Club Dead

control then. Every day had been full of dramas—the dramas of other kids. Trying to concentrate on listening in class, taking tests in a roomful of buzzing brains . . . the only thing I’d ever excelled in was homework.
    Janice didn’t seem to be too concerned that I was a barmaid, which was an occupation not guaranteed to impress the families of those you dated.
    I had to remind myself all over again that this setup with Alcide was a temporary arrangement he’d never asked for, and that after I’d discovered Bill’s whereabouts—right, Sookie, remember Bill, your boyfriend ?—I’d never see Alcide again. Oh, he might drop into Merlotte’s, if he felt like getting off the interstate on his way from Shreveport to Jackson, but that would be all.
    Janice was genuinely hoping I would be a permanent member of her family. That was so nice of her. I liked her a lot. I almost found myself wishing that Alcide really liked me, that there was a real chance of Janice being my sister-in-law.
    They say there’s no harm in daydreaming, but there is.

Chapter Seven
    A LCIDE WAS WAITING for me when I got back. A pile of wrapped presents on the kitchen counter showed me how he’d spent at least part of his morning. Alcide had been completing his Christmas shopping.
    Judging from his self-conscious look (Mr. Subtle, he wasn’t), he’d done something he wasn’t sure I’d like. Whatever it was, he wasn’t ready to reveal it to me, so I tried to be polite and stay out of his head. As I was passing through the short hall formed by the bedroom wall and the kitchen counter, I sniffed something less than pleasant. Maybe the garbage needed to be tossed? What garbage could we have generated in our short stay that would produce that faint, unpleasant odor? But the past pleasure of my chat with Janice and the present pleasure of seeing Alcide made it easy to forget.
    “You look nice,” he said.
    “I stopped in to see Janice.” I was worried for fear he would think I was imposing on his sister’s generosity. “She has a way of getting you to accept things you had no intention of accepting.”
    “She’s good,” he said simply. “She’s known about me since we were in high school, and she’s never told a soul.”
    “I could tell.”
    “How—? Oh, yeah.” He shook his head. “You seem like the most regular person I ever met, and it’s hard to remember you’ve got all this extra stuff.”
    No one had ever put it quite like that.
    “When you were coming in, did you smell something strange by—” he began, but then the doorbell rang.
    Alcide went to answer it while I took off my coat.
    He sounded pleased, and I turned to face the door with a smile. The young man coming in didn’t seem surprised to see me, and Alcide introduced him as Janice’s husband, Dell Phillips. I shook his hand, expecting to be as pleased with him as I was with Janice.
    He touched me as briefly as possible, and then he ignored me. “I wondered if you could come by this afternoon and help me set up our outside Christmas lights,” Dell said—to Alcide, and Alcide only.
    “Where’s Tommy?” Alcide asked. He looked disappointed. “You didn’t bring him by to see me?” Tommy was Janice’s baby.
    Dell looked at me, and shook his head. “You’ve got a woman here, it didn’t seem right. He’s with my mom.”
    The comment was so unexpected, all I could do was stand in silence. Dell’s attitude had caught Alcide flat-footed, too. “Dell,” he said, “don’t be rude to my friend.”
    “She’s staying in your apartment, that says more than friend,” Dell said matter-of-factly. “Sorry, miss, this just isn’t right.”
    “Judge not, that ye be not judged,” I told him, hoping I didn’t sound as furious as my clenched stomach told me I was. It felt wrong to quote the Bible when you were in a towering rage. I went into the guest bedroom and shut the door.
    After I heard Dell Phillips leave, Alcide knocked on the door.
    “You want to play Scrabble?” he asked.
    I blinked. “Sure.”
    “When I was shopping for Tommy, I picked up a game.”
    He’d already put it on the coffee table in front of the couch, but he hadn’t been confident enough to unwrap it and set it up.
    “I’ll pour us a Coke,” I said. Not for the first time, I noticed that the apartment was quite cool, though of course it was much warmer than outside. I wished I had brought a light sweater to put on, and I wondered if it would offend Alcide if I asked