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"No."
"Are you sure?"
"I said no."
"Have you been in custody?"
"You stop talking to me like this. Why are you saying these things to me?" Her voice started to break.
"Because somebody is turning the screws on you. I suspect it's Nate Baxter. He's a sonofabitch, Kim, and I know what he's capable of."
She pushed the heel of her hand along her hairline.
"What does Tony know?" she said.
"I couldn't guess. Do you sleep with him?" My eyes shifted away from her face, and I didn't want to hear her answer.
"I used to. When he wanted me to, anyway. He doesn't want to anymore. It's the speed. It's messed him up."
I glanced back at her face again. Her eyes met mine, then they looked away. There was a tingling in my throat, like a heated wire trembling against a nerve.
"Did somebody make you sleep with him?" I said.
"You don't have the right to ask me these things."
"If Nate Baxter is behind this, he's going to have the worst experience of his life."
"There's nothing you can do. It involves somebody else. Oh God, where's my stash?" she said.
She got up from the table, took a clear, sealed plastic bag of reefer from a kitchen drawer, sat back down, and began to roll a joint from a sheaf of ZigZag cigarette papers. Her eyes were narrowed with concentration, but her fingers began to shake and strands of reefer fell from both sides of the paper. Then she gave it up, rested her elbows on the table, and pressed a knuckle from each hand against her temples.
I picked up the plastic bag, splayed it open, dropped the papers inside, raked the loose strands of reefer into it, and walked down a short hallway to the bathroom.
"What are you doing?" she said.
I emptied the bag into the toilet and flushed it. Then I dropped the bag into a kitchen garbage sack. When I turned around she was standing a foot from me. Her hair hung on her forehead, and she had accidentally smeared her lipstick.
"Why did you do that?" she said.
"You don't need it."
"I don't need it?"
"No."
"Tony says it's all a cluster fuck."
"He's wrong."
Her eyes were green and mois
t and they looked directly into mine. I could hear the wetness in her throat when she swallowed. The top of her pink-ribboned peasant blouse was crooked on her shoulders.
"There's always a way out of trouble," I said. "You just have to trust your friends once in a while."
I touched her on the upper arm with my palm. I meant it in a protective and friendly way. Yes, I know that was the way I meant it. I could see the freckles on her shoulders, feel her breath on my face. She stepped close to me, and my arms were on her back, my hands lightly touching the coolness of her skin, the thickness of her hair. She rubbed her face under my chin, and I felt a shudder go through her body like tension leaving a metal spring.
Then she remained motionless in my arms, her breath small and regular against my chest. In the distance, I could see the hard, stiff outline of the Huey Long Bridge against a bank of purple rain clouds.
