“Where’d you get the pie?”
“At the bakery.”
I looked at my watch. It was 6:23 A.M. “The bakery is closed.”
“I woke them up.”
“You know what happened here?” I said.
“The whole city knows.”
Behind her, the fog was so thick I could hardly see the yard or trees or streetlamps. “Come in.”
I had thrown out the rug Marcel died on and had cleaned the blood from the floor. I had also showered and shaved and changed clothes, and hoped I did not look like I felt. She walked past me into the kitchen and began making coffee without asking permission.
“I don’t know if you should be here, Miss Penelope,” I said.
She was no longer wearing the lavender suit and pillbox hat but a baby-blue cashmere suit with a white blouse and white hose, which meant she had come to New Iberia with luggage. “Sit down,” she said.
“Kind of you to ask me,” I replied, and remained standing.
“The man who died here? He was the one the killers were after?”
“He may have been my half brother. At least that’s what he said before he shot himself.”
“I’m very sorry, Mr. Robicheaux.”
“You have to forgive me, but I don’t understand you. In fact, nothing about you makes sense.”
She took the plastic cover off the pie and got cups from the cabinet. “No one will believe my story. Nor will they believe yours or Mr. Purcel’s. That means we’re members of a very lonely club.”
“So tell me the story.”
“Maybe later. Eat first. Please. I want to explain something you’re probably experiencing now or will experience later.”
“Oh, really?”
“Don’t be sarcastic.” She placed her hand on my chest. I could feel my heart beating against it. I sat down.
“Start eating,” she said.
I didn’t argue.
“People who commit suicide in a dramatic fashion often have an agenda and are involved in a fantasy that leads to their death. They’re filled with rage and seek revenge against those who have hurt them. They slash their wrists or jump from buildings or fire bullets into their brain. In their fantasy, they witness the discovery of their body by people they hate. In that way, they leave behind a legacy of guilt and sorrow. Don’t let this happen to you, Mr. Robicheaux.”
I put a teaspoon of pie in my mouth and drank from the coffee cup she had placed by my elbow. But neither would go down. I choked and held a napkin to my mouth. She was standing behind me now. She spread her hand across my back. It felt as warm as an iron on cloth. “You’re shaking,” she said.
“I have malaria.”
“From where?”
“Vietnam or the Philippines. Who cares where you get it?”
“After all these years?”
“Give it a break, Ms. Balangie,” I said.
“You’re one of us now.”
I stopped trying to eat. “One of what?”
“The people who have to see into the other world, the one we try to deny in modern times.”
“Sorry, I’m not up to listening to any more craziness, Italian or otherwise.”
“Did the man who died see Gideon Richetti?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“What does that tell you?”
“The price of knowing the Balangie and Shondell families is too expensive.”
“Your wife died recently?”
“I’ve lost two wives.”
“I didn’t know.”
My hand was trembling on the teaspoon. “You need to leave.”
“Walk me to the door.”
“You can find your way.”
“No. Get up.”
I wiped my mouth with a paper napkin and rose from the table. I looked straight into her eyes.
“Well?” she said.
“You’re a big girl. You need an escort to leave someone’s house?”
“I want you to do just that. I mean, escort me.”
My eyes lingered on hers. I felt a longing I couldn’t explain, as though I had never smelled a woman, or kissed one, or slept with one. I felt as I did when my mother abandoned her family. I felt as though I were on the edge of a grave, that the only light in the world was trapped inside my home, inside the fog, and the rest of the earth was disappearing.
I put my arms around her and lifted her against my chest and put my mouth on hers. I felt her feet barely touching the tops of my shoes, her breasts against me, her fingernails digging into my back, her auburn hair warm and clean-smelling in my face, the ache in my loins unbearable.
Then we were in my bed, and I went beneath a harbor off Bimini, the sunlight shattering on the surface, a coral cave inviting me deep into its recesses, its walls covered with pink lichen and the gossamer threads of sea life that had no name. Some believed this was the eastern edge of ancient Atlantis, a suboceanic kingdom where spring was eternal and mermaids wore flowers in their hair and where each morning one could cup water from the fountain of youth.
But I could no longer control the images in my head, and I felt them slipping like confetti from my body into hers, and I buried my face in her hair and bit her shoulder and heard myself saying, “Pen... Pen... Pen,” as though it were the only word I knew.
I didn’t go to work that day. At six P.M. I bought a bucket of fried chicken and biscuits and a sealed cup of gravy at Popeyes, then took them to Clete’s cottage in the motor court on East Main. The rain had flooded the tree trunks along the banks of the Teche and quit at sunset. The sky was magenta and looked as soft as velvet, the bayou swirling with organic debris and yellow froth and dimpled with the water dripping from the trees. Clete saw me through his window and opened the door. “I’ve been calling you all day,” he said. “Where have you been?”
I walked past him into his small living room. “I had my phone turned off. I was asleep.”
“The whole day?”
“Why not?” I said.
He closed the door. “Did you ever figure LaForchette for a suicide?”
“I had him figured wrong on several levels. You want to eat?” I put the Popeyes sack on the breakfast table.
“Yeah, sure,” Clete said. He gave me a look. “I got a feeling more is on your mind than LaForchette going off-planet.”
I told him how I’d busted up Adonis Balangie in his home theater, and how I’d moved Leslie Rosenberg and her daughter from Metairie to New Iberia, and finally, how I’d ended up under the waves off Bimini with Penelope Balangie at my side. He listened without interrupting, his hands like big animal paws on the breakfast table, his gaze focused on empty space.
After I finished, he continued to stare without speaking.
“Hello?” I said.
“Let’s see if I have this straight,” he said. “You start the day by beating the shit out of Adonis in his home, in front of his wife, then motor on over to the house of his regular punch and move her to New Iberia. His wife drops by your house after a guy blows out his brains in your living room, and to celebrate the occasion you put the blocks to her?”
“Lay off it, Cletus.”
“Excuse me, I left something out. You also put in some boom-boom time with what’s-her-name, the stripper and regular pump for Adonis?”
“Leslie Rosenberg.”
“Right,” Clete said. “So you think Adonis might be a little upset? A guy who thinks women are property?”
“He dealt the play,” I said.
“No, Penelope Balangie did.”
“Wrong.”
“Keep telling yourself that. She’ll have you mumbling to yourself.”
“She swears she’s not married to Adonis.”
“You believe her?” he said.
“Yeah, I do.” But I stumbled on my words.
“Why would a broad with her kind of class use up her life as a house ornament for a greaseball? Ask yourself another question: Why would a guy like Adonis not try to nail her? How would you like to look at those knockers every morning and say, ‘Nope, not for me. Hands off.’ ”