Pacific Avenue (9 page)

Time meant nothing in the Café Du Monde either. Dawn
was silvering, but day or night made no difference there. They never closed,
and they only served coffee and doughnuts—if I closed my eyes, I could imagine
any time at all.
Frying oil, the raw scent of powdered sugar, black-roasted
coffee and steaming milk. Scrape of chairs, crash of dishes, and blurred
foghorns out on the river. It’s always been like this and it always will be.

The awning dripped, and I pulled my chair closer in. I
shook off my eerie mood. Whatever year it was, it was morning.

I had to get over to the stand, and I wanted to find a
present for Richard today, too. Something for Valentine’s Day, something
beautiful for almost no money. I sighed. Antiques and jewelry glittered in the
windows of Royal Street, but those shops were no use to me. I finished my
coffee and stood up, flicking back worries as I flicked back my hair.

As I walked down Chartres to the stand, I saw Eddie’s
truck parked at the curb. He finished stacking wood crates on the sidewalk,
waved quickly, and pulled away. I got started putting out stock. If February
tomatoes were no good, neither was much else at that time of year. We had
apples, navel oranges, winter squash, onions, and peanuts in the shell. We were
starting to get some spring asparagus, but it was expensive. The hot,
bittersweet smells of tomatoes and eggplants and Italian parsley were still to
come.

I could see my breath in the cold. September seemed so
far away.
But everything will be different then. We’ll have a house with a
tree, and a garden like Dad’s. An orange kitten lapping a saucer of milk by the
back door and chasing its tail. I’ll be a real mother, not like Mom. I’ll go to
the yard and pick good things to eat, fresh from the garden. My little girl
will run to me, and I’ll hug her.

My foot slipped on an onion skin on the market cobblestones.
It was almost time to open. I set a weight on my stack of paper bags in case
the wind came up, and arranged mirlitons, carrots, and red onions in an
eye-catching design. Estelle was sure to want asparagus, so I put aside the
best bunch for her.

There wasn’t much business that morning, not as cold as
it was. I tidied up the stand and made more patterns with apples and oranges.
Eddie came back just before ten, swearing under his breath about underripe
tomatoes and imported strawberries.

“Hey, the way you got all those vegetables—that looks
good!”

I could feel my face turn red. “Oh, well, I got to
fooling with them, you know, things were slow—”

“I’m serious, it’s pretty. Makes us stand out. Looks
high class or something, maybe. Like those ‘great restaurants’ books.”

“Well, thanks. Oh, and I put asparagus aside for
Estelle. You know she won’t turn up until noon, but then she’ll want a good
bunch. What was good at the market?”

“Not much.”

“Then I guess there’s not much to unload.”

“You guess wrong. We gotta have something to sell, even
if it’s awful.”

Eddie was exaggerating. He had some good spring vegetables,
shallots, and some baby lettuce, and a few more fruits than last week. You
could chart the seasons inch by inch, working for Eddie.

We finished a few minutes before noon. By then, the day
had warmed up enough for me to eat my sack lunch in Jackson Square.

As I ate, fat beggar pigeons flocked around my feet.
They scattered when I brushed crumbs off my lap, but mobbed their way back,
pushing and squabbling. Thinking of pigeons as “squab-ling” made me smile as I
stood and started across the square.

I had no clear destination, just window-shopping in
hopes of finding something good for Richard’s gift. Street artists had their
pitches all along Pirates’ Alley, their work hanging from the wrought-iron
fence of the St. Louis Cathedral. I loafed along, looking at the pictures. One
of the artists was doing a portrait, with people standing behind him, looking
over his shoulder.

Another was sitting idle in a canvas captain’s chair. I
looked at his pictures.
Can I afford a little one?

The artist smiled at me. “Draw your portrait for ten dollars.”

I didn’t have ten dollars. “Oh, no,” I said,
embarrassed.

He leaned over to whisper. “I’ll do it for free, if you
want.”

He looked at me sharply.
He knows what I thought.
“That way, people will watch, and I’ll get some
business. And you get a free portrait,” he explained, still whispering. He
nodded towards the next pitch, where one of the onlookers was taking the
model’s chair.

“Okay,” I agreed.
I sure made a fool of myself
there.
This would solve the problem of
Richard’s present, if it was any good. And if it wasn’t, I hadn’t lost anything
but time.

I sat in his other canvas chair and tried to look
casual for the picture. He started talking right away.

“I’m Tex,” he announced. “What’s your name?”

“Kathy.” I looked more closely at his drawings hanging
along the fence. Mostly portraits, and they looked better than a lot of the
artwork in Pirates’ Alley, more like real people. A few courtyard scenes and
moss-draped plantations for the tourists. At least there was nothing on black
velvet.

“Where you from?”

“Here. I live over on Bourbon Street.”

“Where on Bourbon?”
Does he think I’m a stripper?
One of those women who do bumps and grinds out on the sidewalk? Maybe he is
coming on to me.

“Up by Esplanade.” The opposite end from the clubs.

He picked up his charcoal and started a sketch. “Quiet
up there.”

“That’s why we chose it.”

“We?” He glanced back and forth from me to the paper.
His hand never stopped.

“My boyfriend and I. We wanted a place where people
would leave us alone.”

“I’d say you have it. What do you do? Have I seen you
around?”

“I work for Eddie Graziano, over in the French Market.
I don’t think I’ve seen you.”

“I don’t know him. I never shop in the Market.”

“I don’t either, except what Eddie gives me. Too expensive.”

“Tourist trap, that’s what it is. You ever do any modeling?”

“Just for portraits.”
He guessed what I was thinking
again.
“I have a class, well, several
classes I teach at night. I live over on Dumaine. You interested?”

I hesitated. Maybe he was paying a little. On the other
hand, I liked to be with Richard at night. Still, if he was paying
. . . .

“Five bucks and dinner, if you want to try it.”

He finished the picture and sprayed it with fixative
from a can. As he showed it to me with a flourish, two women came up to admire
his work. The portrait looked like me, and looked like he had somehow caught me
about to say something, too. The face in the picture almost moved. One of the
women sat down in the model’s chair as soon as I got up.

He rolled the picture, taped it lightly, and handed it
to me with a card that said “Tex Smallman, Artist.”

“Thanks,” I said. “It’s great.” I wondered when a
person got to put “artist” on their card. Did someone official give them
permission, or did they decide one day, “Hey, I’m an artist,” and call up the
print shop and order them?

He looked up as he started on the woman’s picture.
“Nice meeting you, Kathy. Let me know about the modeling. I’m here every day.
Or you can call me.”

I took the roll of paper back to the rooming house and
found a red ribbon to wrap around it to make it look like a present.

Richard wouldn’t be home for a while, so I had some
time to tidy the room. We had a tiny closet, bulgy with hangers and pegs, and a
chest of drawers with a double row of books on top. Our table had a
single-burner hot plate and stacks of dishes and packaged food. I opened a box
of instant macaroni and cheese for dinner and fetched some water from the
bathroom down the hall to cook it in.

Richard came in as I got back to the room. He looked
tired and closed-in, hands crammed into his pockets and shoulders hunched. He
sat on the bed and watched me stir the cheese powder into the saucepan.

“Take off your coat and stay a while,” I offered,
trying to lighten things up.

He didn’t answer, only stared blankly at the steam coming
off the pan.

“I got you a present.” I handed him the rolled-up
picture, with its red ribbon. He opened it slowly.

“Oh, sweetheart, it’s beautiful.” He focused on the
paper for a couple of seconds, then looked blank again.

“The artist did it for free,” I said. “He wants me to
model for his portrait class.”

“I can see he would.” His face twisted up.

“What’s wrong?”

“Oh, God, Kathy, you’re so beautiful, but over there
. . . .”
He means Vietnam.
“They loved their people too, and I destroyed them.”

“Is that what you were having nightmares about last
night?”

“I was dreaming faces I saw there, little kids
. . . little brown faces, Montagnards.” He turned away, but I knew he
was crying.

“Montagnards?”

“Hill people. We went through a village one day—they
didn’t beg like the other kids, only stood by the side of the road, stood in
the pits and craters from our shells and watched us go by.”

I waited for more. He said nothing. “Richard?”

“They had dark faces and curly hair, oh, God, they
looked like my cousins. I couldn’t pretend anymore that it wasn’t people I was
killing.”

He went to the window and looked down onto the quiet
street, still holding the picture carefully, as if it were his picture of the
past.
He’s seeing that mountain road in Vietnam.
“I think about shells, my shells, falling on those kids. When I close
my eyes, I see theirs looking at me.”

The macaroni was starting to sizzle and burn. I took
the pot off the hot plate.

“You didn’t do anything you didn’t have to do.”

“That’s not true. I could have been a CO.”

“Yes, and gone to prison. Isn’t that what happened to
most of the conscientious objectors?”

“I could have gone to Canada. I should have done something,
anything but go over there and kill people . . . women and
kids. . . . I can’t believe I wanted to impress my father that
much.” He set the picture gently on the chest of drawers.

I put my arms around him. “Richard, you did the best
you knew. If you’d known different, you’d have
done
different. That’s all anyone has. It’s not your fault
there was a war.”

“That’s the thing about turning into someone you hate.
It usually isn’t your fault. Except it is.”

He shoved me away and scrambled out of the room. The
door banged behind him. I sat on the bed a few minutes, and then spooned some
of the macaroni into a bowl and tried to eat. But I didn’t feel hungry anymore,
and the burned flavor had seeped all the way through and ruined the whole
thing.

California’s January drizzle had washed away all the holiday
glitter by the time I finally got a call about Kathy. It wasn’t Sharon. It was
a man who’d gotten my number from her.

“Hello, my name is Eddie Graziano,” he began. “You
don’t know me, but I’m a friend of Kathy Woodbridge. She used to work for me in
New Orleans. Her sister Sharon gave me your number.”

Not a southern accent. Almost like Brooklyn. In New Orleans,
they call it “Irish Channel,” that accent. When I’d stayed with Tante Eloise,
I’d met plenty of people who talked like that. White, blue-collar, family lived
in New Orleans since Noah was a kid.

“Nice to talk to you. How’s Sharon doing?” Trying to
find out what he wanted without seeming too inquisitive.

“She’s fine. Except that she’s worried about Kathy.”

Well, that made at least three of us.

“I was sorry to hear that their dad passed away,” I
said. I was careful not to tip my hand that Sharon hadn’t confided in me and
neither had Kathy.

“Sharon told me you’d called her, and we decided to
talk to you. We’re both worried about Kathy. In fact, all her friends are
worried.”

“I’ll be happy to help any way I can.”

He hesitated. “I’m not sure what you could do. Before I
called Sharon, I had no idea where Kathy was. I guess I just wanted to check
up. Kathy’s been on my mind a lot.”

“You didn’t know where she went?”

“No, she bolted. We didn’t know what to think. She ran
off from Sharon’s house in Baton Rouge after her father’s funeral. She left a
note to say she was going, but she didn’t say where. Sharon thought she’d just
gone home. But when she didn’t hear anything for a while, she called down here
and found out we hadn’t seen Kathy, either. Kathy’s stuff is still here—I guess
she never came back.”

“When was her father’s funeral?” I asked.

“First week of December.”

“That’s about when she turned up here. How did Sharon
find out where she is?”

“Kathy sent a postcard. Nothing on it but her address.
Before that, her sister had no idea she’d gone to California.”

“I guess Kathy just picked up and hitchhiked, the way
kids do.”

“Oh, lord. I hope she didn’t hitchhike. How is she?”

“She’s not real happy, but she’s getting by. She has an
apartment here in San Pedro. Didn’t Sharon tell you all this?”

“More or less, but I wanted to talk to you direct. You
see her every day.”

“Well, she’s not too good, not too bad.”

“Listen, could I give you a call from time to time,
stay in touch, you know? And give you my number in case something comes up? Her
dad’s gone now, and her mom . . . . Well, I don’t think she’d be
much help if Kathy needed anything. And Sharon’s good, but she isn’t a whole
lot older than Kathy.”

“That’s fine. Actually, my husband and I are planning
to be in New Orleans for Mardi Gras. We could get together, if you’d like. Have
a cup of coffee or something.”

“That would be great! Where are you staying in New Orleans?”

“My husband made the reservations, so I’m not sure.
I’ll have to get back to you.”

I took his number and got off the phone.

That conversation worried me. Eddie’s story hung together
as far as it went, but it didn’t quite make sense. I could see a girl maybe
running away after her father’s funeral, especially if she didn’t get along
with her mother. But she was still here, apparently planning to stay. She
hadn’t even gotten in touch with her friends. And there was the matter of
Richard Johnson.

I didn’t ask Eddie about that. Best let him tell me in
his own time.