I went behind the bar to pour some more tea for Jane Bodehouse, who was trying to be sober today because she was trying to compile a list of the guys who might have given her chlamydia. A bar is a bad place to start a sobriety program—but Jane had hardly any chance of succeeding, anyway. I put a slice of lemon in the tea and carried it to Jane, watched her hands shake as she picked up the glass and drank from it.

“You want something to eat?” I asked, keeping my voice low and quiet. Just because I’d never seen a drunk reform in a bar, that didn’t mean it couldn’t happen.

Jane shook her head silently. Her dyed brown hair was already escaping the clip that held it back, and her heavy black sweater was covered with bits of this and that. Her makeup had been applied with a shaky hand. I could see the lipstick caked in the creases in her lips. Most of the area alcoholics might stop in Merlotte’s every now and then, but they based themselves at the Bayou. Jane was our only “resident” alkie since old Wil lie Chenier had died. When Jane was in the bar, she always sat on the same stool. Hoyt had made a label for it when he’d had too much to drink one night, but Sam had made him take it off.

I looked in Jane’s head for an awful minute or two, and I watched the slow shifting of thoughts behind her eyes, noticed the broken veins in her cheeks. The thought of becoming like Jane was enough to scare almost anyone sober.

I turned away to find Mel standing beside me. He was on his way to the men’s room, because that’s what was in his head when I looked.

“You know what they do in Hotshot with people like that?” he asked quietly, nodding his head toward Jane as if she couldn’t see or hear him. (Actually, I thought he was right about that. Jane was turned so inward that she didn’t seem to be acknowledging the world much today.)

“No,” I said, startled.

“They let them die,” he said. “They don’t offer them food or water or shelter, if the person can’t seek it for himself or herself.”

I’m sure my horror showed on my face.

“It’s kindest in the end,” he said. He drew a deep, shuddering breath. “Hotshot has its ways of getting rid of the weak.”

He went on his way, his back stiff.