The Woman Who Married a Bear by John Straley

than you bargained for. No matter what it is.”
    â€œIt’s nothing, Doggy. It’s a writing job. The old lady in the home wants to die happy. I’m going to tell her what she wants to know and then send her a bill. Doggy—you know that the Louis Victor case is already solved.”
    We stared at each other for a long awkward moment until we both realized that we were staring. And then we paused to see who could get out gracefully.
    â€œYeah, I know.” Doggy smiled again. “It’s just that I’m a little concerned about you, Cecil. I knew your father. I’m sorry about him. You and I don’t know each other real well but I know a lot about you. I don’t want you to get in trouble or hurt.”
    â€œDoggy, you don’t know shit about me….”
    â€œNow, Cecil, that’s not quite true,” he said firmly, with the tone of a patient day-care worker. He reached into his bag and brought out a file, replaced his half glasses, and started reading.
    â€œYou are… let’s see… thirty-six and you were born in Juneau. Your dad, of course, is…was”—he looked up with that sympathetic look that addresses my family’s disappointment—“‘the Judge.’ Your sister’s earned a good name as an attorney and now teaches at Yale. You studied music and art history at Reed College until you were thrown out. You got into drugs. The drugs weren’t the problem at Reed. You got tossed for never showing up for lectures or exams.”
    He looked up with a cute little “fuck you” grin and kept reading.
    â€œAfter Reed, in ’73 you traveled in Africa and Asia, studying religion and music, and … I don’t suppose you call it ‘contemplating your navel,’ do you? No. You worked for a time in the oil patch in Wyoming and on the tugs on the Inside Passage, and you traveled around the South singing in choirs—?”
    Another look.
    â€œSacred Harp chorus. Get to the good stuff.”
    His voice was taking on more of a biting tone. There were no happy lines around his eyes. “The good stuff. Well, your daddy wanted you to be a lawyer, so he set you up as an investigator with the Public Defender Agency, hoping that if you carried enough briefcases for snotty little lawyers younger than you, you’d be shamed into going to law school. But you got in some trouble that involved cocaine and a small matter of suborning perjury. You did a little time—very little time—and your record was wiped clean. You moved to Sitka and played at being Sam Spade with your sister’s money. You stayed sober until your daddy died, and then you played the drunken aesthete until your girlfriend left you. Now your roommate is shot in the chest and may die.”
    â€œWhat’s the point?”
    â€œThe point is this, friend. This is real life. This is Toddy’s life. I’d feel a little better about all of this if you had gotten shot, but you didn’t. So go home, get drunk or fucked up any way you want. But stay out of this. What happened tonight is a real crime, Younger. There is no room for a damaged, confused rich kid roaming around fucking up this investigation.”
    I should have thought of some icy retort that would have shown him how cool and incisive I was. I should have said something that would have thrown the entire weight of his disdain back on him in three or four words.
    â€œOh, yeah? Make me.”
    â€œGet out of here, Younger. Get drunk. Get stoned. Just stay out of the way.”
    He walked out the door and I settled back in the chair by the window. Across the road there was a street lamp above the water and the reflection was milky white on the surface of the bay. I thought of broken bones.
    Toddy lay in bed surrounded by blinking machines and tubes. His face was as white as a plaster mask. I wanted to shake him, scold him for being so lazy as to be in bed. I wanted to wrap