Crescent City Connection (8 page)

Chip laughed in a way Lovelace really couldn’t construe as anything but evil. “Oh, yeah, right.”

It occurred to her that she should have wondered herself why they were giving her the ride. But the answer seemed obvious and not even sinister—they were drunk and it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Sam winked at Lovelace, who had noticed by this time that Mimi was stretched out with her head in his lap. “You two gettin’ along?”

She smiled with her lips together, hoping they hadn’t thinned into a telltale line. “Just fine.”

“Hey, ol’ buddy, gimme another hit of speed, okay?”

Chip pulled some pills out of his pocket, passed them back to Sam, and offered one to Lovelace. She took it, thinking she could use the rush.

The two men looked at each other. Chip said, “Aw right!”

Apparently, they thought they’d found a kindred spirit.

Sam said, “Gimme a beer.”

“Want to go to the French Quarter? I mean, y’all don’t really need to sleep now, do you?”

“Who said anything about sleepin’?”

“Listen, I kind of need to get home.”

Chip grabbed her leg again. “Aw, come on. Just have breakfast with us. Then we’ll take you home.”

Lovelace noticed Chip hadn’t availed himself of the speed, and her only hope was that he wouldn’t. She needed him to crash. Breakfast might make him sleepy.

“Whatever.” She shrugged and smiled at him, just a bimbo along for the ride.

They got off the Interstate and found a McDonald’s, where she promptly excused herself to use the ladies’ room, thinking home-free thoughts. But two things went wrong—Mimi came with her, and there was no window.

The guys had ordered her an Egg McMuffin.
If I eat it
, she thought,
does that mean they’ll
think I owe them? And if I don’t, are they going to get ugly?

In the end she nibbled, and when they urged her to eat up, she said she wasn’t hungry. Sam said, “I know what you mean, man. I got other nourishment in my bloodstream.”

Chip was starting to behave like a kid who hadn’t had his nap. “Come on. I’m draggin’.”

Sam said, “How about I drive for a while?”

“Are you kiddin’? You nearly wrecked us last night. Hey, I saw a Quinta Inn—let’s go check in for a couple of hours.”

“I want to get to New Orleans, man.”

“Hey, man, we’re there. This is Veterans Highway. We’ll just stop for a nap, okay? Everything in the French Quarter’s gon’ be booked.”

Mimi was nuzzling Sam. “Come on, Sammy. Let’s stop for a little while.”

If Lovelace had had any questions about the sleeping arrangements, they were answered.

So here’s the problem, she thought:
The lady or the tiger? The devil you know or the devil you don’t? 1 could just start hitchhiking, but maybe the new Ted Bundy’ll give me a ride.

She opted for her new best friends.

As soon as the door closed, Chip was upon her, beery, eggy breath in her face, tongue between her teeth.

She kissed him, but with her hands on his chest, pushing gently even as she opened her mouth, teasing a little. She broke away and whispered, “Let me take a shower first.”

Once again there was no window. Still, she knew she wouldn’t have used it. She was getting bolder by the moment, and more and more reckless. Later, she knew that she’d known in the back of her mind what she was going to do, but she never put it into words, never admitted it to herself—she just did it.

First, she did take a shower—a long, leisurely, delicious one. Then she put all her clothes on, stepped back into the room, and observed a dream come true.

Chip had stripped in anticipation, turned on the TV, and crawled between the covers, leaving his wallet and car keys on the dresser. He was snoring.

The keys were tempting. Really, really tempting. But the goal was staying away from her dad, and if she got busted for car theft, she’d be stuck with him for the next million years.

Besides, Chip had five or six twenties in his wallet—he probably didn’t know how many himself. He’d never be sure if she took one or not. In fact, he wouldn’t know if she took two.

She asked the desk clerk to call her a cab and was waiting in the lobby, big as life, when Chip came in loaded for bear. He was so mad he clenched his fists as he walked; his face was close to purple. She’d probably have wet her pants if there hadn’t been two or three other people around.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

She smiled as if he was her long-lost lover. “Hi, Chip. I realized I’ve really got to get going—my mom’s going to be frantic if I don’t get home soon.”

At the mention of her mom, his anger turned to confusion. She knew what she looked like—a well-scrubbed college girl. If he tried anything here, these people would call the cops—fast.

“Well, why didn’t you say so? Listen, I’ll take you home. No problem.”

“Oh, that’s okay. Here’s my cab.”

He followed her out and spoke through clenched teeth: “Give me my money, you little whore.”

She said as if she didn’t hear: “Listen, I really appreciate the ride. Tell Sam and Mimi good-bye.”

She gave the driver her uncle’s address.

THE WHITE MONK pulled up his hood and began sweeping the patio, counting each stroke as he did so. He sometimes did this three times a day, sometimes six or eight. Because he worked practically for peanuts, his boss, Dahveed, thought he’d died and gone to heaven.

The Monk could count and think at the same time. It was a form of meditation for him. On a beautiful March day like this—crisp and windy, but bright as copper—he could contemplate theology all afternoon. But there were other things to do—some dusting, some heavy cleaning, some framing. Even his own work.

He looked forward to it all equally, would as soon be doing Dahveed’s work as his own.

He was as close to peace as he’d ever been; except for the doubts. He still couldn’t be sure he hadn’t killed someone. Or wouldn’t, sometime in the future.

“So then,” said Revelas, who was painting in the courtyard, “I says to the guard, ‘You blink your eye, I’ll cut your eyelids off.’ Meanwhile, Skinny and Poss are lyin’ there bleedin’, see…”

The Monk was conspicuously not in the mood, but there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. “See, I got a philosophy—long as I’m not dead, I’m ahead. So I know if I can get through this, I’m ahead. If I don’t, well, then, I’m only dead and who’s gonna care about that? Not me, I can handle it.”

I love him,
The Monk thought.
I swear to God I do
.
The guy’s a thinker.
“Long as I’m not dead, I’m ahead.” It’s a version of “Whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.”
And I love his courage! Talk about nonattachment
. “If I don’t, I’m only dead and who’s gonna care …”
What would it be like not to be afraid?

Yet The Monk was in a good place right now. There had been times—lots of them—when he absolutely couldn’t have listened to this. Every single negative thought would have had to be counteracted. Every time Revelas said “dead” or “die” or “kill,” The Monk would have had to wait until he said “live” or “life” before he could leave his presence, and then every time he thought one of the words himself, he would have had to counteract it in his own mind. But that wasn’t plaguing him right now. At the moment there were only two really forbidden words, and they were a name, a name that Revelas probably didn’t know, thank the gods.

He had to count right now, and some other things, but the word problem had receded for a while—a good thing, too, or he couldn’t work with Revelas, who was his best friend at the moment. It could pop up at any time, though. He never knew what would trigger it.

Damn!

He swore because he’d lost count and he had to start all over again.

He tapped Revelas on the shoulder and crossed his index fingers in an X—their signal that The Monk was meditating.

Revelas was so black he looked painted. Though he was technically unable to blush, he looked so distressed, so truly embarrassed at disturbing The Monk, he might as well have turned pink. He was one of the most sensitive people The Monk had ever met, though the wife he had stabbed to death may have had her own opinion.

Everybody knew The Monk counted. That is, they didn’t really—they just knew he couldn’t be disturbed when he was sweeping or he might never finish. The Monk didn’t tell them why.

No doubt they thought he was thinking deep and holy thoughts when he was only counting his broom strokes. In truth he hardly ever thought deep and holy thoughts, or so it seemed to him. To him, his spiritual growth seemed so slow it was like watching a plant grow.

Today, he could believe in it, though—and in God, or the gods, in Kali or Coyote, in Jehovah or Allah.

He just plain felt good, almost as if his life was about to change—though how it could, he couldn’t imagine.

Maybe it was the painting he was working on—the angel who was half-white, half-black. He called it Pregnant with Possibility. Her head was the size of a pin, she had no neck, and her huge belly contained both heaven and hell.

It was a breakthrough for him. Most of his work was crude, raw, obvious as fur. This one was minutely detailed. It terrified him, yet he was obsessed by it and couldn’t stop working on it.

He had dreamed of her lately, the lady with Pandora’s Box so neatly juxtaposed with Valhalla.

Dahveed hated the painting and said he couldn’t sell it, it wasn’t the sort of thing he handled, and maybe The Monk ought to try his luck over on Julia Street. This was Dahveed’s greatest insult. Though his gallery was in a high-rent section of the French Quarter—very nearly the highest—Julia Street, in his lexicon, meant effete and la-di-da. The Monk paid him no mind at all. He was painting it because he had no choice, not because the House of Blues might take it. They had taken some of his paintings, and Revelas had acted as if he’d been elected president. This was nothing to The Monk. One of his vows was that of poverty.

He prided himself, if not on poverty itself, on being a true outsider, being able to get along without much money.

His salary here at the gallery, plus the little he got from his paintings, covered the rent with enough left over for food and utilities. He knew how to cook rice and beans and other things—vegetables, mostly—that cost practically nothing and were about the best things you could eat. He burned a lot of candles, which really cut down on electricity, and he needed only white robes to wear. A woman friend had made those, before his vows were complete.

He finished his chores and waved good night to Revelas. He had painted in the early part of the day, and now he could get on his motor scooter and go home and pursue his spiritual life.

Once home, he cleaned his house from top to bottom. This might have been easy, as there was very little in it, but The Monk was a thorough cleaner. He threw off his robe and washed it, along with his towels and sheets from the night before. Then, naked, he pulled up his one tatami, shook it out, and swept his floors—living room, bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom.

He scrubbed the bathroom and kitchen. Then he got in the shower and let the water run till all the hot was gone. Finally, after donning a clean white robe, he could put his tatami back down, light a candle, and sit down to meditate.

On Mondays, he would start with a mantra and then he would stop and simply sit, until he realized a subject had taken hold in his head; and then he would ponder that subject. He would sit with that subject, that idea, for a whole week, and the next Monday a new one would come to him.

It was Saturday now, and for nearly a week the subject had been his mother. This wasn’t the first time—far from it—but it was always hard for him. He felt her pain when he thought of her, when he let himself go to her in meditation—such a lovely woman, so sweet, so naive. So deeply betrayed.

He always cried, and he wondered if it were literally her pain he felt, if he could, by sheer force of his mind and soul, reach across continents and oceans and find her, pluck her pain out, suffer it for her.

She was one of life’s true innocents, so vastly undeserving of the thing fate had sent her. After she had gone—and after the incredible perfidy of his sister-in-law—he had left town to become an itinerant seeker, almost literally with a begging bowl, like the Buddha himself.

By a stroke of amazing luck—and because of a woman he met—he ended up in New Orleans, where the river flowed so close you could stick your toes in, where the air was velvet and carried the music of a thousand artists trying as hard as he was to bring order to their own chaos. It was a wonderful place to be in love, and The Monk had been, though he had had a name then, before his woman dumped him. That was when he took his vows.

The art started before that, on the road. He didn’t know how, or why; just one day he was sketching on the lined page of an old notebook, and he realized that he’d fallen into a sort of trance. As soon as he was able, he bought some art supplies, and the thing came out of him, he couldn’t stop it.

It was better, in a way, than sitting; he felt better afterward, anyway. Sometimes he felt that his meditating, his spiritual practice, was going nowhere—and yet, what would he replace it with? What else was there (other than his art)?

The idea terrified him. It had been confirmed again and again—for some reason, maybe only God could say (or one of the gods), he had not been born to be loved. He was innately unlovable. He did not know why this was—why some people had such an easy time, were loved and surrounded by friends, and others were destined to be alone. It was a subject of deep concern to him, and yet if that were the case for him, so be it. One of the goals of his spiritual life was to learn to accept what was.

He was watching the candle, so caught by the flame, so deep in its hypnotic envelope, that he felt for a moment at peace with the universe and himself, breathing with the tiny fire, and the world. It was the feeling that mystics might mean when they speak of bliss—The Monk wasn’t sure—but it was certainly among the top three feelings he’d ever had. It never lasted more than a moment, but this time it seemed barely to arrive before it was literally chased away by a knock on the door.