Surface Tension by Christine Kling

testosterone in the air. Then Collazo smiled. It was the first time I had seen him smile, and I couldn’t help but notice the huge gap between his front teeth. He could have slid his gold pen in there without touching enamel.
    “Oh, I’ll do that, all right.” He looked straight at me. “We will be waiting for your statement, Miss Sullivan. Tomorrow.” He picked up his jacket, turned, and walked out of the bar.
    When the door closed behind him, Wally called over, “I think you scared him off, B.J.” All the guys, including Pete, laughed.
    Jake said, “You beat the hell out of his karma there, man.”
    “Yeah,” Nestor shouted, “I think you threatened to meditate him to death and scared the shit out of him.”
    “Okay, guys, that’s enough.” I swiveled around on my barstool to face him. “I’m surprised at you, B.J. Bullying him like that.” I tried very hard to look stern, but my face broke into a grin. “Mother Teresa?”
    He shrugged and smiled. “A much sexier version.”
    I shook my head at him.
    We moved to a booth along the back wall. B.J. ordered grilled dolphin with rice and vegetables, and he shook his head in disgust when I asked for a basket of fried shrimp and chips. Normally, he would have told me that I was going to die of a heart attack by the time I was forty because I lived on beer, fried food, and takeout, but after the day I’d had, apparently he was going to give me a break.
    “I looked for you today before going out on this job,” I said. “I thought you were going to work on repairing that head. Where were you?”
    “Jimmy St. Clair came by on the river in his Sea Ray. He asked me to go down with him to Bahia Mar to give him a price on a boat he’s rebuilding. He’s got a nice old Chris Craft right there on A dock. A classic. You can see her when you’re driving by on A1A. She’s got a bad case of dry rot—enough to keep me busy into the summer.” He unfolded his napkin and carefully spread it on his lap. “But I wish I had been at the estate today. Do you want to tell me about it?”
    Pete brought a couple more beers over at that point, and as we drank, I told the story again. I was beginning to find it therapeutic to repeat the tale so many times.
    “And then when I finally made it back to the cottage, I had a message on my machine from Maddy. He wants me to sell Gorda so he can get his money out of the boat.”
    “Whoa! That’s kind of sudden, isn’t it?”
    “Yeah. But Maddy can lose money fast. He used to be a regular at the track.”
    I hadn’t realized how hungry I was until Lil set the plate down and I inhaled the tangy sea smell of the fried shrimp. B.J. wrinkled his nose when I drowned my fries in catsup, but he didn’t slow down his eating. He’d always been ultra picky about food. He insisted on healthy
    food, but when it came time to eat, he was like a machine. He didn’t shovel it in or look gross, but he ate with an incredible economy of movement. I would look up and suddenly realize that he had cleaned his entire plate. I always had to concentrate to keep up with him. I didn’t dare try to talk while eating, and we’d been friends long enough that silence at the table didn’t feel uncomfortable to either one of us.
    When he finished, he wiped his mouth with his napkin and leaned back, spreading his arms on the back of the booth. Unlike most Samoans, he didn’t have wavy hair. His was straight and shiny, nearly the same length as mine. Because of his hair, his lean, muscular build, and his almond-shaped brown eyes, I suspected there was some Chinese or Japanese somewhere in his family tree.
    “I’d met her,” B.J. said.
    For a minute I wasn’t sure who he was talking about. He must have seen the blank look on my face.
    “The girl, Patty Krix. One night a couple of weeks ago, I came into the Downtowner, and she was here with Neal.”
    I pushed away my basket of soggy fries. He’d conjured up that picture of her again, with the knife and