Half of Paradise (25 page)

“Two dollars.”

“You don’t have any that comes in glass jars, do you?”

“We only sell bonded whiskey here,” the clerk said.

“Give me the pint.”

The clerk put the bottle in a paper bag. Avery stuck it in his back pocket and picked up his groceries and went out to the highway.

He sat under a pine tree and ate lunch. There were brown pine needles spread over the grass. He opened the sardines and picked them out with his pocketknife and ate them with bread. He was still hungry and he wanted to eat the lunch meat, but he would have to save that for supper. The sun was very hot now. He threw the empty can to the side of the road and wiped his knife clean on the grass. He took the pint bottle out of his pocket and cut the seal off. He unscrewed the cap and drank; he felt the whiskey hot in his stomach. It tasted good after so long. He took another swallow and put the cap back on and replaced the bottle in his pocket. He wrapped the rest of his groceries in the paper sack and got up and stood by the shoulder of the highway to hitch another ride. Three cars passed him by, and then he caught a lift with a salesman who was going all the way to New Orleans.

He got into the city late that night. The salesman gave him directions to an inexpensive rooming house and dropped him off on the lower end of Magazine. Avery walked through the dark streets of a Negro area until he found St. Charles. He caught the streetcar and rode downtown to Canal. He stood on the corner and looked at the white sweep of the boulevard with its grass esplanade and palm trees and streetcar tracks, and the glitter like hard candy of the lighted storefronts. The sidewalks were still crowded, and he could hear the tinny music from the bars and strip places. He walked down to Liberty Street and found the rooming house the salesman had told him of. It was an old wood building that had a big front porch with a swing. It was one block off Canal and three blocks from Bourbon, and the Frenchwoman who owned it kept it very clean and she served coffee and rolls to her tenants every morning.

He took a room for the night, and in the morning the woman brought in his coffee on a tray. She poured the coffee and hot milk into his cup from two copper pots with long tapered spouts. She wore a housecoat, and her hair was loose and uncombed.

“Will you keep the room for another night?” she said.

“I’m looking for a job. I’ll stay if I find one,” Avery said.

“Your name is French.
Tu parles français
?”

“I understand it.”

“
D’où tu viens
?”

“Martinique parish.”

“What kind of work do you do?”

“Anything. I’m going down to the docks today,” he said.

“My husband is a welder on the pipeline. He can get you work.”

“I’ve never worked on a pipeline.”

“You can learn. He will teach you.”

“Where is he?” Avery said.

“He is eating breakfast. Finish the coffee and you can talk with him.”

Avery met her husband and drove to work with him. He got a job as a welder’s helper on a twelve-inch natural gas line that had just kicked off and was to run from an oil refinery to the other end of the parish. He worked with the tack crew, cleaning wells, driving the truck, and regulating the welding machine. He liked the job. Each morning they went out on the right-of-way that was cut through the woods and marsh, and the joints of pipe would be laid along the wooden skids by the ditch; he followed behind the truck with the electric ground that he clamped on the pipe to give the welder a circuit and with the wire brushes and the icepick in his back pocket that he used to clean the joints; the welder would bend over the pipe with his dark goggles on and his bill-hat turned around backwards and his khaki shirt buttoned at the collar and sleeves, and the electric arc would move in an orange flame around the pipe, and there was the acrid smell of tar and hot metal and the exhaust from the heavy machinery.

He stayed on at the rooming house, and sometimes in the evening he went down into the Quarter and ate dinner in an Italian place off Bourbon Street, then he would walk through the narrow cobble lanes and look at the old red and pink stucco buildings and the iron grillwork along the balconies and those fine flagstone courtyards with the willow trees and palms that hung over the walls. At night he could see the back of Saint Louis Cathedral with the ivy growing up its walls under the moon, and there was the park in the square across from the French Market where the bums and the drunks slept under the statue of Andrew Jackson.

One night he found a small bar on Rampart where the band was good and there were no tourists. He had been drinking since he had gotten off work. He sat at the bar and drank whiskey sours and listened to the band knock out the end of “Yellow Dog Blues.” The drummer twirled the sticks in his hands and played on the nickel-plated rim of his snare. The man on the next stool to Avery was having an argument with the bartender. He was dressed in sports clothes, and was quite handsome and quite drunk. He had thin red hair and blue eyes and a pale classic face like Lord Byron’s. He didn’t have enough money to pay for his drink. He turned to Avery.

“I say, have you a dime?” he said.

Avery pushed a coin towards him.

He gave the dime to the bartender with some other change.

“The fellow was going to take my drink away,” he said.

“You’re spilling it,” Avery said.

“Spilling?”

“On your coat. You’re spilling your drink.”

“Don’t want to do that.” He wiped his sleeve with his hand. “My name is Wally.”

“I’m Avery Broussard.”

“You look like a good chap. Do you want to go to a party?”

“Where?”

“On Royal. A friend of mine is giving a debauch.”

“I wouldn’t know anyone.”

“Of no importance. The literary and artistic group. We’ll tell them you’re an agrarian romanticist. Do you have a bottle?”

“No.”

“We’ll have to get one. The artistic group asks that you bring your own booze.”

They left the bar and went to a package store down the street.

“Do you mind making it Scotch?” Wally said.

Avery went in and bought a half pint.

“Good man,” Wally said.

“Are you English?” Avery took a drink and passed the bottle.

“Who would want to be English when they can belong to the American middle class?”

“You sound English.”

“Went to school in England. Drank my way through four years of Tulane, then tried graduate work at Cambridge and was sent down. Acquired nothing but a taste for Scotch and a bad accent. Now make my home in the Quarter writing.”

“Pass the bottle,” Avery said.

“What do you do?”

“Pipeline.”

“I say, we’re emptying the bottle rather fast.”

“Have to buy more.”

“I’m stony broke. Hate to use your money like this.”

Avery took a long drink.

“Mind if I have a bit?” Wally said.

Avery gave him the bottle. He leaned against the side of a building and drank.

“I think I’m tight,” he said.

“Where is the party?”

“Royal Street.”

“We’re going the wrong way,” Avery said.

They turned the corner towards Royal. The half pint was almost finished.

“You have the last drink,” Wally said.

“Go ahead.”

“Your bottle.”

Avery drank it off and dropped the bottle in an alley.

“Puts us in an embarrassing way. Can’t go to party without liquor,” Wally said.

“Dago red.”

“Never drink it.”

“It’s cheap.”

“Unconventional to go to party with dago red,” Wally said.

“There’s an Italian place with good wine.”

“A little restaurant off Bourbon?”

“Yes.”

“Have to wait outside. Can’t go in,” Wally said.

“Why not?”

“Broke some glasses they say. Don’t remember it. Was inebriated at the time.”

“They have good wine,” Avery said.

“I’ll wait for you. It’s always awkward to have scenes with Italian restaurant owners.”

Avery walked down two blocks and bought a large two-liter bottle of red wine in a straw basket. He met Wally at the corner.

“I forgot to get a corkscrew,” he said.

He cut out the top part of the cork with his pocketknife and pushed the rest through the neck into the wine.

“Good man,” Wally said.

They each had a drink. They could taste the cork when it floated up inside the neck. They walked along, Avery holding the bottle by the straw loops of the basket. They came to an apartment building with a Spanish-type courtyard that had an iron gate and an arched brick entrance. The courtyard was strung with paper lanterns, and there was a stone well with a banana tree beside it in the center. The walls were grown with ivy, and there were potted ferns in earthenware jars on the flagging. People moved up and down the staircase, and laughing girls called down from the balcony to young men in the court.

“Hello!” Wally said.

“It’s Wally,” someone said.

“I say, is there a party here?”

“Come in. You look shaky on your feet,” another said.

“Does anyone know if there’s a party here?” he said.

“Someone help Wally in,” a girl said.

“We’re agrarian romanticists. This is Freneau Crèvecoeur Broussard.”

“Avery.”

“That’s not agrarian enough. You’ll have to change your name,” Wally said.

Everyone turned and looked at Wally.

“Do you remember my party last Saturday?” a girl said.

“I was helping out at the mission last Saturday. We’re starting a campaign to make New Orleans dry.”

“He said he was somebody out of
War and Peace,”
she told the others. “He stood backwards on the edge of my balcony and tried to drink a fifth of Scotch without falling.”

“Couldn’t have been me. I’ve never read Chekhov.”

“You would have broken your neck if you hadn’t fallen in the flower bed,” she said.

“Don’t like those Russian chaps, anyway. A bunch of bloody moralists,” Wally said.

“Sit down, fellow. You’re listing,” someone said.

“Won’t be able to get up.”

“Tell Freneau Crèvecoeur to sit down. He doesn’t look well,” the girl said.

“Avery.”

“Beg your pardon?” she said.

“My name is Avery.”

“Excuse me, Mr. Avery.”

“We’re agrarian romanticists,” Wally said.

“Avery is my first name.”

“Who wants to read a bunch of bloody Russians when they can have the agrarian romanticists?”

“What does your friend have in his bottle?” the girl said.

“The best Italian import that a pair of unwashed feet could mash down in a bathtub. I say, let’s have a drink.”

He took the bottle from Avery and turned it up.

“Your turn, old pal.”

Avery sat down on the well and drank.

“Damn good man. Wonderful capacity,” Wally said. “Everyone take a swallow. Pass it around. I insist. Each of you must take a swallow. I never drink alone. It’s a sign of alcoholism.”

“You’re impossible, Wally,” the girl said.

“I cannot stand people who do not drink.”

A man took the bottle and held it for his girl to drink. She laughed and a few drops went down her chin. The bottle was passed from one couple to another.

“I refuse to go to parties where everyone is not smashed,” Wally said.

“Do you live in the Quarter, Mr. Crèvecoeur?” another girl said.

“No writer would live in the Quarter,” Wally said.

“Are you a writer?”

“Work on the pipeline,” Avery said.

“What did he say?”

“He’s a disillusioned agrarian,” Wally said.

“Have you really written anything?”

“We’ve made an agreement with a publisher to write dialogue for comic books,” Wally said.

“Be serious.”

“He did his thesis on Wordsworth’s sonnets to the dark lady.”

“I’m interested in writing myself,” she said to Avery.

“She’s a copy reader for the
Picayune
.”

“Where is the wine?” Avery said.

“All gone.”

“Have to get more.”

“I’ve written a few poems and sent them off,” the girl said.

“We had a full bottle when we came in,” Avery said.

“It’s a lovely trick. You let everyone have a sip of yours, and then you drink out of theirs for the rest of the night.”

“Do you publish often?” she said.

“I’m a welder’s helper.”

“You said you were a writer.”

“He is.”

“I almost failed high school English,” Avery said.

“Why did you say you were a writer?”

“I tell you he is,” Wally said.

“We need another bottle.”

“Let’s go upstairs.”

“I wouldn’t have told you about my poems,” the girl said.

“Crèvecoeur will be happy to read your poetry and give you a criticism.”

“You take things too far,” the girl said.

“Oh I say.”

“It’s true.”

“Apologize to her, Crèvecoeur.”

“I’m going down to the package store.”

“These other chaps owe us a round. Let’s toggle upstairs.”

They went up the staircase and entered the living room of an apartment. It was crowded and they had to push their way through to the kitchen where the liquor was kept. Wally took a bottle of Scotch off the sideboard and two glasses from the cabinet. There was a sack of crushed ice in the sink. He fixed the drinks and handed one to Avery. They went back into the living room. There was a combo playing in one corner. The guitar player was a Negro. It was very loud in the room. Someone dropped a glass on the coffee table. Someone was saying that a girl had passed out in the bathroom. Avery tripped across a man and a girl sitting on the floor. The glass doors to the outside balcony were open to let in the night air. He started to go out on the balcony but he heard a girl whisper and laugh in the darkness. The piano player in the combo was singing an obscene song in Spanish. Avery couldn’t find Wally in the crowd. Two men who looked like homosexuals were talking in the corner by the bookcase. One of them waved girlishly at someone across the room. The girl who had passed out in the bath was brought out to the balcony for some air.

Avery moved through the groups of people. He finished his drink and put his glass on a table. He could feel the blood in his face. The noise in the room seemed louder. He wanted to get outside. He remembered that he had to be out on the job at seven in the morning. He looked up and saw a girl watching him from the other side of the room. She smiled at him and excused herself from the people she was with. It was Suzanne. She wore a wine-colored dress, and there was a gold cross and chain around her throat. She looked even better than when he had seen her last.