My Juliet (42 page)

“Crown and water?” Lulu calls from her perch on a stool.

“Crown and water,” Sonny says.

“Sonny, have you met Juliet? Juliet, that there is Sonny LaMott, world-famous French Quarter artist. Maybe you've heard of him.”

“Juliet,” Sonny says with a formal nod, offering the chair next to his.

It is easier than before, easier than the day several weeks ago when they sat consumed by silence at Café du Monde. It is warm in the lounge but not uncomfortable, and yet her face is damp with sweat, the golden hair on her forearms glistens.

“You gonna be okay?” he says.

“I guess I'm hot.”

“I just thought of something,” he says. He waits until she looks at him. “Put us each in a puka shell necklace and platform shoes and it'd be like old times.”

She brings an unlit cigarette to her mouth. “What do you want, Sonny? Don't you think I've been humiliated enough?”

“I'm not here to humiliate you, Julie.”

“Sonny, this isn't my life anymore. My life ended a long time ago.”

“I'm not here to humiliate you,” Sonny says again.

Lulu delivers his drink and he downs most of it before saying anything more. “Is it true in California they let the girls dance completely naked? I hear they don't even have to wear pasties.”

“California has too much to worry about than whether you've got your nipples covered.”

“What about something to cover your bottom?”

“California ain't worried about that either.”

“You'd think New Orleans, with its low reputation, would allow for anything goes.”

“Yes, you'd think that, wouldn't you? You'd think a lot of things about New Orleans. But you'd be wrong. You'd always be wrong.”

She lights the cigarette and in the flame from her lighter Sonny can see that he never really got her right. Her mouth is less full than he painted it and her chin is actually more round than square. And why did he have to exaggerate the size of her breasts?

The way she wears her hair? He got that wrong, too.

“I've decided to go back home,” she says.

“Home?” and he lifts an eyebrow.

“I mean to LA. I'm going to start over. It's not too late to change. I want to be a better person. Do you think that's possible, Sonny? Can a thirty-two-year-old woman who's made every mistake there is start her life over again?”

He should've painted that small cluster of acne on her forehead. In his Juliets her forehead was always flawless. Also, her eyes are older than he made them, the bones of her face less prominent. Why did he make her features so perfectly formed?

“Maybe when I was a kid I fell off my bike and bumped my head,” Sonny says. “There has to be an explanation.”

“For what?”

“For why for so long I've been hung up on you.”

“I was talking about California?” Juliet makes it sound like a question. “What I was saying before I was interrupted, and I hope you'll listen, I'm not staying in New Orleans much longer. I'm just working until I can save enough money to buy a plane ticket and pay off my bill at the hotel. That lawyer, that bastard Harvey? He still hasn't given me my check.”

Sonny reaches into his pocket and removes the envelope holding the money from his bank account. He fans the cash out in a half-circle on the table. “It's not quite two hundred dollars. It's all I have left. I want you to have it, Julie.” He stops himself. His voice has betrayed him, the nervous cheer giving way to desperation. “I was hoping I could be alone again with you, Julie.”

She looks at the money and sadly shakes her head. Her mouth, as she brings the cigarette back to it, reveals what might be a nervous tic. “You have come to humiliate me,” she says. “It's that fat slob neighbor of yours, isn't it? He told you.”

“Let me go talk to Lulu, Julie.”

“I must hate men. I know I hate you. Does it hurt to hear me say that, Sonny?”

“It's funny but hurt seems to feel like everything else lately.”

“I hate almost everything about you,” she says. “I hate how you need me. Sometimes I think it's my hate that you need because my hate is what confirms your opinion of yourself. It gives you a reason to get out of bed in the morning. Without it you could never go to that fence every day and hang your pictures. You could never accept the rejection. My hate—and I realize this might sound like a reach . . . but my hate defines you, Sonny LaMott. It defines you because it's all that stands between you and what's ordinary. The little ranch-style house in Saint Bernard Parish, bingo games every Wednesday night in the church recreation hall, the minivan, a barbecue kettle in the backyard. My hate has spared you that. Without it you join the rank and file. Just another working-class boy from the Bywater without a ticket Uptown. And certainly not an artist.”

“Am I really an artist, Julie?”

“Oh, shut up, Sonny. You're an artist even in your sleep.”

“They're going to arrest me,” he says. “They've got motive and they've got opportunity. That's what they look for, you know? Motive and opportunity,” he says again.

She points to the cash on the table. “I really, really need this.” Cigarette clenched tight in her mouth, she folds the money and holds it in the palm of her hand, as if to weigh it. “We should have had us that baby, huh, Sonny?”

“Yes.”

“Everything would be different.”

“Everything. Everything in this world.”

Outside the streetcar moves past with a roar and squeal, wheels grinding, electric line overhead reflecting the last of the afternoon light.

Juliet doesn't hear the car doors slam. She's in the middle of a dream. She's in her yellow Ford Mustang rental car but she's in California stuck in traffic on the I-5. Up ahead there's a wreck and no one is moving. People are getting out of their cars and trying to see. They block the sun with the flats of their hands. Horns are blowing
beep beep beep
. The jam extends for miles in a single direction, while on the other side of the interstate there isn't a car in sight. The lanes run forever, empty.

Maybe she doesn't hear the doors slam because in the dream people are slamming doors, too.

“We should try the other side,” Juliet says in her sleep.

“I don't think I like it that way as much as just regular.” Sounds like Sonny LaMott, but what is he doing in California?

“The other road,” she says. “No one's there.”

When they come through the door he rises to his feet and staggers to the middle of the room. He holds his hands out in front of him, as if at their mercy, ready to be cuffed. He is naked, his body washed yellow by the ceiling light.

Several seconds pass before it comes to her that he in fact is Sonny and she Juliet, that they are back in her room at the Lé Dale.

“And a happy good morning to you, podna,” the male black says.

Behind him stand the male white and two uniforms. There is also a woman.

“Put your clothes on,” the male black says.

Sonny reaches for his undershorts, his trousers. He places a hand on top of a chair and carefully steps into them.

“I didn't mean you,” the male black says. And only now does she remember his name. Peroux. “I meant you, Miss Beauvais. Get out of bed. Let's go.”

Juliet props herself on an elbow and pulls a sheet up over her chest.

The woman crosses the room and stands next to the bed.

“Juliet Beauvais, my name is Patricia Kimball. I am a prosecutor with the Orleans Parish District Attorney's Office, and you're under arrest for the murder of Marcelle Lavergne Beauvais.”

“Get up,” Peroux says again, stepping past Sonny. He grabs Juliet by the arm.

“Tell them it wasn't me,” she says to Sonny. “Tell them.” Sonny doesn't speak and she says, “You'll find the hourglass in his cart, Lieutenant. He hid it there, he told me.”

“Is that true, LaMott?”

Sonny steps back from the detective and looks at her—he just looks at her.

“Only reason I ask, Leonard Barbier told me not two hours ago that a certain black boy from a certain housing project put it there, and that a certain Juliet Beauvais paid this certain boy to do it. Oh, and then we spoke to the kid.” Peroux lowers a hand into the pocket of his jacket and fishes out her mother's wedding band. “This look familiar, Miss Beauvais? No? How 'bout this, then?”

One of the uniforms steps forward holding the hourglass in a plastic evidence bag.

“How long is forever, Sergeant Lentini?”

“Oh, it's a long time,” Lentini says, “especially where she's going.”

“Miss Beauvais,” Patricia Kimball says, “you have the right to remain silent. Any statements you make can and will be used as evidence against you.”

“Get dressed,” Peroux says again.

“You have the right to the presence of your own counsel. If you can't afford your own counsel, the court will provide one for you prior to any questioning.” The woman hands Juliet a sheet of paper. “Miss Beauvais, this document is for you to sign. It states that you have been apprised of your rights under the Miranda Rule. Do you have any questions, Miss Beauvais?”

“How long did you say forever was, Sergeant Lentini?” Peroux says. He has removed a dress from the closet, the same one Juliet wore on her trip in from California.

Juliet offers no resistance as the detective squeezes it past her head and pulls it down over her upper torso.

Lentini takes her shoes, the blocky ones, and checks them for contraband before placing them on the floor at her feet. “Forever?” he says, contemplating the possibilities. “Forever in Saint Gabriel? That's about as long as forever is in hell, I'd say.”

“Know where Saint Gabriel is?” Peroux says to Juliet. “That's where we put our women prisoners in this state. And that's where you're going.”

“Saint Gabriel,” Juliet says in a whisper. “Gabriel was an archangel. Sonny, you were an altar boy. Wasn't Gabriel an archangel?”

From the pocket of his dress shirt Peroux removes Sonny's postcard of the Beauvais Mansion, the sepia one describing New Orleans as an unexpected paradise. “Mind if I give her this?”

Sonny shakes his head.

“We went by your place earlier, thinking she might be there. I hope you don't mind.” He offers the card to Juliet and she holds it loosely in her open hands. “Something to look at in case you don't get a room with a view,” he says.

They put her in cuffs and lead her past Sonny. She tries to get his attention but he keeps his head down. At the door Peroux stops and wheels back around, and Juliet waits with her back to the room. “I hung your picture in my bedroom,” the detective says to Sonny. “But it's a funny thing, art. The longer you look at it the less you see what it shows.”

“How do you mean, Lieutenant?”

“If you look long enough, and I mean give it some real quality time, it's the artist you see in the picture, not the person he painted.”

“I think I understand, Lieutenant.”

“I bet you do, podna. I bet you do.”

They walk her down the stairs and past the lobby where Leroy waits in the doorway. “I hope you enjoyed your stay at the Lé Dale,” he says, smiling red teeth. “If ever you're in our fair city again, please consider us as your destination of choice.”

“Sonny,” Juliet says, trying to break free of their hold.

“Easy now, Miss Beauvais,” Lentini tells her.

“Sonny,” she says again. “Sonny! Don't let them take me, Sonny!”

Outside on the sidewalk another streetcar rumbles past, its occupants watching as the two detectives usher her down the stairs and into the backseat of a Chevy sedan.

Juliet glances up at the building just as Sonny presses through the front door. As before in the room, he's wearing only trousers.

“What else did Leonard say?” she asks as they start on their way.

Peroux moves his head a little but doesn't answer.

“Did his father the fancy lawyer cut him a deal? I bet Leonard pled out probation and turned state's evidence. Tell me, Lieutenant. Did you give him immunity?”

“Leonard Barbier is a fine, upstanding young man with a promising future ahead of him.”

“Leonard,” she says quietly.

“Oh, it's true he might be confused about a few things at the present time but in my book he's made a hard turn toward straightening himself out. Give that boy ten years and he'll be Rex, king of Carnival, leading a parade down this very street.”

“Well, I'll be damned,” Lentini says, then taps a finger on the rearview mirror. “Sammy, you ain't gonna believe this.”

Peroux turns in his seat and stares through the back glass, prompting Juliet to do the same. Sonny LaMott, still half-dressed and barefoot, is running after them down the middle of the street. His arms pump hard by his side, and he lifts his knees high like those of a sprinter with the finish line in sight. Through stop signs he runs, weaving around traffic, dodging occasional pedestrians. The wind bells out his cheeks and throws his hair back.