DR10 - Sunset Limited Read Online Free PDF Page B

Her face was lumpy, her
eyes unrelenting when they fixed on you, and her blond hair seemed
molded to her head like a plastic wig. She leaned on my office
windowsill with both arms and watched a trusty gardener edging the
sidewalk. She wore a nine-millimeter automatic in a hand-tooled black
holster and a pair of handcuffs stuck through the back of her gunbelt.
    "I met Miss Pisspot of 1962 at the jail this morning," she
said.
    "Who?"
    "That FBI agent, what's her name, Glazier. She thinks we set
up Cool Breeze Broussard to get clipped in our own jail."
    "What's your take on it?"
    "The mulatto's a pipehead. He says he thought Breeze was
somebody else, a guy who wanted to kill him because he banged the guy's
little sister."
    "You buy it?" I asked.
    "A guy who wears earrings through his nipples? Yeah, it's
possible. Do me a favor, will you?" she said.
    "What's up?"
    Her eyes tried to look casual. "Lila Terrebonne is sloshed at
the country club. The skipper wants me to drive her back to Jeanerette."
    "No, thanks."
    "I could never relate to Lila. I don't know what it is. Maybe
it's because she threw up in my lap once. I'm talking about your AA
buddy here."
    "She didn't call me for help, Helen. If she had, it'd be
different."
    "If she starts her shit with me, she's going into the drunk
tank. I don't care if her grandfather was a U.S. senator or not."
    She went out to the parking lot. I sat behind my desk for a
moment, then pinged a paper clip in the wastebasket and flagged down
her cruiser before she got to the street.
     
    LILA HAD A POINTED face and milky
green eyes and yellow hair
that was bleached the color of white gold by the sun. She was
lighthearted about her profligate life, undaunted by hangovers or
trysts with married men, laughing in a husky voice in nightclubs about
the compulsions that every two or three years placed her in a hospital
or treatment center. She would dry out and by order of the court attend
AA meetings for a few weeks, working a crossword puzzle in the
newspaper while others talked of the razor wire wrapped around their
souls, or staring out the window with a benign expression that showed
no trace of desire, remorse, impatience, or resignation, just temporary
abeyance, like a person waiting for the hands on an invisible clock to
reach an appointed time.
    From her adolescent years to the present, I did not remember a
time in her life when she was not the subject of rumor or scandal. She
was sent off by her parents to the Sorbonne, where she failed her
examinations and returned to attend USL with blue-collar kids who could
not even afford to go to LSU in Baton Rouge. The night of her senior
prom, members of the football team glued her photograph on the rubber
machine in Provost's Bar.
    When Helen and I entered the clubhouse she was by herself at a
back table, her head wreathed in smoke from her ashtray, her unfilled
glass at the ends of her fingertips. The other tables were filled with
golfers and bridge players, their eyes careful never to light on Lila
and the pitiful attempt at dignity she tried to impose on her
situation. The white barman and the young black waiter who circulated
among the tables had long since refused to look in her direction or
hear her order for another drink. When someone opened the front door,
the glare of sunlight struck her face like a slap.
    "You want to take a ride, Lila?" I said.
    "Oh, Dave, how are you? They didn't call you again, did they?"
    "We were in the neighborhood. I'm going to get a membership
here one day."
    "The same day you join the Republican Party. You're such a
riot. Would you help me up? I think I twisted my ankle," she said.
    She slipped her arm in mine and walked with me through the
tables, then stopped at the bar and took two ten-dollar bills from her
purse. She put them carefully on the bar top.
    "Nate, this is for you and that nice young black man. It's
always a pleasure to see you all again," she said.
    "Come back, Miss Lila. Anytime," the barman said, his