That was new.
He pressed the back of his head against the lamp post again and looked at the sky going pink over the oaks and thought about a woman he had mistreated in more ways than just the one.
The accounting didn't balance. It hadn't balanced in a long time.
He was beginning to think that was the point.
Billy's phone call lasted forty-five seconds.
Judah heard his own name said twice — once in greeting, once in something approaching apology — and then Billy was pocketing the phone and looking at him with an expression Judah had absolutely no desire to decipher.
“She's coming,” Billy said.
“Who.”
“Lauren.”
The lamp post was warm against the back of Judah's skull. His legs felt like something borrowed from a larger man — heavy and uncooperative.
“You didn't have to call Lauren.”
“I didn't have a lot of options.” Billy produced the bottle from his jacket — not the Randy's bottle, a different one, smaller, from somewhere that had no good explanation — and offered it. “The Jaguar's at my house. You drove the Mustang here and you are not touching that Mustang. My conscience wouldn’t let me letyouwrap it around a telephone pole.”
Funny,Judah thought without any sense of levity.
Judah took the bottle and poured a quarter of it straight in his throat.
“Whoa,Preacher—”
Judah wiped his mouth with the top of his palm. “You could've called a cab.”
“In St. Frankenville?” Billy looked at him. “Just… keep drinking, man,” he said, and then added, “Lauren answered on the second ring.”
Judah said nothing. The street was swaying. Or maybe he was. He couldn’t understand much of it. Or rather couldn’t understand much of what his eyes were telling him. All he knew was that a dog had crossed the far end of the block and had lifted his leg to pee on someone’s bike tire.
He drank some more.
Lauren's car was a silver Honda and she pulled up to the curb at 5:47. Judah watched her through the window. She was looking straight ahead. Not at him.
Billy opened the back door, and Judah folded himself in. The car was small.
Too small.
She didn't say anything. He didn't either, not for the first two blocks.
Then: “Lauren.”
She glanced at the rearview mirror. Her jaw was set. She'd done her eyes — he noticed that, and wished he hadn't, because it meant she'd made herself presentable when Billy called, which meant something he didn't have the right to think about tonight.
“You don't have to—” He stopped. “I'm not going to—” He pressed his fingers to his eyes. The bourbon was doing what bourbon did: making everything very clear and very useless at the same time. “I'm sorry.”
“Judah.”
“No, I mean it.” He let his hand drop. The Spanish moss was going past outside in the headlights. “It wasn't fair. The way I—” He exhaled. “I should've said so sooner.”
The silence from the front seat was its own answer.
“It's fine,” she said.
