She works laying whiskey down

He watched her cross the lawn the way a rancher watches his cattle. She lumbered over to him with gin-soaked footsteps and kicked her sparkly gold kitten heels off under his lawn chair before sliding onto his lap.
"How many days have I been here, James?"
"Not counting the day I picked your ass up and drove thirteen hot hours to get here, three."
She grunted and chewed on a piece of hair that had loosed itself from her bun. Her fingers were slender but her wrists were mannish. She listened to Linda Ronstadt and Otis Redding in equal amounts. She fucked like someone who never meant to keep the job but was damn good at it. He fucked like he never learned how but really wanted to.
Here they sat- two hours south of Reno at his uncle's trailer purchased exclusively to get away from the world until he had died three months prior. The days passed blearily with sad commas of gin drinking and struggling naked against one another on the couch's pull-out bed until someone blasphemed and sighed. She sadly acknowledged that three bad days with James were preferable to a lifetime back home.
He squinted over toward the truck, "How long do you want to wait before we move on to Tijuana?"
"I don't know, maybe early next week? I just need to sit still for a few more days."
The image of her brother laying face down in the kid pool he had brought home for their mother's dog the summer before was always in her head if she focused on anything for too long. His letter had made no sense- something about love and basketball and Tom Waits. She had vomited until the bile gave way to acrid air at which point she had collapsed and called James. He had been there by sunrise.
James curled his finger around her wrist and smiled softly. His pinky sat just below the small bones protruding on either side.
Among the dust and freckles on her hands- which hadn't seen a sink and soap since yesterday- was a a small drop of sugary juice that had dried into a gray dot. She sighed and closed her eyes as he felt it melt slowly back to juice form beneath the warmth of his grasp.