Free Bullets of Rain by David J. Schow

has no value. He's the Wind, and I'm the Cinderblock. She gains the world and I feel like I've lost everything, and I start to ask myself, gee, does she have to figure some things out, or is she really that shallow?"
        "Scared, maybe." Art thought it was sad. Did two people ever run in parallel, or was it all just lies partners imposed on each other, a shadow play of life as it was supposed to be, not how it was?
        "I couldn't do anything useful, so I gradually worked my way around to the idea of scaring Tommi off. Maybe, I thought, she left me so easily because I didn't light for her."
        "Mmm." Art rolled his eyes and stuck out his lower jaw into a ridiculous gorilla expression. "Ug do battle for woman. Crush enemies."
        Derek leaned forward, elbows on knees. They'd started an actual, real blaze of actual, real wood in the fireplace, and burning cedar had filled the room with a rich, smoky tang. An occasional knot fizzed and exploded against the spark grate. They were savanna hunter-gatherers, swapping sagas by firelight.
        "I find out where Tommi lives and stealth over there, thinking I'll keep the clip in my pocket and shove my gun in his mouth and scare him into I don't know what. But her car's already there and through the side window I can see them fucking in the bedroom. She's being really loud, really vocal, which is funny because she rarely did that with me. Her new personality. I guess I just saw red; I thought if I could just see them fucking, then click, my brain would know that it was over and done. Wrong. I burglared in-just add breaking and entering to my tab, thanks-and pushed the door open with my foot and shot him. She was on top of him, bucking away like somebody was filming them, flailing and hooting, and the round went right between her left arm and armpit and hit him in the tit as he was trying to sit up. He flopped with a little grunt-I think that was when he blew his load-and when Erica looked down she saw a bullet hole with a red air bubble of blood already growing out of it. She saw me and I said something really moronic, like 'Remember me,' and I turned and walked out."
        "Jesus."
        "Then I did the only thing dumber than what I've just told you."
        "You went to a bar with a thatched frond canopy and drank yourself idiotic until a cop tapped on your shoulder."
        Derek tipped his bottle toward Truth and finished it off. "Detective, actually. When I got arraigned it came out that I hadn't paid any income taxes since Lockheed, which was another rather shortsighted life decision. The list of charges ran over two typed pages by a single line, and when judges see that staple holding more than a page, they tend to get a bit irritable. I got a pit bull of a lawyer who sacrificed my one-time accountant to the tax beef, and played the crime-of-passion angle for all it was worth, which is to say, all I could be billed for."
        "That doesn't explain why you're here, what, a couple of years after a murder charge. How does that work?"
        "Three years and change. It happened right when the second-degree murder charge got changed to Voluntary manslaughter.' Hawaii has no death penalty, but even second degree carries a life sentence."
        "With possibility of parole, I take it."
        "It was the state versus me, and they concluded no premeditation."
        "Crime of passion?"
        "Better." Derek allowed himself a private grin. "Third degree. They concluded that unpapered gun of mine actually belonged to Tommi, and they believed it when Erica showed up in court and said it was so. My lame hit hung a corner into self-defense. Nobody was more boggled than I was. That was the last time I saw her, and god knows why she did it, because I never got to ask."
        Art knew his old amigo better than that. "What's the part you're leaving out?"
        Derek chuckled. "The attorney part. The bribery part. The money part. The