TWELFTH NIGHT 2004
THE FRENCH QUARTER
The Sugarlick door swung shut, warped and weathered wood, traces of bleach and mold and thousands of drunken palms, and I was once again on the cracked Quarter sidewalk in the shadow of the balcony overhead.
My fight with Gaby had started so innocuously here and it was strange that so much time had passed, a year of my life now lived without her. I had been excited to show her my dancing, here was this amazing new skill I had discovered that she had never witnessed. I had been crushed at her reaction. She didn’t get it at all. Said I was demeaning myself, and even worse, playing the whore. That one hurt. It was one thing if she wasn’t going to be supportive, but to call me a drunk and a whore, that was too much. It was like having the rug pulled out from under me. Now that she was interning for her social work degree, she had this new authority to her; she sounded different when she talked about things and had certainly never spoken to me that way. In retrospect, calling Gaby a judgmental bitch was not the best way to defend my integrity. No matter how drunk I had been, she didn’t deserve that. I remembered watching her walk away from me, arm hitched tightly over her purse.
“It’s funny,” I said, to distract myself from the memory. “I had a fight with my best friend in this bar a while ago. Maybe it’s cursed. Or maybe all bars are like this because being drunk makes us all act like idiots.”
“Definitely the latter.” This guy was bent away from me, fumbling with a bike lock. “But sometimes there’s a silver lining. So,” he added, looking up. “Do you have a thing with that guy?”
“Who?”
He gave me a look. “You know who.”
“No,” I said reflexively. But then I thought about it. “Yes.” I tried it out to see how it sounded. It sounded right so I said it again for the pleasure of it. “Yes. I do.”
He didn’t seem concerned. “Yeah, I know him, he bartends at the Cove, right? He’s always got a lot of girls around. Why is that? I think he looks like Steve Buscemi.”
“Oh, I don’t know, he’s got a style.”
But this guy wasn’t done. “Or like if Mark E. Smith and Hank Williams had a love child, and then that kid became a junkie who paid too much attention to his hair. And he’s also missing a pinkie. Did you know that?”
I smiled; our intimacy went way beyond that. “Just the tip of one. He and I have a history. What, have you never dated a bartender? In this town?”
He looked surprised. “Me? Well, yeah, sure. I practically fall in love with every woman who hands me a drink, Jesus Christ. But I’m a fucking loser. You look like you could be choosier.”
“Why are you wearing a suit?” I interrupted him.
He turned his head from side to side, cracking his neck. “It’s a long story. I’ll probably tell it to you, if you’re interested. Why? Do you like it?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “I was just curious.”
He finished fiddling with his bike and stood, fastening the enormous chain of his lock around his waist. Its weight immediately pulled it down to slam against his hip bones, and I flinched thinking of the bruises he must surely have. He didn’t seem to notice and grabbed his handlebars looking at me expectantly. His shitty bike was covered in duct tape and had a big metal basket on the front. The Quarter was filled with young men in dirty clothes with just such bikes, crisscrossing the streets at all hours, delivering cigarettes and six-packs and half-rancid hamburgers and fried shrimp po’boys, servicing a web of desires. He seemed happier now that we were outside. I knew that feeling. I waited for him to start talking again, feeling he wouldn’t be able to stay quiet for long.
“So, what was your fight about?” I asked to get him started.
“Huh?” He was watching a stray cat dart out of traffic.
“What exactly was your friend saying to you in there? You looked pretty upset.”
“That? Just the usual bullshit.”
“I don’t know, getting kicked out of someone’s house seems pretty dramatic. You should try me. I’m good with this kind of stuff.” I watched his face closely, looking for any returning tremor of that earlier emotion I had seen but his expression was unreadable. I wanted him to tell me his secrets.
“Didn’t you just say you had a big fight with your best friend? Maybe you aren’t so good with this stuff.”
My feelings were hurt. “At least I have a place to sleep tonight.” He didn’t need to know I was kind of lying. And anyway, I felt like he owed me. This evasiveness didn’t seem fair after I had started a fistfight in his honor. “Tell me, maybe I can help,” I offered again. I could tell by his very specific interest in the cat now hiding under the wheels of a parked car that he wasn’t going to elaborate, and this seemed to break some essential contract between us. Fuck this guy, I had things to do anyway. “Okay, fine. I guess I’ll be on my way.”
But he looked up quickly, worried, I noticed with satisfaction. “It’s just boring. I owe him some rent. No big deal.”
“Oh,” I said, trying to hide my disappointment. I didn’t know what I’d been expecting but this did feel a little pedestrian.
“But I don’t know, maybe you can still help me. I need all kinds of things, especially from someone who looks like you,” he said, flirting aggressively again.
I rolled my eyes. He was very bad at this, but then as if he realized it himself, he dropped this unconvincing bravado and changed the subject, relapsing into honesty almost as if by accident. “I don’t know why Ryan is such a dick when we’re out together. He’s not like that when we’re alone. But he tries to show off in front of the guys because he wants to start a new band. Everybody wants to be in a band. I’m over it. I want to make movies. Do you like movies?”
“Sure.” I liked this confidential side of him better. We had begun to walk, for no reason, directionless, while I started to consider my next course of action. I could go directly to Big Papa’s to find Jonah. In the crowded dark of a strip club, no one would notice my arrival. The fact that I had followed him there could be smoothed over between the two of us with a joke or a suggestive comment. I needed to let a little time pass though. I couldn’t appear too eager. He had come to my show, kissed me even, but then in that evasive way of his, he had slipped away after, almost, I suspected, to keep me from getting too sure of myself. And so now I would have to chase after him, but I would have to do it carefully, with finesse. Once we were somewhere where we could really talk, alone, just the two of us, all this would be unnecessary. Until then, I didn’t want to take any chances. He was easily spooked.
This guy led his bike beside me and every so often, he stepped up onto one of the pedals and coasted, hanging on to one side of the bike and wobbling. His chatter rose up again and he was describing some Korean horror movie in vivid detail. I was pretty sure he was on drugs. Amphetamines, I guessed. At least they made you friendly. It was such a gift when other people did all the talking for you and you could just coast, barely existing. This was why I never got along with junkies—they were too quiet. “What’s your name?” I asked when he paused for breath.
“Christopher.” He looked over at me and smiled. “Patron saint of travelers, sailors, floods, epilepsy and lighting strikes. Also fuckups, losers, delivery boys and guys who cut their own hair because their best friend did and called it a 1930s prison cut that made him, the friend, let’s call him Ryan, look like a movie star and that made me look like I should be on the locked ward at Charity Hospital. I’m usually better looking. Not much but a little.” He swallowed hard and tapped his finger along the top of his handlebars. I was glad that he was visibly high because it meant that he wouldn’t be going to bed anytime soon and that energy sparking off his sad eyes like flint meant he wouldn’t be the one to leave first. That was a comfort at least.
“I’m Rosemary,” I said in answer to the question he hadn’t asked.
“That’s a pretty name. When I was little my mom used to make potatoes with rosemary, at least I think that’s what she said it was and, man, it smelled so good. Is there anything better than the smell of dinner when you’re, like, a dumb little kid and playing with Legos or some shit?”
“My mom didn’t really cook.”
“I get it, my mom once tried to beat the disrespect out of me with a rosary, but still those potatoes smelled fucking delicious. No, I’m just kidding. She probably wanted to though, I was a fucked-up little kid. A word of advice, while we’re talking parenthood here—don’t ever send your pussy-assed little son to Catholic school. Those priests will fuck him up good. Literally and figuratively.”
I started to respond but he cut me off. “No, I’m just kidding again. Do whatever you want with your kids.”
“Okay, thanks, I guess,” I said, before his flow of talk started up again.
“Do you ever cook stuff yourself and be, like, it’s just me, Rosemary, making some rosemary potatoes or whatever?”
I smiled. “No. Never.”
“Yeah, all I know how to make is instant ramen. But if I ever have a house, I’m going to keep those potatoes going in the oven all day. Just for the beautiful fuck of it. I bet you’d make a good mom.”
“Are you kidding?” Even on drugs this seemed too unreasonable. “Look at me.”
“I’m serious. You have a nice face. And you probably smell really good.” He leaned over then and sniffed at me. I was surprised and shied away, and he got embarrassed and all of this made his bike swerve and he had to slide off the pedals to catch himself. “I was just curious. I apologize for myself and the way I smell. Our hot water has been broken all winter so...” He trailed off and started humming tunelessly to himself. “What should we do? What should we do?” He looked around as if the empty street might have any answers. “You’re so fucking pretty,” he said. “It kind of makes me want to punch you. But not in a bad way. Just because it’s so intimidating.”
He was talking gibberish but still the word lingered, pretty. Its touch was gentle, the brush of a finger against a cheek, meadows and flowers and sunshine, how nice to see myself in all of those things. And how unexpected. How tempting it would be to follow this boy around and get to see myself through his eyes. Christopher, wearing buttons on his lapel that said, Eat the Rich and Nazi Punks Fuck Off and who talked about roast potatoes and Legos.
I had become accustomed to the icy calculations of men like Jonah, the way Rockabilly Mike had just nodded after my show, Nice act. He had said it with almost a smirk. They all had to be such dicks about everything. True, it had led me to Mike’s bed, but not because I believed his implicit disparagement, that in his jaded experience he had seen other, better women. The trade seemed fair to me. Give him my body and get to warm myself in the heat of his desire. I didn’t need his kindness too. But this guy was just throwing it out there, a compliment tossed at my feet like a gift with nothing asked in return. Or at least not yet. It felt nice.
“Thank you,” I said.
“It’s just a fact. I hate people that pretend not to notice stuff like that, fucking liars.” He brushed me away like it was a discussion long since resolved. “It needs to be something special.” He murmured to himself. “What bars do you like?”
This seemed to sum up all one needed to know about another person, but before I could answer he shook his head. “No, that won’t do. Bars, bars, so boring, so obvious. You’re too special for a bar.”
“No one has ever said that about me before.” How could anyone be too special for a bar? I couldn’t even imagine. He again brushed it off like it was no big deal. “Well, it sounds like you just got kicked out of wherever you live, and I’m not taking you to my place, just so you know. And I’ve only got a little while to hang out.”
He wasn’t paying attention and spun his bike bell by hand, slipping the flat metal sphere between what were clearly sweaty fingers. It made a flat, muffled ding each time. “We should just move. Move, motion, speed. Speed, speed, crash into it like a bus without brakes. Good movie but what a dumb way to kill people,” he said as an aside. “Just fucking blow them up.” He made a little explosive gesture with his fingers and a noise that reminded me of playgrounds, the kind of sounds boys made all the time with their G.I. Joe figures. He stepped astride his bike.
“Hop on.”
“What?”
He pulled on my sleeve, caught some of my fake hair and I had to grab at the back of my head before I lost it completely. “I’ll ride you,” he said, indicating his handlebars.
I laughed loud and short into the air. “No thank you.” One of my mom’s boyfriends had tried to do this once and I ended up with four stitches in my forehead.
“Come on,” he said, smiling. “I promise I’ll go slow.”
“No offense but you look like you weigh one hundred pounds.”
“None taken. I’m fit.” He so clearly wasn’t that I laughed again. “Please,” he said suddenly, and I saw a kind of urgency in his eyes, in that face all soft and yearning and I noticed he was bristling with energy like a racehorse, a young body bursting with drugs and eagerness and all at once it was very easy to step out into the dark loam of possibility, to hand my body over to someone, anyone, and he seemed so eager for the burden. “Have you done this before?”
He nodded. “A million times.”
“Fine. But be careful. I’m terrible on bikes. I have no sense of balance.” This seemed true on many levels.
His face lit up. “I spent my whole life on this bike. You don’t have to do anything. Sit here.” He placed a steadying hand on the center of the handlebars. “But you can’t put too much weight on the basket or it will break, so maybe kind of try to get your legs around it and rest your foot underneath against the fender if you can. Like if you bend and spread your knees or something.”
The absurdity of his instructions felt appropriate to this new, unexpected turn in the night. Maybe he was right; Jonah could wait. The right span of time would make it look more casual. He would be nicer to me if he thought I didn’t care. And I had learned not to turn away from twists of fate like this, the little fillips of company that a night in the Quarter so often offered, a sprouting tendril veering off from the stalk of a vine. It was a gift to someone like me. Somewhere to go, an hour to burn. A person to whom my presence was a gift, even if he was all over the place. Or maybe precisely because he was. Something about him made my shoulders feel looser, the air around me lighter, easier. There was nothing outwardly reassuring about him, but for some reason he had that effect. I didn’t want to leave him just yet.
I did my best to climb on as he had indicated, while he held the bike steady, as steady as he could, and I noticed again how thin he was and wondered if he would be able to carry our weight. But before I could ask, with a few wobbling jumps forward, he stood and leaned hard on the pedals and we took flight.
I gasped, and then the wind, the speed, a mix of terror and delight ripped a shout from my chest, high and loud, carrying up and out into the night as we hopped the curb and flew the wrong way down the bumpy street. He did it. “Be careful,” I yelled.
“I got you,” he said, quietly and close to my ear.
Brightly painted houses with drawn shutters passed in a blur. Gas lamps flickered in arched doorways and the clouds and the fog seemed to bow low, a purple embrace of the quiet town and our reckless progress. Familiar streets from an unfamiliar vantage passed like a movie. At each bump, his bike rattled loudly, a bunch of spare parts just barely held together, and I gripped the cold steel bar beneath me even tighter, tensing all my muscles to stay on my impossible perch. The bright lights of a daiquiri store flew by, huge machines churning rainbow vats of colored liquids. A dog barked at us from behind a gate, indignant. Christopher swerved around a giant pothole and I shrieked again, and he laughed, breathless now against my neck. The forward momentum pushed me against his narrow chest, his arms wrapping around me. He smelled like dirty laundry and I relaxed against him, shutting my eyes, feeling only the wind and his heart pounding, his breath heavy with effort.
He cut over toward the river, riding through the parking lots behind the retaining wall and crossed up and over the train tracks on a narrow walkway of wooden planks that rattled me and the bike like a set of false teeth. Then with a desperate gasping push from him, we were up over the small hill of the levee and riding along the flat path on top. In the distance, the lights of Algiers twinkled on the far shore, and the big black sludgy expanse of the river rippled between us. The sound of waves lapped at the rocks down below and I breathed in deeply at the sudden vista of sky and water all submerged in the same dark murmuring. After all the narrow streets of the Quarter, the river felt as endless as outer space. “I love it up here,” I said, my voice disappearing into the wind.
I think he tried to answer me too, but he was breathless and concentrating on pedaling.
“You don’t have to go so fast,” I tried to suggest.
But he just laughed, and I knew that he knew what a joy there was in all this wind and water, and that he would burst his heart right open to keep the two of us caught in that ecstatic forward blur. Some gutter punks were drumming on the grass, transient, close to the trains that they would hop to other cities and other gutters. Their dog looked up at me as we passed, a sweet-looking pit bull with a soft face like the velvet fuzz of a peach, and I wanted to leap down and bury my face in his broad forehead. Ida had been so frail. Her bones becoming weightless in the last few weeks, like a bird. I wanted to take him home and let him see that some humans took their responsibilities seriously, offering stability and constancy, safety and security to our puppies, a communion of two to shelter together from the harsh world. I was mad that these homeless teenagers with their face tattoos and bongos wouldn’t be able to do that for him. My eyes watered but the rushing wind blew away my tears, a single stream that ran back into my ear.
Then, since we were running out of boardwalk, Christopher turned his bike down another path to cross back over the train tracks and into the streets. I was glad he knew that I didn’t want to ride farther down to where they had redone the riverfront, turned it into a brightly lit pedestrian destination, where the bricks were all too clean and the landscaping too fresh, the signs too aggressively cheerful. The river belonged to the quiet warp of the old boardwalk and not to the stupid city council riverfront revitalization schemes or whatever. But he knew. And I liked that he knew.
When we burst back onto Decatur Street, the souvenir shops up here were still open and loud Cajun music blared from the propped-open doors of big tourist bars. All the lights were too bright, a searing fluorescent blue. Four women in pink cowboy hats hooted at us as we rode past, raising their drinks and cackling. Somewhere a man yelled something insulting. We almost ran into a couple whose argument had slipped off the sidewalk and into the street. I shrank back against the noise and confusion and the sudden feeling of visibility. My delicate joy withered in the face of all the loud, manufactured fun of the upper Quarter. Christopher, sensing my dismay, asked, “Wanna see something cool?”
That sort of a question was never really a question and since I had already abandoned myself to his strained athleticism, I nodded, my eyes shut against the inflamed pink faces of Southern vacationers. He turned off toward Jackson Square and coasted down the stone ramp, hitting the broad flagstones with another shattering rattle that made me worry about the bike. And then he stopped, and I slid off, hitting my butt against the basket, scratching my ankle against the sharp wire lattice. I felt flushed and shining, my heart pounding. “That was really fun,” I granted him.
He was still panting and slipped the heavy chain off his waist and around his bike, locking it to a lamppost with a quick, practiced agility. He smiled a shy apology. “It’s no car, but it’s not a bad way to travel.”
“Did I wear you out? Was I too heavy?” I felt his continued breathlessness almost like a reprimand.
His look was so contemptuous, I didn’t pursue it. “Come on,” he said.
We crossed the square, the cathedral looming above us, white and stern. I wished they didn’t keep it so clean. They had washed all the years off of it, which in such a filthy city made this building a stranger, too gleaming, unreal, something only for postcards and photographs. When I was little, I once asked my mom if going to Mary Immaculata made me a Catholic. She exhaled a long plume of menthol cigarette smoke and told me I was lucky they hadn’t set me on fire already. We had never been to synagogue and she kept a Joan of Arc candle on her dresser next to the mirrored box full of cheap jewelry. Religion in general was a confusing jumble.
I watched the back of this strange young man, Christopher, walking in front of me. His boxy suit had faded to a rusty black and the uneven hem of his pants bounced against his high-top sneakers. Watching his skinny ankles, the funny way he rolled through each step, headlong and hesitant at the same time, made me feel kindly toward him. He also kept glancing back at me to see if I was still following and seeming surprised every time that I was. At one point he tripped, and I reached for his arm to steady him, but he slid out of my grasp before I could, and I saw the back of his neck flame red for a minute. He turned the corner to the quieter side of the square and stopped in the shadow of a tree next to the high railings that bound the garden in the center of the square. He looked both ways and then locked his hands together and bent down.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Go over. I’ll give you a boost.”
The garden was locked at night and the railings, sunk into a stone wall that already came up chest high, were another six feet over that.
“Are you kidding?”
“You’ve got to do it quick though. Here.” He held out his clasped hands expectantly.
“Sorry, there is no way.” I walked a few feet away and sat down on one of the iron benches in the middle of the square. It was very uncomfortable, colder than I expected, and the narrow, rounded slats dug into my back. That’s all I needed. Another run-in with the police. Last time they had given me a pretty inconsequential scolding for trying to start fires, but I was much older now and I had no plan on ever seeing the inside of central lockup. I had heard plenty about the moldy bologna sandwiches and that they took your bra away.
“Ryan and I do this all the time. Trust me. I’ve got no money, no car, no place to stay, my best friend hates me, my parents kicked me out. My sister, who was once the coolest girl in the whole world, married an asshole and doesn’t talk to me because I’m a dirty loser. I’ve never had a real girlfriend, but you know what? I spend a lot of time on my bike and in the Quarter at night, and I know some cool things, and you’re so fucking pretty I can’t even look at you, and this is all I’ve got, so would you please, please just step on my goddamn hands?” At the far end of the square, a group started slowly moving toward us, stumbling and loudly singing a Jimmy Buffett song. “I mean, do you want to run into those guys?”
They did provoke a kind of immediate urge to escape, and as I still wasn’t quite ready to leave this guy and the odd instinctive kinship I felt in his company, I stood up. On the opposite side of the square, a police car slid down to cruise slowly around the perimeter. “Hurry up,” he said more urgently. “Please.”
Despite my one glaring exception, I had never really been a delinquent. An early drinker, yes, but that barely counted in this town. I had started hanging around the Quarter senior year, but it really wasn’t until I had come back to town that I realized the immense freedom that opens up to you once you had failed. The way once you have given up, life just unfolds all around you in possibility because there are no rules anymore, because nothing matters. A lesson this kid had clearly already figured out. And here he was, with his cupped hands offering me the only thing that still mattered—company, because the road down was only terrifying when you were alone. And it was kind of cute that we were wearing the same sneakers. “Fine.”
Again, he looked surprised and I wondered why he kept offering things he didn’t expect anyone to take him up on. I stood up and eyed the distance to the top of the spiky railings.
“Let me help. It’s easy once you get some momentum. Just up and over.”
I leaned back and threw my bag over the top. It landed with a thump on the other side. Once a choice was made, I always found it easy to throw myself into the follow-through. Maybe too easy. But this was the part I liked—the doing without thinking too much about it. I grabbed an iron rail in each hand and hoisted myself up to the top of the stone wall. I stood on the ledge for a second, enjoying my height. The rails were thick and cold in my hands and the square looked different from up here. I could see all the way from the noisy buskers still active at Café Du Monde on Decatur to the silent corner of Chartres Street. In the distance, the lights of the police car flickered through the hedges of the garden. The raucous group singing “Cheeseburger in Paradise” got closer. “Yeah,” his voice said from below, “that’s probably the worst place you could stop and hang out if you don’t want to get busted.”
With a quick jolt of fear, I wedged the narrow soles of my sneakers between the bars and, grabbing the decorative points at the top, pulled myself up, just snagging the crossbar of the top of the fence with my other foot, and flung myself over with a desperate propulsion. I landed with a soft thud in the dirt of the other side, and in retrospect the leap seemed embarrassingly easy. Christopher shimmied up and over with the ease and strength of a young monkey, light and heedless. Thumping down beside me in a crouch, he took my hand and pulled me down and through a row of formal hedges into the deep landscaping all around the edge of the park. And just like that we disappeared.