Free The Bayou Trilogy: Under the Bright Lights, Muscle for the Wing, and The Ones You Do by Daniel Woodrell

Frog.”
    “When I want to be, I am,” Tip said. “Every March I’m Irish.”
    Ledoux walked away, and as he sighted in on the john he heard Tip ask: “Say, what about old Alvin Rankin, there, Steve. That’ll shake Pan Fry up, won’t it?”
    “I would guess it would,” Roque said. “But as long as they only kill each other, who can gripe? Not you, not me. That’s what I got to ask—who’s goin’ to be upset?”

6
    I N THE heart of Frogtown, or Old French Town, as the historical markers labeled it, the streets were burnt-orange cobblestone, and brick row houses were built so that the front doors opened onto traffic instead of sidewalks. There were handmade signs for Pierre’s Shoes, Secondhand and New, Jacqueline’s Herbs and Spices, and at the corner of the line of row houses on Lafitte and Perry, Ma Blanqui’s Pool House.
    The downstairs of the house had two pool tables in what had once been the parlor and one in the former dining room. In the rear was a small kitchen, a bedroom, and a large closet without a door on it. Monique Blanqui Shade sat in the closet on a high stool from which she kept an eye on the tables. A large Dr Pepper cooler served as a counter and gave her storage space for the extras she sold.
    The upstairs was a separate apartment although the door that connected it to the downstairs had no lock on it. That had never been a problem, for Rene Shade lived in the upper half. He lived there partly because he believed, despite considerable contrary evidence, that his mother might need his protection in this neighborhood, but primarily because it was cheap.
    On the morning following his meeting with Mayor Crawford, Shade woke sometime before noon but could not pull himself from bed. The apartment was dark and he looked around the room, his familiarity with its accoutrements causing him to overlook the fistful of trophies on a bookcase, the Brueghel reproductions on the wall, andthe clothing strewn across the floor. He found himself staring at a cooing pigeon on the window ledge, a ledge well used by pigeons; a pigeon he could not hush by voice command alone. He considered throwing something that would rattle the window and panic the bird, then passed on such a serious test of his aim so early in the day.
    He pulled a pillow over his eyes and tried to sleep.
    Sometime later, caught in the lucid but immobile state where the subconscious rambles and the conscious listens, Shade became aware of wet blossoms sprouting from his body. The damp tulips unfolded on his neck, his belly, and then on ground where sweet blossoms live dangerously. His hand began to follow the pattern of moist horticulture and finally grasped a bud just planted but beginning to spread.
    “Got me,” a voice like a blue saxophone said.
    Slowly Shade sat up, a few strands of Nicole Webb’s hair wound between his fingers.
    “What round is it?” he said.
    Nicole draped her arms around his neck.
    “The first,” she said. “And you’re winning.”
    “Just a minute,” Shade said. He rolled out of bed and clumsily walked to the bathroom. He bent over the sink to splash water on his face, then crouched to the faucet and irrigated the potato field that his mouth had become.
    Nicole, a rare good fortune for a post-twenties single man in that she was mature but not cautious, and confident but not aloof, leaned against the doorjamb.
    “You’re not wearing the underwear I bought you,” she said. “You must not like it.”
    Shade rubbed his face with a towel.
    “See a beach?” he asked. “Where’s the sand?”
    “They’re bikini briefs,” Nicole said. “That just means sexy underwear.”
    “I thought naked was sexy.”
    “Well, it is. But sexy comes in stages.”
    Nicole wore cutoff jeans, with stylish unravelings that formed slitsalong the seams, and a black T-shirt that advertised Sister Kettle’s Cafe. The benefits of racquetball and modest weight training gave her arms a fetching versatility of attitude. Black