I Never Thought I'd See You Again: A Novelists Inc. Anthology

by Неизвестный

  The light turned green and the streetcar lurched across, continuing on its path uptown.

  Why did I get off? Barry wondered as he watched Ricky cross the neutral ground and start across St. Charles.

  Because you want to see where he goes, that’s why. If he hadn’t gotten off so close to your own stop, you wouldn’t have.

  Carly Simon was now Melissa Manchester as he followed Ricky across the street.

  I just need to see where he’s going, that’s all, I should know where he lives, he told himself as he watched Ricky’s slender frame head down Melpomene Street towards the river. If I’d gotten off first that would have been the end of it, but he got off in my neighborhood so I need to see where he’s going. I need to know where he is if he’s living in my neighborhood. I have a right to know where he’s at, don’t I?

  Ricky crossed Prytania Street, but the light had changed by the time Barry got to the corner. He had to wait, as rush hour traffic drove by in both directions, his eyes on the retreating form as he got farther and farther away. By the time Barry could cross, Ricky was crossing Melpomene at the corner at Coliseum, and was soon out of sight.

  But when Barry got to the corner, he saw Ricky crossing the park, waiting at the curb to cross Camp Street. He hurried across the street as Melissa Manchester became Bette Midler. He watched from under a live oak in the park as Ricky went through a black wrought iron gate on the other side of Camp Street, climbed the front steps, slid a key into the lock and opened the front door.

  He lives less than two blocks away from me, Barry thought, feeling the panic rising from deep inside. He put a hand up against the tree and closed his eyes, listening to his heart leaping inside his ribcage. He focused, as the long-ago therapist taught him, on the sound and rhythm of his heart, slowly imagining it softer and quieter, until it was the sound of waves lapping against a white sand beach, beautiful clear green water cresting softly with white foam. Once his heart was beating normally again, he crossed Coliseum Street and walked on the other side, never taking his eyes away from the fuschia Victorian and the big green door Ricky Livaudais had disappeared behind.

  Before he knew it he was unlocking his front door and stepping into the air conditioning inside. His orange striped cat howled and wrapped himself around Barry’s legs as he stood there, leaning back against the door. He slid the deadbolt into place and put the chain on. Breathing deeply, he fed the cat and sank down into an easy chair. The phone was blinking, so he pressed the message button.

  “BEEP. Hi, this message is for Barry Monteith. This is Lawrence Schindler. It’s been a long time, hasn’t it? I hope this is still your number. I have to apologize for not contacting you sooner, but I only just got the notice myself and I thought you should know they’ve released Ricky Livaudais. Yes, he was sentenced to eleven years but he got out early for good behavior. I’m sure this is a shock to you — it was to me too — but he has done his time, Barry, and I hope you can remember that, appreciate it. I know it’s hard but you have to let the past go. He’s free, he’s paid his debt to society and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. He was just the driver, remember — the others won’t be eligible for parole for at least another seven years, if then. If you need to, you can call me at —”

  Barry depressed the erase button. There was no need to call Lawrence Schindler.

  He walked into the kitchen and, for the first time in four years, poured himself a drink.

  The vodka tasted good. Tasted, in fact, like another glass.

  That would have been the end of it, really, if it weren’t for the fact that it seemed he ran into Ricky Livaudais everywhere he went. Standing in line to buy toilet paper at Walgreen’s, the front doors would open and there he would be, walking in and picking up a shopping basket, sliding it onto his tattooed arm before disappearing down the aisles. At Zara’s Grocery, when Barry walked in to buy lettuce and vegetables for a salad, there he was at the cash register, buying a loaf of bread and a pack of cigarettes and a really cheap bottle of gin. When he walked to the Burger King when he didn’t feel like making dinner, there Ricky was at the soda fountain, filling up an extra large plastic cup with Coke before picking up his greasy bag and walking out the front door.

  Everywhere he turned, Ricky was there in some kind of sleeveless T-shirt and those damned droopy-drawer baggy jeans and a baseball cap turned sideways on top of his head.

  And whenever their eyes met, there was no recognition in Ricky’s. He would just turn away and go about whatever it was he was doing.

  It was frustrating, infuriating. He wanted to scream at Ricky, how dare you not know who I am?

  And every time he saw Ricky, he’d come back home and pour himself a glass of vodka, watching television but not seeing or comprehending what was on the screen as he slowly drank the vodka down, letting it cool his body and his temper, settle his mind down and let him relax.

  And yet somehow he always found himself on Coliseum Street, walking slowly along while his music played into his earbuds, his eyes glancing every so often to the big fuchsia house, wondering what Ricky was doing, if he was home, sitting on his couch planning on destroying someone else’s life.

  He certainly had an aptitude for it.

  Three weeks after Barry saw Ricky that first time on the streetcar, he began frequenting the coffee shop at the corner of Race and Magazine. He would get a cup of coffee and walk back up Camp Street to the corner at Melpomene. Some mornings he’d stop in front of the big fuchsia house and stare at the green door, wondering if Ricky was awake yet, if he was drinking coffee inside, wondering what he would say if the green door opened and Ricky came out suddenly and unexpectedly.

  One morning he walked up the sloping driveway and looked into the parking lot behind the big wrought iron fence, wondering if any of the cars back there were Ricky’s — but reminding himself that it was unlikely — hadn’t he first seen Ricky on the streetcar?

  But maybe his car had been in the shop — mine had been, hadn’t it?

  He heard a door opening in the rear of the house and he hurried back down to the sidewalk, glanced down the street and ran across to the park on the other side, sitting down on a cement bench in the shade of an ancient live oak tree. He watched as a young woman with reddish blonde hair climbed into a green Honda about the same age as the live oak, opened the gate with a remote control and drove down the slope and out onto Camp Street. She gave him an odd look when she stopped at the foot of the drive, and he panicked for a moment.

  He got up and walked back home, deciding it was time to forget about Ricky Livaudais.

  That was the smart thing to do, after all.

  He went about the business of living his life for three days before Ricky invaded his world again. Barry’s routine was always the same: he got up every morning and went to the gym, worked out, came home, ate breakfast and went to work. He then came home every night and fed the cat, relaxed without the vodka and was, in general, feeling rather pleased with himself when he ran into Ricky Livaudais in the most unusual place.

  It was a Friday, and his boss’ birthday. “Meet us for drinks tonight,” his boss insisted. “You never do anything with us anymore. It won’t kill you.”

  He agreed, not really wanting to but figuring it would do no harm to go to the Brass Rail. He met his co-workers and their friends there at nine, and at nine thirty on the dot the door back behind the pool table opened and several young men wearing only underwear came out to peddle their wares and dance for dollars. He’d never really cared for the Brass Rail — he knew it was snobbish to feel the way he did about the bar, but he couldn’t help it. There was just something enormously sad to him about the place, the dancers, and the patrons who parted with dollar bills to grope the lithe young bodies of the dancers. In other bars the dancers didn’t get to him the way the ones in the Brass Rail did. There was something seedy and sad in their neediness. They didn’t turn him on — rather, they made him feel kind of sad.

  But he was relaxing an
d having a good time when he froze with his vodka tonic halfway to his lips.

  Ricky Livaudais was climbing up onto the bar in red bikini briefs.

  At first, Barry was certain he was seeing things. It couldn’t be — not Ricky Livaudais, surely not. But as he watched him start shaking his narrow hips from side to side on the other side of the bar, he saw the sunburst tattoo at the base of his neck and knew it was him. There was another tattoo — the word DESTINY written in blue ink and old English lettering, across his lower back just above the waistband of the red bikinis. And there was the tattoo on the inner forearm.

  Yes, it was most definitely Ricky Livaudais.

  Ricky slowly started moving across the top of the bar, making way for another, more muscular young man to climb up where he’d just been dancing. Beyonce began wailing through the speakers about divas being the female version of hustlers, and he couldn’t take his eyes away from Ricky as he coaxed and teased dollar bills from men around the bar.

  He wasn’t the handsomest stripper, nor did he have the best body, nor did he have the biggest package neatly wrapped up inside thin cotton underwear.

  But there was just something about Ricky.

  He couldn’t look away, no matter how much he wanted to.

  Barry wasn’t sure what he would do when Ricky made it to where he and his friends were standing.

  “That’s hot,” he heard his boss say as Ricky stepped over several drinks on the bar until he was standing just above them, moving his hips from side to side.

  He swallowed and looked up.

  His eyes locked on Ricky’s, and Ricky looked confused.

  Ricky knelt down. “Do I know you from somewhere?” he said above the music, which was now Lady Gaga bitching about getting a telephone call on the dance floor. Ricky’s knees were spread apart, only inches away from Barry’s arms on either side. Ricky’s head was tilted to one side, his eyebrows furrowed together.

  You murdered my boyfriend, Barry wanted to scream at the top of his lungs. Instead, he shrugged. “Maybe.” He managed to sound calm and nonchalant, just another gay man in a gay bar talking to a stripper in red underwear. “You do look kind of familiar to me.”

  A smile spread across Ricky’s face, and Barry was sickened to realize how handsome he actually was. The green eyes lit up, and the stern, angry looking features relaxed into the face of a good looking young man, the kind of young man you’d want to wake up next to every morning. “You shop at Zara’s!” Ricky said excitedly, snapping his fingers, delighted with himself for remembering. “You live in my hood!” Ricky placed both hands on Barry’s shoulders. “I knew I recognized you!”

  The hands on his shoulders burned him through the tight T-shirt Barry was wearing. They felt like acid devouring his flesh, insidiously eating their way into his nervous system. He swallowed, resisting the urge to throw Ricky’s hands off him, to toss the cheap vodka tonic in his face, to shove him hard enough to knock him backwards off the bar and maybe even crack his skull or snap his neck when he hit the floor. “I do live in the lower Garden District,” Barry replied slowly. “I guess maybe I’ve seen you around.” He was amazed at how calm and even his voice sounded, now that contact was being made. He thought he’d be more nervous, that his heart would pound so loudly others could hear it. He was proud of himself, more proud than he perhaps should have been. His hands weren’t even shaking. His only reaction was the sudden dryness of his mouth and throat. He took another sip of his vodka tonic.

  Ricky leaned forward and pressed his lips against Barry’s ear. “How long you gonna be here?” His breath felt hot against Barry’s neck, as one hand slid down Barry’s torso. “Maybe you could give me a ride home?”

  Barry swallowed. “How late you going to be working?”

  Ricky looked around. “I can leave in an hour if I want.” He swallowed. “There’s too many guys working tonight for me to make much money, anyway.”

  “Okay,” Barry replied, looking into the deep green eyes just inches away from his own. They were, he reflected, really beautiful.

  “I’ll be back.” Ricky smiled at him, and stood back up to his full height on the bar, and started dancing his way down to the next group of men.

  His co-workers teased him about his ‘encounter,’ but their jaws dropped when Ricky came walking up a little over an hour later, a bag slung over his right shoulder, ready to leave. Barry made his goodbyes to his openly envious co-workers and headed out the front door with Ricky.

  “I didn’t mean for you to leave your friends,” Ricky said finally, when they were inside Barry’s car and he was pulling away from the curb.

  “I don’t mind,” Barry replied. “It was my boss’ birthday. I don’t really go out that much. I don’t much care for it.”

  “You don’t?” Ricky looked out the window.

  “Since I quit smoking the smoke bothers me,” Barry said with a slight shrug of his shoulders. “And I don’t really like to drink all that much anymore, either. No, if it hadn’t been my boss’ birthday, I would have probably stayed home tonight.”

  “And we wouldn’t have met.”

  We’ve kind of already met — you just don’t remember me.

  Ricky laughed. “I don’t know your name, I just realized I didn’t ask.”

  “Barry.”

  “I’m Ricky.”

  They smiled at each other while stopped at the light at Canal Street.

  “It’s so weird that we live in the same neighborhood,” Ricky went on when the light turned green. “And that we shop at the same places and all. I knew as soon as I saw you tonight that I knew you from somewhere — oh, turn here. I live on Camp Street, close to the corner at Melpomene.”

  “So I should go down to Magazine?” Barry asked.

  “Uh huh.”

  Ricky didn’t speak again until after Barry turned onto Camp Street. “Pull up here — oh, good, there’s a spot right in front.”

  Barry maneuvered the car into the spot in front of the fuchsia house, and cut the engine. “Well, here you are.” He smiled brightly.

  “Oh, come on in.” Ricky smiled back at him, opening the passenger side door. “I know you don’t smoke cigarettes, but I’ve got some awesome weed that’ll blow your mind.”

  “Just for a little while.” Barry hesitated with his hand on the car door handle. Maybe he does remember me. What if this is some kind of trick? To get me inside? And he has friends waiting, so they can do to me what they did to Thomas?

  He looked back into Ricky’s green eyes, and chided himself for being so paranoid. He opened the car door and got out, following Ricky through the gate and up the front steps. Ricky fumbled in the darkness for his keys, apologizing — “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve asked them to fix that damned light” — and finally getting the door open. He flicked on the lights and shut the door behind Barry.

  Almost immediately, Barry felt sorry for Ricky.

  The place was big, but it was empty. There was a tiny television mounted on top of milk crates, and the furniture — originally intended to sit on a nice suburban patio — was now threadbare and decrepit. The whole place felt unlived in — transitory rather than a home. There was a battered and scarred plywood coffee table in front of what passed for a couch. There was a paper plate with chicken bones and a big grease spot sitting on it, with a dirty steak knife and fork on either side. He sat down on one of the rusty patio chairs and felt it give a little under his weight. Ricky tossed his bag into a corner and went into the kitchen, coming back with a joint and a lighter in his hand.

  “The place is kind of a dump,” Ricky said as he lit the joint, sitting down in a chair next to Barry’s. “I’ve been here a little over a month.” He inhaled and offered Barry the joint. He blew the smoke out with a hacking cough. “It’s harsh, though,” he choked the words out as Barry took a dainty hit from the joint. “Be careful.”

  Barry didn’t hold the smoke in. “Where were you before?”

  “Prison.” Ricky t
ook another hit, and pinched it out when Barry refused to take it from him. “Don’t freak out, man. I made a mistake — a major mistake — when I was a kid and I went to jail for eight years.”

  Barry looked down at his hands. “What did you do?”

  “I don’t know that I really want to talk about it yet.” Ricky leaned forward in the chair and pulled his T-shirt over his head.

  “You killed someone?”

  Ricky stared at him. “No, no I didn’t. My friends did. I was driving that night.” He swallowed and closed his eyes. “You have no idea how many times I’ve wished I stayed home that night. NO idea. I thought — you know, I just thought we were driving around wasting time, throwing back a few beers — I didn’t know they wanted to — ” He slumped down. “Can we talk about something else?” He swallowed and opened his eyes again. There was a sad, almost repentant look on his face. He looked like nothing more than a sad little boy who’d done something wrong and was terribly sorry. “I can still hear that guy screaming as they beat him to death…” He winced and his eyes filled with tears. He wiped at them, closing them again.

  Barry reached over and touched his arm. His skin was damp and hot. “The guilt must be really terrible,” he said softly. “I’m not sure I could live with it, you know? I mean, the pain the guy must have suffered…the people he left behind.”

  Ricky’s eyes remained closed. “Every night I can hear the guy screaming.” He shook his head and a greasy tear slid out from his right eye.

  “That must be so awful for you,” Barry whispered as he picked up the steak knife sitting on the plywood coffee table and shoved it into the soft skin underneath Ricky’s chin. “I’ve heard him screaming every night since you and your bastard friends killed him, you know.” Blood spurted, and Ricky’s eyes opened wide for a moment. He gurgled, trying to reach for Barry with both hands.

  Barry moved out of his reach and watched as Ricky’s eyes went glassy with death.

  Barry stared at him for a few moments as the blood pumped out and gushed down Ricky’s throat, soaking his T-shirt.