MELT YO HEART

August 2018

The International Collaborative School of New Orleans was situated in the old Rabouin Technical College building on Carondelet Street. The building made Casey Ravel think of a sandcastle sculpted by an obsessive child—all shaved planes and soft angles. At the height of summer, before the fall semester began, the school building seemed to lie in an enchanted trance. The resigned hush of its empty halls seemed like a bated breath, and Casey imagined the school ached to live again.

When he accepted the job, he thought he’d simply be writing grants, but it turned out the school expected more from him. He attended every board meeting and leadership session, though he wasn’t a teacher. Where he drew the line, though, was in policing the students’ behavior and dress. Dr. Pullen had asked that all school leadership make sure that students’ ties were tied and that their powder-blue uniform shirts were tucked in. Casey had smiled and agreed enthusiastically, knowing even as he did that he had no intention of following through. Listening to the circular conversations to decide whether to decide about this or that detail of whatever-the-fuck procedure was one thing, but being a dick to kids just to do it didn’t sit right with him.

Casey’s office was tucked away to the left of the lobby stairs. It had once been a supply closet, and a few items were still stored there—the threadbare Panther mascot costume, extra fire extinguishers, and some seasonal decorations—but the ceiling was high, and the room was small enough that the single window unit kept it comfortably cool even as wet heat smothered the city like a great fat belly. Now classes had begun and the building was alive again for the 2017–18 school year, and the place smelled of teenage funk and rubber cement.

Casey had submitted two grant proposals and a Letter of Interest that week, but there was nothing else to do while he waited for Ms. Mounir, the Arabic teacher, and Mr. Crawford, the Mandarin teacher, to turn in their program narratives for the Language Expansion Report due next week. The thought that he hated this work flashed dull in Casey’s mind, and he shoved it gently away, squinting at his flat-screen computer monitor to check his calendar for what must have been the fiftieth time that day. He hated fundraising, all right, but he was damn good at it.

Casey’s phone dinged and he flipped it onto its back to see who had messaged. Oh. Wrong phone. He was still getting used to being the kind of cat that carried multiple iPhones. The ding came again, and this time he realized it was coming from the top left desk drawer. He fished it out.

Nigga, tha FUKK???

Casey reached under his glasses to hold his eyes shut. Jayl was right to be indignant. Casey should have told his cousin he was moving back to town, but every time he’d tried to form the words, he had failed, and he wasn’t sure why. He snatched up the phone and called.

“Excuse me, sir? Excuse me. Language, sir. Language.”

“Uh, excuse you?” Jaylon said.

“No, I know,” Casey said. “My fault.”

“Mane, you done me downbad. I don’t expect Uncle Trev to tell me shit with his absent-minded tomato-cobbler-eatin’ ass, but you my nigga, nigga!”

“I know. First I didn’t want to tell you because it didn’t look like it was going to happen, and then when it did it happened so fast that—”

“That you just forgot my ass? I see I see.”

“Never that. I figured I’d tell you in person, but your ass be jetting around everywhere all the time.”

“Aw.”

“Where you calling from right now?”

Jayl sucked his teeth. “Mane, that’s—”

“Where, though?”

“See, I ain’t even that far: Houston.”

“Where were you Monday, though?”

“Okay, Montreal.”

“Well.”

“Trev tell you what I’m workin’ on?”

“No, he said it was big and hush-hush.”

“‘Big Hush Hush.’ That sounds like him. Can you me at the Spot tomorrow night?”

“Already there, baby. Later on.” Casey ended the call and considered the sensations playing across his skin. He was excited to see his cousin again—thrilled—but he had to admit there was a little fear there, too. In a flash, he remembered running as hard as he could, a stich in his side. Scrambling up a chain-link fence as Jaylon broke to the right behind him, unable to get over. There was no sin in it, Casey knew. Jayl had always been big, a little slow. He couldn’t run like Casey. But leaving him felt… The regret gathered in the back of Casey’s throat.

He swallowed it and went back to work.

Casey’s relationship with his parents was not ideal—but it was better than some. From Casey’s youngest years, he remembered his father, Raymond, teaching Casey’s brother H. T. the rules of manhood. First and foremost was We Take Care of Our Own. When Ravel men had children, they raised those children; when family asked for help, they gave it. Casey had listened intently to those lessons without knowing exactly why. When he decided to begin his transition, he was living with his girlfriend Ximena in Bowie, Maryland. He stayed away from his parents for the first few weeks, begging off the Sunday dinners they hosted at their house in Catonsville. At the end of Casey’s second month on T, he and Ximena had gone to dinner.

The house was a five-bedroom brick-and-siding split-level with a broad stained deck Raymond Ravel had built himself. Casey arrived with Ximena in tow and was surprised to find that his Teedy Billie and her wife Laverne were there as well. Billie was his mother’s older sister. She’d been married to her man, Wood, for almost forty years until he died of cancer—then she’d married her lifelong best friend.

By then, Billie’s move was no scandal in the family—the tug-of-war over Casey’s lesbianism had more or less ended because his parents had come to understand that it was more than a passing phase—and the next year, Casey had told his brother that the inner child he’d been wrestling with for years was a little boy.

The dinner itself went well. No snide comments came Casey’s way. The family treated Ximena warmly, told her stories of Casey’s girlhood—how he would peel off his dress and take to the suburban streets and bike trails, running until his brother caught up with him and led him home by the hand. Casey had been embarrassed by the anecdote, but he hoped his brother telling it meant that he understood, at least a little, that Casey had always hated the dresses and skirts his parents had given him to wear, that they’d never fit.

Over the course of the dinner, Ximena mentioned that Casey had been down for the count for almost a week with a chest cold he found hard to shake. At the end of the night, as they were preparing to leave, Raymond had quietly asked Casey whether it had really been a cold or “whatever you been taking to grow a beard.”

“No,” Casey said. “It wasn’t the hormones.” But the comment withered him, ruined his night.

He hadn’t known it at the time, but that was when Casey resolved to move back to New Orleans.

Most days, Casey walked to and from work. He lived only twenty minutes away and commuting on foot gave him time to slip into his work persona. Office work had always made him feel divided, as if he had to quiet his true personality, his internal monologue. That deadening of his personality kept folks from feeling that Casey watched them too intently—as if he was sizing them up for something. Of course, what he’d been sizing them up for, in his younger days, was sketches, but he hardly drew at all anymore.

Nowadays Casey felt like a stranger to the city, but by walking he felt he was getting to know it again. He half jogged down the school’s front steps and turned right on Carondelet street, heading uptown toward the Lower Garden District.

Even now, twelve years after the storm, everywhere Casey looked he saw the scars left behind by the Failure of the Federal Levees: crosses spray-painted on boarded-up windows, whole high-rise towers standing empty in the Central Business District while luxury condo buildings popped up like toadstools after rain. When Casey referred to the Failure in conversation—which was not often—folks unfamiliar with the details of the destruction looked at him strangely, wondering why he termed it so formally. What they didn’t understand was that the hurricane itself wasn’t responsible for the damage. Instead, it was the levees designed and built by the Army Corps of Engineers—the fact that they’d never been as strong as New Orleanians had been led to believe. Katrina and Rita were manmade disasters, and while Casey felt like a traitor for abandoning the city in its darkest hour, at least he could remember that much, name it to himself.

To be fair, the city looked better than it had when he’d first returned after the storm. Yes, the scars were still evident, but miasma of injury had faded, or at least transformed into something quieter, a sort of background static. As Casey walked under the I-10 overpass, he saw a forest of tents and even a sofa or two sitting in the shadow of the highway. At least three churches stood close by the encampments, and Casey’s religious upbringing sent twinges of anger through his chest—hot little slivers like the bits of shrapnel that threatened Tony Stark’s heart. He hated the way New Orleans treated its poor, its less fortunate. He hated what his mother would have called the “do-lessness” of the clergy here and elsewhere.

Casey had first felt the same pale, dull anger when he’d come down from Maryland in February of 2007. Then, he and Jaylon had driven from Chalmette up to Bay Saint Louis and back, touring the area. Casey had looked out the passenger window at acres and acres of dead trees choked by floodwaters. Even Lake Pontchartrain had changed from a silver-blue expanse stretching to either side of the causeway bridge to a darker, muddier blue, as if it were considering another uprising. And everywhere, blue tarps lay draped over damaged roofs. In Chalmette, Casey saw a house that had drifted off its foundation and split horizontally in half. The upper section of the house had caught fire even in the flood and now lay across the street, broken and blackened. In Mississippi, Casey saw families camping on what had once been the foundations of their houses—with not even FEMA trailers to shelter them.

Casey snapped back to the present to find that he’d reached his building. His apartment was cheap by DMV standards, but here in New Orleans it was on the steeper side. The Georgian was an ivied brick building sitting on St. Charles Avenue.

When he was young, Casey had spent summers staying with his Mamaw Relma in her big old place down on France Street. Gardenias perfumed the city, and the bizarre street names sounded like secret incantations. Rocheblave, Tchoupitoulas, Henriette Delille… Some nights, as he lay in the attic room twin bed, listening to Jaylon and H. T. mumble and snore, Casey would recite those names quietly to himself. If he went long enough without repeating one, the words would gradually transform in his mouth, ferment like the floral spirits his grandmother kept in the living room sideboard. If he went longer still, the air seemed to vibrate, and he would feel pressed against an invisible membrane, and if he learned the proper key, he could push through into… what…?

Usually, as Casey walked, he’d silently recite the name of every street he crossed. He must truly be distracted. He shook his head, irritated with himself. Of course he was distracted! He was bone-tired from the stress of the move and living in the unfurnished apartment made him feel as if he barely existed.

He stood in the kitchen sipping grape juice, scanning the bare living room: not so much as a TV in here. Well, New Orleans didn’t lack for entertainment no matter how much had changed since the storm. He needed to eat something anyway, so he might as well head over to Frenchmen and see who was playing.

The same day he flew in, Casey found a beat-up ’97 Lumina on Craigslist. Six hundred dollars later, he was on the move. It was the last of his savings, but his first check from the new job had been enough that he could get an apartment straightaway, even if he couldn’t yet furnish it.

The city simmered in its bowl as Casey parked the Ole Girl by Washington Square. As he strolled through to Frenchmen Street, he remembered that this wasn’t his first time here since leaving town. The other visits had been part of holiday excursions—Halloween, when the street was a river of drunken costumed revelers, and Carnival, when it was… well, an ocean, he supposed.

Today there were no costumes, no off-brand Transformers or zombie clowns, just doughy tourists in cargo shorts and polo shirts and locals who understood how to handle the lingering heat as the daylight dimmed to evening. Best to move as little as possible and keep to the shade.

A hush stole over the street. Casey felt a strange sensation of openness, as if someone had lifted the lid off the sky. He felt watched. He thought he heard someone call his name in the silence, and the impression was so powerful that he wheeled for a moment, looking to see who had named him. As he did, the ambient noise of the city—the grumbling engines, the commotion of crows, and the skittering of squirrels—returned as if it had never gone. Cautiously, Casey resumed walking.

Two older men sat outside the Marigny Brasserie. One was thin and dark-skinned with a mane of salt-and-pepper hair and glasses with thick bubbly frames. He wore a diagonal-striped polo shirt and sandals with socks. As Casey stepped past him, the man stood, and the tone of his conversation elongated as if he was considering leaving but hadn’t yet made up his mind.

Casey checked out the menu at Three Muses, and his eyes immediately fastened on the lamb sliders. This would be the place. Casey was a sucker for miniature foods. In Casey’s eyes, this bar was a prime example of the sort of place opening up on Frenchmen Street in the past several years. The clientele was largely white, either transplants or tourists who knew enough to bypass Bourbon Street and the Famous Door in favor of real music. The walls were painted a cloudy blue, with crimson curtains in the window and vibrant portraits of jazz men Casey mostly didn’t recognize hanging on the walls.

He ordered his sliders and some truffle fries at the bar and a Spaghetti Western for the wait, then slid into a seat near the small stage where a tech was setting up for the show. He didn’t know who was playing tonight, but it didn’t matter. It would be good to lose himself in music again. He made a mental note to buy a new needle the moment his turntable arrived.

Casey was scrolling through his Discogs wantlist on his phone when the band started up with a blazing riff that yanked him back to the present. Something about the sound reminded Casey of arcing a bright line of spray paint across a concrete wall.

The thin, bespectacled man Casey had seen down the street stepped up to grab the mic with his right hand as he held his trombone at his side.

I said, I will I will I will I will I will

Melt your heart like butter!

Under the goddamn cover of night

I will make you make you shudder!

Hey!

The singer drew his horn back to his lips and played along as the band launched back into the opening riff. They were playing a version of Dr. John’s “I Walk on Guilded Splinters.” Casey didn’t know what he’d expected, but it wasn’t this. The set made him hoot and stomp as the band veered between joyful but reverent jazz standards, original songs, and reinterpretations of cherished favorites from all over the map.

Casey shouted out loud when they launched into a rattling version of “Revival” by Deerhunter. In response, the singer jumped up on the bar to play his own version of the guitar solo while Casey and the rest of the crowd stood from their seats and threw their hands up. Afterwards, Casey was left with that ringing feeling behind his breastbone that he only felt at the tail end of a solid show or when he knew for certain he’d lost his pursuers after a chase.

“Thank y’all! Thank y’all, Three Muses!” the singer shouted at the end. “I have been Foxx King and errybody free!”

Casey settled up his tab and headed back to his car. On the way, he saw King standing outside the brasserie again.

“Hey, man,” he said. “That was amazing!”

“Aw, thank ya, baby,” King said lazily. Casey couldn’t believe how chill this man could be after such a fiery set. “We here every Thursday.”

Afterwards, as he reached the spot where he’d felt overshadowed by that strange silence and openness, Casey expected something strange to happen again—but there was nothing. His fingers twitched and, absently, he reached into his pocket for a pack of cigarettes that wasn’t there. He caught himself, and the action made him frown. It embarrassed him, but a feeling of defiance swelled in him. He was a grown-ass man, and if he wanted to smoke, that’s what the fuck he’d do…

For days, the Muses show stuck in Casey’s mind. The opener, especially. The original track was one of Casey’s favorites. He had heard it by chance when he was young, playing at some record shop in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor that Casey’s older brother had dragged him to looking for this or that cassingle. As H. T. ignored him in favor of the tapes he was thumbing through, Casey turned away in search of amusement. In those days, Casey wore rompers. They were meant as a compromise, since he and his mother had done battle over his unwillingness to wear dresses.

The music on the PA was just background noise until Casey heard the singer’s voice, smooth and gravelly at the same time, mention the word “zombie.” H. T. had shown Casey Return of the Living Dead last week, and the movie had terrified and thrilled him at the same time. Now he listened more closely to the song. It moved like a carousel, foreboding chords rolling across an enchanted mix of tom-toms and bongos.

When the singer promised to “melt your heart like butter,” Casey frowned. Nothing about the song sounded heartwarming to him. It sounded foreboding, like a threat made in a midnight churchyard. Casey was as frightened by it as he’d been by the “Thriller” video when he saw it at four years old. This fear was colder, though, and there was something delicious in it.

The next time he heard the song, it was a different version. Flatter, paler—almost as if the singer had no idea what the lyrics meant. He couldn’t remember which of the many many covers that had been. Paul Weller? Sonny and Cher?

It wasn’t until Casey was a freshman at Smith that he listened to Gris-Gris from start to finish. All of the tracks amazed him, but “I Walk on Guilded Splinters” pierced him through the heart—made him feel as if he was way out on a collision course with something he had not yet begun to understand.

The sun had begun to drop away behind Metairie as Casey hurried the old car north up I-10. He took the Chef Menteur exit, and for a moment he had the queer feeling that he’d been transported back in time. The only difference he noticed as he came off the freeway was that the apartment building to the left of the road had been tagged-up something fierce. FREYA, ARBUS, YANKY, but no JAYL—the car behind him at the light bleated to let Casey know the stop had turned, and he continued on, trying not to think What if? What if? What if?

Jaylon’s spot was in the Franklin Manor complex.

The compound itself was a series of four six-story buildings connected by what Casey first took for walking bridges before he realized they were merely decorative awnings. The place reminded Casey of the dorms at UNO, but the facades were brighter, with crisp edges and broad balconies. Jaylon’s place was a three-bedroom corner apartment. Art prints and originals hung on the walls, and each room had its own color scheme.

As his cousin showed him around, Casey realized why he was so surprised: The last time he’d been to one of Jaylon’s apartments was five years ago, and the place on Leonidas had looked like what it was—a transitional space between adolescence and adulthood. Some of his posters and art prints had been framed, while others were tacked directly to the wall. The kitchen trash was tucked neatly under the sink, but out on the balcony sat a Big Shot bottle full of Kool butts. Now Jayl had brought his artist’s eye to bear, and the place looked professionally decorated.

“You didn’t tell me it was like that,” Casey said, grinning, as they sat on opposite ends of the sectional. Jayl had taken the long side, where he could stretch out. He’d always been big—well, fat, really—but even that had changed in recent years. He was still barrel-chested with a belly, but it didn’t protrude the way it used to.

“Thanks,” Jaylon said. “And I’m grateful, no cap. But—and I honestly don’t talk to anybody bout all this…” He paused, frowned as he parsed his words. “I mean, I’ll talk about my work in interviews and shit, but it’s not like, real talk. Then I’ll talk to other artists and shit, and that’s great… but I thought it would be different by now.”

“Different?”

“Yeah, you know. Since all that Shepard Fairey Andre the Giant shit, I thought white folks was really feeling street art. They say so, but you know: There’s a vibe. Like low-key ‘you don’t really belong here,’ ya heard?”

Casey nodded. “Good.”

Jaylon stopped short, surprised, then his understanding seemed to shift. “Yeah. Yeah,” he said. “We an invasive species. We thrive where we don’t belong.”

“Like nutria and weeds, nigga.”

“Goddamn, I’m glad you’re here!”

“Me too, man. Me too,” Casey said. “Listen. You, ah… I know I haven’t been in touch like I should.”

“Please,” Jayl said. “You here now.”

He was; following through on his decision to return had cost him more than he expected. The years since the storm had shaped Casey into someone new—and it wasn’t just the transition. It was—

“Ximena left me,” he said, finally.

Jaylon’s expression darkened and he shook his head. He and Ximena had gotten along famously. “Aw,” he said. “Aw, man. I really thought y’all was gone make it.”

“I know,” Casey said. “I thought we were over the hump. I figured if we made it through transition, we could make it through anything.”

“How long y’all was together?”

“Ten years, man.”

“Goddamn,” Jayl said. “Longest I made it is five years, and I started running out of shit to talk about. You ever look at bae and be like, ‘Could you please get kidnapped or some shit?’”

Casey laughed. “Well. It was never boring. Maybe that was the problem.”

Her image rose up in Casey’s mind. Her almond eyes red from crying. Case, I love you so much, she’d said, but I can’t come with you where you’re going. His fingers twitched in his lap.

When Casey looked back to Jaylon, the other man was watching him with an unreadable expression.

“What?” Casey asked.

“I don’t know,” Jaylon said. “We just living in some wild-ass times, I guess. I’m just, uh, you know. I’m glad you’re back. For real for real.”

Like Casey, Jaylon was pushing forty, but for a moment he looked much older. What had Casey missed? What had Jaylon been through that he hadn’t the words to tell?

“I’m just sorry it took me so long.”

Jaylon shrugged off the apology. He wriggled his eyebrows. “You wan see something dope?”

“Indeed I do,” Casey said in his Johnny Carson voice.

Jaylon rose, snatched his car keys up from the coffee table. “Then come on.”