New Orleans Noir (18 page)
Drinking was a crutch, yes, but it got her through the day. Just for today, she would drink just for today, one day at a time. Maybe tomorrow would be better. Maybe she should sell everything and move west. West of Eden.
“Maybe you should slow it down, lady,” said the new bartender. New bartenders were the worst. She hated the new faces that appeared daily in the city. New faces from the rest of America, dull uninspired faces. She surveyed the bar and noted the appalling number of strange men. They all seemed to be staring at her. New predatory faces contending for spoils. Modern carpetbaggers descending upon a modern Reconstruction.
Wyatt sat next to her.
“You okay?”
“I’m ghastly, thank you for asking.”
“That was a bit of a fiasco at the funeral the other day. You’ve sure been acting loopy, come to think of it. Even more than usual.”
“It’s my fault he’s dead.”
Wyatt put his arm around her. “Come on, now, we all feel helpless about it.”
“I was with him that night. Just before.”
“Then what happened? What happened to you and Jimmie Lee down by the levee?”
Jimmie started the car, a rebuilt Mustang.
“Maybe we should ride around so we get some breeze,” he said, and pealed out into the late night. They drove around the Bywater, sharing the joint, then headed over the Industrial Canal to the Dead Zone. It was black as black can be. No streetlights, nothing. Just the gleam of the waxing moon on the eerie razed stubble of a landscape that was once a neighborhood. Acres of toxic silt. Mountains of trash. Even the crows wouldn’t land here.
Jimmie parked near the levee and turned the headlights off.
“If they build a casino on this land, I swear I’ll torch it myself,” he said, lighting a cigarette.
Tears welled in her eyes inexplicably. “I think I’m cracking up.” Jimmie took her hand and caressed it. “You can lean on me, girl.” He handed her his cigarette.
She took a drag, wiping her eyes. “You think the city is finished, Jimmie?”
“Hell no. If yellow fever, fire, and Betsy didn’t wipe us out, Katrina won’t either. But the government might.” He gave her a toothy smile.
His handsome gaze lingered. Their breath quickened, and she leaned toward him. They kissed and embraced under the moonlight in the Mustang parked in the Dead Zone with an urgency like it was wartime. And it was.
Later, she opened the door from the backseat and looked for her panties. Jimmie sat there with his Wranglers unzipped, smoking a cigarette.
“You sure got a tiger in your tank,” she said automatically. She said that to all the men. She found her panties in the front seat and put them on.
“You may want to keep those off. I’m not finished yet,” he said tenderly, putting a hand on her back. She brushed it away.
“This was a mistake,” she snapped.
“Why?” Jimmie asked in a puzzled voice.
“
Why why why
. Don’t be so clingy.” She couldn’t believe what she was saying, but she couldn’t stop herself.
They rode in silence to Montegut Street.
“Please stay,” Jimmie said low, as he stopped near her gate. She wouldn’t look at him.
“Go cool yourself off, Jimmie. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
She got out and walked to her door. The Mustang squealed away loudly.
Wyatt sighed long.
“Someone told me they found his clothes all neatly folded on the rocks down there at the Riverwalk. You know how crazy a kid he was; he probably tried to swim across the river to Algiers. Nobody ever makes it. The current lost him. Hell, the hurricane lost him.”
She left Wyatt and wandered down by the Riverwalk, desolate at this hour. Clouds moved fast across the moon.
Is this where you did it, baby? Just like you to go skinny-dipping in the River Styx
, she thought. She walked down the steps to the water. She used to drink wine here with her ex. There was a figure sobbing.
“Jimmie Lee?”
She looked closer; it was the brunette her ex had been seeing.
“He set me up. The bastard!” she sobbed. “He called and asked me to meet him, and when I walked into the bar, there he was all cozy with some new fat rich cunt from New York who thinks she’s going to save New Orleans. He wouldn’t even look at me.” The brunette shuddered as she cried.
“That’s really tough, kid,” she said, as she sat down on a step and lit a cigarette. Lightning flashed in the direction of the Gulf, followed by the low drones of thunder.
“You must really hate me,” said the brunette when the sobs receded.
“No, I hate myself,” she replied, and offered the brunette a cigarette.
“I’m sorry about your friend,” the brunette said, taking the offered cigarette. “Does anyone know how he ended up in the river?”
She took a long drag and stared at the light dancing on the river currents. A breeze came off the water, small respite to the burning.
“He was number one hundred,” she said finally.
The former rivals sat side by side smoking cigarettes. Watching the shadow of a barge in the dark moving quickly and silently up the river.
Here is where you’ll always find me
Always walking up and down
But I left my soul behind me
In that old cathedral town*
*From the song “Boulevard of Broken Dream.” Words by Al Dubin, music by Harry Warren; © 1933 Warner Bros., Inc. All rights administered by WB Music Corp., lyrics reprinted by permission of Alfred Publishing Co., Inc. All rights reserved.
M
ike left his office at the shipping company at 5 o’clock sharp, his senses dull from another day of taking orders, checking invoices, and listening to the pursers gripe about prices going up. Didn’t they know? It’s what prices do. He always left work vaguely angry. All day counting the big money, all night counting the stingy tips. When he thought about driving the cab, trying to make ends meet, which they never did because the price of everything kept going up, he would get so worried he’d forget about being angry.
It had been worse since the hurricane. He was one of the lucky ones, his house was still standing; the floodwaters had leveled out with barely a centimeter to spare under his floorboards. The roof had nearly blown off. He and his wife prayed for no rain as they waited for their name to come up on any one of several roofers’ lists, not likely until spring, while Mike often spent the midnight hours covering the mold with toxic goop to keep it from getting the upper hand.
Too many people hadn’t come back yet, or they couldn’t come back because they had no place to live. Mike did the work of two, sometimes three people at the shipping company, but his paycheck was still the same amount, as if nothing had happened. His initial gratitude had worn thin. Each night as he left his office to drive to the yard to claim his cab, to drive sometimes for two hours without a fare, to pick up irritable people who thought disaster warranted cheaper fares, he found it harder and harder to remind himself how lucky he was. Only the thought that he could have died, his family could have died, put him in the proper attitude of thankfulness. He had to be careful. The death thoughts could get hold of him in spite of his deeply rooted Catholic faith. They could take over his mind so that he wouldn’t hear someone talking to him.
“Hey, Mikey,” the man said, “remember me? Mikey …? Hey.
Mikey.”
His breath fogged in the cool air as he leaned into the open passenger window.
“Yeah, sure. The casino. Kenner.”
Last week. Thursday night. The guy had flagged him as he drove by, same time, about 8:00, near the same place he was parked now, in front of Igor’s on St. Charles. He’d taken him out to the ’burbs because Harrah’s had been closed since the storm. He’d waited a couple of hours for him, then dropped him off at a worn-out building on Felicity Street, right off Prytania, where he had a room. “Up there,” the guy had said, and pointed to the second-floor balcony, rotting wood and rusted wrought iron that you’d think would have ripped clear away in the killer winds and landed on the avenue. The big wad of money he pulled out to pay Mike looked worth a week at the Pontchartrain Hotel. What did Mike care? It was the best money he’d taken in since the hurricane had wiped out the tourist trade.
Mike turned around now as the guy dropped his big rear end on the backseat and pulled his legs in after him, the way a woman gets into a car. “The casino?”
“Nah.” The guy’s short thick arm pulled the door closed and rocked the taxi. “We’re on another mission tonight, Mikey.”
Mike frowned as he turned away to start the car. What’s with this
Mikey
? he wanted to ask the guy. No one called him that, not even when he was a kid. Then he was the French
Michel
, his mother straight off the boat from Pau, France. He’d taken his fair share of abuse for having a girl’s name. So he’d changed it to Michael. His license on the dash of the cab read
Michael Willet
, clear as day. Now here comes this slick-haired, stubby guy with his big hard-looking tub, one of those guys who pushes his stomach way out front, uses it the way other people use authority, takes up space with it, likes taking up as much space as he can, likes his tub of lard because it gives him a kind of presence he could never have as a thin man. And thinks it’s cute to call him
Mikey
. Puts him in his place.
Mike let it go. After all, this was the third night he’d parked outside Igor’s hoping to run into the guy again. He started driving. “Where to?”
“Lakeview, Mikey. We’re going to Lakeview. West End and Filmore.”
Mike turned into the St. Charles neutral ground, stopped on the streetcar tracks they said would be out of commission for a year. He jerked around in his seat. “Lakeview? There’s nothing out there.” He could hear his voice echoing back at the guy, heard the whine in it. He hated going into the devastated areas where the water had gone up to the roofs, moved houses off their foundations, killed anything it touched except the damned mold spores. They were everywhere, waiting to go into your lungs, attach to your sinuses, take over your body. When he and his wife had made the obligatory tour of destruction soon after they returned to New Orleans, it reminded him of that horror movie he wished he’d never seen,
Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
He felt as if his body was being taken over, like one of the pod people, even when he wore a respirator.
“We need respirators,” he told the guy.
That got him a laugh. “It ain’t gonna kill you, Mikey. It’s the land of opportunity out there. Some of us sees it, some of us don’t. Don’t worry, you can stay in the car. It ain’t like I need a bodyguard.” He snorted a big laugh over that one.
Mike turned his attention back to the street. Anger filled his chest, turned his olive skin a shade darker. He knew the guy was taking a shot at his thin frame, his body that looked weak, his slouchy posture, rounded shoulders, a body type that could catch attention coupled with the right attitude, like the young Brando or James Dean. Especially if the man was strong, and Mike was stronger than he looked. His thinness was sinewy, his muscles taut like rope, and his grip—try to get out of his grip. Like that amped-up gutter kid a couple of weeks ago who reached over the seat to take Mike’s money pouch while he was making change. He grabbed the kid’s thick wrist. The kid twisted and pulled, but all his amphetamine energy couldn’t break Mike’s hold. The way he ran off clutching his arm to his chest, Mike might have broken a bone.
At heart Mike was not a violent man. The thought of violence of any kind, even verbal, horrified him. His wife had insisted he carry a gun when he drove the cab. She’d gotten so worked up about it that he’d given in, but he kept the gun in the trunk, in the wheel well.
He made the U-turn heading toward the interstate. He spoke with his head slightly to the right so his coated, low-pitched voice would travel to the backseat: “Yeah, but if you did need a bodyguard, I could be your man. I’m even licensed to carry a gun.”
The words sounded as empty to him as he knew they were, so he was surprised when the guy took him seriously. “That right? I guess you can’t be too careful driving a cab these days.” He shifted in his seat. In the rearview mirror Mike saw him lean forward. “You wear it on you?”
“No,” Mike said low, without turning his head. The blower in the dashboard muffled him.
“What’s that?”
“I said no, I don’t talk about where I keep the gun.”
The man leaned back. He laughed. “Yeah. You right, Mikey. Don’t talk about the gun. Just show it when you need it, huh?” He chuckled a little more, his mouth closed, like it was his own private joke.
Mike felt his face heat up again. Fuck him. He turned the blower up another notch.
Mike headed toward the St. Charles ramp. Traffic was light, not many cars waiting underneath the overpass to get onto the ramp. The lights didn’t work. One of them was on the ground. They were replaced by stop signs on short tripods. He stopped in the left lane behind a car that waited for a lone driver to cross the intersection in front of him. The car traveled slowly. In his peripheral vision, Mike saw a dark sedan pull behind the truck in the right lane. Mike knew the car without looking at it directly. It was his family car. His wife was at the wheel, no one in the passenger seat. He glanced; she glanced too, but turned away quicker than he did. He sensed the tension. Her mortification. He risked a look into the backseat. His daughter sat behind his wife, not looking his way, thank God. She had two friends with her, and she was reaching across one of them. He thought he could hear them laughing and talking through the glass, but he was only putting sounds to their animation. His head felt as though it was underwater. With effort he began to turn away, as though struggling against a current. His daughter, tight in her seat belt as she reached across to her friend, suddenly slammed herself hard against the seat back. He thought she would look at him then, but her head tipped backwards as she laughed. Her long gangly arms, arms like his, reached again, and the sedan moved up to where the truck had been. He could feel the sweat on his forehead. Twelve years old, the age of irreversible humiliation. His wife had told her never to tell anyone her father drove a cab.
“Hey, Mikey.”
Sweet Jesus, there was someone in the car with him.
“We never gonna get there unless you stop dreaming your life away, Mikey.”
“What?” He’d heard the guy perfectly. He touched the knob on the dash and turned the heat down as he eased off the brake. His wife was up the ramp before he reached the stop sign.
The moron in the back repeated his piece of sarcasm.
It had cut close to the bone. “I heard you the first time,” Mike said with a certain amount of viciousness, but he mumbled.
The man leaned forward saying, “What?” When Dean or Brando mumbled, no one said,
What
?
Mike lifted his head to throw his voice behind him. “What kind of opportunities you got out in Lakeview at night?”
His wife must have taken the girls out to eat. It was funny how the people who’d come back didn’t seem to like staying home. The few restaurants open were more crowded than ever, as though everyone wanted to see who had dared to return, bump shoulders with them. He wondered where his son was. Talk about attitude.
“Whew, Mikey,” the guy was saying, “you really don’t want to go to Lakeview, do you?”
“I don’t care about going to Lakeview. I just asked you a question.”
“Okay, okay …” He started to say something else, but Mike broke in.
“Look. My name isn’t Mikey.” He pointed at the license. “Michael, see? Or Mike.”
“Okay, Michael it is.” He deepened his voice. “A little touchy, huh, Mi
chael?”
The dramatic tone was followed by a high-pitched, strangled chuckle way back in his throat. The guy was his own best audience. “Did you know that woman in the car back there or something?”
Mike’s eyes flicked to the rearview mirror and made contact, a split second when all his anger, his attitude slipped away, gone through the looking glass, and left him slumped in the front seat of his taxi.
“My wife.” Out before he could stop it, as if he had no will left. He gave a short laugh.
“What’s the matter? She not talking to you?”
“Not much.” He nosed the taxi into the curve that took them toward Lakeview. “Not these days.”
“You mean, since the storm?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“So the storm’s
your
fault?” That high strangled laugh again.
“No. Come on—everyone’s on edge since the storm.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“You don’t get it, do you? You’re not from here.” Mike looked in the rearview to see if the guy was shaking his head or something, some indication he’d heard him, but he was gazing out the side window. “Are you?”
“No.”
“Where’re you from?”
“Jersey.”
“Just down here to make a buck, huh?”
“Yeah.”
Boy, it burned Mike up.
Some of us sees it, some of us don’t.
That kind of arrogance, the guy was probably gouging the money out of people. Riding around in cabs, going to the casino—money to burn.
Mike exited the interstate and drove slowly along West End Boulevard. It looked as though most of the debris had been bulldozed out of the street since he’d last come through here, but if he went too fast he might drive into one of those crater-sized potholes the storm had left all over the city, as if it had blown out the asphalt with its explosive winds, the same way it bombed through houses and tore huge trees whole out of the ground. You could bust a tire if you missed one of those holes in the dark, do some serious damage to your car.
Mr.
Sees-it
was still looking through the window into a night so dark the skeletons of houses loomed like blackened ghosts. Mike jumped in his seat as a mountainous mass appeared ahead on his left in what had been the half-block-wide green space between West End and Pontchartrain boulevards. Once he was up on it, his headlights revealed a giant mound of debris. The green space, which Mike knew was now black even in the daylight from the toxic water, had become a dumping ground. He’d heard on the radio that the amount of debris already collected in the city was a year’s worth of garbage in Manhattan. The landfills couldn’t take any more.
Mike jumped again; his eyes had drifted from the road and caught the edge of a rift in the concrete. Sees-it said, “You sure you know where you’re going? I can’t see a fucking thing.”
“Yeah, I know where I am. Filmore’s just up there.”
The man faced forward now, sitting up so he could clutch the back of the front seat. His nerves had got him. He was nuts to want to come out here at night. Mike had heard the looters came out after dark. Like cockroaches. They crawled through places most humans wouldn’t go, searching out anything that might turn a dollar. They stripped the plumbing, the light fixtures, the copper flashing, chimney covers, eating a house down to the bare bones. Who knew what kind of
opportunity
this cockroach in the back of his cab could find at night. Mike should have said no. To hell with the extra buck. He rubbed his hand over his face. Christ—couldn’t he think about anything other than money?
“Here’s Filmore.” He made a right turn and slowed the taxi to the speed of a gimpy pedestrian. “Where to?”
“Uh, General Diaz, General Haig, Argonne. One of those.”
“If you’d told me that to begin with, I could have gone straight to Canal Boulevard.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s your money.”
