My Juliet: A Novel

by John Ed Bradley

  M Y J U L I E T

  J O H N E D

  B R A D L E Y

  M Y J U L I E T

  PUBLISHED BY DOUBLEDAY

  a division of Random House, Inc.

  1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036

  DOUBLEDAY and the portrayal of an anchor with a dolphin are trademarks of Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Bradley, John Ed.

  My Juliet/John Ed Bradley.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  1. Man-woman relationships—Fiction. 2. New Orleans

  (La.)—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3552.R2275 M9 2000

  813'.54—dc21

  99-089051

  eISBN 0-385-50240-0

  v1.0

  Copyright © 2000 by John Ed Bradley

  All Rights Reserved

  September 2000

  First Edition

  Contents

  About the Book

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  About The Author

  M Y J U L I E T

  ALSO BY JOHN ED BRADLEY

  T U P E L O N I G H T S

  T H E B E S T T H E R E E V E R W A S

  L O V E & O B I T S

  S M O K E

  D O U B L E D A Y

  N E W Y O R K L O N D O N

  T O R O N T O S Y D N E Y

  A U C K L A N D

  FOR CONNIE DORSEY

  About the Book

  One of the South’s best writers returns

  with a scorching tale of murder and sexual

  obsession in New Orleans

  John Ed Bradley is a writer of great power and intensity whose early novels were ecstatically received by critics. It has been six years since Bradley has published a novel, and he has used that time to craft a noir tour de force that breathes new life into the Southern gothic tradition.

  My Juliet tells the story of a struggling artist, Sonny LaMott, and his obsessive love for Juliet Beauvais, who is Thanatos and Eros all balled up into one nasty, irresistible package. Juliet returns to New Orleans after her years as an “actress” in California, thinking that her mother is about to die and that she will inherit the family mansion. But Juliet discovers she’s been tricked by her mother, so this most fatale of femmes seeks out the damaged Sonny, who still can’t resist her fifteen years after she crushed his heart. With ease, Juliet seduces him anew, nefarious purposes in mind.

  Juliet is an unforgettable character, and the prose and dialogue drip with New Orleans atmosphere. The gothic elements—graveyards, kinky debauchery, decay, melodrama—are superbly rendered, yet the author’s rich sense of humor and pity for his characters make it all vibrant and original. Bradley excels at stretching out an impending sense of doom that hovers over all the players, creating a delicious tension out of out expectation of the worst yet to come.

  With My Juliet John Ed Bradley returns, triumphantly, to the literary scene.

  “HOW’S ABOUT I END WITH A QUEStion, Mother? Do you remember those shoes you and Daddy bought me that Easter at D. H. Holmes on Canal Street when I was little? We played like tourists and toured the French Quarter in a sightseeing buggy and later had lunch at Galatoire’s. I bet you remember.

  “This is how sharp my memory is: you had trout meunière but you sent it back because you said the sauce was too runny. The sauce looked fine to Daddy and me but you always were the type to send your food back. Even after the chef put some starch in it you wouldn’t eat. I guess in your mind that proved something. I guess that proved you were better than me and Daddy and everybody else in the place. For somebody without an ounce of culture you sure were snotty. You had that nose up in the air. You thought you were too good for food.

  “Daddy: Marcelle, dear, please eat.

  “You: Johnny, please don’t embarrass me.

  “Daddy: Are you trying to make a point? I’m not sure I understand.

  “You (voice loud enough to attract stares from diners nearby): I think I said don’t embarrass me. I think I even said please don’t embarrass me. Juliet, did I just say please don’t embarrass me to your father?

  “I didn’t answer. I was too young and unformed yet to calculate a sufficient reply. Well, now that I’m grown I’ve come up with something. Let me give it a try.

  “Me: Shut the fuck up and eat your fish!

  “When we got home I put my shoes on and Daddy said don’t run in the grass, baby, I’d stain them. So, me, I took to the sidewalk. I loved them things. I loved the soft white calfskin and the shine and I loved the silk bows and the maker’s stamp on the leather bottoms. Daddy watched from his chair on the gallery and I could hear him laughing and yelling and rooting me on. I actually ran staring down at my feet to see my shoes they were so pretty. Back and forth I went on the sidewalk, dizzy from looking down, wild with joy. Was I innocent once or what? Goddamn right I was innocent.

  “I ran maybe fifty yards like that, and then when I rammed into the lamppost on the corner and nearly knocked myself out I could hear Daddy screaming and hurrying to help and the maid close behind but where were you, white girl? (My guess is you were hiding in the kitchen, eating cold trout out of a doggie bag.)

  “Daddy put me to bed and I lay there with a knot on my head crying under the covers while you chased him down the stairs with a hairbrush and blamed and cursed him and called him ninny and queer when all along you knew it was the shoes. What kind of wife were you, anyway? What kind of mama? Didn’t you realize my door was open? Didn’t you understand I had ears?

  “Mother, at this moment I see your nightgown pulled up to your waist, your dimply thighs and nest of unruly gray pubes. How quiet you are for a change. Did it hurt when he lifted the club high and whacked your big, fat noggin? What about his hands on your neck? How did that feel?

  “I see blood at your lips and your nose leaking some too. Your eyes being open I can’t help but wonder what they see. Surely not that crystal chandelier you seem to be staring at. Maybe it’s a light shining bright at the end of a tunnel. Maybe the angels are welcoming you home.

  “Well, I guess I’ve provided enough proof for now. I’d stuff this thing down your throat but I’d rather not get my hands dirty. Along with the blood, I’m seeing something else suddenly. What is that, by the way? Meunière sauce?

  “Oh, and one last thing: If you bump into Daddy please tell him his little girl is some kind of lonesome.”

  1

  LAST OF THE WHISKEY CONSUMED, the butt of his cheap Honduran cigar smoldering in a glass tray, Louis Fortunato staggers to his feet finally and slips the unlabeled videocassette into the VCR. It’s what he came for, after all. And Sonny, if not yet drunk, is having a hard time staying awake.

  “You sure you want to see this?” Louis says, punching buttons on the machine. “Hey, Sonny? I need to know, man. You sure you want to see this?”

  Sonny LaMott, slow to open his eyes, sits up tall on the little Naugahyde sofa by the window. “It’s not that I want to,” he says. “I need to, brother. We both do.”

  The audio is poor and she makes more noise than either of them remembers but it’s Juliet all right: the great head of hair, the hungry mouth, the breasts capped with nipples no different in color than the too-pale flesh around them. She’s sitting on a corduroy love seat with panties looped around one ankle, a thin gold chain around the other. Her legs are sprea
d open. A mound of expertly trimmed pubic hair, the same golden shade as the hair on her head, holds the middle of the screen.

  “Jesus,” Louis says with a whistle, then abruptly breaks it off.

  A man has entered the picture. He is tall and narrowly constructed, with a mole on his lower belly. It looks like a mole, anyway, although as easily it could be a botched tattoo. When after some encouragement from Juliet the man’s penis comes up, Sonny lowers his head and looks away. He has to swallow, and this is difficult. Where on earth do they find guys like that? he wonders.

  Juliet is happy and energetic, loud when expressing her pleasure, all too eager to please. Give her partner credit, he doesn’t pander. He goes at it, working with concentration so high in his face that he could be trying to solve a math problem.

  “This way . . .”

  “Everything.”

  “Like that?”

  “Come on, you. Give it to me. . . .”

  Even louder than in the old days, if that is possible. To end it, Juliet uncorks a cry that sounds like an animal being tortured.

  Sonny is about to say something when Louis, leaning close to the screen, snaps his head back and lets go a low gurgle of laughter. “God, man, can you believe the dick on this guy?”

  The screen dissolves to bands of crackling white on a black field. The whole room, they’re in Sonny’s house, buzzes in the sudden silence.

  Louis puts a fresh cigar in his mouth and lights it leaning into a burner on the kitchen stove.

  Sonny, able to control himself no longer, retreats to the bathroom and weeps at the sink, scooping hands of water to his face.

  He isn’t there long when the sound of the movie comes again, the sound of Juliet like that.

  “Hey, Sonny, does she still have her mannerisms?” Louis says to the empty space, his words mangled for the stogie in his mouth.

  When Sonny returns to the living room Louis is crouched in front of the TV, pressing buttons and making the tape squeal in the box. “You want me to leave this with you?” he says. “Or you want me to take it? Better I take it, huh?”

  “Leave it,” Sonny says. “Leave it so I can put it out with the trash in the morning.”

  He throws the curtains open, a cloud of sun-bright dust spiraling around him. The effects of the whiskey have dissipated and all that remains is a taste of aluminum in his mouth. Sonny stands looking out past Chartres Street in the direction of the river, eyes drawn to a squint, lips bunched up close. Past the top of the levee and the Pauline Street Wharf the spires and funnels of a freighter move by.

  Maybe it was the camera angle that made the guy look like that. What in school when he was a kid they called an optical illusion.

  Now Sonny wonders if he ever satisfied her at all.

  “Didn’t I tell you she went crazy? I believe it now, brother, your girl went nuts.”

  “Just get out of my house, Louis.”

  “You remember Adelaide Valentine, right? Well, blame Adelaide for this. Don’t blame me. She came in the restaurant the other night and she’d just found out about it herself—”

  “Louis, did you hear what I said?”

  “Your Juliet grew up to be a head case, brother. In and out of those drug clinics where nobody ever gets fixed. Arrested so many times for possession they named a wing after her in the county jail. Sonny, you have any questions call Adelaide.”

  “What will it take to make you go home?”

  “Sometimes you act like you’re the only guy who ever had it bad for a girl. You think you’re special that way? Jesus Christ, man, have another look. Look at the little sweetheart you’ve been pining away for.”

  “Get out, you sonofabitch. I mean it.”

  Louis leaves the tape in the machine and limps to the door, his nub sucking and squeaking where it meets the leather sleeve of his prosthesis. It’s a noise Sonny has never been able to get used to, even after all these years. At the door Louis turns back around. “Remember I only did this for your own good.”

  “Yeah? Well, thanks. Do I seem all better now?”

  After he’s gone Sonny cleans up the room then falls asleep on the sofa and sleeps so hard that when he wakes a couple of hours later he isn’t sure where he is. He’s a kid again. His father’s outside on the lawn with a can of beer watching purple martins cut circles in the air above the birdhouse. His mother isn’t dead years now but in the kitchen making supper. If he were to pick up the phone he could dial the Beauvais and hear the voice of Juliet, telling him their plans for the evening: “I was thinking we could start in the Quarter. I have an envie for oysters. Ever have an envie for something, Sonny? Ever get where you have to have it and if you don’t have it you feel like you could just die? Do you love me like that, Sonny? Tell me how much you love me, Sonny. Tell me you love me so much that if you don’t have me you’ll just die. Tell me you have an envie for Julie, baby . . .”

  Sonny sits up and lets the world reach him. The noise of ships unloading at the wharf, the stink from the seafood plant down the street. It takes him a minute to understand that he’s alone in the Bywater, that he’s Sonny at the surprising age of thirty-two: no wife, no kids, no family but what passes as his father in an Arabi nursing home. No birds outside, no food to eat. No nothing, really, but that tape in the VCR.

  He watches it again, revisiting the part with Juliet half a dozen times, his face less than a foot from the screen. “Everything,” she says. “Give it to me . . .”

  Sonny recalls the line from the days when they were together. “What do you dream for us?” he asked her. “I know what I want,” he said. “I want everything. Don’t you want everything, Julie?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Oh, yes, Sonny. Everything. Give it to me. . . . Yes . . .”

  Now when Sonny cries he doesn’t care how loud he is or who hears.

  She comes home finally. It is April 1986, nearly fifteen years since she last saw the place, now as her plane descends a mossy green pod surrounded by fields of black water, still spooky as shit. “Oh, you,” she whispers sadly to the view from her oval window.

  She comes home wearing a light summer dress and big, blocky clogs with three-inch soles. Her Walkman plays a compendium of dance tracks from the decade before: the Bee Gees, Donna Summer, K. C. & the Sunshine Band. She doesn’t look like a girl who once acted in dirty movies but rather like one who’s just finished exams at college and who’s coming home for semester break. Sleep past noon, catch a tan by the pool, eat a plate of red beans at Mother’s then sip a few at Pat O’s. That’s Juliet. She carries a dog-eared paperback on self-actualization that a fellow traveler left on the seat next to hers, and she reads half a page before encountering a trash can in the main concourse and throwing it away.

  As Juliet strides through New Orleans International, her shoes clopping on the dull, gum-pocked tiles, people look at her in a way that she considers unkind if not outright rude. If they know about her time in front of the camera, however, nobody says anything. She would like to tell them all to go fuck themselves. Never does it occur to Juliet that they’re staring because she is beautiful. Some people have a natural aversion to anyone who has sex, she has decided, and it doesn’t matter with whom that person is having it—whether a marriage partner or, as in her recent case, professionals.

  Every now and then, feeling exhausted by things, Juliet has an urge to walk up to a stranger and say, “Wanna do it?” And today is one of those times.

  Cutting through Baggage Return, she focuses on an elderly man sitting by himself with a sports magazine and a packet of trail mix. Juliet strides to within a few feet of the man but the words that leave her mouth are not the ones she’d intended to deliver.

  “It’s not the heat so much as the humidity,” she says.

  “No, it isn’t,” the man answers, smiling a mouthful of nuts and yogurt-covered raisins. “But that’s Nawlins for you.”

  She comes home with ten dollars in her pocket and one good credit card. With the cash she buys a c
heese sandwich, a mound of fries, a family-size jug of Coke and a copy of the New Orleans Times-Picayune. With the card she rents a yellow Ford Mustang convertible at the Hertz counter. “Where will you be staying during your visit to New Orleans?” asks the clerk at the desk.