My Juliet: A Novel

by John Ed Bradley

  But by now Sonny is asleep, too far gone to answer.

  Five hours later, at a little after eight o’clock, a hard knocking at the front door awakens Sonny to an empty bed, sheets wrapped around his legs.

  Sonny comes to with a fat headache that only gets fatter when he realizes Juliet isn’t there.

  He throws on a robe and pulls the door open. Standing on the landing at the top of the stairs are two men in black plastic raincoats, both of them dripping water.

  Sonny knows they’re cops before they identify themselves.

  The older and more physically substantial of the two gives his name as Lieutenant Peroux. “Me and Sergeant Lentini here are NOPD, Criminal Investigation Division.”

  Peroux looks to Sonny like one of those black Creoles Juliet lectured her mother about, his small, sharp features and fair complexion betraying more French than African blood. His hair, too, is straight and fine with comb lines sweeping from left to right. He’s so wet from the rain that even his mustache shines with glass beads.

  Lentini, in contrast, is small and fat and sports just enough stubble to look stylish. He wears horn-rimmed glasses and a weatherproof golf hat. Sonny can’t decide whether he looks more like a fifties beatnik or an electronics technician on call for cable TV.

  Neither he nor Peroux bothers to show credentials.

  “Is Juliet Beauvais here?” Peroux begins. He has a Yat accent (as in the local colloquialism “Where y’at?”) and one almost as hard and flat as Sonny’s.

  Talking carefully, tightening the sash on his robe: “Ah, no. I’m sorry, Lieutenant. Juliet’s already left.”

  “Did she say where she was going?”

  “No. No, she didn’t.”

  Sonny’s head is pounding and he can barely speak for the dense, cottony weight on his tongue. “Would you like to come in?” He opens the door wider but Peroux stays outside, fingering a page in a reporter’s notebook.

  Lentini, on the other hand, brushes past Sonny without a word, glaring from behind too-thick lenses.

  “Any idea where she might of run off to?” Peroux asks.

  Sonny needs a moment to answer. “She had a room at a hotel downtown.”

  “What hotel was that?”

  “The Lé Dale on Saint Charles. Just down the street from the Hummingbird.” Once again Sonny tries to swallow but can’t get anything down. “Lieutenant, can you tell me what’s the problem?”

  Peroux lowers his gaze and quickly brings it back up, his muddy brown eyes exploring Sonny’s face as if for an answer to a question he isn’t prepared to ask.

  Then from inside Lentini speaks with a tone so low and unaffected he might be describing the room’s thrift-store furnishings. “Somebody got in her mama’s house last night.” He waits until Sonny looks at him. “They killed her.”

  Sonny leaves the doorway and crosses the room and sits on the sofa by the window. Nearly a minute goes by before he starts to cry, then it comes with an intensity that racks his body. The cops watch him without saying anything. Finally when Sonny seems to finish, Peroux knocks on the door as if they just got there. “Hate to interrupt, but can we have a look around?”

  It is hard for Sonny to answer, hard for him to say anything at all.

  “In the room back there . . . mind if we look? You don’t want us to look, just say don’t look.”

  “You can look.”

  But Peroux stays where he is. And it’s Lentini who looks. Sonny hears him opening closet doors, pulling back the shower curtain, rifling drawers.

  “Are you sure it was Juliet’s mother?”

  “Positive, Sonny.” The detective smiles and points a finger. “You are Sonny, right, podna?”

  Lentini returns and flashes a pair of open palms.

  Peroux takes a business card from his wallet and hands it to Sonny. SAMUEL PEROUX, JR., it says, and includes the phone number and South Broad Street address for police headquarters.

  “We’ll be needing to talk again,” he says. “So don’t be going nowheres.”

  Sonny keeps his eyes on the card.

  “You see Miss Beauvais you have her call that number, you hear?” Sonny doesn’t answer and Peroux says, “Hey, podna, I’m talking to you.”

  “I’ll tell her.”

  As soon as they’ve gone, Sonny puts the police chain on the door. In the bathroom he forces a finger down his throat but nothing comes up. He kneels on the floor next to the tub and runs the water and tries a second time. Still nothing.

  He can’t stop shaking and can’t seem to get warm and he lies on the rubber bathmat and holds his legs with his arms. He stays on the floor for nearly an hour then he remembers something and he gets dressed and walks downstairs to the street.

  In the truck he starts with the passenger’s side. Finding nothing, he moves down to the driver’s side and feels under the seat. A Coke can. Paper candy wrappers and empty corn chip bags. Digging deeper, he finds the gloves and ski mask wadded together against the seat frame. He finds a tire jack and an empty can of oil. But the club is gone.

  Sonny is careful not to slam the door.

  He looks back at the house to make sure Florence and Curly Bonaventure aren’t watching.

  It’s no big thing to find a ride, even at this time of night. The old Pontiac rattles to a stop and the passenger door squeaks open. Juliet, standing in a wash of red from the brake lights, flicks her cigarette in the weeds and steps forward trailing smoke. She doesn’t think she can stand being kidnapped and raped just now, but her feet hurt. She bends in the door and spies a brother and his woman, their faces green in the glow from the dash. “Need a ride?”

  “Did you see my thumb?” Juliet says to the man, then gives a loud, dishonest laugh. “Last I checked your thumb needs to do something.”

  “I don’t play by them rules,” he says. “If you’re coming, get in. Otherwise, good night.”

  The woman shoves over and Juliet sits on the torn rubber seat. The window is down and she sticks her elbow out. “I’m going up the street here ’bout half a mile.”

  “On our way, then,” says the woman, as the car thumps over train tracks. “You starting the day or you ending it?”

  Juliet likes the woman’s face, her smile. Also, she smells nice. Sweet, like cane syrup warmed with butter. “My days don’t start or end, sweetie. They just go on and on and on.”

  “I hear you,” says the man, cackling with laughter.

  Juliet wants to ask about their day, but here they are in Faubourg Marigny already. She gets out and bumps the car with a fist as it drives away. The brake lights flash in recognition, then the blinkers, both sides. It is always nice to make new friends, even at three-thirty in the morning when it is a brother and his woman and she wouldn’t be caught dead talking to them in the sensible light of day.

  Her vagina’s sore, but nevertheless Juliet feels deep affection for all mankind.

  She walks a block and arrives at Leonard’s club. Except for the handful of kids hanging out in front the place seems to have packed it in for the night. Inside a couple of boys are stacking chairs and folding tables. At the bar a woman is counting money. And over on the bandstand Leonard is coiling electrical cords.

  Juliet walks up to the foot of the stage. “I’ve got an envie for crawfish étouffée,” she declares in a happy voice.

  “Huh?”

  “You ever get like that? Like your body craves a certain type of food.”

  He nods and returns to his work. “Me, it’s barbecue.”

  “When I get my inheritance I’m going to open a restaurant on the first floor.”

  “I hope you sell barbecue.”

  “You don’t like étouffée?”

  “Too rich,” Leonard replies, dropping the cables long enough to pat his belly. “Pardon my French, but it gives me the runs.”

  Juliet shrugs. “I’ll sacrifice the runs if it’s étouffée.”

  The little young one has already left, as have the vocalist and the two others in
the band. Leonard allows as to how he’s hanging around here only until they get paid for the night, which is always an iffy proposition with the club’s current management. “They didn’t appreciate my man Bird when he was alive, either,” Leonard says.

  “That that white guy plays for the Celtics?”

  “No, that’s that black dude played the sax. Charlie ‘Bird’ Parker. He used to do gigs and they wouldn’t want to pay him, neither. That’s what you get for being an artist these days.”

  Juliet’s about had it up to her eyeballs with artists, and she’d say as much if she didn’t need Leonard’s help. She wants him to drive her to the Beauvais then later to the Lé Dale.

  They tramp out of the club ten minutes later, Leonard counting his money. It doesn’t seem to occur to him to ask why she’s shown up at such an hour, and this is a trait of his that she both admires and despises: Leonard Barbier might be as thick in the head as they come, but he doesn’t meddle. He doesn’t even ask about her encounter with the drummer, not that she holds the subject as sacred. They are strolling under the streetlights when Juliet says, “Ever see one purple like that?”

  “Not on a white person I haven’t.”

  “It looks like it got dipped in an inkwell, don’t it?”

  “You call that color eggplant. People nowadays are using it for home decorating. It’s all the rage.”

  They move on a few paces before she thinks of something else to ask about. “What was my daddy like?” Trying to sound as casual as possible.

  “What do you mean, what was he like?”

  “Did it have a color?”

  “Everything has a color. Even water has a color.”

  “You think he was a bona fide homosexual or do you think he liked it with girls, too?”

  “I don’t know, I never got around to asking him. But I’d assume he was content to go either way, considering he had a daughter to his credit. You don’t grow fruit without planting seed, as they say.”

  “When you’re young you don’t understand about human sexuality, do you?”

  “No, you don’t—human or any other kind.”

  “When you’re in high school and you hear your friends saying things about the man you love and admire most in the world, when that happens you can get really confused.”

  “Tell me about it. I got confused and the only thing my father ever wanted to have sex with was his money.”

  Leonard takes out a small glass vial with a rubber stopper. It holds cocaine and he dribs some out on the back of his hand and offers it to Juliet, who consumes it with a single inhalation. After he ingests a line of his own he puts the vial back in his pocket and starts a doob going. Leonard the medicine man. He drags for a long time before sharing with Juliet.

  “We were discussing my daddy?”

  “Right.”

  “I’m just trying to remember if my memory is correct.”

  “I know you are.”

  “Was he a good lover, Leonard?”

  “I’m a little uncomfortable with this line of questioning, Counselor,” Leonard replies. But after a few seconds he says, “Yeah, I suppose he was, if you really have to know.”

  “Did he feel guilty afterwards? I always feel guilty.”

  “I’d say he suffered like we all suffer, Juliet, except in his case he got on the phone and called room service. Your father was a bon vivant, I’ll give him that.”

  “Did he ever mention me?”

  “Not when we were doing it, if that’s what you mean.”

  “I mean in general. Did he talk about me?”

  “All the time. The man loved you, Juliet.”

  They reach his car finally. It’s parked on Esplanade Avenue, not far from the Beauvais. She tells him to drive her there, and he’s too busy smoking his dope to protest.

  He parks by the curb and they sit awhile looking at the house past the windblown shroud of crape myrtles. She watches the window where the Yankee allegedly hanged himself but tonight it’s as dark as all the other windows.

  She wonders if they’d pay her another thousand if she broke another lamp.

  “I always liked the Beauvais,” says Leonard.

  “Then let’s go see it. I have a key.” She shoulders the car door open.

  Leonard holds up the joint. “Can I bring my little friend here?”

  “Only if you promise to blow a lot of smoke.”

  The trees drip rainwater as she and Leonard walk up the path. At the front door she tells him to take his shoes off, and when she removes her own she remembers “The Proof” and pulls it out from under the insole and sticks it in a pocket.

  They place their shoes side by side on the welcome mat, as if they belong there. When she slips the key in the knob the door swings open, sounding a rusty lament. Sonny must’ve forgotten to lock it after he left. Juliet and Leonard stalk in. She wishes she could talk out loud and give him a real tour. “Now as we enter the foyer you’ll note the crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling overhead . . .”

  They move through the parlor. It was her mother who started calling it a parlor, but Juliet prefers to think of it as the Grand Ballroom. It was the Grand Ballroom to previous generations of Beauvais, back in the days when people liked to capitalize the names of their rooms.

  When she gets it back it’ll be the Grand Ballroom again—at least until she converts it to a restaurant.

  “Oh, look, that’s the couch where Daddy got caught one night,” Juliet says to Leonard. “It used to be in a bedroom upstairs. They must’ve moved it.”

  Leonard smiles. “Got caught doing what?”

  She pretends not to have heard. But in her head now another voice: “Juliet? Juliet, wake up, baby. Wake up. Put some clothes on, Juliet. We’re leaving, baby. We’re leaving this house . . .”

  She turns away from the sofa. “Daddy ever bring you here?”

  Leonard shakes his head and mouths the word: “Hotels.”

  They troop past the TV. That’s the next thing gets broken, Juliet says to herself. She wishes she had some tape to tape “The Proof” to the screen. Give her mother something to think about when she sits down tomorrow to her Good Morning America.

  “I can make you a sandwich,” Juliet says as they tramp through the kitchen.

  “My mind’s stuck on barbecue,” Leonard replies.

  “What about some Neapolitan ice cream? Mama always did keep a half-gallon handy.”

  “No, ma’am. Ice cream, étouffée. Anything rich like that and I got to go.”

  She opens the freezer door and sure enough there’s the ice cream. Her mama and that cheap K&B drugstore brand comes in a paper cube. “You ever wonder why they call it Neapolitan?”

  “No. Not me personally I haven’t.”

  “It’s that ice cream with chocolate, strawberry and vanilla stripes? It’s good when you can’t decide on any one particular flavor.”

  “I don’t like to mix my foods,” Leonard says. “I got this phobia about it. I like my peas on one side, my rice on another, then my meats over here.”

  They prowl through every room on the first floor and end up in her father’s library, casually sitting on leather furniture. Although Leonard’s doob has stopped burning, he heroically sucks on it for vestiges of life, a last sweet spin across wherever. When it gives nothing he curls up on the couch and clutches a throw pillow to his chest. “You’re not gonna fall asleep on me, are you?” she says.

  He looks so peaceful, though, that she can’t bring herself to protest any more.

  Certain that he’s asleep, Juliet takes the coke vial from his pocket and empties it on an occasional table. “Is this my life?” she says to the enormous room, then snorts the powder without bothering to cut it into lines.

  She leans back in the wing chair and listens to the silence, her mind tumbling in the purest of space. She suddenly feels energized, and strong. Too bad Leonard’s not awake to arm wrestle. Too bad Anthony’s not around to race in the yard. Her father used to time Anthon
y when he sent him out on chores, ticking off the seconds. “Twenty-four . . . twenty-five . . . twenty-six . . .” If only her father were here, she would break Anthony’s records.

  “Juliet? Juliet, please, sweetie, get up.”

  “Where are we going, Mother?”

  She’s about to get up and rouse Leonard when her father, dressed in white and holding his favorite panama, appears on the other side of the room.