"They were busted by Immigration?"
"I don't know that, man. You stand behind that bar and you'll hear a hunnerd fucking stories a night. It's a soap opera. How about it, man? Do I get some slack?"
I eased the hammer down carefully and let the.45 hang from my arm. He expelled a long breath from his chest, his shoulders sagged, and he wiped his damp palms on his pants.
"There's one other thing," I said. "You're out of Robin's life. You don't even have thoughts about her."
"What am I supposed to do? Pretend I don't see her? She works here, man."
"Not anymore. In fact, if I were you, I'd think about finding a job. outside the country."
His face looked confused, then I could see a fearful comprehension start to work in his eyes.
"You got it, Jerry. I'm going to have a talk with Bubba Rocque. When I do, I'll tell him who sent me. You might think about Iran."
I dropped the.45 in the pocket of my raincoat and walked back out of the bar into the rain that had now thinned and was blowing in rivulets off the iron-scrolled balconies along the street. The air was clean and cool and sweet-smelling with the rain, and I walked in the lee of the buildings toward Jackson Square and Decatur, where my truck was parked, and I could see the lighted peaks of St. Louis Cathedral against the black sky. The river was covered with mist as thick as clouds. The waiters had stacked the chairs in the Café du Monde, and the wind blew the mist over the tabletops in a wet sheen. In the distance I could hear a ship's horn blowing across the water.
It was eleven o'clock when I got back home, and the storm had stopped and the house was dark. The pecan trees were wet and black in the yard, and the slight breeze off the bayou rustled their leaves and shook water onto the tin roof of the gallery. I checked on Alafair, then went into our bedroom, where Annie was sleeping on her stomach in her panties and a pajama top. The attic fan was on, and it drew the cool air from outside and moved the curly hair on the back of her neck. I put the.45 back in the drawer, undressed, and lay down beside her. I could feel the fatigue of the day rush through me like a drug. She stirred slightly, then turned her head away from me on the pillow. I placed my hand on her back. She rolled over with her face pointing at the ceiling and her arm over her eyes.
"You got back all right?" she said.
"Sure."
She was quiet a moment, and I could hear the dryness of her mouth when she spoke again: "Who was she, Dave?"
"A dancer in a joint on Bourbon."
"Did you take care of everything?"
"Yes."
"You owed her, I guess."
"Not really. I just had to get her off the hook."
"I don't understand why she's your obligation."
"Because she's a drunk and an addict and she can't do anything for herself. They broke her finger, Annie. If they catch her again, it'll be much worse."
I heard her take a breath, then she put her hands on her stomach and looked up into the dark.
"It's not over, though, is it?" she said.
"It is for her. And the guy who was partly responsible for me getting my face kicked in is going to be blowing New Orleans in a hurry. I admit that makes me feel good."
"I wish I could share your feeling."
It was quiet in the room, and the moon came out and made shadows in the trees. I felt I was about to lose something, maybe forever. I put my foot over hers and took one of her hands in mine. Her hand was pliant and dry.
"I didn't seek it out," I said. "The trouble came to us. You have to confront problems, Annie. When you don't, they follow you around like pariah dogs."
"You always tell me that one of the main axioms in AA is 'Easy does it.'"
"It doesn't mean you should avoid your responsibilities. It doesn't mean you should accept the role of victim."
"Maybe we should talk about the price we should all be willing to pay for your pride."
"I don't know what to say anymore. You don't understand, and I don't think you're going to."
"What should I feel, Dave? You lie down next to me and tell me you've been with a stripper, that you've run somebody out of New Orleans, that it makes you feel good. I don't know anything about a world like that. I don't think anybody should have to."
"It exists because people pretend it's not there."
"Let other people live in it, then."
She sat up on the side of the bed with her back to me.
"Don't go away from me," I said.
"I'm not going anywhere."
"Lie down and talk."
"It's no good to talk about it anymore."
"We can talk about other things. This is just a temporary thing. I've had a lot worse trouble in my life than this," I said.
She remained seated on the side of the bed, her panties low on her bottom. I put my hand on her shoulder and eased her back down on the pillow.
"Come on, kiddo. Don't lock your old man out," I said.
I kissed her cheeks and her eyes and stroked her hair. I could feel myself grow against her side. But her eyes looked straight ahead, and her hands rested loosely on my shoulders, as though that were the place that obligation required them to be.
I could see the water dripping out of the pecan trees in the moonlight. I didn't care about pride or the feelings that I would have later. I needed her, and I slipped off her panties and pulled off my underwear and held her against me. Her arms rested on my back and she kissed me once lightly on the jaw, but she was dry went I entered her, and her eyes stayed open and unseeing as though she were focused on a thought inside herself.
Out on the bayou I heard the peculiar cry of a bull 'gator calling to its mate. I was sweating now, even in the cool wind drawn by the attic fan through the window, and in the mire of thoughts that can occur in such a heart-rushing and self-defeating moment, I tried to justify both my lustful dependency and my willingness to force her to be my accomplice.
I stopped and raised myself off her, my body trembling with its own denial, and worked my underwear back over my thighs. She turned her head on the pillow and looked at me as a patient might from a hospital bed.
"It's been a long day," she said quietly.
"Not for me. I think I'd like to go out and blow the shit out of some tin cans and bottles right now."
I stood up from the bed and put on my shirt and pants.
"Where are you going?" she said.
"I don't know."
"Come back to bed, Dave."
"I'll lock the front door on the way out. I'll try not to wake you when I come back."
I slipped on my loafers and went outside to my truck. The few black clouds in the sky were rimmed with moonlight, and shadows fell through the oaks on the dirt road that led back into New Iberia. The bayou was high from the rain, and I could see the solitary V-shaped ripple of a nutria swimming from the cattails to the opposite shore. I banged and splashed through the muddy pools in the road, and gripped the steering wheel so tightly that my fists were ridged with bone. When I went across the drawbridge, the spare tire in the bed of the pickup bounced three feet in the air.
Main Street in New Iberia was quiet and empty when I parked in front of the poolroom. The oaks along the street stirred in the breeze, and out on the bayou the green and red running lights of a tug moved silently through the opened drawbridge. I could see the bridge tender in his little lighted office. Down the block a man in shirt sleeves, smoking a pipe, was walking his dog past the old brick Episcopalian church that had been used as a hospital by federal soldiers during the War Between the States.
The inside of the poolroom was like a partial return into the New Iberia of my youth, when people spoke French more often than English, when there were slot and race-horse machines in every bar, and the cribs on Railroad Avenue stayed open twenty-four hours a day and the rest of the world was as foreign to us as the Texans who arrived after World War II with their oil rigs and pipeline companies. A mahogany bar with a brass rail and spittoons ran the length of the room; there were four green-felt pool tables in back that the owner sometimes covered with oilcloth and served free gumbo on, and old men played bourée and dominoes under the wood-bladed fans that hung from the ceiling. The American and National League scores were written on a big chalkboard against one wall, and the television above the bar always seemed to have a baseball game on it. The room smelled of draft beer and gumbo and talcum, of whiskey and boiled crawfish and Virginia Extra tobacco, of pickled pig's feet and wine and Red Man.