Intoxication
He looked at Judah in the doorway.
Judah looked back at him. His collar was open. His jacket was somewhere — his tattoos on full blast. Not characteristic of Judah.
Billy stepped back and let him in.
He didn't ask right away. That wasn't how it worked between them.
Billy poured two glasses and put one in front of Judah and sat across from him in the leather chair his father had died in, which he'd never gotten rid of because there wasn't a Arceneaux alive who threw out good leather on account of sentiment — and he waited.
The study was cool, the shutters drawn against the morning heat.
Billy's house was smaller than the Beaumont manor — a cottage, really, inherited from his grandmother — the Black Widow of St. Francisville.
Twelve husbands on the day she died — and if God had allowed it — the thirteenth somewhere between her cremation and the pearly gates of Hell.
The house had been renovated once in 2009 and not since. His mother had claimed residence in the east wing after an unsuccessful fling with her yoga instructor who’d cheated her out of a sum that wasn’t polite to say out loud.
So now Billy’s house had the whiff of the Black Widow and wilting beds of gardenias — and a particularly miserable preacher sitting in his living room before 10 AM.
“That bad, huh?” he said.
Judah reached for the bottle.
By noon the bottle was half gone and Billy had stopped pretending to pace himself an hour ago. The shutters kept the worst of the heat out. The ceiling fan turned. Somewhere outside, a dog barked — then gave up. He thought he heard a gator, but that might’ve been bourbon whispering.
Judah had talked. Not all of it. Not in any order that made sense. But enough — the bedroom, the tests, the way she'd looked at him when he'd said bought, the way she'd said get off me with her voice gone flat and — Judah had to forgive him — Billy understood where she was coming from.
Billy had listened without interrupting, which was not his natural condition. That, more than anything, told Judah how bad it sounded from the outside.
“She sent you to the guest room,” Billy said finally.
“Yes.”
“And you went.”
“Yes.”
Billy turned his glass. “Huh.”
“Don't.”
“I'm not doing anything.” He drank. “I'm just noting that in the twenty-two years I've known you, I have never once seen you do what someone told you to do. Certainly not a woman.”
Judah said nothing. The bourbon was doing its work. He just wished it would do it quicker.
“She's going to leave,” he said.
“Maybe.”
“Not maybe.”
Billy leaned back. Looked at the ceiling. “Did you sleep?”
“No.”
“Eat anything?”
“No.”
“Right.” Billy stood. Picked up the bottle. “We're going out.”
“We're not going out.”
“Sure, we are.” He was already moving toward the door, jacket off the hook, keys from the bowl on the shelf.
He looked back. “You've been sitting in that house alone since last night processing the consequences of thirteen years of terrible decisions.
That's enough of that.” He held the door open. “Get up, Judah.”
Judah looked at the empty glass on the table.
He got up.
St. Francisville at noon on a weekday had no curated interest in being discreet about witnessing things.
Mrs. Cormier saw them first, coming out of the hardware store with a bag of something and a look that sharpened immediately into focus.
Billy was holding the bottle, which he'd brought because why not, and Judah was following with his glass, moving it toward Billy for a refill every few minutes.
Safe to say he was committed to the process.
“Pastor Beaumont,” she said.
“Mrs. Cormier.” He stopped. Made eye contact. His voice was steady — the years of standing at a pulpit did something to a man's voice that bourbon couldn't fully dismantle. “You look well.” That was a lie. She looked old.
She glanced at the bottle in Billy's hand.
“Anesthetic,” Billy said pleasantly. “He's having a crisis of faith. Completely normal. Happens to the best of ‘em.”
“William—”
“Saint Paul himself, drunk in the road outside Damascus. Or thereabouts.” He steered Judah forward with a hand between the shoulder blades. “Have a blessed afternoon, Mrs. Cormier.” And as they got further, Billy hissed, “the nosey bitch.”
She stood on the sidewalk behind them with her hardware store bag and her story ready to be spread like legs in mid-July.
Randy's was open.
Oddly, it was always open. The sign said noon but the door was unlocked by eleven and sometimes by ten if Dice had come in early to do inventory and gotten bored. Or just drank through the night and wanted company that wasn’t wasted come morning.
Reed's truck was in the lot. Cole's bicycle was locked to the post out front, which meant he'd walked from wherever he'd been and then decided against walking home.
Billy pushed the door open.
The bar was dim, cool, smelling of last night's beer and synthetic cool that could’ve come only from an old, rattling AC. Reed was at his usual stool at the far end. Cole was eating something that might have been lunch. The jukebox was between songs.
Dice was behind the bar.
She looked up when the door opened. Looked at Billy, then at Judah, then back at Billy with an expression that took in the bottle, the hour, and realized questions were not mandatory neither particularly necessary.
She reached under the bar and produced two glasses without being asked.
Reed turned on his stool. Looked at Judah. Cole put his fork down.
Nobody said anything.
Judah sat at the bar. Not at the far end, not in the middle — at the near end, close to the service well, close to where Dice was standing. He put both hands flat on the wood and looked at them for a moment.
“Hey,” he said.
Dice looked at him. “Hey.”
That was it. That was all either of them said for a minute. The jukebox found the next song — something slow, something with an accordion under it, something that had been playing in this bar since before any of them were old enough to be in it.
Billy poured both glasses and the one Judah was nursing, kept one for himself, raised an eyebrow at Reed who nodded, at Cole who pushed his plate aside and nodded too.
Dice didn't take one but she put an additional glass on the counter.
She leaned on the bar with her arms crossed, her sleeve tattoos vivid in the low light, watching Judah with her green eyes and for once, didn’t know what to say, so she said the same thing anyone would’ve said in this situation. “You look like shit.”
Judah’s face did a thing. He took a deep breath and nodded.
“When did you last sleep?”
He swallowed. “Yesterday.”
“Yesterday morning or yesterday night?”
He thought about it. “The thing that comes before the dark.”
She made a sound that wasn't sympathy but wasn't nothing either. Reached for a glass after all. Poured herself something from a different bottle — something amber that wasn't bourbon. She drank without toasting.
Reed turned back to the bar. Cole picked up his fork and then set it down again. Billy sent the third glass his way, gliding across the counter. The room eased into something that wasn't quite comfortable and wasn't quite tense.
It was Billy who said it first. Because Billy always said it first.
“He told her.”
The bar went quiet — even the jukebox stuttered.
Dice looked at her glass. Reed looked at the bottles on the shelf. Cole looked at his plate.
“How'd that go,” Reed said finally.
“About as well as it should,” Billy said.
Judah drank. The bourbon was warm and it was his sixth glass or his seventh — he'd lost count somewhere around the second hour at Billy's.
“I paid for her,” Judah said, his face pulling into a grimace as he corrected, “bought her.”
Nobody moved.
“At the fundraiser. Hargrove had her. Three others had expressed interest.” He turned the glass on the bar.
“I paid over ask. Didn't negotiate. I just—” He stopped.
Started again. “Three hundred thousand dollars. And I told myself it was the right thing. That I was keeping her out.” He looked at his hands. “And then I put her right back in.”
Cole exhaled through his nose.
“Different room,” Billy said quietly.
“She's pregnant,” Judah said.
That one landed differently.
Dice straightened. Reed turned all the way around on his stool. Cole put both hands flat on the bar.
Judah kept looking at his glass. “She found out yesterday. Went to Baton Rouge, didn’t want me to find out. Bought three tests.” He almost laughed. It came out wrong. “Three. In case the first two were lying.”
“Does she—” Dice started.
“She knows I know. I told her.” He drank. “It went badly.” Drank again, then quietly— “Because I’m a dick.”
Dice snorted softly. “No arguments there.”
“Ain't that the truth,” Reed muttered, raising his glass in a half-toast that looked more like a small surrender to the inevitable.
The jukebox switched to something with an electric guitar. The afternoon light slanted through the gaps in the blinds, catching dust motes in its beam.
“So what's she gonna do?” Cole asked, breaking the weighted silence.
Judah's jaw tightened. “Don't know. Didn't get that far in the conversation.”
Billy wrapped an arm around Judah’s shoulders, grinning now. “Tell them the best part. Come on, tell them.”
Judah took a deep breath. “She kicked me out of my own bedroom.”
Billy's laugh cracked through the bar like a bullwhip. “And he listened! Our very own Pastor Beaumont, terror of the parish, slept in the guest room because a woman told him to.”
Reed whistled low. Cole shook his head, something like admiration in his eyes.
“You're in it deep,” Dice said, reaching for the bottle. She refilled Judah's glass without asking. “Never thought I'd see the day.”
Judah stared at the fresh pour; the bourbon gleamed like forbidden honey. He'd missed her. He hadn't let himself know that for years and now, sitting on this stool in this bar, he knew it clearly. He’d missed all of them.
“I need to tell you something,” he said.
She waited.