“That ain’t your usual lipstick,” Gabriel murmured, flicking ash onto the damp wooden planks beneath his boots. The porch light buzzed faintly, painting half his face in jaundiced yellow, the other half swallowed by the Louisiana dark. His thumb brushed the rim of his bourbon glass, no ice, never ice, leaving a smudge where his fingerprints melted into the condensation. A scent of heavy settling over the glades with the nocturnal aroma of Kahula, cigarettes and intoxicating possibilities, making the ice cubes tremble with the sounds of smoky. Casting a shadow across her cheekbones, inhaling the bayou and the old peat that rose from the ground like petrified ghosts. She tilted her head just enough for the light to catch the smear of burgundy at the corner of her mouth, too deep for daytime, too deliberate for accident as her tongue licked the the night’s roux ftom her lips. Letting the bullfrogs sing, “Laissez les bons temps rouler.” Let the good times roll.
“Cher, you lookin’ at my mouth more’n a preacher looks at collection plates,” she drawled, her voice slow as molasses dripping off a spoon. The words curled between them, mingling with the thick air that clung to their skin like another layer of clothes. Somewhere in the distance, a gator slid into the black water with a sound like a zipper closing on the night itself. Gabriel’s laugh was a low, rolling thing, like the distant thunder promising a storm that wouldn’t come. He took another sip of bourbon, the liquid dark as her lipstick in the dim light. “Preachers ain’t got nothin’ on me,” he said, leaning back against the porch rail. The wood groaned under his weight, a sound as familiar as her laughter. “But that color…” Her chatoyant eyes like maraschino cherries.
