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“You telling me the troot’?”
“I mean this with all respect: Why would I lie to you? Because I can’t find a girlfriend? I have to go to barrooms on back roads and make up lies like some kind of molester? Is that what I look like?”
“I didn’t mean it that way.”
“You’re a nice girl. You’re bright and evidently have talent. But if you don’t want to go to Lafayette, no hard feelings. Maybe you’re right. It’s not meant to be.”
“What isn’t?”
“One of those breakthrough moments. Doors open, and we go through them or we don’t. If a person lets fear dominate his life, he doesn’t deserve the talent he’s been given. Believe me, if that’s the case, with you or me or anybody who has a gift, it will be taken from us and given to somebody else.”
“I never t’ought of it like that. Okay.”
“Okay what?”
“I want you to hear me sing. Let’s go to Lafayette, Robert.”
“You called me by my name. That’s a breakthrough in itself.”
She sat down in the deep black leather of the seat and fastened the safety belt across her chest while he closed the door behind her. Then he turned the ignition, backed in a half circle, and drove slowly across the gravel toward the road.
He got only twenty feet before the female deputy sheriff stepped in front of his headlights, her eyes watering in the glare.
Weingart rolled down his window. “What’s the trouble?”
“Cut your engine and step out of the car, please,” she said. The deputy leaned over and peered inside at Tee Jolie. “You doin’ all right tonight, miss?”
“I’m fine,” Tee Jolie replied.
“Did you hear me, sir?”
“Whatever,” Weingart said, lifting his hands from the steering wheel. He turned off the ignition and the lights and got out of the car.
“Walk over here with me,” the deputy said.
“Can we pull the plug on this?”
“Do you have a hearing impairment?”
Weingart and the deputy went into the shadows by the corner of the club, ignoring the black bartender who stood on the porch. “You leave that girl alone,” she said.
“Somebody made you the patroness of mulatto bar girls?”
“This isn’t St. Mary Parish. Your free ride is over, buster.”
“If I were short and fat, I’d be mad at the world, too.”
“I hope you wise off one more time. I really do. Short of that, you get your sorry ass down the road.”
“Gladly.”
“She stays.”
“That should be up to her.”
“I can’t tell you how happy I am that you’ve taken this attitude. There were a couple of times I wanted to do this, but I didn’t. I’ll always regret that.”
“Whoa,” he said, stepping backward.
