I put on my rain hat and went into the motel bar. It was almost deserted, and raindrops ran down the windows. Outside, I could see the white and blue neon flower against the dark sky. The bartertder smiled at me. He wore black trousers, a white shirt that glowed almost purple in the bar light, and a black string tie sprinkled with sequins. He was a strange-looking man. His eyes were close-set and small as dimes, and he smoked a Pall Mall with three fingers along the barrel of the cigarette. I sat at the corner of the bar, where I could see the front door of Vidrine and Mapes's rooms, and ordered a 7-Up.
"It's pretty empty tonight," I said.
"It sure is. You by yourself tonight?" he said.
"Right now I am. I was sort of looking for some company." I smiled at him.
He nodded good-naturedly and began rinsing glasses in a tin sink. Finally he said, "You staying at the motel?"
"Yeah, for a couple of days. Boy, I tell you I got one." I blew out my breath and touched my forehead with my fingertips.
"I met this lady last night, a schoolteacher, would you believe it, and she came up to my room and we started hitting the JD pretty hard. But I'm not kidding you, before we got serious about anything she drank me under the table and I woke up at noon like a ball of fire." I laughed.
"And with another problem, too. You know what I mean?"
He ducked his head and grinned.
"Yeah, that can be a tough problem," he said.
"You want another 7-Up?"
"Sure."
He went back to his work in the sink, his small eyes masked, and a moment later he dried his hands absently on a towel, turned on a radio that was set among the liquor bottles on the counter, and walked into a back hallway, where he picked up a house phone. He spoke into the receiver with his back turned toward me so that I could not hear him above the music on the radio. Outside the window, the trees were black against the sky and the blue tile of the motel roof glistened in the rain.
The girl came through the side door ten minutes later and sat one stool down from me. She wore spiked heels, Levi's, a backless brown sweater, and hoop earrings. She shook her wet hair loose, lit a cigarette, ordered a drink, then had another, and didn't pay for either of them. She talked as though she and I and the bartender were somehow old friends. In the neon glow she was pretty in a rough way. I wondered where she came from, what kind of trade-off was worth her present situation.
I wasn't making it easy for her, either. I hadn't offered to pay for either of her drinks, and I had made no overture toward her. I saw her look at her watch, then glance directly into the bartender's eyes. He lit a cigarette and stepped out the door as though he were getting a breath of fresh air.
"I hate lounges, don't you? They're all dull," she said.
"It's a pretty slow place, all right."
"I'd rather have drinks with a friend in my room."
"What if I buy a bottle?"
"I think that would be just wonderful," she said, and smiled as much to herself as to me. Then she bit down on her lip, leaned toward me, and touched my thigh.
"I've got a little trouble with Don, though. Like a seventy-five-dollar bar tab. Could you lend it to me so they don't eighty-six me out of this place?"
"It's time to take off, kiddo."
"What?"
I took my sheriff's deputy badge out of my back pocket and opened it in front of her. It was just an honorary one, and I kept it only because it got me free parking at Evangeline Downs and the Fairgrounds in New Orleans, but she didn't know that.
"Don's in deep shit. Go home and watch television," I said.
"You bastard."
"I told you you're not busted. You want to hang around and have some of his problems?"
Her eyes went from my face to the bartender, who was coming back through the side door. Her decision didn't take long. She took her car keys out of her purse, threw her cigarettes inside, snapped it shut, and walked quickly on her spiked heels out the opposite door into the rain. I held up the badge in front of the bartender's smalj, close-set eyes.
"It's Iberia Parish, but what do you care?" I said.
"You're going to do something for me, right? Because you don't want Lafayette vice down here, do you? You're a reasonable guy, Don."
He bit down on the corner of his lip and looked away from my face.
"I got a. number I can call," he said… "Not tonight you don't."
I could see his lip discolor where his tooth continued to chew on it. He blew air out his nose as though he had a cold.
"I don't want trouble."
"You shouldn't pimp."
"How about lightening up a bit?" He looked at the two remaining customers in the bar. They were young and they sat at a table in the far corner. Behind them, through the opened blinds, headlights passed on the wet street.
"Two of your girls are in room six. You need to get them out," I said.
"Wait a minute…"
"Let's get it done, Don. No more messing around."
"That's Mr. Mapes. I can't do that."
"Time's running out, partner."
"Look, you got a beef here or something, that's your business. I can't get mixed up in this. Those broads don't listen to me, anyway."
"Well, I guess you're a stand-up guy. Your boss won't mind you getting busted, will he? Or having heat all over the place? You think one of those girls might have some flake up her nose? Maybe it's just sinus trouble."
"All right," he said, and held his palms upward.
"I got to tell these people I'm closing. Then I'll call the room. Then I'm gone, out of it, right?"
I didn't answer.
"Hey, I'm out of it, right?" he said.
"I'm already having trouble remembering your face."
Five minutes after the bartender phoned Mapes's room the two prostitutes came out the front door, a man's angry voice resounding out of the room behind them, and got into a convertible and drove away. I opened the wooden toolbox in the bed of my pickup truck and took out a five-foot length of chain that I sometimes used to pull stumps. I folded it in half and wrapped the two loose ends around my hand. The links were rusted and made an orange smear across my palm. I walked across the gravel under the dripping trees toward the door of room 6. The chain clinked against my leg; the heat lightning jumped in white spiderwebs all over the black sky.
Vidrine must have thought the women had come back because he was smiling when he opened the door in his boxer undershorts. Behind him Mapes was eating a sandwich in his robe at a wet bar. The linen and covers on the king-sized bed were in disarray, and the hallway that led into another bedroom was littered with towels, wet bathing suits, and beer cups.
Vidrine's smile collapsed, and his face suddenly looked rigid and glazed. Mapes set his sandwich in his plate, wet the scar on his lower lip as though he were contemplating an abstract equation, and moved toward a suitcase that was opened on a folding luggage holder.
I heard the chain clink and sing through the air, felt it come back over my head again and again, felt their hands rake against the side of my face; my ears roared with sound a rumble deep under the Gulf, the drilling-rig floor trembling and clattering violently, the drill pipe exploding out of the wellhead in a red-black fireball. My hand was bitten and streaked with rust; it was the color of dried blood inside a hypodermic needle used to threaten a six-year-old child; it was like the patterns that I streaked across the walls, the bedclothes, the sliding glass doors that gave onto the courtyard where azalea (petals floated on the surface of a lighted turquoise pool.
CHAPTER 4
Alafair woke up with an upset stomach the next morning, and I kept her home from school. I fixed her soft-boiled eggs and weak tea, I then took her down to work with me in the bait shop. The sun had | come up in a clear sky that morning, and the trees along the dirt road were bright green from the rain. The myrtle bushes were filled with purple bloom in the sunlight.