"That's what the sheriff says."
Clete opened a Budweiser and drank from it, his throat working, his eyes flat. "You figure somebody took him off the board?" he asked.
"Who knows?"
He watched the way I was looking at him. He wiped the beer off his lips with his hand. "Get yourself a Dr Pepper out of the icebox."
"I don't want one," I said.
"What's bugging you?" he said.
"Nothing," I replied.
He picked up a pint bottle of whiskey from inside the open top of his Caddy. It was wrapped inside a brown paper bag, a shaft of sunlight flashing on the broken seal affixed to the cap. He took a hit from the neck and chased it with beer from his Budweiser can. He lit a cigarette and drank again from the whiskey, then ground the cigarette out in the gravel, his cheeks blooming with color. Unconsciously I wet my bottom lip. His eyes wandered over my face and I saw a great sadness in them.
"I'm a bad example. You stop having the thoughts you're having," he said.
"I'm not having any thoughts. I worry about you," I lied.
"Right," he said.
I headed for my truck.
"I'll put the booze up. I'll drive you to a meeting. Dave, come back here. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!" he said.
I put on my running shorts and lifted weights in the backyard, did three sets of push-ups, with my feet propped on a picnic bench – thirty reps to each set – and jogged two miles through City Park, then hit it hard back across the drawbridge to home. But I could not rid myself of the restlessness that seemed to invade my metabolism without cause, nor the thoughts and images that kept drifting before my eyes.
There was no question about their nature. They had to do with the smell of perfume, the amber splash that sour mash makes when it's first poured on ice, a woman's face framed softly inside the thickness of her hair, the shine of bar light on the tops of her breasts, perhaps a cherry held between her teeth, her hand curved on the neck of a freshly opened bottle of champagne, bursting with white foam.
I opened a bottle of Talking Rain and drank it empty, then showered, put on my pajama bottoms, and tried to read, my shield, handcuffs, slapjack, and.45 on the nightstand beside me. The last of the summer light had gone out of the sky, and in the yard I could hear the bamboo rattling in the breeze and the first patter of rain on the trees. Sometime just before midnight I fell asleep with my hand over my eyes. I had not locked the front door.
When I woke, the room was black. I went to the bathroom and got back in bed. Outside, dry lightning flickered on the trees. I drifted off to sleep and dreamed I was inside a cave, my arm twisted behind me. That's when I heard the rocking chair moving back and forth in the corner.
I opened my eyes and saw a silhouette seated in the chair. When I tried to sit up, my right wrist came tight against the handcuffs that were clipped around it and the brass bedstead. I reached with my left hand for the nightstand, where my.45 should have been. It was gone, along with my slapjack. The figure in the chair stopped rocking.
"I was watching you sleep," a woman's voice said.
"Honoria?" I said.
"Your front door was unlocked. That's a dangerous thing to do," she said.
"What are you doing here?"
"I came in to see you."
My eyes were still adjusting to the darkness, but I could see her face now, a pale orb wrapped in shadow. "Where's my piece?" I said.
"Your what?"
"My forty-five, where is it?"
She stood up from the chair and walked to the side of the bed. She wore Mexican-style jeans, gold sandals, hoop earrings, and a white blouse that was fluffy with lace. She sat down beside me, her rump pressing deep into the mattress. "I hid it," she said.
I couldn't smell alcohol on her, nor even cigarette smoke, which meant she had probably not been in a bar. "My handcuff key is in my pants. You need to unhook me, Honoria," I said.
"Why?"
"Because friends don't do this to one another," I replied.
She looked into my face and brushed back my hair, then leaned over and kissed me on the mouth. "You like me, don't you?" she said.
"I'm too old for you."
"No, you're not." She placed her hand on my stomach and leaned down again.
"What you're doing is no good for either of us, Honoria," I said.
She took her hand away and sat very still. I could see her breasts rising and falling against the light from the street.
"I think the devil lives under the bayou. I think the devil lives in my father, too," she said.
"I believe you need some help with this stuff. I know a doctor in Lafayette," I said.
"A therapist?"
"I used to see him after my wife Annie was killed. He helped me a lot," I said.
She looked at nothing, her small hand by my hip. "Do you mind if I stay with you a while?"
"No, but I -"
"Just say yes or no."
"No, I don't mind."
"I didn't think you would. I always liked you, Dave. You're a misplaced figure from Elizabethan theater, you know. Your tragedy is the fact no one ever explained that to you."
And with that, she curled up next to me, her face on my shoulder, her arm across my stomach, and went to sleep.
The sun was above the rooftops when I woke. The space beside me was empty and my right wrist was free of the handcuffs that hung from the bedstead. My.45 and slapjack had been replaced on the nightstand, along with the key to my cuffs. From the kitchen I could hear someone clattering pots or pans on the stove.
After I used the bathroom, I pulled on my khakis and went into the kitchen. Honoria was dripping coffee, heating a pan of milk and stirring a pot of oatmeal. Both Snuggs and Tripod were eating out of their pet bowls on the floor. Honoria's hair was brushed and her face made up, but when she glanced in my direction her face had the stark expression of someone who has been caught unawares by a photographer's flash.
"There was no water in the cat's bowl," she said.
"He drinks out of the toilet," I said.
"That's disgusting."
"That's what I've been telling him," I said.
But she saw no humor in my remark. She served oatmeal in two bowls and placed them on the breakfast table, then began hunting for spoons and coffee cups. I looked at my watch. "I'm running a little bit late for Mass," I lied.
"Where's your butter dish?"
"I don't have one. Look, Honoria -"
"The oatmeal is getting cold. I fixed it for you. It would be nice if you ate it."
"Sure," I said, and sat down at the table.
She poured coffee, and placed toast, jam, and sugar in front of me, preoccupied, her eyes darting about the room, as though somehow she needed to impose order on it. "Your cat is climbing in the sink," she said.
"Snuggs is his own man," I said.
"You should train your animals," she said, lifting him off the drainboard and scooting him out the back door. "Don't you ever rake your leaves? A couple of days' work and this place would look fine."
"Last night you said the devil lived under the bayou and also inside your father."
"Where'd you get that?" she said, smiling for the first time that morning.
I studied her eyes. They were dark brown, like warm chocolate, possessed of visions and privy to voices and sounds that I believed only she saw and heard. They were the eyes of someone who would never be changed by therapy, analysis, Twelve-Step programs, religion, or medical treatment.
"Do you know what you did in your sleep last night?" she said.
"Nothing," I said.
"Have it your way. I don't kiss and tell," she said.
"This bullshit ends now, kiddo. The Robicheaux Fun House is officially closed. Thanks for fixing breakfast," I said, and dumped my food into a sack under the sink.
She took a half pint of gin from her purse, poured a three-finger shot into a glass, and drank it at the back door, staring in a desultory fashion at the yard. "Have you ever spent the spring in Paris? I fell in love there with a boy who was gay. My father hounded him without mercy. He drowned himself in the Seine," she said.