lacquer less fingertips to her lips.
'Whoops,' she said. 'That's not polite.'
'An inheritance. Don't worry, everyone asks that question, if not always out loud. Can I fix you a drink and if so, what's your preference?'
'I'll just go with a vodka and tonic. Light, please. I'm not much of a drinker.'
'Twenty watts, coming up. Get your stereo repaired?'
She waved her hands above her head and shuffled in a circle, an impersonation of local cable-access preacher Beulah Chilers. 'I have mew-sic again and heard its glow-ree and I have been sank-tea-fide by it, pra-a-a-a-ise Jay- susI nearly dropped to my knees and hallelujahed.
Was this the same gray-humored woman who minced bodies for a living?
'Damn, it's colder'n a morgue in here,' Ava said, and with great difficulty I avoided noting her nipples thought so too. We took our drinks to the deck. Ava seemed to have brought a breeze and for the first time in a week the air didn't feel like hot syrup.
'So you boated over,' I said as we angled chairs toward one another and tapped glasses in a toast to the boundless spirit of Friday nights everywhere.
'Getting to Gulf Shores was a nightmare. But returning across the bay made up for it. Someone told me we passed over the site where the guy said, 'Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.'
I nodded. 'Admiral Farragut during Battle of Mobile Bay, August fifth, 1864, the curtain coming down on the War Between the States.'
Our eyes held one another's longer than usual for a one-line history lesson and startled us into looking away. Ava jumped up and wobbled slightly. 'Sea legs from the ferry,' she said, walking to the railing and looking out over the Gulf. A sailboat ran east with the wind toward the mouth of the bay. The wind nestled Ava's clothes against her slender body and I knew Reubens was wrong and subtle curves curved best. Ice chimed against her lips as she sipped.
For a half hour or so, we conversed like friends too long apart. The weather. The dearth of Indian restaurants. Mobile's once-famed Azalea Trail. The serene and stately glory of Bellingrath Gardens. I told her how Mobile had danced to its own version of Mardi Gras years before New Orleans put its shoes on.
I discovered Ava Davanelle was thirty years old with an orthopedic-surgeon father and a mother who taught French. She'd grown up in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Reading her father's copy of Gray's Anatomy when she was thirteen inspired her career. She'd lived in Mobile for six months, and today was the first time she'd been on the beach. I discovered she understood quiet, and our silences were comfortable and contemplative.
Then, over a period of fifteen minutes, her silences became forced, almost troubled. Her eyes wavered from mine and their incandescence waned. Ava sat forward and rubbed her forehead. 'Doggone,' she said,
'I brought you the copy of the preliminary report. It's in my car.
I'll be right back.'
'I don't need it now. I'll wait for finals.'
'After I've brought them here by land and sea? You're getting them.'
Her smile was strained, like trying to smile while lifting weights.
'Just summarize. Similarities and differences in twenty-five words or less.'
She rubbed her forehead. 'I was struck by how similar the bodies were, like twin brothers, except, had they been brothers, Deschamps worked out two hours for every one of Nelson's: more pronounced musculature, primarily in the upper body.'
'Great,' I said. 'All I needed.'
She stood. 'I'll get the report.'
'I'll come with you,' I offered. 'Show you the exotic sights under my house. You'll love my kayak.'
She handed me her glass. 'Fix me another, please. Light. I'll be right back.'
Shapes of the past: Ben 'The Bear' Ashley, my first partner, finding reasons to get me out of the car. 'Gimme a pack of gum, Carson,' 'Run in and grab me some smokes, bud.' Bear sent me inside fast-food joints for the food instead of using the drive-through. I also recalled Bear's low moods before he'd command some odd errand. Until learning the truth I thought it a rookie initiation or show of pecking order.
After mixing two more drinks I returned to the porch and waited, a weight pressing my heart. Ava stepped outside with a manila folder. A new scent of mint suffused the air. She rolled her head as if loosening her neck. Two minutes later she was laughing like a tickled bell.
The indications were there, but I needed to know for sure. I smacked my forehead. 'Damn,' I said. 'I've got to take out the trash. If I forget I'll find ants everywhere in the a.m.'
'Ants! Of coursh,' Ava slurred. 'Pesky things.'
I grabbed a half bag of trash from the container and wrapped it for show, heading downstairs. She'd locked her car and I got the slim-jim from mine, a two-foot strip of thin steel slipped between door and window to pop the lock. Ava's door opened in seconds. The glove box had the usual automotive records, plus several packs of gum, breath mints, and other scented candies. I patted beneath the passenger seat.
Nothing. My hand crawled beneath the driver's seat and found a long brown bag that sloshed as I retrieved it. Inside was a liter of bottom-rung vodka, a third empty. A sales receipt fell out. Beneath the imprint of the package store was the name and price of the vodka, plus date and time of the purchase. 7:01 p.m. Tonight.
Jesus. Ava had sucked down eight or so ounces of liquor before she'd arrived. No wonder she'd looked incandescent at the door; she was lit up with first-flush alco-energy, blazing. But it's a fire ravenous for fuel and her featherweight drinks lacked the voltage, so she'd hustled to her car for an eighty-four-proof jump-start.
Bear was an alky who pulled chugs from a bottle under the seat when I picked up smokes and burgers. Ten months with him taught me if Ava could drink that much and still present a sober facade, she'd had practice handling it. She was experienced enough that leaving the report in the car let her socially birdie-sip her drink, having an excuse to head to the well if the itch started. Alcoholics are master planners at sneaking drinks.
The slurring had started. With a fresh surge of ethanol in her system she'd start showing its effects, but perhaps be too affected to realize it. Letting her drive back to Mobile was unthinkable. I felt like an amateur juggler handed two lit blowtorches and a Roman candle: how to proceed without getting burned?
'How's your trash prollem?' Ava said loudly as I stepped back outside.
Her glass was fuller than when I'd left, and I realized she'd slipped inside and poured one. It didn't seem the best way to begin a relationship, she sneaking my booze while I broke into her car.
I said, 'It's solved. No ants in my pants tonight.' 'What about your pantch?' Her esses had moved from slippery to slushy.
'Nothing. Just a comment on entomology.'
'Ettamolgy? Where words come from, right?'
She squinted slightly, a reaction to blurring vision. After several seconds spent studying her watch Ava jumped up as if bee stung.
'Pas' my bedtime. Gotta run.' She started to walk but wavered.
'Whoopsie,' she said, covering. 'Leg fell asleep.' She bent and pretended to massage sparkles away.
'And a very nice leg at that,' I said.
She grinned crookedly. 'Thanks. Got another'n just like it over here.'
She wobbled again. If she got in her car I'd have to call the Dauphin Island cops and have her stopped. I couldn't sober her up quickly, but I could push her the other direction.
'Just one more small one?' I suggested. 'A light light for the road?'
'Nope. All done.' But her eyes weighed the notion and her feet weren't moving.
'Please, just one more with me,' I said. 'Sit, darling.'
'Darling?' she echoed as I went to the kitchen. A minute later I handed her three shots of vodka with tonic to take it to the rim. I'd added a hefty squeeze of lime, hoping its citrus bite masked the potency. Ava was past sipping for show and drained a third of the glass in a single swig. She cocked her head my way and her eyes took a two-count to focus.
'Carshon, did you call me darling before?'
'Yes, I did, Ava.'
'Why?' she said, turning the word into two syllables.
'It seemed appropriate.'
