Page 46 of Cognac Secrets

Out here was wide and spacious. Chains and mechanisms hanging from the ceiling, the cement floor polished and smooth. There were areas that looked like they had been bays to repair cars in, and a couple of those bays still had a mechanic’s lift – only while one was easily recognizable as being used for cars, the other was a different variety. Likely to roll a motorcycle up on it to do work.

There was a ring of camp chairs around a big pot on a propane burner out toward the back big bay door which was wide open to ventilate things, coolers between chairs and used to prop the feet of some of the men and women lounging around the cooking pot.

“Well, if it ain’t Bennie and his dancing queen!” a man I recognized from the bar the night I first met Bennie called out. He gave a wolfish grin and I glanced at his name patch thing on his cut.Axemanwas plucked out in purple thread against the dingy white background of the patch and I painted on a cautious smile. Polite, bland, my customer service smile.

His grin grew and he said, “Aw, Bennie already warned you, this ain’t going to be fun.”

“Ha, ha, fuck you,” Bennie said to Axeman and Axeman flipped him off, taking another drink from his sweating can of beer.

“Get you something out of the cooler?” a woman asked me. She was a lovely brunette, willowy and almost ethereal in how she looked. If it were the Victorian era, I would even hazard to describe her as waiflike, if it wasn’t for the redheaded woman sitting nearby. Nowshewas petite, and whose lap was she sitting in like she’d found the true essence of what it meant to behome?None other than the brick, tattooed shithouse, of LaCroix.

Talk about a Beauty and the Beast parallel! Yet somehow, against all odds, they really did seem to go together. They worked in this almost unnatural, twilight zone kind of way – like you could visuallyseethat her presence seemed to soothe whatever animalistic side he had to him and it was… nice… but also,holy fuckI would hate to see what he would do to anyone that harmed a hair on her rich, strawberry blonde head of hers – because he oozed that he had a particular set of skills that would make him a nightmare for people like whoever if you know what I mean.

Not sophisticated, spy level shit, but definitely and absolutely the stuff of nightmares. He fixed his alien eyes on me, and something passed between us, a shiver of fear rocked me just a little bit, and it was like heknewand it put the tiniest hint of a smile on his face.

Yeah, the Voodoo Bastards had a reputation, and I wondered how much of it was bulk resting on LaCroix’s bulky shoulders.

“Would you mind getting me a beer, oh love of mine?” Hex asked, breaking off from me and Bennie to go to the brunette.

“Of course,” she smiled up at Hex like she’d finally foundherhome and man, what I wouldn’t have given to finally be able to look at someone like that.

I was a weirdo like that, though. I didn’t feel like home was a place. I never had. I felt like home was where the heart was and we all had our person it belonged to out there and until you found them? You were restless, you were out of rhythm with the rest of reality… and man had it felt like that for me since forever.

A few times, in the beginning, I’d felt like I’d come home in the arms of a lover – but again, I’d always been the girl who was good enough to fuck and to have around but never for anything so deep or so much as a commitment.

It was sort of my lot in life, and so I took what I could get when I could get it because fooling myself was better than facing the yawning chasm of the abyss all by my lonesome.

“You okay, beautiful?” I startled, Bennie’s lips brushing the shell of my ear, lingering along the side of my neck, his breath warm and sending a shiver down my spine for an entirely different reason than the one that’d gone down it before.

“What? Yeah! Sorry, guess I let myself get lost in my own head a little hard for a minute there.”

I laughed it off, but had the thought,oh shit… what day was it?It was fleeting, though.

Bennie led me around to an empty camp chair and asked Hex’s lady, “Can I get a beer too?” she reached down into the cooler and handed him one and he asked me, “What do you want, babe?”

“Oh, uh, do you just have a Sprite or a Coke or something?”

“Sorry, soda is over by Alina, there’s just beer in this one,” she said, taking a drink from her own glass bottle of what looked like Michelob Ultra.

“Here, I got you,” the redhead said, and she bent down to the cooler in front of her and LaCroix and flipped open the lid. “We got both. Which one do you want?” she asked.

“Oh, Sprite please,” I said, and she pulled up a glass bottle of the good stuff from Mexico made with real sugar.

“Thanks,” I said going partway around the crawfish boil in progress. I could tell by the smell, and boy did it smellgood.

I took the proffered soda from the woman and Bennie took it from me, using the simple black band on one of his fingers to pop the top for me. I smiled at him and said, “Thanks.”

He winked at me and took an empty chair and patted the top of his thigh. I smiled and took a seat, his arm going smoothly around my waist, thumb grazing over my t-shirt, back and forth, like I was his touchstone.

I liked that.

Introductions were made, and Bennie assured me the whole gang was here. I looked back over my shoulder at the plastic sheeting up around the lone figure of the woman on the other end of the garage or whatever we were in and asked softly, “What is she doing?”

“Carvin’ bone,” a man two seats over said in a similar Tennessee drawl as Hex.

“That’s my sister. She’s the road kill queen to your dancin’ queen,” another brother said across the fire and it was hard to forget his name. Cypress. I mean, his neck was probably as thick as my waist and Bennie had muttered that’s how Cy had gotten his name, for having arms and a neck like a cypress tree.

“You wanna closer look? Go on.” The Tennessee man, Collier, said. I didn’t know what a Collier was, but it sounded like it could be a last name or something? If I had to guess – that’s what I would guess that it was.

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