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house, their tongues hanging out, gasping. He said when he gotto running full out even hounds’d throw it in, fuck it, look up at him with those sad eyes.
    Chucky said he mellowed out quite a bit since he’d grown up, found a plateau he could live on in peace. The steps: flunked out of Wake Forest prelaw. Reached an incredible screaming high in Nam, seven months in-country to a time, two hundred days compressed to a time he couldn’t move to save his mind, had no way to release the panic short of killing himself and tried to, tried like hell . . .  and was brought down with Thorazine at the VA hospital in Memphis. The final step, Miami, where Charles Lindsay Gorman III passed through his Chucky Buck phase, hustled, got rich and found happiness on a maintenance dosage of Valium and ‘ludes: before meals or whenever his motor got stuck on high idle.
    The effect of his medication was like swimming under water, only without any water. Floating in lights. He still moved, felt the urge, but he wasn’t moving kinetically now, he was floating. He’d load up and let the mood move him along. Cock the straw boater on the side of his head and do a soft shoe on the parquet floor of the den, shuffle stiff-legged to this draggy Kool-and-the-Gang beat he’d turn on softly in his head. Just float, experiencing hundreds of thousands of colored lights popping inside his head like trip flares, only without a sound. See, Chucky said, your hearing gets so acuteyou have to soundproof your head, turn the decibels way down.
    For some reason he had found himself explaining this phenom to the young guy working for the Cubans, Eddie Moke—the person he was talking to right now on the phone—and Moke had said, “That’s what you do, uh, float? I think you got brain damage, man. I think you ought to check it out.” With that frozen sound Moke had, barely moving his mouth. The boy was a study, trying hard to effect the grungy look of a heavy-metal rock star, the headband, the illustrated disco shirt open all the way . . .
    He should never have told Moke about floating and doing the soft shoe. The only reason he had was because of the way Moke sat on his spine, giving himself curvature, practically lying in whatever chair he was in, and Chucky had asked him how he could stay like that without ever moving, like he mainlined cement. You would say things to Moke and he wouldn’t respond unless he had to and then would barely move his mouth. And Chucky would take another swing at it, yes, just like trying to bust cement. The Latins dressed up and posed and gave you snappy TV lines—”What’s happening, man?”—but this Moke, he’d lock his jaw like a stoned rocker and give you dreamy slit eyes. Hardest thing in the world, trying to talk to him on the phone . . .
    Chucky said to his conference system, “You still there?”
    Moke’s voice, a nasal twang partly hidden in there, said, “Yeah, I’m here.”
    â€œWell, what do you think?”
    â€œI think you better pay the man.”
    Chucky, circling his desk, ran stiff-curled fingers through his hair—the wiry blondish waves kinking back on his head—made a glide over to the tree and put on his orange hardhat, set it low over his eyes.
    â€œI’m going to pay him. That’s not the question I asked you, boy. Have I ever said I didn’t intend to pay?”
    The speaker system remained silent.
    An idea edged its way into Chucky’s brain. What if the boy kept his mouth shut because he felt alone, like some redneck manure-spreader among all the Latin dandies? What if the boy was simply self-conscious? It had occurred to Chucky there was another image that would fit him better. A bronc-stomper was what Moke should be playing, not some candy-ass rocker.
    But that analysis would have to wait.
    Chucky continued circling the desk. “To answer the question, no. I told