2. Getting on towards midnight and Noelle's two black eyes ain't brought lil' Jacky-Pete back, though they did done stop up her tears. She's curled in the big king bed, a shivering lump of satin nightgown and bruises. Petey-Jack sets up in the kitchen with a bottle of whiskey, too pissed and confused for a smoke or a glass. He fumes in silence at Noelle some more, for losing his only son (however it happened), and for the possibility that he can't trust her no more. Maybe she's lying, after all, to cover up something worse-- something dark and horrible, mayne something she's done... Them kinds of imaginings'll only make you kill the woman, he tells hisself, and he ain't inclined to do that just yet. Four years of pretty good food and great sex can't just be tossed out-- snap-- like that. But what all this come down to, how far he can trust his wife a whole 'nother issue-- is that Petey-Jack's son, his only baby, is missing. And that's what time it is right now. Petey-Jack fumes at hissownself too. Two hours of threats, shouting, fists, an' even his belt hadn't changed Noelle's story one lick. She's been too shocky, he thinks, in Southern Comfort clarity. Maybe he shoulda waited for her to settle up a bit before putting it to her like that. He muses over the precious few sobbed details he's managed to beat out of the bitch. She'd been shopping with Maryanne down at the tourist shops and out of the grates come a flock of goblins and they carried off the baby, right out of the buggy. What did Maryanne do? Noelle didn't know. Where did Maryanne go? She didn't know that either. And the goblins? Ran off giggling and whooping into the park. What kind of goblins? Goblin goblins. What did they look like? Green, pointy ears. Goblin-y. At which point he told her to get the fuck cleaned up and go to bed. He thinks of calling up Maryanne, asking her what she knows, but this time of night she's not likely to be anything but a stone bitch. Besides, Petey-Jack doesn't really want to have to hit any more women tonight. Or leave the house, for that matter, not entirely trusting Noelle to her own devices. Nonetheless, night and the bourbon have niether conspired to make the man more brave nor more sober, and thus, he accomplished nothing by setting on his ass alone in the dark kitchen. Petey-Jack is not a man accustomed to long deliberation, (or otherwise thinking too hard about things), and this situation put a thorn right deep in his back pocket. SO he grabs his keys, locks up, and leaves the house on the border of North and South. Petey-Jack is one of those people who at least maintaines to drive better when he's drunk, and this might even be true. Though he is so pissed and frustrated right this second, he doesn't feel the liquor 'cept for a brief burn at the back of his throat, and a sour warmth in his belly. Having to cpncentrate on the road calms him a little too, forces him into a mechanical focus and he heads direct to the park. He's a gonna find his son, one way or the other. << @me translator blurty geas bellicosity