A Private Cathedral (Dave Robicheaux 23)

“I didn’t know.”

My hand was trembling on the teaspoon. “You need to leave.”

“Walk me to the door.”

“You can find your way.”

“No. Get up.”

I wiped my mouth with a paper napkin and rose from the table. I looked straight into her eyes.

“Well?” she said.

“You’re a big girl. You need an escort to leave someone’s house?”

“I want you to do just that. I mean, escort me.”

My eyes lingered on hers. I felt a longing I co

uldn’t explain, as though I had never smelled a woman, or kissed one, or slept with one. I felt as I did when my mother abandoned her family. I felt as though I were on the edge of a grave, that the only light in the world was trapped inside my home, inside the fog, and the rest of the earth was disappearing.

I put my arms around her and lifted her against my chest and put my mouth on hers. I felt her feet barely touching the tops of my shoes, her breasts against me, her fingernails digging into my back, her auburn hair warm and clean-smelling in my face, the ache in my loins unbearable.

Then we were in my bed, and I went beneath a harbor off Bimini, the sunlight shattering on the surface, a coral cave inviting me deep into its recesses, its walls covered with pink lichen and the gossamer threads of sea life that had no name. Some believed this was the eastern edge of ancient Atlantis, a suboceanic kingdom where spring was eternal and mermaids wore flowers in their hair and where each morning one could cup water from the fountain of youth.

But I could no longer control the images in my head, and I felt them slipping like confetti from my body into hers, and I buried my face in her hair and bit her shoulder and heard myself saying, “Pen… Pen… Pen,” as though it were the only word I knew.

* * *

I DIDN’T GO TO work that day. At six P.M. I bought a bucket of fried chicken and biscuits and a sealed cup of gravy at Popeyes, then took them to Clete’s cottage in the motor court on East Main. The rain had flooded the tree trunks along the banks of the Teche and quit at sunset. The sky was magenta and looked as soft as velvet, the bayou swirling with organic debris and yellow froth and dimpled with the water dripping from the trees. Clete saw me through his window and opened the door. “I’ve been calling you all day,” he said. “Where have you been?”

I walked past him into his small living room. “I had my phone turned off. I was asleep.”

“The whole day?”

“Why not?” I said.

He closed the door. “Did you ever figure LaForchette for a suicide?”

“I had him figured wrong on several levels. You want to eat?” I put the Popeyes sack on the breakfast table.

“Yeah, sure,” Clete said. He gave me a look. “I got a feeling more is on your mind than LaForchette going off-planet.”

I told him how I’d busted up Adonis Balangie in his home theater, and how I’d moved Leslie Rosenberg and her daughter from Metairie to New Iberia, and finally, how I’d ended up under the waves off Bimini with Penelope Balangie at my side. He listened without interrupting, his hands like big animal paws on the breakfast table, his gaze focused on empty space.

After I finished, he continued to stare without speaking.

“Hello?” I said.

“Let’s see if I have this straight,” he said. “You start the day by beating the shit out of Adonis in his home, in front of his wife, then motor on over to the house of his regular punch and move her to New Iberia. His wife drops by your house after a guy blows out his brains in your living room, and to celebrate the occasion you put the blocks to her?”

“Lay off it, Cletus.”

“Excuse me, I left something out. You also put in some boom-boom time with what’s-her-name, the stripper and regular pump for Adonis?”

“Leslie Rosenberg.”

“Right,” Clete said. “So you think Adonis might be a little upset? A guy who thinks women are property?”