James Burke - Light of the World

“Buy you a drink, legs?” asked the man hunched on the stool.

“I didn’t catch that,” she replied, not taking her eyes off Clete’s back.

“You’ve got long legs, lady. I should have called you ‘beautiful.’ I didn’t mean anything by the other name.”

“Blow me,” she said without looking at him. She went out on the terrace and approached Clete’s table. “You shouldn’t be driving,” she said.

Clete and the small woman looked up. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes lit with an alcoholic shine. “Hey, Gretchen. What’s the haps?” he said. “Miss Felicity, this is my daughter, Gretchen Horowitz.”

“Did you hear me?” Gretchen asked.

“Hear what?” he said, grinning, squinting as though the sun were in his eyes.

“You’re sloshed,” she said.

“It’s so nice to meet you,” Felicity said.

Clete tried to hold his smile in place. He pushed out a chair. “We just ordered. Did you eat yet?”

“Yeah, by myself. After I fixed supper for both of us.”

He looked confused. “We were supposed to eat together? I must not have heard you. Is Alafair with you?”

“Yeah, I’ll drive the Caddy. She’ll follow us home. Let’s go.”

“Maybe we should do this another time, Clete,” Felicity said.

“No, no,” Clete said. “Sit down, Gretchen. I’ll go get Alafair. Order me a refill.”

Gretchen propped her palms on the table and leaned down. “What’s your name again?” she said to the woman.

“Felicity Louviere.”

“You’re married to Caspian Younger?”

“Yes. How would you know that?”

“I’m making a documentary on your family and your oil and natural-gas explorations. You’re not aware of it?”

“Somehow it escaped my attention.”

“I don’t like to say this, Ms. Louviere, but I think you’ve asked for it. You’re out with a man who’s not your husband after just losing your daughter. Does that seem normal to you?”

“Clete, I’d better get my car,” Felicity Louviere said. “I appreciate your thoughtfulness. I hope to see you another time.”

Clete pinched his temples as though the pressure of his fingers could impose a modicum of sanity on the situation. “Tell Alafair to come inside,” he said. “We’re going to have dinner. We’re going to talk like civilized human beings. This bullshit ends, Gretchen. Now sit down.”

Gretchen felt the blood go out of her cheeks. The candle on the table seemed to brighten and change shape and shine as though burning underwater. “She looks like Mickey Mouse’s twin sister,” she said. “What’s the matter with you?”

“Don’t talk like that,” Clete said.

“It’s your life, Clete. Be a public fool if you want. You’re really good at it,” Gretchen said.

She walked toward the French doors, her eyes shiny, an electric grid printing itself all over her back. “Don’t go, Gretchen,” she heard him say.

She gripped the brass handle on the French doors and turned to look once more at the table. Clete had stood up and was leaning over Felicity, his hand resting on the back of her chair, as though he were comforting her. His eyes met Gretchen’s. He smiled and walked toward her. Her heart was pounding so loudly, she could hardly hear his words.

“Are you all right?” he said.

“Get rid of her. Don’t do this to yourself.”

“There’s no problem. We’re just having dinner.”

“You may have the right to hurt yourself, but you don’t have the right to hurt others.”

“You want me to leave her alone in the restaurant? A woman whose daughter might have been murdered by the same guy who was stalking Alafair?”

“She’ll use you. When she’s finished, she’ll be fucking some other poor halfwit who thinks he’s the love of her life. You make me so mad, I want to get as far away from you as I can and never come back.”

People at the tables turned and stared.

“We’ll talk later. I’ll see you at the cabin,” he said.

“You mean after you get your ashes hauled. After you come home hungover and stinking like a cathouse in Trinidad on Sunday morning.”

She saw the twitch in his face, the injury in his eyes. “Okay, I messed up about supper. I got a long history of being irresponsible,” he said. “You knew that when you signed on.”

“That’s the way you feel? A bimbo lets you scope her jugs and you dump the only family you have? That’s pathetic. I hear there’s a T and A bar on North Higgins. Maybe both of you can get jobs there.”

She went through the French doors into the bar. It was crowded with college boys and tourists, all of whom were talking as loudly as they could. A television set was blaring, and someone was yelling whenever a soccer player on the screen kicked the ball down the field. She wanted somebody to start something with her, to step in her way, to put a hand on her, to make a pass, to comment on the anger in her face. She wanted to twist off someone’s head and kick it down the sidewalk. Where was the smart-ass who had called her “legs”?

She seemed to have become invisible. She walked out the front door and got in Alafair’s car.

“What happened in there?” Alafair said. “You look like someone put you in a microwave.”

“Don’t be clever at my expense.”

“What did Clete say to you?”

“Nothing worth repeating. He’s an expert at empty rhetoric. Fuck him .”

“We’re your family, Gretchen. You need to trust people a little more.”

“I told you to give it a rest, Alafair. You sound like your father.”

“Clete’s charity is his weakness. Manipulative women use it against him,” Alafair said. “And don’t be making remarks about Dave.”

“Porking a bitch like Felicity Louviere is an act of charity? No wonder your family is screwed up.”

Alafair drove down a brick-paved street that paralleled the train tracks. The evening star was bright and cold above the hills in the west. A solitary drop of rain struck the windshield. “I’m going to forget what you just said.”

“Did I need to put this on flash cards? Clete just made a choice. He wants to get in that bitch’s bread. If that hurts his daughter, too bad. His swizzle stick comes first.”

Alafair pulled the Honda to the curb and cut the engine. She waited for a rusted-out Volkswagen bus and two bicyclists to pass. She started to speak, then studied a reflection in the outside mirror.

“Let’s get going. I don’t need any more psychoanalytical crap,” Gretchen said.

“I thought I saw a guy come out of the restaurant and look at the back of my car. He’s gone now.”

“A guy was hitting on me in there.”

“Who?”

“How would I know? The kind of guy who sits on a barstool like a vulture. Who cares? What were you going to say?”

“You have to accept Clete as he is,” Alafair said. “When we take people to task for being what they are, we’re deceiving ourselves. It’s also pretty arrogant. We’re telling others they have to be perfect in order to be our friends. It took me a long time to figure that out. You need to dial it down, Gretch.”

“Oh, really?”

“Clete would lay down his life for any one of us. This stuff with the Louviere woman will pass. Clete has never grown up. He probably never will.”

“How would you feel if your father put another woman ahead of his family?”

The car was quiet.

“Not too goddamn good, right?” Gretchen said.

“You’re right,” Alafair said.

“Start the car and drop me by the Caddy.”

“What for?”

“I have a spare set of keys. If Clete wants to go to a motel, his punch will have to take her car, because I’m going to boost the Caddy.”