“And you, too, Sookie,” Claude told me. Dermot’s courtesy was rubbing off on my grumpy cousin.
I woke in the morning to the sound of knocking at the door. Rumple-headed and bleary, I dragged myself through the living room and looked through the peephole. Sam.
I opened the door and yawned in his face. “Sam, what can I do for you? Come on in.”
His glance flickered over the crowded living room, and I could see him struggling with a smile. “Aren’t we still going to Shreveport?” he asked.
“Oh my gosh!” Suddenly I felt more awake. “My last thought when I fell asleep last night was that you wouldn’t be able to go because of the fire at the bar. You can? You want to?”
“Yep. The fire marshal talked to my insurance company, and they’ve started the paperwork. In the meantime, Danny and I hauled out the burned table and the chairs, Terry’s been working on the floor, and Antoine’s been checking that the kitchen’s in good shape. I’ve already made sure we’ve got more fire extinguishers ready to go.” For a long moment, his smile faltered. “If I have any customers to serve. People aren’t likely to want to come to Merlotte’s if they think they might get incinerated.”
I didn’t exactly blame folks for worrying about that. We hadn’t needed the incident of the night before, not at all. It might hasten the decline of Sam’s business.
“So they need to catch whoever did it,” I said, trying to sound positive. “Then people will know it’s safe to come back, and we’ll be busy again.”
Claude came downstairs then, giving us Surly. “Noisy down here,” he muttered as he passed on his way to the hall bathroom. Even slouching around in rumpled jeans, Claude walked with a grace that drew attention to his beauty. Sam gave an unconscious sigh and shook his head slightly as his eyes followed Claude, gliding down the hall as though he had ball bearings in his hip joints.
“Hey,” I said, after I heard the bathroom door shut. “Sam! He doesn’t have anything on you.”
“Some guys,” Sam began, looking abashed, and then he stopped. “Aw, forget it.”
I couldn’t, of course, not when I could tell directly from Sam’s brain that he was — not exactly envious, but rueful, about Claude’s physical attraction, though Sam knew as well as anyone that Claude was a pain in the butt.
I’ve been reading men’s minds for years, and they’re more like women than you would think, really, unless you’re talking trucks. I started to tell Sam that he was plenty attractive, that women in the bar mooned over him more than he thought; but in the end, I kept my mouth shut. I had to let Sam have the privacy of his own thoughts. Because of his shifter nature, most of what was in Sam’s head remained in Sam’s head . . . more or less. I could get the odd thought, the general mood, but seldom anything more specific.
“Here, I’ll make some coffee,” I said, and when I stepped into the kitchen, Sam close on my heels, I stopped dead. I’d forgotten all about the fight the night before.
“What happened?” Sam said. “Did Claude do this?” He looked around with dismay.
“No, Eric and Pam,” I said. “Oh, zombies.” Sam looked at me oddly, and I laughed and began to pick things up. I was abbreviating one of Pam’s curses, because I wasn’t that horrified.
I couldn’t help reflecting that it would have been really, really nice if Claude and Dermot had straightened the room up before they turned in the night before. Just as lagniappe.
Then again, it wasn’t their kitchen.
I set a chair on its legs, and Sam dragged the table back into position. I got the broom and dustpan, and swept up the salt, pepper, and sugar that crunched under my feet, and made a mental note to go to Wal-Mart to replace my toaster if Eric didn’t send one today. My napkin holder was broken, too, and it had survived the fire of a year and a half ago. I double-sighed.
“At least the table is okay,” I said.
“And only one broken leg on one of the chairs,” Sam said. “Eric going to get this stuff fixed or replaced?”
“I expect he will,” I said, and found that the coffeepot was intact, as were the mugs that had been hanging on a mug tree next to it; no, wait, one of them had broken. Well, five good ones. That was plenty.
I made some coffee. While Sam was carrying the garbage bag outside, I ducked into my room to get ready. I’d showered the evening before, so I only needed to brush my hair and my teeth and pull on some jeans and a “Fight Like a Girl” T-shirt. I didn’t fool with makeup. Sam had seen me under all sorts of conditions.