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As soon as I stepped into the house I saw Snuggs resting on the arm of the couch, his eyes shut, his paws tucked under his chest, a red satin bow tied around his neck. I walked into the brightness of the kitchen and stared woodenly at Theodosha, who was lifting a loaf of buttered French bread out of the oven. Behind her, steam curled off a pot of gumbo. Her mouth parted slightly when she saw me, as though I had dragged her away from a troubling thought.
"I fixed you some supper. Hope you don't mind," she said.
"Where's Father Jimmie?" I asked.
"He went to Lafayette. He said he's probably going to stay over."
"Is Merchie here?" I said.
"I'm not sure where he is. He's just out being Merchie. Do you want me to go?"
"No, I didn't mean that. I'm just a little disconnected today."
She began setting the table as though I were not there. Her hair looked like it had just been cut and shampooed. She wore Mexican sandals and khakis with big pockets and a denim shirt embroidered with roses and stovepipe cactus. In fact, as I looked at her moving about the room, I realized what it was that drew men to her. She was one of those women whose intelligence and elan and indifference to public opinion allowed her to give symmetry and order to what would have been considered chaos in the life of a lesser person.
"Theo, I'd feel a lot better if we could ask Merchie over," I said.
"I knew you'd say something like that."
She set a gumbo bowl on the table and stared at it emptily. She removed a strand of hair from the corner of her mouth and walked to within a foot of me. She started to touch me, then folded her arms in front of her, as though she had no place to put her hands. Her breath was cold and smelled of bourbon and orange slices.
"I was going to a meeting today. I had no plans to drink. I swear. I drove twice around the block, then went into a bar and drank for two hours." She looked up at me desperately. "Dave, I'm seriously fucked up. Nothing I do works."
She lowered her head and inverted her palms and clasped them around my wrists. She stood on my shoes with her sandals and her stomach touched my loins. I could smell the shampoo in her hair and the perfume behind her ears. She pulled my hands to her sides and held them there. I could feel a thickness growing in me, a dryness like confetti in my mouth. She slipped her arms around my waist and pressed her face sideways against my chest.
"Dave, why didn't you ask me to marry you?" she said.
"This is no good, Theo."
"We had fun together. Why did you go away?"
"I was a drunk. I would have made any woman unhappy."
Her eyes were wet against my shirt. I patted her on the back and tried to step away from her. Then she turned up her face to be kissed.
"I'll see you," I said.
"What?"
"I have to go back to the office," I lied. "I just came home to get something. I don't even remember what it was."
Then I left my own house, feeling stupid and inadequate, which was perhaps an honest assessment.
When I returned to the house two hours later she was gone. The kitchen was immaculate, the food she had fixed carted away. I didn't fall asleep until after midnight. Then I woke at three in the morning and sat on the edge of the mattress, my skin filmed with sweat, my loins like concrete, the darkness creaking with sound. I put my loaded .45 under the pillow and when the sun came up the hardness of the steel frame was cupped in my palm.
Later, I ate a bowl of Grape-Nuts and milk and sliced bananas on the kitchen table, then heard Snuggs at the back screen. I opened the door for him and he walked to his pet bowl under the kitchen sink and waited for me to fill it with the box of dry food I kept on top of the icebox. The red silk bow Theodosha had tied around his neck was coated with mud. I took a pair of scissors from the dresser in the hallway and snipped the bow loose from his fur. "It looks like Theo's concern for you was limited, Snuggs," I said.
Somehow that thought made me feel more comfortable about leaving her and the meal she had prepared for me the previous night. I returned the scissors to the dresser drawer. But before I shut it I glanced down at the box where I kept all the sympathy cards that had been sent to me when Bootsie died. A corner of an envelope stuck out of the pile and the return address on it made me wince inside. On my visit to Theo and Merchie's house several weeks ago she had expressed her sympathies about Bootsie's death, but I'd had no memory of her sending a card and had concluded her sentiments were manufactured.
But her card was in the pile and the statements on it were obviously heartfelt. I picked up Snuggs and set him on the countertop and patted his head. "How can one guy's thought processes be this screwed up?" I asked.
Snuggs rubbed against me, brushing his stiffened tail past my nose, and made no comment.
The phone on the counter rang. I started to pick it up, then hesitated and stared at it, my heart quickening, because I knew who it was, who it would have to be, if he was the obsessed and driven man I thought he was.
"Hello?" I said.
"Is the good father there?" the voice asked.
