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Like Caine was a fish on a hook

He crawled up onto the step The granite was cold He felt exposed and ridiculous sitting there, al on his brow

It still had its hook in hi hi sure the hook was still set, wearing him out

Playing him

Caine flashed on a otten He saw his “father,” seated in a deck chair with salt spray darkening his tan jacket, holding the long, supple pole, sawing it back and forth

Caine had gone fishing that one time, with his “father” It hadn’t been a Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn kind of experience Caine’s father—thehis father—was not a man for small, intimate moments, for worms in a bucket and bamboo poles

They were on a trip down to Mexico Caine’s “ranted the high privilege of accouised as a father-son fishing trip

Caine and his father; a kid nairl named…well, he couldn’t recall her na for swordfish aboard a seventy-foot power boat

The girl, as her name?

Oh, my God, her name had been Diana Not the sairl, not very attractive, red hair, bulging eyes, not at all the same

Diana had led theht forward space where the anchor and ropes and so on were stored There she had produced a joint, a sarette

Paolo, an Italian kid a couple of years older than Caine, had shrugged and said, “No proble Caine had felt trapped Trapped on the boat Trapped in the coh

Trapped

It wasn’t Caine’s favorite feeling

He’d sat there in that dark, da he was anywhere else