up by the thighs, and she wrapped her legs around my waist and her hands in my hair.

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