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B
ut the waiter, who had an Irish accent, was a piece of work. “Which fuckhead is that, madam?” he asked.
“Not bad. Have one yourself while you’re at it,” Barbara said.
“Maybe we ought to hit the road,” Clete said.
“Not a chance,” she said.
When the waiter returned, Barbara lowered a jigger of bourbon into a schooner of beer, then drank the schooner empty. She blew the hair out of her face, her eyes slightly out of focus.
“Wow,” she said. “You gonna drink yours?”
“Absolutely,” he said, putting his hand on the schooner before she could pick it up.
She waved at the waiter. “Hey, Irish, bring us a couple more,” she called out.
Then they went out on the crowded dance floor. The band had gone into “One O’clock Jump,” and Barbara danced in her stockinged feet, her arms flying in the air, her body caroming off the dancers around her.
“Oops, excuse me,” she said to a woman she knocked into a table.
“My, but you’re an energetic thing, aren’t you?” the woman said, her glasses askew.
“Sorry. Don’t I know you? Oh, you’re the new federal judge. Hi, Your Honor,” Barbara said, stopping, shutting her eyes, then opening them again. “Boy, am I shit-faced.”
She walked unsteadily back to the table, then pulled off her corsage and threw it on her plate and leaned over and hooked her shoes in her fingers and almost fell when she tried to put them on. Clete put his arm around her shoulders.
“Guess who is seriously fucked up,” she said.
“You’re beautiful,” Clete said.
“I know. But I think I’m going to throw up,” she replied.
They drove back to New Iberia on the old highway that led past Spanish Lake. It started to rain and mist blew out of the trees, and a long Southern Pacific freight clicked by on the elevated grade, its whistle blowing down the line. Barbara pressed her fingers against her head as though she were awaking from a dream. Her skin looked green in the glow of the dashboard.
When he mentioned food, she made a sound like someone slipping into a whirlpool.
“I think you were great back there,” he said.
“Good try,” she said.
When they reached her apartment on Bayou Teche, he walked her upstairs and was about to say good night.
“No, come in. I’ll try to stop acting like a basket case. Watch television while I take a shower. Then I’ll fix you something to eat,” she said, then sprained her ankle going through the bedroom door. She threw a shoe at the wall and closed the door behind her.
Clete could hear her pulling at zippers and snaps on her clothes. He folded the coat of his summer tux and pulled off his tie and sat on the couch and watched a boxing match on a sports channel. He tried not to think about Barbara Shanahan in the shower. When she came back out of the bedroom, she had put on faded jeans, a blue terry-cloth pullover, and Indian moccasins. Her hair was damp, her skin rosy from the heat of the shower. But her eyes were scorched with an early hangover, her voice husky, her speech clipped, as though she could not coordinate her thoughts with her words.
She started breaking eggs in a skillet.
“Is there something on your mind I could help you with?” he said behind her.
“I thought I might run for district attorney. You know, make a difference, put away more of the bad guys, stick it to the polluters, all that jazz. What a joke.”
“No, it’s not,” he said.
She dropped an egg on the floor and looked at it wanly. “I’m sorry, Clete. I just don’t feel very well,” she said.
He used a dishrag to clean the floor, then squeezed it out in the sink and dropped the broken eggshells in a waste can. “I’d better get going,” he said.
