by Tony Dunbar
“Home at last,” Wendell replied weakly. He twitched his nose, trying to decipher the warm richly-odored air, while Edward tipped the driver heavily. They watched him putter away.
Wendell bravely rang the bell.
They stood patiently for a minute or two, assimilating their new, somewhat mildewed surroundings, and then Edward tried the latch. The door creaked open.
Tentatively, they stepped into a cool, backlit grotto. It was a tiny office partitioned by a polished oak counter on which lay a pile of tourist brochures and an open leather guest book. There was also a credit card machine. The space was surprisingly neat and clean and suggested more luxury than the shuttered exterior.
Finding no one in attendance, Edward tinkled the silver bell on the counter. After a moment, from the beaded curtain behind, a slender figure entered, dressed in a plum leather vest and tight black pants and looking remarkably feline. She had straight black hair, and had chosen glossy black lipstick. There were silver bracelets on her wrists. Her voice had an accent they couldn’t place, but which seemed somehow incongruous with her appearance. A local resident might have recognized it as Chalmette.
“How may I help you?” she asked.
“Edward Doyle. Wendell Rappold. Reservations for the week,” Edward said.
“Now where is that book,” the woman, apparently the person in charge, said. She rummaged about under the counter. “I’m just sort of filling in for the owner of the place while he’s out. Which could be a long time. Okay,” she said and came up with a lacquered clipboard.
With obvious amazement she said, “I see your names right here. There’s a note, too. Let me see if I can read it.” She turned the board sideways. “Want street view. Want privacy,” she read slowly. She put a finger to her lips. Her nails were enameled black. “I guess I’ll put you in the annex.” She winked.
“Is that good?” Wendell asked.
“I would like it.” She smiled and found a key.
“Follow me,” she said, floating around the counter. She stepped through the archway to the hot street outside. She led them around the corner and down the block, to three granite steps ascending to a tall green shuttered doorway.
“Nobody knows how big this place is.” She explained as she worked her key into the old Yale lock. “I think Sidney truthfully owns the whole block. Lots of freaks live on this street. Lots of ’em,” she added to herself. She threw the green shutters aside and stepped in.
She couldn’t find a light switch but knew where some long pink candles were kept.
The two visitors, enthralled by the sense of having fallen through the looking glass, waited at the edge of the sunlight while she got the candles lit. Carefully, she placed one in a saucer on the dining room table and the other on the floor by a fat stuffed sofa in the living room.
“Come on in,” she urged. “I’ve already found you three bottles of wine.”
Oil paintings of old men in muttonchop whiskers came alive in the glow. A comfortable couch, a tall ceiling, narrow shafts of daylight entering horizontally through the slits in the shutters closed over the windows, slowly emerged from the darkness.
“Isn’t it nice?” she asked. “I’m looking for light bulbs.”
She found some in a cupboard.
“Don’t you want to imprint my card?” Edward, very honest, asked.
“Maybe I should,” she said, as if the thought of payment had just struck her. “Want to give it to me?”
“I guess.” Edward located his wallet and handed the green plastic over to her.
“I’ll leave it up front for Sidney,” she said, and drifted outside.
By candlelight, Edward and Wendell began poking about their new digs. Edward, mystified about how he had lost possession of his American Express card, stumbled upon a yellowing issue of a magazine called Gambit that had a map of Lee Harvey Oswald landmarks. Wendell discovered the Merlot.
“I like this place,” Edward said, tossing the magazine aside.
“Do you think they know we’re here?” Wendell asked, seeking a corkscrew.
“I wonder if she’ll bring back my card.”
“Shall I close the door?”
“Never mind.” Edward uncorked the bottle he was handed and dropped the lead foil to the floor. He moved into the sunlight washing through the doorway, leaned against the wall and sighed. “Let’s just let it happen.”
CHAPTER IV
Tubby’s favorite part of Mardi Gras was Thoth. If what you wanted to do was crash into people, drink beer, eat fried chicken, and hop around for rubber monkeys, almost any parade would do. Over the past twenty-five or thirty years, he supposed he had made a fool of himself at the feet of every king, duke, knight, maid, and big shot in the Carnival Kingdom, sometimes with a screaming child on each shoulder and sometimes with nobody but himself to blame. He had carted home wheelbarrows full of trinkets and couldn’t tell you where any of them were today. He had shouted himself hoarse, stared awestruck at teenage bosoms, and swiped bouncing cups from the grasp of babes. Of Mardi Gras, he had seen it all. What he liked best was Thoth.
It was a nice old parade that rolled slowly through the neighborhood he lived in on the Sunday morning before Mardi Gras Day. It followed a circuitous route past the numerous old folks’ homes and hospitals that dotted the area. The theme was cheering up the shut-ins. If you picked a location near a platoon of old gray-haired gents or ladies in wheelchairs you were certain to get clobbered with beads. There were also some convents along the way, and the nuns who came out on the sidewalk in their habits got tons of good stuff, too.
Since the krewe rode Uptown in the daylight, there were hordes of children out for the event. As far as some of the little kids knew, this was Mardi Gras. Their parents never ventured out of doors on Fat Tuesday itself because, hell, nowadays you could watch the whole thing on television. And when you wanted a cold beer and a ham sandwich, or needed to use the bathroom, hey, no problem.
Lots of people Tubby knew held Thoth parties. Usually they would open their homes or backyards an hour before the parade. They would set out the tiny muffalettas, or the roast beef, or light that crawfish pot and start mixing Bloody Marys right after they fed the kids breakfast. Then all the little boys and girls could run around like maniacs, painting their faces and spreading rumors about when the parade would pass, while their parents and grandparents enjoyed the sunshine outside and carried on the city’s oldest tradition.
Since his divorce from Mattie, Tubby had noticed with interest and some regret how their once-common friends had dealt with party invitations. Mainly, he did not get as many. First to abandon him were several high-class attorneys who lived in the immediate environs of his old house on State Street. They had correctly understood that it was Mattie Dubonnet who was the more scintillating around the grillades and grits and that Tubby, though undeniably a lawyer, kept a fishing boat in his driveway. He did not truly view them as companions.
Tubby had, however, kept the cream of the crop in his opinion. Such as Jerry Molideau, the financial advisor, who lived on Chestnut with his girlfriend Bonita. She was good enough to send Tubby an invitation to their annual pre-Thoth celebration addressed by hand to “Tubby Dubonnet and Guest.”
Collette, his youngest daughter, had agreed to join him for the occasion. She still lived at home with her mother. On the phone she offered to meet her father at Magazine and Jefferson, right where the parade passed and in the thick of the crowd. Knowing her proclivity for diversion, he said he would pick her up instead and they would walk together down State Street. Okay, they made a deal.
So now he found himself by the curb outside the house where he and Mattie had raised a family, and he was wondering if she would ever paint the porch. He had mowed around the trees and azaleas in this front yard so many times he could probably do it in his sleep, and he had to admit he missed it. But did he miss Mattie, who still called herself Dubonnet? Not on your life.
“Well, hello Tubby,” she said when
she answered the bell. She gave him a big smile. A discreet golden favor from an old Comus ball adorned her perennially tanned, attractive, and not-forgotten chest. The rest of her was stylishly draped in a white, fairylike beach dress.
He grinned in admiration and shook his head, and was glad he was wearing sunglasses so she couldn’t see his eyes.
“You’re looking good,” he said honestly.
“Are we ready to go?” Collette brushed past her mother.
At fifteen, she was a smaller version of the original, just developing some pretty significant curves. Until the last year she had been real smart in school. Now, like her mother, she was starting to expect to be the center of attention in any crowd larger than three and was generally getting to be a know-it-all. Unlike her mother, she still loved Tubby.
“Ready and waiting,” he said.
“Then let’s head out.” Collette took her father’s elbow, turned him around, and hustled him down the walk to the gate that was about to fall off its hinges.
“I’ll be at the Ormonds,” Mattie called, to let Tubby know she was still in demand. Poinsette Ormond was among the high-class attorneys he was personally glad to be rid of. “Maybe I’ll see y’all at the parade.”
Tubby was halfway down the block before he let his stomach out. Brief encounters with the ex-wife were always nerve-wracking.
“Are you in a hurry to get to the parade?” he asked Collette, who was prodding him on ahead.
“No, I’m just glad to get out of the house,’ she said in exasperation.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, trying to match her stride down the oak-lined sidewalk, sections of which had been broken and lifted by the trees’ massive roots. They were passing lovely homes and tended hedges, all belonging to his former neighbors.
“You know how Mattie is. She just keeps asking questions. Who am I talking to on the telephone. Why Brenda is dropping out of school. Just bugging me all the time.”
“You call your mother Mattie?”
“When she’s like that, I do. She’s absolutely convinced I’m going to start doing drugs and pierce my nose and go grunge.”
These were exactly Tubby’s fears.
“Ha. Ha,” he laughed.
“Really,” she said in agreement. She waved at some boys in ragged blue jeans and baseball caps sitting on the wide steps between the columns of a grand old wooden porch.
“So you don’t like nose rings?” he asked.
“They may look fine on somebody eighteen, but not on a girl my age,” she said sensibly.
His brow furrowed.
“Will we have to stay long at the Molideaus? What are you supposed to call them? They’re not married, are they?”
“Her last name is Gayoso. Just call him Mr. Molideau and her Ms. Gayoso. We’ll stay awhile and get something to eat and then go to the parade. We can go back to their house whenever we want and use the bathroom.”
“Why don’t they get married? Haven’t they been together for years and years?”
“I have no idea,” Tubby said. “They own the house together. I guess they just have their own jobs and want to keep their lives a little bit separate.”
“I think that’s so cool.”
He did not have a chance to find out what part of the arrangement she found cool because they reached the gate of the Molideau yard.
“Howdy, stranger.” Bonita, in yellow shorts and a Crescent City Classic T-shirt greeted them. “Is this Collette? Honey, you’ve grown!”
Collette got through the introductions without a hitch, and it did not take her long to find the teenagers she knew who had isolated themselves in a distant corner of the yard. Having been abandoned by his escort, Tubby joined the men standing around the pirogue full of ice and Langenstein’s Lager.
“Make way for lawyer Dubonnet.” Jerry, hale and hearty with beer foam on his upper lip, pressed a wet bottle into Tubby’s fist.
“Happy Mardi Gras, son,” he said. “Let’s get this day going right.”
Tubby inhaled deeply the peppery vapors of crawfish steaming and took a long cool swallow. It looked like they even had an entire turkey frying in one of those pots. A child darted in for a handful of ice, and somewhere a clock chimed eleven.
“I saw you on the Angela Show,” somebody said to Tubby. “You were talking about some scam a drug company was running over at the Moskowitz Labs. Or was it a murder?”
“It was a murder,” Tubby said, accepting a fried oyster from a tow-headed six-year-old in charge of a full tray.
“Yeah, it was a very interesting program.”
“I tell you what, Angela’s really great,” Tubby said.
“She always has on them earrings.”
“Yeah. I thought she was real nice looking.”
“Didn’t I see you come in here with some babe?”
“Uh, that was my daughter.”
“Oh. Have another beer.”
And where could she have gotten to, Tubby wondered, looking around.
* * *
An old man named Russell Ligi was getting more and more nervous, which made him more and more angry, the longer he had to wait at the Algiers Ferry landing. He was sitting in his car with his door open, feet planted on the iron ramp, furiously puffing a Swisher Sweet. A seagull landed beside him, and he kicked at it. His instructions had been to take the eleven o’clock boat and someone would contact him. The ferry was late, of course. He had been watching it piss around on the far side of the river for half a hour. He desperately needed to use the can.
The boat finally chugged up and discharged its load, and a punk in an orange vest waved him aboard. By then, Ligi was ready to pop off at anyone who volunteered. A dozen other vehicles rumbled onto the ferry behind him, and they were all crammed together in three tight rows on the open deck.
As soon as he could shut his engine off Ligi was out of the car. He leaned on the rail and crushed the butt of his cigar into the sheet metal deck with his heel. Sunlight broke through the overcast sky for a moment, causing the river to sparkle wildly. He had to squint to see the face of the large, square-jawed man who had appeared on the railing beside him.
“Ligi?” the man asked.
“Yeah, sure!”
“C’mon, let’s get in my car.”
The big man turned away without waiting for a reply and led Ligi to a mustard-colored Cadillac parked further back in the jam. Ligi hopped from foot to foot while the man worked the locks. He got in and slammed the door.
“So? What?” Ligi had out another of his Sweets and tapped it on the dashboard.
The stranger, with curly blond hair worn long to cover a few sparse patches, stared at Ligi until the old man stopped fidgeting.
“Mr. Ligi, the deal is all set. That’s what I’m supposed to tell you. The sale is going ahead. I’ve got the papers right here for you to sign.”
“Sign? Right now? What about the fucking letter I told them about? You got that?”
“We’re getting it. It will all be taken care of.”
“You got old Parvelle to give it up? What’s that old thief getting out of this?”
“That’s not your affair. You made your deal, and the deal is going down on Mardi Gras Day.”
“You got to be fucking joking,” Ligi sputtered. “When do I get paid? Why am I signing now in the front seat of a car on a goddam ferry boat? Where’s my money?”
“You’re going to get it later this week,” the man explained patiently. “Right after Mardi Gras.”
“This is bullshit, sonny. That’s what the chickees say when they’re trying to talk some guy into marrying them. After that it’s ‘I’m tired, honey. Oh, I’m so tired.’ Nobody does business like that.”
“Mr. Ligi, I was asked to treat you with respect, considering your age, but if you don’t stop breathing in my face I’m going to smash your fucking head up against that windshield. So listen up.”
Taken aback, Ligi clamped his jaw shut.
“The thing is, you si
gn your deed now. You forget about that letter, like it doesn’t exist. When the investors finish the transaction, which should be in a couple of days, you will get your money. I’ll deliver it personally.”
“And I’m just supposed to trust you?” Ligi shook his head violently.
The big man’s hand shot out and grabbed Ligi’s nose, fixing it in place. Deliberately, he squeezed and twisted slowly one way, then the other, causing Ligi to squirm and stomp his feet on the carpet.
“Ow, ow, ow,” he yelped.
“Mr. Ligi,” the man said, holding him tight, “this ferry is about to dock, and before it does you’re going to sign the documents I brought with me. Then you can go on about your business.”
Mopping the blood off his upper lip with his handkerchief, Ligi signed his name on the sheets of paper as they were pushed in front of him.
“These are supposed to be notarized,” he complained.
“We got a notary.” The stranger folded the papers and put them in his pocket. “You better get back in your car,” he said pleasantly. “We’re there.”
* * *
With sirens whooping and street cleaners gobbling debris and hosing down the pavement, the Thoth parade faded away down Magazine Street. That was it for Tubby.
Walking home after the parade, both weighted down with many, many beads, Collette invited her father to rendezvous with her crowd on Mardi Gras Day. So-and-so was parking a truck at the corner of Third Street and St. Charles, and they would have an ice chest, and everybody could come there and watch Rex and all the trucks. Her sisters, Debbie and Christine, would probably spend part of the day there.
Maybe, he said, but the idea of staying home, hanging out in the backyard, and listening to the beat of distant drums had a lot of appeal, too.
“They’re going to bring a grill and barbecue stuff all day,” she said, which made the invitation a lot more tempting. “They’re going to cook hamburgers and sausage and roast some oysters on the grill.” Perhaps he would take a stroll down there after all, if the weather was nice. The forecast, however, said possible showers.
“It can’t rain on Mardi Gras.” Collette was certain of that.
