TWELFTH NIGHT 2004
JACKSON SQUARE
Jackson Square. I have a picture of myself here as a baby. In stiff, old-fashioned lace-up shoes, I’m standing on the pebbled path squinting and grinning, balanced on two thick legs, rolls of baby fat squeezed by the elastic of a romper embroidered with pansies. My mom is sitting behind me, thin, young, in big gold hoops and a low-cut ’70s denim shirt. She’s holding her elbow, cigarette poised near her face and staring at something off camera. Andrew Jackson’s statue looms over us. Old ladies used to sit around the square selling birdseed in little packets. Feeding and then chasing the pigeons that had gathered is one of my first memories of pure joy. The whole flock would scatter, rising up into the air, a frantic beating of gray wings that ruffled my hair and made it feel like the whole world was spinning away, uplifted.
Then in junior high, Gaby and I used to beg rides from her mom so that we could come here to wander around the bright, touristy mall of the Jackson Brewery, buying expensive slabs of fudge, high on the novel pleasure of independence. We went to Café Du Monde, feeling like grown-ups. Sitting alone, we ordered from the tiny green menu pasted on the side of the silver napkin dispensers. A dollar twenty-five for beignets, another seventy-five cents for the coffee, sweet and milky that we had already started drinking. We bit into puffy sweet clouds of fried dough. I always messed up, inhaling too soon and then choking on the powdered sugar, Gaby whacking me on the back. “She’s fine,” she explained to worried mothers from other places. “Now look, you got his attention, and that creepy man’s going to come talk to us.” There were always men floating around, panhandling, trying to sell a deflating balloon animal, playing a few suggestive notes on a trumpet, as if we would pay him to continue. And to each in his turn, Gaby would direct that excruciating politeness. That smile, a gracious reply to whatever junkie was trying to seat himself at our table until I finally snarled at him to go away. “Why are you so polite to those guys?” I teased her.
“I can’t help it,” she laughed, but there was something tense in her, and even then, I could feel the blurred outlines of it, something terrible in the way that Gaby lived in a world of particular rules, codes of behavior that never occurred to me. When we were little, she often had stomach aches at school. The only thing that helped, she swore, was to lie flat, facedown, nose pressed into the scratchy carpet of the classroom’s “quiet reading corner,” her hands cradling her belly. I remembered Sister Agnes’s annoyed face when she said, “Again, Gaby?”
I still passed through the square almost every day to catch the bus up to Magazine Street for work, but it had been years since I had come into the garden at the center and the memories it unlocked felt strangely fresh. I had certainly never been in here at night and so all that familiarity, the sunlit days of childhood, passed into shadow, like looking at a stage after someone had turned out the lights. Floodlights angled up from below made the contours of everything stand out too clearly, and Jackson’s statue reared against the black sky, enormous. His horse strained its open mouth against the bridle and pawed the air with its front two legs, weightless, helpless tons of bronze. Seen so close, Jackson’s rakish salute was kind of terrifying, and I looked away. Christopher was watching me, waiting for my approval. “Wow,” I said honestly.
We were in the bushes, a little clearing hidden on all sides by tall plants. On one side, elephant ears rustled between us and the iron fence, their huge heart-shaped leaves shielding the small patch of dirt and roots where we sat. On our other side, manicured box hedges formed a thick green wall. Above, an oak tree’s spreading branches turned the streetlamps into dappled spots of light. While I looked around in silent appreciation, the drunk tourists finally passed by, so close I could have reached through the branches and railings and touched them. The cathedral bell rang once for the half hour and the police car flashed its siren, one loud blip, at the tourists. Life swirled around us. And here we were, suddenly safe in the hidden heart of it all.
“Pretty cool, huh?” he asked.
“How did you find this place?”
“Me and Ryan figured this out one night, just being drunk and fucking around and then it’s been kind of our spot ever since.”
He still talked like a teenager, half-hearted cadences alternating with bursts of sincerity, but it was hard to tell in this town. He was part of a certain life that was remarkably elastic. Punky delivery boys were like bartenders that way and their youth could stretch out the better part of decades. A cheap room and a few friends were all you needed to enjoy the special place the Quarter reserved for people who had stopped living for the daylight hours. I wanted to know where on that arc he was, how far in this light and easy freedom of drugs and minimum wages he had endured. But I didn’t want to ask.
Since we had entered this little spot, he had been looking at me with a peculiar directness, and I wanted to keep him talking to put off what was so clearly in his mind. I wasn’t about to fuck in the bushes.
“How did you guys become friends?”
He leaned on one arm, shifting closer to me. “Shows, bars, I don’t know. Our scene is just kind of like that. You see each other around enough and then suddenly you’re best friends.”
“Really?” I asked. “I don’t think of my burlesque friends like that. I mean, we’ve never had a real conversation. It’s all pasties and guys. Although, I don’t know,” I added, thinking of Chantal. “I guess there are some who are different.”
He lay down, propping his head on his hand and inching ever closer to me. “Yeah, I lied. That’s not how it happened.”
“Well?”
“What is there to say? Sometimes you just get someone. Life felt easier when I was with Ryan. I like myself better with him. I like myself better with you too.”
I could see where he was coming from and in a strange way, I felt a similar involuntary ease, like I wanted to stay with him and his funny loose-limbed manner in this green-domed pillow fort. “You’ve known me for, like, five minutes,” I countered. He didn’t seem concerned and just kind of shrugged. I wondered if all that stuff about me being too special for bars had just been to lead me here, the bushes, where a guy who doesn’t even have a place of his own brings girls. “Is this where you bring people to make out?” I asked.
He sat up quickly and that flash of discomfort burned in him again so suddenly I almost apologized. He was awfully sensitive. “Why would you say that?” Then he flopped down on the ground flat on his back on the roots and rocks, not looking at me. “Fuck. Just fucking fuck everything. Why is everyone against me?”
I suspected it might be the drugs making him so careless with his body, but it definitely added to the impression I had of something too young. Like a puppy that hadn’t learned the stillness of resignation. “I’m not against you, dude. I’m just making conversation.”
He sighed and waited, some internal calculation that I wasn’t privy to. Then he propped himself up on his elbow again. “If you want to know what happened between me and Ryan, why he got all weird on me, it’s because we hooked up, okay? I gave him a hand job and then he flipped out,” he said quickly, watching for my reaction with a certain hostility.
“Oh.” I hadn’t been expecting that. Had I been wrong about the waves of desire I had been feeling from this kid? I tried to make my face indifferent, but I had been expecting our interaction to be based on his wanting to fuck me, so for a moment I was at a loss. This, however, was much more interesting.
But as I was trying to adjust to this new dynamic between us, he saw my confusion and answered with a frown that was almost a snarl. “I’m not a fag, just so you know.”
I bristled. “Why would I care if you were?”
“I’m into girls,” he added, again a little aggressively.
“Okay, sure, whatever,” I reassured him, and then because I was really curious, asked him, “Was that something you guys usually did? I mean, is that something guys usually do?” I actually knew so little about the secret interior worlds of men. I wanted this kid to keep talking. Were there whole complicated worlds moving behind the blankness of the desire that they turned in my direction? The possibility made me like men in general slightly more.
“No.” He shrugged. “I mean, sure. Who cares? It didn’t have to mean anything. We’re together all the time anyway, it was just a thing. He’s such a hypocrite.” He paused as though intending to stop there and then almost as if compelled to keep going, I guessed from the drugs, resumed. “You know, what the fuck? We watch porn together all the time, but if I touch your dick all the sudden I’m gay?” He glanced at me again to quickly check my reaction, but then returned to his own internal argument. “It’s fucking lame. Especially from a guy who wore a devil’s lock for two years. Homophobia is pretty fucking square if you ask me.”
He was obviously upset, yet I couldn’t help but be a little fascinated. It was kind of thrilling to discover a problem so far out of my experience. People were so interesting. And men. My years of Catholic school and the hookups since then meant that I knew nothing of the murky territories of male friendship. “You watch porn together?” I asked.
“Straight porn,” he said rather sternly, but this seemed of little consequence compared to the tremendous intimacy he was describing. “All guys do. It’s really not a thing.”
“Really? Okay.” I was still a little unconvinced. Then I remembered his face in the bar, that sudden quick despair that he hadn’t been able to hide. There was more to all of this. “Are you in love with him?” I whispered, but as I spoke, I felt a funny disappointment, as though I had lost something.
“No.” He ran his hands through his greasy hair, and it stuck up from his head in sprouts. “God, that’s probably what he thinks too. I just need to talk to him, you know, when there aren’t like ten of us around. I didn’t mean to freak him out.” He stared at the ground, his forehead creased. “I just wanted—” He stopped. “And why am I even telling you all this?” he asked in annoyance.
“Because I’m interested.”
“That’s how this all started with Ryan. I told him things that I had never told anyone before. I’m always spilling my guts and it fucks everything up.” His ears got red and he had that sudden look of fragility again, an impression of being made of eggshell, translucent, pale, and I reached out to touch his arm. He startled at the touch and then tried to cover it up by crossing his arms and rubbing his elbows like he was cold. “He makes really good scrambled eggs,” he said finally. “And I have these moments sometimes where I start to freak out. It’s happened since I was a kid, like I really kind of lose it and he was always good at chilling me out. Sometimes he’d even sit on me, like just hold me down until it passed and, I don’t know.”
“Like a panic attack?”
“I don’t know. If my parents had ever brought me to a doctor, maybe I would know why I puke at all the wrong times and get the shakes like a crackhead, but we don’t do that in our family. ‘Nervy,’ is what they call me and that’s that. Whatever. But Ryan never freaked out about it. He just kind of fixed it when it happened. I don’t know, he didn’t mind.” He caught himself as if remembering me and tried to play it all off. “Whatever, it’s not a big deal. I can find somewhere to sleep. There’s always a punk house to crash in.” Then changing his mind yet again, he sighed. “My stuff is at his place. I don’t know what I’m going to do now.”
“I don’t know what I’m doing either,” I admitted. “Do any of us?”
He looked up at me, relieved, and for a moment we were caught together in a glow of understanding, and then he reached out and gently felt my breast.
“Dude.” I slapped his hand away.
“Sorry.” He shrugged and kind of laughed, and somehow this had the effect of resetting our relations. He began pulling leaves off one of the hedges and tearing them into little pieces.
I felt back on more steady ground. “So.” I had been about to ask him if he was from here, but somehow, I knew that he was. So instead, I relapsed into that catechism of new acquaintance. “So, Christopher of the twitchy disposition, where’d you go to high school?”
“Why does everybody ask that?” His whole body stiffened again, and he kicked at a root with the heel of his sneaker. “Why does it matter?”
I shrugged. “Don’t you think we should get to know each other better?”
“It’s such a bullshit question though. St. Francis De Sales won’t tell you shit about me. It was a pit of assholes and sadists and priests copping feels from little boys’ gym shorts.”
I let that go, but my question had done its work. St. Francis De Sales was the fanciest boys’ private school in town. This kid was supposed to be at home on St. Charles Avenue. Not here in the bushes covered in filth and smelling like last week’s laundry. I poked his Eat the Rich button. “And this?”
“Yeah, what of it? Fuck those people. Fuck my parents and all their drunk, racist country-club friends. I hope they’re all first up against the wall when the revolution comes.”
“That may be a long time coming in this town,” I said, but he wasn’t going to get off that easily. I knew this world existed, the social precincts of Uptown New Orleans, an enclosed terrarium of privilege, the mossy loam of centuries of tradition and wealth. You feel it at Mardi Gras parades, looking up at the floats and the riders hidden behind their silk masks, plastic cups in hand, drunk on self-aggrandizement and noblesse oblige while we ordinary folks raised our hands, begging them for trinkets and beads. Secret societies, balls, debutantes, the rolling tinsel of centuries-old krewes, the old-fashioned masks and capes that made them look like so many multicolored, velvet-draped figures of terror. I had never met anyone who went to St. Francis and I wanted to know more. How did he get here? I had slipped down maybe a rung or two from my barely respectable, vaguely slutty mom, but we existed in the same universe. This guy had bypassed whole continents in his downward spiral. He should be drinking Johnnie Walker in a Perlis button-down shirt and feeling up a deb in her parents’ downstairs powder room. If he were gay, or even kind of, that would be a whole thing where he came from.
Once, my boss at the lingerie store forgot her phone on her way to her usual Friday afternoon lunch at Galatoire’s and I had to bring it to her. The frosted glass door closed behind me and once inside the bright, icy air-conditioned room, I looked around at the tables, chairs, brass light fixtures, everything frozen, perfectly maintained, like they hadn’t been changed in a hundred and fifty years. I couldn’t believe what was going on in that beautifully appointed room. Everyone was wasted. Like falling down, “spilling old-fashioneds on white tablecloths” wasted. Women in pearls strolled from table to table, chardonnay in hand, grabbing the backs of bentwood chairs for support, cackling and shrieking their gentle Southern syllables. People sang loudly. Anecdotes were yelled across the room. Waiters splashed streams of flaming coffee into silver urns with long, delicately handled silver ladles. Corks popped, dishes clattered. Men in seersucker jackets sweated and laughed, pink jowls shaking. Someone stood on a chair singing the Ole Miss fight song. Strangers joined in, upraised glasses spilling booze. The long mirrors that covered the walls spun the chaos into an endlessly reflecting mural while the tile floor heightened the noise into a clamor. And all of this was happening at two in the afternoon on a weekday, and it was all hidden from the prying eyes of the uninvited by the taut white curtains covering the front windows. I had never seen anything like it. It was fascinating, especially to a low-income, self-conscious Jew. “Have you ever been to Galatoire’s?” I asked him.
He raised his two middle fingers in reply. “Fuck that place too. Have you ever seen Night of the Hunter?” he answered instead. “Do you think it would be cool or stupid to get love and hate tattooed on your knuckles like Robert Mitchum?” He didn’t wait for me to answer. “I wish so many other people hadn’t done it, but it really sums everything up, right? Crazy that he’s supposed to be a preacher in that movie. Baptists are nuts.”
“It would be stupid,” I answered, but he was looking at his knuckles reflectively and wasn’t listening.
“I used to work at Blockbuster,” he continued, changing the subject. “Movies are just...” he paused and looked into the branches above us, searching for the word “...they’re just everything. I’d just die without movies,” he said finally. Then he began chewing on a thumbnail that was already bitten to the quick. “Do you throw a punch with the love hand or the hate? I’d go for the love, nice irony there.”
He was not going to talk about his background, which was disappointing. This guy had strange priorities of what he wanted to share and didn’t. “I had to turn that movie off halfway through.” He looked up at me, appalled, and I felt I had to clarify. “I felt too sad for those kids. No one taking care of them.” He was about to argue so I shook my head. “I don’t like movies where kids are in danger.”
“I’ve been working on a script.” He pulled a bunch of crumpled papers from his back pocket and then gingerly unfolded them. The lined sheets were covered in a messy scrawl.
I extended my hand. “You walk around with a movie script in your back pocket?”
He didn’t seem to see anything funny about it and handed it into my waiting palm with hesitation. “Careful, it’s my only copy. I really like Tarantino.”
“Of course you do.” In the shadows that flickered over the page, I couldn’t make out the words, but I liked looking at them anyway. He had been using a ballpoint pen that kept running out, making him write so hard he tore the pages in places. It was hard to see all that frantic sprawl and not feel a gentleness. “You should write a script about Uptown people. They are so entertaining to the rest of us.”
“No thanks. I want to make something that lets people just go away for a couple of hours, get out of their heads, get out of their lives, you know, action films, heist stories,” he continued. “I probably watched four movies a day until I started hanging out with Ryan. I still do sometimes. I did,” he corrected himself and flinched a little.
I could have told him just how much I understood that desire to escape, but even in the shelter of all these whispering plants, there were some things you couldn’t explain. Like how after I had failed out of college, I couldn’t even watch dumb comedies. Every time someone got humiliated, or disappointed, my heart shattered for them, a wave of newfound empathy that broke over me and made me turn it off and bury my tears in Ida’s indulgent fur. That you can’t watch Dumb and Dumber because it keeps making you cry is not the kind of thing you can really admit to. I handed him back his papers. “I like when people want to make things.”
But he had already slipped from enthusiasm into embarrassment. “Yeah, whatever. It’s probably shit just like everything I do.” He shoved the pages back in his pocket. “So, Rosemary. Since we’re doing it this way, where’d you go to high school?”
I was glad he also knew intuitively that I was local. I was glad for a moment of solidarity. I was glad to be sitting here, on the crunch of dried magnolia leaves in the fresh rich smell of dirt and roots. “Mary Immaculata.”
He grimaced. And then, to my utter outrage, I saw a look of contempt cross his face. “Oh. I didn’t know you were one of those.”
“How dare you. You just said you went to the fanciest school in town.”
“Yeah, but I hated it. Look at me. I’m a fucking punk. Immaculata girls are materialistic cunts.”
“Yeah, I know they are, you asshole. I hated it too. I grew up with a broke single mom. At least I’m not some slumming rich kid.” He didn’t even flinch, and I guessed he had heard that before. “Do I look like a fucking cheerleader in designer clothes to you?”
He actually looked at me, considering, and I remembered why I hated this conversation about high schools. “What are you, seventeen?” I asked, trying to find an advantage.
“Twenty,” he answered proudly instead.
For a moment this held me. Twenty. Oh, to be twenty and still possess as much awkwardness as this guy had eking out of his bones. Men, men could stay children forever it seemed. By the time I turned twenty, I was as old as I’ll ever be and everything since has just been passing the hours. By twenty, I knew I wasn’t going back to college. At first it seemed as if they might reconsider the alcohol infractions, and I spent my forced leave of absence pouring badly made lattes with milk that never seemed to foam. It was like I was cursed—all the milk that passed through my hands at that dumb coffee shop refused to give up more than a thin, watery froth. But then the school said no. And that was that. All my potential erased in a polite letter of dismissal. Or a retraction of my scholarship, which amounted to the same thing.
I moved into a tiny apartment in the Quarter that I rented from a racist old lady who used to dance on Bourbon Street and whose windows were lined with an unfortunate collection of pickaninny figurines. You’re just two blocks away from where I used to live before I had you, my mom had said, a fake cheeriness to make me feel better that was instead a million times worse, before she turned back to Days of Our Lives. And now here I was, arguing with a ratty little jerk about who had been more miserable in high school.
And it was obviously me. “You don’t know anything about me. I was more punk than you’ll ever be. In high school I set my principal’s lawn on fire.” I was a little ashamed of myself, but whatever. This kid needed to be put in his place.
“Oh yeah?” He raised an eyebrow, and as quick as that, I had returned in his esteem.
“Yeah,” I said, trying to decide how much of the story I was going to tell him. “I was going to do her house, but I didn’t want to kill anyone by accident. Me and my best friend just tried to burn her lawn. It turns out grass is hard to set on fire, so it was really dumb, but still, I did it.”
“That is pretty badass,” he said, settling back into a valley between roots and looking at me with a returning warmth. “Did you get in trouble?”
“Yeah, she called the cops.” I spoke knowing this would impress him, as well. I remember the look of terror that Gaby gave me when we heard the sirens. I think she almost peed herself. Cops are so scary in theory. Until you see them, and they’re just big fat white dudes looking so bored. And you could practically tell he was trying not to smile. He wasn’t even a real cop, just neighborhood watch. I teased her about that for weeks. “But they let us go. It was fine.”
“Bar fights and arson.” Christopher was looking at me very, very softly again. “I think I might be in love with you.”
I laughed. This guy was all over the place, but I felt better. I needed that flame of admiration. And in spite of everything, he still seemed like kind of a sweetheart. Something gentle lurked under all this anxious fidgeting. I wanted to help him.
Then as if to prove me wrong, he sprang in my direction. He lost his balance landing on top of me and aiming, I think, to kiss my mouth, but missing and slobbering on the side of my jaw. I hit the ground and felt a stone beneath me jab into my shoulder blade.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” he mumbled, instantly apologetic. He was light and uncoordinated enough that he didn’t feel like much of a threat. I knew I could shove him off with one push. This ill-considered lunge only brought to mind slumber parties and the play fighting you do as a little kid; he felt like a kitten or something pouncing at a toy. Except that he was now trying to kiss my neck. Again, he smelled of old clothes and I thought about all the guys like him I had been underneath in my time. Those shitty apartments with dishes in the sink, the smell of mold creeping in from under buckling floorboards, guys who would fuck me on a futon without a frame, so close to the floor you could smell the dust. A halogen lamp, posters on thumbtacks, a milk crate full of CDs, maybe records if I was lucky and he had taste. The smell of stale masculinity that didn’t care and wouldn’t care about you in the morning, and the great ease and rest that came from being disregarded like that. But this kid didn’t have any place to take me. “Chill out, buddy,” I said, giving him a push.
“Please.” His voice was muffled by my hoodie, crushed under his face. “Please. I’ll tell you something I’ve never told anyone.”
I pushed him harder and he fell back with no resistance. “I don’t want your secrets, weirdo,” I said, sitting up and brushing leaves out of my hair. But I wasn’t sure that was true.
We looked at each other for a minute. He was still panting slightly. “Please. You’re so pretty.”
“Yeah, so you said.” I could understand where he was coming from. There was something about this den here that had the privacy, the sanctity of the confessional. It made you want to share. I had secrets burning a hole in my stomach too. And I was almost tempted. But then it occurred to me again that I was probably not the first person he had brought here, and my feelings got hurt. Was this just what he did? He was watching me closely, an expression that kept switching between his usual look of a deer caught in headlights and something a little more canny. “It seems like you’re having trouble making up your mind,” I said.
“I swear I’m into girls.” He stared into my eyes to make sure I understood. “Don’t get the wrong idea.”
“Okay. I don’t really care. Is this how you usually get laid? Bringing people here and offering secrets and then making out in the bushes? Is this your thing?”
He flinched and he was all eggshells again. But then I had a funny flash of intuition and I made a guess. “Is this where you had your thing with Ryan?”
He didn’t look at me, but his feelings were so raw and visible in his sweaty face, and all of a sudden I put it all together. “Did this all happen tonight!” He nodded, still not looking at me, and I couldn’t help laughing. “Jesus Christ. I thought I was having a fucked-up time but you’re really cramming it in. Don’t you think you should go home and call it a night?”
“Yes, I should go home, but I can’t,” he yelled back, annoyed. “Because Ryan kicked me out.”
“You’re a mess,” I said affectionately.
“Yeah, thanks.”
We sat in silence for a minute while someone far away played “When the Saints Go Marching In” poorly on a saxophone.
“I hate this song,” he said finally. “So, what’s your deal?”
“What?”
“You just said you were having a fucked-up time. What’s going on? Why is someone like you sitting here in the bushes with someone like me?”
“Ugh,” I sighed, unpleasantly reminded of myself again. “I don’t want to get into it. But let’s just say I’ve had a really shitty night. You’ve got no home and I don’t want to go home to mine. What a pair. Speaking of, I should go in a minute. I’ve got to go find my friend.”
“No.” He grabbed my wrist. “Please don’t go. Don’t go be with that hipster douchebag. He sucks.”
“Well, maybe, but we kind of have a relationship and I need his help tonight. And,” I added a little meanly because the way he was looking at me was making me feel bad, “at least he’s a grown-up.”
Christopher didn’t seem to notice. “I’m serious. I’ve never felt more alone than I did tonight when Ryan looked at me like that and then out of the fucking blue, you run up and punch him in the face. You’re all I have. You have to help me.”
“Help you do what? Fuck, I’m the one who needs help.” I started to pick a few stray leaves off my pants with my free hand in anticipation of getting up. “Listen, Christopher, I’m sure you will make up with your friend. Misunderstandings happen. Tempers cool. You guys will probably be back to normal by tomorrow.”
“Come to a party with me,” he interrupted me, urgently.
“What?”
“I was going to go with Ryan. I think he will probably still be there, and I could find him and talk to him, but I can’t go alone. I mean, I could, but I can’t face it.”
“What kind of party?” I sighed, still held in his sweaty grasp.
“For Twelfth Night. It’s an amazing Twelfth Night costume party. There’s a band, free booze. King cake. That’s why I’m wearing this suit. It’s my costume. I know you would love it, please.”
“Pretty boring costume,” I said, distracted. King cake. How could I have forgotten about king cake today? I fucking love king cake. Every year I waited and waited and waited for the sixth of January and then I bought one, only colored sugar, no icing, and ate the whole thing myself. Doughy, yeasty, just sweet enough, it was the one food that I felt I could eat forever. That first terrible year at school, my mom had a bakery ship one to me. I don’t know if I was more surprised that she would remember and plan ahead enough to order something like that, or by the intensity of joy and longing that I felt cramming that special texture, light and airy and dusted with sweetness, into my mouth. It tastes like a cinnamon roll, my idiot roommate had said, unimpressed with the precious slice I gave her. Then I ate the rest of the cake by myself, weeping with homesickness on the hard, narrow bottom bunk. The cake had fallen in its journey and the grainy stripes of colored sugar had melted, and the whole thing had turned to a thick, gluey mess, made all unguent by the snot and silent tears running down my face.
But fresh king cake was the taste of spring, and mild afternoons, and the rumble of a marching band dancing just a foot away from you, the sharp push of the matrons backing up the crowd to make room for the girls tapping in white boots, huge pompoms and batons swaying in time, of my mom laughing and elbowing me to the front of the crowd. Of no bedtime on parade nights, of joyful anticipation, the two of us walking toward the lights of a parade in the distance, hand in hand, my mom whooping and singing along to the songs pouring out of cars and porches and speakers tied to bicycles. A backpack full of Miller Lite, beads jangling around her neck and wrists, holding my hand and making me dance next to her on these nights when the city became what she wanted it to be again, and I got to warm myself in her reflected happiness.
All I wanted in that one moment was a slice of sweet, fluffy, flawless king cake. I had forgotten with everything that happened this afternoon to go buy myself a king cake.
Christopher was watching me intently and I didn’t want to let on how much I could be tempted by a slice of cake. How embarrassing. But somehow, I knew that he knew. He knew that deep, atavistic craving for dough and colored sugar. Still, I had plans. “I can’t. I’m sorry.”
“You’ll regret it. It’s a really good party.”
“You will find another chance to talk to him, I promise,” I said, but he looked away and quickly let go of my wrist.
“You’d like it,” he said quietly.
“You’re a sweet guy,” I said, “but I really do have to go find my friend.”
He reached out suddenly and grabbed my hand again just for a second. A gesture that felt surprisingly tender, a kind of innocent grasping. “Well, if I can’t convince you, can I at least walk you wherever you’re going? Where are you going?”
“Big Papa’s.”
He made a face that was all snotty punk again. “Gross. Strip clubs are gross. Exploitation is fucking gross.”
“Yeah, okay.” I stood and dusted off my butt. “Don’t be rude, some of my best friends work there.”
“Hey, I know, some of my best customers work there. Strippers get hungry at two in the morning, but still. They bum me out.”
“Well, you don’t have to—” I began.
He cut me off. “I’m coming.” He stood, then bent over and offered his back as a step for me to get up over the railings. “I was just saying.”
I slung my bag crosswise over my chest for stability. “What about you? Where are you going to go?”
“I’ll figure it out.” He spoke to his own knees, still doubled up for me. “There’s always a new gutter to roll in.”
“That’s the spirit.” I grabbed the railings and stepped onto the curve of his shoulders and, trying not to wobble from the boniness of his back, I hoisted myself over the black iron fence. The drop was farther on this side and I had to close my eyes as I tumbled out of the seclusion of the locked garden and fell to my knees on the hard paved stones in the sharp light of the square. I glanced back at him and he was watching me through the bars of the fence with such undisguised longing that I had to look away. I don’t know if anyone had ever needed me like that. A little flame burned in my chest, and I wasn’t sure if it felt nice or painful. Then he landed at my side with a grunt and I let him spring up and brush my cheek with his lips. I leaned my forehead against his for a minute. He was cold but sweaty. “Come on,” I said.
“I’ll get my bike on the way back,” he mumbled, reaching around and straightening my bag for me with a quick, deliberate tug, then dropping back to walk at my side.