A Stained White Radiance Read Online Free Page B

feast for the disease that swam in her veins.
    She leaned against the gallery post with one arm, winked at me, and said, “ Comment la vie, good-lookin’?”
    â€œHow you doin’ yourself, beautiful?” I said.
    â€œI made étoufée for your lunch.”
    â€œWonderful.”
    â€œDid Lyle Sonnier get hold of you at the office?”
    â€œNo. He called here?”
    â€œYes, he said he had something important to tell you.”
    I squeezed her with one arm and kissed her neck as we went inside. Her hair was thick and brushed in swirls, tapered and stiff on her neck and lovely to touch, like the clipped mane on a pony.
    â€œDo you know why he’s calling you?” she said.
    â€œSomebody took a shot at Weldon Sonnier this morning.”
    â€œWeldon? Who’d do that?”
    â€œYou got me. I think Weldon knows, but he’s not saying. The older Weldon gets, the more I’m convinced he has concrete in his head.”
    â€œHas he been in trouble with some people?”
    â€œYou know Weldon. He always went right down the middle. I remember once he got caught stealing food out of the back of the poolroom in St. Martinville. The bartender pulled him out of the kitchen by his ear and twisted it until he squealed in front of everybody in the room. Ten minutes later Weldon came back through the door with tears in his eyes and grabbed a handful of balls off the pool table and smashed every inch of window glass in the place.”
    â€œThat’s a sad story,” she said.
    â€œThey were sad kids, weren’t they?” I sat down at the table in front of my smoking bowl of crawfish étoufée. The roux was glazed with butter and sprinkled with chopped green onions. The white window curtains with tiny pink flowers on them rose in the breeze that blew through the oak and pecan trees in the sideyard. “Well, let’s eat and not worry about other people’s problems.”
    She stood close to me and stroked my hair with her fingers, then caressed my cheek and neck. I put my arm across her soft rump and pulled her against me.
    â€œBut you do worry about other people’s problems, don’t you?” she said.
    â€œUnder it all Weldon’s a decent guy. I think it’s a contract hit of some kind. I think he’s going to lose, too, unless he stops acting so prideful.”
    â€œYou mean Weldon’s mixed up with the mob or something?”
    â€œAfter he got out of the navy I heard he flew for Air America. It was a CIA front in Vietnam. I think that stuff involves a lifetime membership.” I clicked my spoon on the side of the étoufée bowl. “Or maybe Bobby Earl has something to do with it. A guy like that doesn’t forget somebody dragging him through the tossed salad by his necktie.”
    â€œAh, a big smile on our detective’s face.”
    â€œIt would have made wonderful footage on the evening news.”
    She leaned over me, pressed my head against her breasts, and kissed my hair. Then she sat across from me and started peeling a crawfish.
    â€œAre you busy after lunch?” she asked.
    â€œWhat’d you have in mind?”
    â€œYou can’t ever tell.” She looked up and smiled at me with her eyes.
    I am one of the few people I have ever known who has been given two second chances in his life. After investing years in being a drunk and sawing myself apart in pieces, I was given back my sobriety and eventually my self-respect by what people in Alcoholics Anonymous call a Higher Power; then after the murder of my wife Annie, Bootsie Mouton came back into my life unexpectedly, as though all the years had not passed and suddenly it was once again the summer of 1957 when we first met at a dance out on Spanish Lake.
    I’ll never forget the first time I kissed her. It was at twilight under the Evangeline Oaks on BayouTeche in St. Martinville, and the sky was lavender and pink and streaked with fire along