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Through the window, he saw the building’s front door open. Jeff Brockman walked in, carrying a blue SCUBA tank under his left arm. A few brown, windblown leaves came in with him, one sticking to his heavy, shoulder-length hair of the same color. From his right hand dangled an overstuffed white plastic bag — take-out food.
Cooper forced himself to stay calm. A new tank? Maybe Jeff had found it. Maybe he hadn’t spent money they didn’t have on equipment they didn’t need.
Yeah, and maybe Cooper would suddenly find out he was a long-lost relative of Hugh Hefner and had just inherited the Playboy Mansion.
Jeff Brockman strode into the tiny office, blazing a smile that said I totally hooked us up!
“My man,” he said. “Wait till you hear the deal I just scored.”
Cooper pointed to the open checkbook. “A deal you paid for with that?”
Jeff looked at the checkbook, drew in an apologetic hiss.
“Oh, right,” he said. “Sorry, dude. I know, I know, you told me a hundred times. I’ll fill in the stub thing right now.” He looked around for s.p.a.ce on his desk to set the food. “The receipt’s in my pocket. I think. Or maybe I left it at the dive shop.”
Cooper stared, amazed. Jeff moved a stack of bills aside, cleared a s.p.a.ce to set down the bag. Through the strained plastic, Cooper counted five containers — had to be enough food there to feed a half-dozen grown men. And the odor … Italian. f.u.c.k if it didn’t smell delicious.
“It’s not about the stub,” Cooper said. “Well, yeah, it’s about that, too, but, dude, we don’t need a new tank!”
Jeff looked the part of rugged entrepreneur: the hair, the two-day stubble, the wide shoulders, and the blue eyes that made meeting girls at the bar so easy he didn’t even have to try.
He smiled. “Coop, buddy, I got a great deal. We’ll need to replace my tank in a couple of years anyway, so I actually saved us money.”
Cooper stood up, slapped his desk hard enough that the thick metal thoomed like a cheap gong.
“You don’t save money by spending it, Brock!”
Jeff’s good humor faded away. His expression hardened. They hung out together all day, most every day, and that familiarity made Cooper forget that Jeff had thirty pounds and four inches on him, made him forget that Jeff carried layers of muscle built over a lifetime of construction and demolition jobs, made him not really see the little, faded scars on Jeff’s face collected from the fights of his youth. That expression, though, made Cooper remember those things all too well.
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