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"I think he'll find us. It won't be a good moment, either."
She looked down the aisle through the machines. The off-duty Lafayette cops had turned their attention to a dead-lift bar stacked with one-hundred-pound plates. Karyn sucked on her index finger, her eyes fastened on mine, then touched it to my lips.
Later, I drove to Sabelle Crown's bar down by the Lafayette Underpass. Even though the day was bright, the bar's interior was as dark as the inside of a glove. Sabelle was in a back storage shed, her body crisscrossed with the sunlight that fell through the board walls, watching two black men load vinyl bags bursting with beer cans onto a salvage truck.
"I wondered when you'd be around," she said.
"Oh?"
"He wouldn't come here. I don't know where he is, either."
"I don't believe you."
"Suit yourself . . ." She turned to the black men. "Okay, you guys got it all? Next week I want you back here on time. No more 'My gran'mama been sick, Miz Sabelle' stuff. There're creatures with no eyes living under the garbage I got back here."
She watched the truck, its slatted sides held in place with baling wire, lumber down the alley. "God, what a life," she said. She sat down on a folding chair next to the brick wall and took a sandwich out of a paper bag. A crazy network of wood stairs and rusted fire escapes zigzagged to the upper stories of the building. She pushed another chair toward me with her foot. "Sit down, Dave, you're making me nervous."
I looked at a smear of something sticky on the seat and remained standing.
"There's only one person in the world he cares about. Don't tell me he hasn't tried to contact you," I said.
"You want a baloney sandwich?"
"We can still turn it around. But not if he hurts Buford."
"Buford was born with a mammy's pink finger up his butt. Let him get out of his own problems for a change."
"How about your father?"
"Nobody will ever change Daddy's mind about anything."
Her expression was turned inward, heated with an unrelieved anger.
"What did Buford do to you?" I asked.
"Who said he did? I love the business I run, fighting with colored can recyclers, mopping out the John after winos use it. Tell Buford to drop by. I'll buy him a short-dog."
"He said he didn't know you."
Her eyes climbed into my face. "He did? Wipe off the chair and sit down. I'll tell you a story about our new governor."
She started to rewrap her sandwich, then she simply threw it in an oil barrel filled with smoldering boards.
That evening it was warm enough to eat supper in the backyard.
"You have to work in Lafayette tonight?" Bootsie said.
"Worse. Buford has a breakfast there in the morning. I'll probably have to stay over."
"They're really making their point, aren't they?"
"You'd better believe it."
"You mind if I come over?"
"I think it's a swell idea."
"Oh, I forgot. Somebody left a letter in the mailbox with no stamp on it."
