Crescent City Connection (30 page)

“Do you really think so?”

“Oh, yes, I most certainly do. And because you are his model, and because I like The Monk, even though he’s completely crazy, I protect you.”

“And my uncle?”

“No, no, no! How many times must I tell you? How many times must I tell the damn cop? I have no fucking idea in the world where your uncle is. Why in hell do you think I would know?”

“Because I don’t know where else he goes, or what else he does. This is his life, so far as I know.”

“Yes, well, he usually is here this time of day. What’s happened, Miss … ?”

“Lovelace. My name is Lovelace.”

“Miss Lovelace—I am quite sure you are not, Miss Not-So-Loveless, my funny valentine. What’s happened to you, Miss Not-so? What’s going on? May I give you some tea?”

“No thank you.”

“Ah—a coffee drinker.”

“No, I just…”

“Well, then, tell me what’s the matter while both of us stand up in this hot courtyard with Revelas smirking in the background. He saved the day, you know. Revelas, have you met Miss Not-So-Loveless, niece of The White Monk?”

Lovelace whirled toward the black man, “Revelas! You’re The Monk’s best friend.”

“I’m his best friend, the man sho’ is hard up.”

“That might be,” said Dahveed. “That might well be.”

“He a very odd duck—more or less the Platonic ideal of a odd duck.”

“Revelas,” said Dahveed. “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again—you talk funny.”

Lovelace came close to doing a double take. How could he have such bad grammar and a classical background?

“Prison school, Miss Lovelace.” He spoke as if he had read her mind. “Good prison library, too. I never did learn to talk too good, but I got a hell of a vocabulary.”

“You aren’t my uncle’s best friend?”

The man looked as if his nose had been pushed in, and it probably had, in one fight or another.

“Oh, I reckon I am—I’m a little hard up myself.”

“Can you help me? Do you know where he is?”

“Well, you ain’t really stated the problem, but sounds to me like your uncle must be missin’—ain’t at home, ain’t here. Must be missin’.”

“We talked for a while last night. Then I went into the kitchen; when I came out he was gone.”

“Y’all fight?”

“I’d rather not say.”

“Course, y’all fought. Somethin’ to do with that cop, that be my guess.”

“Excuse me,” said Dahveed. “I really have no time for this.”

He went back into the store.

“Revelas, please. Do you know where he is?”

“Now, Miss Lovelace, you know I’d help you if I could.”

“You know where he might be?”

“Now that do be a mystery. ’Cause you right, darlin’, he go between the sto’ and the house. That’s about all he can handle, be my guess. Somethin’ eatin’ that man. Dahveed full o’ shit, but he right about that one, almost right anyway. The Monk pretty crazy, all right. First he wear white, then he go bald—just for openers. And we not even gon’ talk about kind of stuff he paint. ’Cept you, I mean. The angel pictures real pretty. But, hey— we outsiders here. Tha’s what they call this shit—you know about that? Outsider art.”

She shook her head, impatient. “You don’t have any ideas?”

“’Fraid not, darlin’. But I know The Monk be mighty pleased to know you so worried about him.”

“Well, thanks anyway, Revelas.” What a nice man, she thought, though remembering full well what The Monk had told her about him.

She found Dahveed again, doing the crossword puzzle in the Times-Picayune. Something seemed peculiar to her.

“Dahveed, let me ask you something. Why didn’t you give the cop our address?”

“Why, Miss Not-so, what could be simpler? Because I do not have your address, or the addresses of ninety percent of the itinerant geniuses who pass through these portals. That oversized official of enforcement can get a truckload of search warrants and she will turn up neither address nor phone number. These people want cash and I pay them in cash—I doubt half of them even have bank accounts. For all I know, some don’t know how to sign their names.

“Not that The Monk is like that, of course. He reads; he definitely writes. Otherwise, how could he communicate? However, I have a motto: Tell me no answers and I’ll ask you no lies.”

Lovelace almost laughed.
If I could, I would,
she thought.
I’ll bet I could like Dahveed. In a superficial kind of way.

There was really nothing to do but go to work. She had phoned Anthony that she’d be late, and he’d said, sure, be as late as you want, just let me know and I’ll give you a two-cent raise.

She couldn’t believe it last night when she came out to announce dinner. The Monk just wasn’t there. He wasn’t in the bathroom taking one of his endless showers, and he wasn’t on the porch sulking.

He was gone.

She had heard him leave a hundred times, so this time he had been careful to be quiet.

He’ll be back, she thought. He’s just walking.

He hadn’t come back. She had driven him away. He had been so afraid of his father, and of her father, that he had left his own home, and all because of her.

She could have kicked herself in the seat of the pants. She would have done anything to take back the whole conversation, everything she’d said about the cop. She didn’t have to see any cop—she could have gone back to Northwestern, or to Mexico to find her mom—she certainly didn’t have to see any cop.

Maybe she could have just gone on living with her uncle, hoping her grandfather and her dad and the FBI wouldn’t find her. Isaac would have been fine then, his life wouldn’t have been disturbed.

But in her heart, she knew it wasn’t true, especially after the thing that had happened that morning. She couldn’t simply have waited for the blow to fall, the moment when she walked through a doorway and someone grabbed her—grabbed her or her uncle.

Isaac would truly have been no safer than she, perhaps less so; he was simply wrong if he thought otherwise.

Still, she couldn’t bring herself to meet the cop this morning, couldn’t shake the feeling that it wasn’t her decision, that it was Isaac’s as well. She needed to give him time, needed to talk about it with him, to let him figure out an escape route for himself.

But perhaps he’d found one. It made her feel immeasurably sad that he hadn’t discussed it with her, had just up and left.

He hated her, probably. And she deserved it, for coming into his life and endangering him like this. He wasn’t a well person, she knew that. But he was more sane than otherwise, she was pretty sure of that. She wondered if his apparent craziness was meant to conceal something else, was simply an act, like Hamlet’s antic disposition.

She got off the bus and walked toward Judy’s Juice.
Am I crazy, too?
She thought,
Maybe I should just go find the cop now. It’s not like I only had one chance.

But she had promised Anthony she’d be there.

* * *

Dorise thought about it, and realized that not only had she never been out with a lawyer, she’d probably never even been out with a man who had graduated college. A lawyer had an advanced degree, if she wasn’t mistaken.

She’d certainly never been out with a man who wore suits to work—a white-collar dude. The phrase was so odd when applied to her life, it was like a foreign language. A movie star would have been more believable—at least she’d actually spent time fantasizing about that. It had a certain familiarity.

A lawyer was the kind of person who lived in the houses she worked in.

The wisdom of what her sister had said came down on her—she didn’t hang with lawyers, except when she was the help. She had no idea what she was going to talk to Dashan Jericho about.

Still, he was taking her to Commander’s Palace. She’d never in a million years thought she’d get to go to Commander’s Palace, and she wasn’t sure what to wear, except that maybe it should be the sort of thing you wore to church. And he’d already seen her one good suit.

She got a loan from her sister and went out to Dillard’s to buy herself a nice dress.

What would make him proud of me?
she thought.
Something red? No, that’s for later, to be sexy. For a first date, something black.

She found it, too; the perfect black dress, made out of some taffeta kind of stuff that caught the light a real nice way and had a little jacket that buttoned at the waist to show off her best asset—her proportions. She went way in at the waist and way out at the hips, and she found a lot of guys thought that was more or less the perfect shape.

She never wore red lipstick, but she got some of that, too, and some perfume that the manufacturers swore had been made in some way that didn’t hurt animals. Shavonne had learned in school that they did something awful to a certain kind of African cat to make perfume, and had made her promise never to wear it again. She couldn’t see how any Christian could condone such a thing and had instantly agreed. She hoped Dashan would know that there were perfumes that didn’t hurt animals.

She would have sent Shavonne to her sister’s for the evening, but her sister had said, “Uh-uh, no way. I’m gon’ get a look at this dude the whole family’s talking about.”

So she was baby-sitting on the premises, wearing a pair of sloppy old jeans, a T-shirt, and a slightly sulky look—not exactly an asset.
But I’m only responsible for myself,
Dorise told herself.
The preacher’s always sayin’ that, when people talk about their husbands drinking and their wives fighting with their in-laws. You can’t change anybody but yourself.

And then she thought:
Maybe this night will change everything.

She was so nervous, she was still getting ready when Dashan arrived, still putting on makeup; didn’t even have the dress on yet. She got a run in her pantyhose putting them on.

Damn! That always happens. Good thing I bought another pair. Hope my sister and Shavonne don’t run him off by the time I get there.

When she finally walked into the living room on three-inch heels, in a cloud of animal-friendly perfume, dress rustling, lips glowing, she felt like a movie star—and Dashan’s face told her it wasn’t just her imagination. He stood up, breaking into a wide grin, and offering what he had in his hand—a single red rose, with some tiny white flowers around it, and a fern frond or something. The whole thing was wrapped in cellophane.

He said, “Look at you! You put this little flower to shame.” He was wearing a dark suit, white shirt, and striped tie, like the men at the parties where she worked. She wasn’t at all sure she’d ever seen a black man her age whom she actually knew wearing a suit, except to go to church or a funeral or a wedding. She’d been to clubs where other men wore suits, but no man she’d been with did, and not even any man in the group she was with. Delavon had money, but he dressed hip—anyway, he called it that; and Troy sure wasn’t into suits.

I been missin’ somethin’,
she thought.
I sure been missin’ somethin’. Maybe I should have got saved, started going to church a lot sooner.

“Mama, can I see the flower?”

“Sure, honey, you go put it in water now.”

Shavonne ran into the kitchen, as if there were no time to waste. Dashan and Dorise smiled at each other the way adults do when children do something cute. The whole scene had an oddly domestic feel.

“She sure is a nice child.”

Dorise’s sister said, “Mmmph,” as if to contradict, but neither of the others paid her any mind at all.

Dorise said, “Did y’all have a nice visit?”

“Well, we did. I’ve just been getting acquainted with your sister here. We had a lot to talk about—my family’s in the laundry business. And then Shavonne and I talked about kitty-cats. She likes the striped ones best.”

Dorise had to laugh. “Which kind’s your favorite?”

Her sister said, “Mmmph” again, jealous as hell—Dorise and Dashan were still looking at each other.

Dashan said, “You know those nice black and white ones? More white than black, though, like with ink spots, and black feet.”

“You’ve been doing some thinking about this.”

“Well, everybody has a favorite kitty-cat, don’t they?” And he gave her a smile that made her feel like the queen of England.

The restaurant was in this big old beautiful house—more like a mansion, really—and they showed Dashan and her to a table all set with white linen and a candle and flowers—real nice—and then Dashan said, “How about some champagne?”

For starters, they ordered three things so they could taste everything, and then they ate some fish that made her feel like she’d died and gone to heaven, but that was nothing compared to the chocolate cake they brought out after that. Dorise had never tasted cake like that, all full of raspberry and something that tasted as if it would make you drunk.

And all through the meal they drank champagne and other fine wine, none of which was like anything Dorise had ever had in her life.

Jesus
, she thought,
you have sent me a prince among men. You must not have meant me to make that promise I made if you sent me a man like this. You must be saying it be time to get serious, find me the right kind of man, once and for all. Good father for Shavonne, good husband for me. 1 b’lieve I’m ready at last.

It was like a homecoming. For one thing, so different from being with Troy. Dashan asked her about her work, and about her clients, but he wanted to know about her—how she felt about it and them, not what they had that he could steal. He asked at least a hundred questions about Shavonne—and all of them nice ones, like what were her hobbies? Did she like her teacher? What school did she go to? Not did Dorise ever get tired of taking care of her, how often could she get a baby-sitter.

This was a man who not only wouldn’t dream of breaking the law, he wouldn’t have to. This was a man doing well—a good Christian man she’d met in church just the way it was supposed to be.

She was so busy congratulating herself, so busy being overwhelmed by her good fortune, she almost forgot to ask him about himself.

He liked his new job a lot, he said, and he liked New Orleans. “Even better now,” he said. “If I didn’t have a reason to stick around before, I got one now. Let me ask you something—maybe it’s something you never thought of, I just want to know.”