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He pulled out a chair and signaled the waitress. Emma was drinking out of a tall Collins glass, one packed with crushed ice and cherries and an orange slice. “I thought you knew Dave through the program,” he said.
“Not really. Our ties go back to NOPD.”
“You’re not in the program?”
“I’ve tried it on and off. I got tired of listening to the same stories over and over. Were you ever in A.A.?”
“Not me.”
“Yeah, stop drinking today and gone tomorrow. Why not party a little bit while you have the opportunity?”
“That’s the way you feel about it?”
“I’m gonna die no matter how I feel about any of it, so I say ‘bombs away.’ If you ask me, sobriety sucks.”
He tried to reason through what she had just said, but the jukebox was playing and the long day had landed on him like an anvil. The waitress came to the table and Emma ordered a vodka Collins and Clete a schooner of draft and a shot of Jack. He poured the whiskey into his beer and watched it rise in a mysterious cloud and flatten inside the foam. He tilted the schooner to his mouth and drank until it was almost half empty. He let out his breath, his eyes coming back into focus, like those of a man who had just gotten off a roller coaster. “Wow,” he said.
“You don’t fool around,” she said.
“I spent most of the day firing in the well, then having a conversation with a world-class asshole. Plus I have complications with a dude by the name of Robert Weingart. Know anything about him?”
“I read his book. Weingart is the asshole?”
“Weingart is an asshole, all right, but I was talking about a client. Have you heard anything in St. Martin Parish about girls getting doped with roofies before they’re raped?”
“I’ve heard about it in Lafayette but not around here. Weingart is doing that?”
“I’m not sure.” Clete finished his boilermaker and ordered a refill. When it came, he sipped the whiskey from the shot glass and chased it with the beer.
“Your stomach lining must look like Swiss cheese,” she said.
“My stomach is fine. My liver is the size of a football.”
“Maybe you ought to ease up.”
He could feel the alcohol taking hold in his system, restoring coherence to his thoughts, driving the gargoyles back to an unlighted place in his mind, releasing the cord of tension that often bound his chest and pressed the air out of his lungs. “I appreciated you calling Dave when I was in that holding cell. Some of those guys in St. Martin Parish carry resentments. That was a stand-up thing to do.”
“You had the same kind of trouble at NOPD as me and Dave. The unholy trinity, huh?” she said, watching him lift the shot glass to his mouth again.
“I brought most of my trouble on myself.”
“Save it for Oprah. I worked with those shitheads. What was the deal outside there?”
“What deal?”
“In your Cadillac. You were on a stakeout?”
“I wouldn’t give it that kind of depth. Anyway, I pulled the plug on it.”
“You like being a PI?”
“I don’t think about it a lot.”
“That’s a good way to be. My job is okay, but I miss life in the Big Sleazy.” She put her hand on his wrist when he started to lift his schooner again. “Better eat something.”
“Yeah, maybe.” His eyes moved sleepily over her face. She pretended to be looking at the bar, but he knew she was aware he was staring at her with more than curiosity. His gaze drifted to her ring finger. “You ever been married?”
“I woke up once with a rock-and-roll drummer who said we’d gotten hitched in Juárez, but I never saw a certificate. The guy got hit by a train, anyway. I was seventeen. I always call that part of my life the downside of that old-time rock and roll.”
