He pressed his fingers against his temples. “Hang on a minute. There are some things I can’t talk about without a drink in my hand, otherwise my gyroscope spins out of control and I fall down.” He went into the kitchen and put the shot glasses and the Carta Blanca and the bottle of tequila and the bowl of limes and a salt shaker on the tray and brought them back to the rollaway. He drank his shot glass empty and sipped on the beer and felt it go down cold and bright and hard in his throat. He sucked on a lime and poured another shot, blowing out his breath, gin roses blooming in his cheeks. “I guess I’m going through some kind of physiological change. Hooch seems to go straight into my bloodstream these days, kind of like I’m mainlining. Or throwing kerosene on a fire. Sometimes I feel like I’ve got a dragon walking around in my chest. My nether regions get out of control, too.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t drink.”
“That’s like telling the pope he shouldn’t work on Sundays.”
“You shouldn’t belittle yourself.”
“Yeah?”
“The world beats up on everybody and breaks most of us,” she said. “Why should we do it to ourselves when it’s going to happen anyway? The only things we take with us are the memories of the good times we had and the good people we knew along the way.”
“I never figured any of that stuff out.”
“You’re a lot more complicated than you pretend.” When he didn’t reply, she said, “It’s almost dark. I’m going to turn on the floor lamp. I don’t like the dark.”
“Why tell me about it?”
“Because I don’t hide anything I do.” She walked to the lamp and clicked it on, then faced him. “Do you like me?”
“I get in trouble, Miss Varina. Lots of it, on a regular basis. I think you’ve had enough trouble in your life already.”
She unbuttoned her shirt and the top of her jeans. “Tell me if you like me.”
“Sure I do.”
“You like the way I look now? Am I too forward? Tell me if I am.”
“I don’t have any illusions about my age and the way I look and the reasons I wrecked my career. I’d better hit the road. I showed bad judgment in coming here. You’re a nice lady, Miss V. It would be an honor to get involved with a lady like yourself, but you’re still married, and this won’t be good for either one of us.”
“If you call me ‘Miss’ again, I’m going to hit you. No, don’t get up. Let me do this for you. Please. You don’t know how important the love of a good man can be. No, not just a good man but a strong man. You are a good man, aren’t you? Oh, Clete, you sweet man. Clete, Clete, Clete, that’s so good. Oh, oh, oh.”
He felt as though a great wave had just curled out of the ocean and knocked him backward into the sand.
I LOOKED OUT our back bedroom window early Saturday morning and saw Clete Purcel slouching through the fog like a medieval penitent headed for the side door of the cathedral, hoping no one would see the load of guilt he was carrying. He stared at the house, looking for signs of life, then picked up a folding chair and walked down to the bayou, past Tripod’s hutch, where both Tripod and Snuggs sat on the roof, watching him. Clete’s seersucker coat was sparkling with damp, his wilted necktie and porkpie hat and rumpled shirt as incongruous as formal dress on a hippopotamus.
Molly was still asleep. I slipped on a pair of khakis and a sweater and lit the kitchen stove and set a pot of coffee on the burner and picked up a folding chair from the mudroom and walked down to the bayou. I could barely make out Clete’s shape in the fog. He was leaning forward in his chair, studying the cattails and elephant ears and the water sliding over the cypress knees that marbled the bank. Somewhere deep inside the fog, I heard the giant cogged wheels lifting the drawbridge into the air.
“Did I wake you up?” he said.
“You know me. I’m an early riser,” I replied. I unfolded my chair and sat down beside him. I could smell the booze and weed and the odor of funk and stale deodorant trapped inside his clothes. “Rough night?”
“I guess it depends on how you read it. Varina Leboeuf has a photo of her husband with Tee Jolie Melton. It was taken in a club, maybe one of those zydeco joints up by Bayou Bijoux. I told her to give it to you.”
“I’m glad you did,” I replied, waiting for him to get to the real reason he had come to the house.
“Think it’s enough to get him in the box?”
“It’s not proof of a crime, but it’s a start.”
“Varina came across it by accident. She wanted to do the right thing with it.” He kept his attention fixed on the water and the bream starting to feed among the lily pads. “I agreed to take her on as a client.”
“She wants you to get the gen on her husband?”
“She came into the office yesterday with a minister. She thinks she’s in danger. What should I have done? Kicked her out?”
“That’s all that’s bothering you?”
“More or less.”