The Last Girls

by Lee Smith

  Mr. Stone occupies his accustomed place at the corner of the bar. Actually he’s all sprawled out across its marbled surface, face turned toward Russell. His cabbage nose is squashed sideways against his cheek; his mouth, partly open, is squashed, too, so it looks like a baby’s mouth. Russell used to squish Lauren’s little mouth together like that with his fingers until her lips made a bow, a baby-doll mouth. “Chubby baby! Chubby baby!” he’d say. Lauren hated it. And now she has chubby babies of her own. But Mr. Stone doesn’t look so good today. His color’s not good, though his crisply starched white shirt and striped silk tie could break your heart. His feet in their white bucks dangle down from his knees in a loose way that makes Russell nervous. But it’s none of his business.

  “Hi, Nick,” he says to the bartender. Nick has got the overhead TV tuned to baseball, as usual. Braves versus Cubs, top of the fourth.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Hurt! I hope you enjoyed your morning.” Nick sounds like he really means it. The kid’s got a great future in business—what’s he doing on this boat?

  “It was okay,” Russell says. “But I’m ready for New Orleans. What about you?”

  Nick flashes his white grin. “Yessir!” He wipes off the bar, then mixes a Jack Black on the rocks and sets it down in front of Russell. The Belle is in the center of the river now, steaming south. Oil refineries rise up like tinker toys beyond the trees on either bank. Docks, tanks, smokestacks, and other structures clog the shoreline. No more nature, they’re in the petrochemical corridor now. Russell has read something about the cancer rate in this part of Louisiana, maybe in his Johns Hopkins Health Letter, something grim. No telling what carcinogens he’s breathing in right now. Mr. Stone makes a little sighing noise. Nick watches Smoltz strike out Marvin Benard and then turns back to Russell. “Weather Channel, sir?” he asks respectfully.

  “Just for a minute, if you can stand it.”

  “No problem.” Nick clicks the pointer and—yes! Damn if it’s not Susi Sergi herself in a clingy black knit outfit that outlines her swelling stomach. She will never get ahead in the world of meteorology if she keeps having all these babies. And as a scientist, doesn’t she want to do her part to stop the world’s overpopulation? But of course Russell knows she’s not really a scientist, she’s a little slut. Still, he wants the best for her. It’s interesting how the girls of today just let it all show, Russell can’t quite get used to it. He remembers those big ugly checkered blouses that pregnant women used to wear, with white collars and bows and shit. They looked like shit. That’s how they thought they were supposed to look when they were pregnant. Russell knows it’s an advance, this modern attitude. Women shouldn’t be ashamed of their bodies, but damn if they ought to go around throwing them right up in your face either. Russell guesses it’s hard to find a happy medium, as with anything.

  Today Susi has pulled her hair back and up from her face on both sides, fastening it with gold barrettes so it cascades down to her shoulders in a swoopy wave. Russell likes the barrettes. Susi wears gold earrings and that gold chain he also likes so much, he’s got to remember to get one of those for Catherine. Susi smiles straight at him. “So it’s another sunny day across the South, with a light wind from the West and some isolated afternoon thundershowers along the Gulf.”

  “Sounds pretty good,” Russell remarks to Nick.

  “Yes, sir. Mind if I switch it back over to the game now?”

  “No, go ahead.” Actually, Russell had hoped to catch the five-day forecast, but you can’t have everything. You don’t even want everything. The minute you get too much of whatever you think you really want, the Big Guy zaps you. Better to lie low, not try too hard or achieve too much, so as not to attract His attention. You pay for everything. The Belle of Natchez goes under a big highway bridge. Smoltz is still on the mound pitching to Sammy Sosa now. Sosa hits a long drive to left center and Jones is going back, back, back—he’s got it with an over-the-shoulder catch. Mark Grace trots out of the dugout. Russell sips his Jack Black and considers another one but no, it’s a long day still ahead, and a big night. Jesus. Maybe he’ll rest a little, too. Catch a nap. Then see if she’s in the mood. He looks up at the TV just in time to see Mark Grace hit a line drive when suddenly Mr. Stone makes a kind of whooshing noise, like air being let out of a tire, and slides off his stool sideways but slowly, slowly, it’s all agonizingly slow—to lie curled on his side on the deck. Now he sounds like he’s strangling. He keeps his eyes closed. Nick picks up the telephone.

  “Mr. Stone!” Russell falls to his knees at Mr. Stone’s side and touches Mr. Stone’s face which has a curiously malleable, plastic feel to it, as if Russell could shape it however he chose. The skin is damp and pale. From somewhere, from some booklet he probably saw in some doctor’s waiting room, Russell remembers a phrase, “The ABC’s of CPR.” But he can’t remember what they are. “Mr. Stone! Mr. Stone, can you hear me?” Russell says in his ear.

  Mr. Stone doesn’t say a thing.

  With a superman leap, Nick is over the bar, jostling Russell aside, pulling at Mr. Stone’s shoulders until he’s got him laid out flat, tilting his head back, jerking his jaw forward, feeling around inside his mouth. Mr. Stone looks awful. Nick throws Mr. Stone’s tie aside. He gets down and puts his ear to Mr. Stone’s open mouth. Then he rips his nice white shirt open. He rubs his knuckles roughly on Mr. Stone’s bony little chest.

  “Stop it! You’re killing him,” Russell says.

  Nick doesn’t even turn around.

  “Where is he?” One of the ship’s pilots bursts through the ring of hushed onlookers who have gathered around the Calliope Bar. “Breathing? Pulse?” he asks.

  Nick shakes his head no.

  Russell remembers that the B of the ABC’s is breathing. But what was A? Maybe air?

  “Shit.” The pilot struggles out of his white jacket and flings it on the floor. He pushes Russell aside and positions himself on his knees beside Mr. Stone. He nods to Nick. Nick sits up for a second, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, then leans back down to put his face over Mr. Stone’s face, his mouth to his mouth. Chubby baby, Russell thinks. The pilot pushes down, hard, with both hands on Mr. Stone’s chest. Nick makes a loud breathing noise, then turns his head to spit. He makes the noise again. Russell sits back on his heels, shaking. He doesn’t think he can stand up. His own heart is going a mile a minute, these guys will probably have to do him next. He glances up: the sun is still shining, the TV’s still on, Tyler Houston’s at bat. The river stretches wide beyond the rail. “I don’t know why they have to do this right out here on the deck in front of everybody,” a woman says in a nasal voice.

  But it goes on. It goes on forever, it seems to Russell, Nick and Mr. Stone locked tight in their long and terrible kiss. It goes on until another man, a swarthy man Russell has not seen before, arrives with an emergency pack. This guy’s wearing a khaki uniform, maybe he’s come up from the engine room. He kneels, sets up some kind of monitor, and positions two things with black cords coming out of them on Mr. Stone’s battered chest. “Okay,” he says.

  Nick sits back. “Shocking paddles,” he tells Russell.

  The man yells, “Clear!” He pushes a button and Mr. Stone twitches horribly, violently, though he does not open his eyes. “My God,” Russell says. The man is looking at the monitor. “Hell,” he says. He shocks Mr. Stone three more times and then quits trying. “Good work anyway,” the man says to Nick. “Damn good job, all you can do.” He packs up his kit. He has short, blunt fingers with black hair on them. He looks like that actor who used to be on TV all the time, playing a detective, what was that guy’s name? Some one-eyed guy. Nick gets up and brushes off his pants. But Russell can’t stand to see Mr. Stone just left splayed out on the deck like a frog in biology lab, so pathetic and vulnerable. Death has no dignity. He moves forward to button up Mr. Stone’s nice white shirt. Peter Falk, Russell remembers suddenly. “Peter Falk,” he says. But nobody cares, nobody’s paying the slightest bit of attenti
on to him. The swarthy man shakes Nick’s hand and says he’ll send some guys right up. Nick goes back around the bar and starts mixing drinks, he’s got a crowd now, all talking, glancing over at Mr. Stone and then quickly glancing away. Mr. Stone seems to be shrinking. He looks littler and littler there on the deck. Russell looks around. A few of the rockers by the rail are occupied by women in hats, reading. One old man has fallen asleep, his newspaper down at his feet. He’s snoring loudly. Two more women, smoking cigarettes and occupied in intense conversation, don’t even notice when Mr. Stone, covered now by a tablecloth, is carried unceremoniously right past them, one guy grabbing him under the shoulders and another guy holding his feet. Russell finally stands up. He feels okay as far as he can tell, though now his own heart is beating in a slow, thudding, scary way. Nick grins at him across the heads of his customers. “Hey, Russell,” he calls. “One on the house! Come and get it, you deserve it.”

  People stand aside so Russell can get to the bar. Somebody gives him a stool. Nick hands him a drink. “What’s the matter?” a woman asks, that pretty woman from Florida, Russell has noticed her before, and somebody else says, “Had a heart attack,” and Russell says, “Damnedest thing, he was sitting right here” and tells them all about it. Telling it makes him feel better. From time to time he looks back down at the deck where Mr. Stone was lying just minutes ago, but he’s gone now, of course, and there’s not a trace of him left, not even a skim of moisture on the shiny blond wood floor, nothing. Not a thing. Mr. Stone is gone. Absolutely gone, as if he had never existed, and anybody who thinks otherwise is a fool. Nothing else happens after death. An image comes to Russell: we drift through the world like dandelion puffs on the wind, we spread our seed and disappear, and the world doesn’t care. The world doesn’t even notice. The world is not about us. Finally the crowd thins out, the Braves win, and Russell gets a chance to ask Nick, “Has anything like this ever happened on board before? Since you’ve been a bartender, I mean.”

  Nick smiles. “Oh, sure,” he says. “Happens all the time. Though not right here, not at my bar, specifically. This is a first. But they drop like flies on this run. That’s why we all have to get trained in CPR before they’ll hire us.”

  Russell shudders, though this knowledge makes him feel better. “What will we do now? Stop?”

  “Nah.” Nick shakes his head. “They’ll just ice him down and hang on to him. We’ll be in New Orleans by midnight anyway. They can sneak him off while everybody’s asleep.”

  An open boat filled with pretty girls goes by, all of them waving enthusiastically at the Belle of Natchez. One blond jerks up her halter top to show her breasts, round as apples, white against her tan. “Hey, man, am I dreaming? Did you see that?” Nick asks. Lil plays a short chorus of “Dixie” on the calliope as Russell and Nick wave back.

  RUSSELL HAS A LITTLE trouble navigating by the time he finally decides to leave the Calliope Bar and go back down to check on Catherine. He could definitely use a nap himself. Or maybe she’ll be waking up now, stretching, her breasts lifted, he can just imagine it, she’ll be rested and rosy-cheeked and in the mood. But when he finally gets the damn key to work in the damn lock, she’s gone, bed as smooth as if she had never lain there, as if they had never lain there with the curtains open, brown river and changing sky and leafy shore passing by their window like a film on the Discovery Channel. “Well, damn.” Russell sits heavily on the side of the bed but he doesn’t feel like sleeping, he feels like he might never wake up if he goes to sleep now. He can’t think what to do next. Her name comes into his mind. He fumbles his way back out into the corridor, then up the Grand Staircase. He gets one quick, shocking look at himself in the floor-length mirror on the landing—maybe he ought to go back to the stateroom first, clean up some. But then he thinks, Nah . . . He goes out to stand at the rail, sun pounding on his head. But isn’t the sun on the wrong side of the Belle now? Or has he gone crazy? He’s feeling really disoriented. That bridge overhead, for instance, didn’t they just pass under that same bridge a little while ago? What the hell is going on here? Russell is headed for the pilot house when he literally runs into Pete, coming down the narrow metal staircase from the Sun Deck.

  “Hey, Russell. Everything all right?”

  The very fact that Pete asks him this worries Russell. “Sure, yeah—” He shakes Pete’s outstretched hand. But hell, what’s the point of pretending? Behind the square lenses, Pete’s eyes are shrewd and curious.

  Russell hangs on to the metal banister. “I couldn’t help noticing—,” he begins. “I mean, it seems to me that we just went under a bridge that we already went under, earlier today. Correct me if I’m wrong.”

  But Pete grins at him, shaking his head. “Damn if you haven’t caught us out,” he says. “Good for you, buddy. First time in three or four trips.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re absolutely right. It’s the Luling-Destrehan highway bridge which we passed under earlier, going south.” Pete consults his watch. “It’s now 3:40 P.M., and we are, indeed, heading upriver, or north/northwest, to be exact. During dinner, we’ll make a nice slow swing around a big island at about mile 135, a turn so slow you’ll never notice it, and then we’ll be headed south again. So we’ll pass under the Luling-Destrehan bridge yet another time as we ease on down to New Orleans, still going as slow as possible.”

  Russell doesn’t get it. “So what’s the point of all this slowing down and back and forth? Why don’t you just go straight to New Orleans?”

  Pete throws back his head and laughs. “Hell, it would only take us two days, total, from Memphis to New Orleans if we did that. We are enhancing your experience, man. Don’t you feel enhanced?” He pokes Russell in the shoulder, a kind of man-to-man solidarity touching which Russell remembers from football. Russell laughs, too.

  “Say,” Pete adds, “how about putting in a good word for me with Harriet? I’m trying to get her to stay over, let me show her the town.” Pete winks at him.

  “You got it,” Russell promises, though he cannot, for the life of him, see the mystifying attraction of Harriet. There’s no accounting for taste, as Catherine’s mother was so fond of saying. Catherine. Now where is she?

  “See you later, buddy,” he tells Pete. “I’ll work on Harriet for you,” he throws back over his shoulder.

  Russell strolls around the entire Promenade Deck twice, nodding to various people, waving to Nick at the Calliope Bar, without seeing anybody in his party. Finally, on his third lap, he looks into the Grand Saloon through the window and sees the backs of their heads—Catherine, Courtney, and Harriet seated near the door in back while some other godawful thing starts up on stage. He goes inside and grabs a seat behind them.

  “Hey, baby, I’ve been looking all over the place for you,” Russell has just begun when Catherine starts shushing him. Up on stage stands Captain John Dulaney, resplendent in his gold-braided uniform and million-dollar smile, along with the Syncopators, all decked out in black tuxedos, and a round table holding an enormous wedding cake flanked by candelabra blazing away despite the bright sunshine outside the windows. Captain Dulaney nods to Alabama Huey. Alabama Huey raises his baton, and the Syncopators launch into the Wedding March as ten or twelve old men come hesitantly onstage left, joined by their wives who enter right. Everybody is all dolled up: coats and ties for the men, dresses for the women. The men look embarrassed. The women carry bouquets. Now Russell remembers what this is. “My God,” he says.

  “Sssh.” Catherine, Harriet, and Courtney hiss as one.

  Captain Dulaney treats the crowd to his dazzling smile. He raises his arms. “I, John Dulaney, by the power vested in me as the captain of the Belle of Natchez, now pronounce you man and wife. Gentlemen, you may kiss your brides!” A giant kissing session ensues which is really pretty damn sweet, all those old geezers and their ladies. Russell reaches for Catherine.

  “No!” she pulls away. “Russell, come on. Cut it out. These people are serious. Quit
being such a jerk.”

  “Hey, you must have the wrong guy. This is me, Russell, I’m not a jerk. I am serious, damn it! Come on, honey. We were signed up to do this, too, as I recall—weren’t we, girls?” Russell glances darkly at Harriet who giggles, blushing. “So let’s do it. Dance with me?” Out on the parquet dance floor, couples glide and whirl. A few of them mostly stumble and sway, but some of them are splendid dancers, better than Russell ever was or ever will be. Some of them are probably better husbands than he is, too.

  “Baby?” He puts his arms around Catherine from behind, chair and all, awkwardly. “Can I have this dance for the rest of my life?” he sings off key.

  “Russell, stop it. You are really embarrassing me now.” Catherine sounds like she means it. “You’re drunk. And these people are sincere.”

  “I’m sincere, too. Why won’t anybody ever believe me when I’m sincere?” But Russell already knows the answer—it’s because he’s been ironic all his life. He’s like the little boy who cried wolf so much that no one believed it when the real wolf came.

  Catherine keeps trying to pry his arms loose. “Hush,” she says.

  “Okay, then fuck it. Just fuck it, baby.” Suddenly he’s fed up with the whole thing. “Pardon my French,” he says to Courtney, that bitch, she looks like she’s got a poker up her ass right now. She looks away. Russell stands up. “You’d better stay over in New Orleans, honey,” he tells Harriet, who opens and closes her mouth rapidly, like a baby bird. Like a little baby wren, that’s it. These women look like See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil. Russell pauses to grab four plastic flutes of champagne, two in each hand, from Maurice as he goes past with a huge silver tray.

  “Hey, buddy, they’ve got your friend all wrapped up in a tarp and laid out on the Main Deck now, dead as a mackerel. Gonna unload his ass in the Easy, first thing.” Maurice disappears into the crowd.