by Chris Wiltz
“Well, ma’am,” he said sitting a little taller, “I don’t know what movies you been watchin but this’s how we talk in Longview, Texas.”
“Oh, now I’ve hurt your feelings,” Raynie said. She was enjoying the mean streak she’d discovered in her new personality.
“You cain’t hurt my feelins, ma’am. Not someone’s pretty as you.”
“You know, if there was a seat left in this place, I’d move. I came in here to have a drink all by myself. Then go home. All by myself. Not get picked up. Get it?”
The cowboy lifted his hands from the bar in protest and swiveled back and forth in his chair, saying no with his whole body. “Whoa there, little lady.”
“For pity’s sake—whoa there, little lady?”
“I’m sorry, ma’am, I really am…”
“Little lady? Ma’am? Everyone talks like that in Longview, Texas?”
He stuck a finger under his hatband and pushed the hat up on his head. Not a bad looking guy, if you liked cowboys.
“Well…” He considered her question. “Maybe not ever’one…Hey, how ‘bout we start all over and this time I won’t try to pick you up.” He stuck out his hand. “My name’s—”
Raynie lifted her hands as he had. “Whoa there, little man.” She gave man a cowpoke-worthy extra syllable. “How ‘bout no introductions. How ‘bout we finish our drinks, decide not to talk to each other so we can’t say anything personal, then we go our separate ways. No muss, no fuss, no future.” The cowboy stared at her. “Tell you what. I’ll give you a couple of minutes to think it over. Don’t let the bartender take my drink.”
She picked up her shopping bag and headed to the ladies room. She’d only gone a couple of steps when the cowboy said, “Hey.” Raynie turned to look at him. “I wasn’t gonna give you my real name.”
No way he was getting the last word. “That’s what I mean about personal,” Raynie said. “That’s way more than I want to know about you.”
She turned fast and walked off with a Marilyn flounce.
***
The bitch deserved what he was getting ready to do to her. Big time deserved it. He took the small brown vial out of his jeans pocket and unscrewed the cap. He put the cap between his thighs. The bartender was busy at the other end of the bar; the guy sitting next to him had his back turned so he could paw the girl with him. The cowboy took Raynie’s drink from the bar and quickly dumped the powdered contents of the vial into it. He put it back on its wet napkin, capped the vial, took a long chug from the Molson. His chin resting in his palm, he stirred Raynie’s drink, a few lazy circles of the long straw she’d left in the tall slender glass, a show of distraction for the audience he always imagined was watching him.
He had an idea. He thumped the back of the guy next to him with his forearm and got an unfriendly over-the-shoulder look.
“Hey,” he said, “you got a pen?” No trace of a twang or a drawl, no extra syllables.
The guy hesitated before he took a pen from his shirt pocket and handed it to the cowboy, who then crowded him to reach a stack of napkins on the narrow apron of the bar.
He wrote on a napkin, “Nothing personal. See ya later gator.”
He left the guy’s pen next to the napkin and walked out to St. Louis Street. He crossed to the opposite side to position himself to see the bar through the French doors that lined the St. Louis side of the Napoleon House. The restaurant across St. Louis also had a row of French doors, but his best shot of the girl put him in front of a couple dining behind him, a pane of glass away. He edged down to lean against the piece of concrete wall between two doors. Now the light was reflected so he couldn’t see the end of the bar. Anywhere he stood, people from both places could see him. He was sure the white cowboy hat glowed in the dark. He was almost itching with conspicuousness. He thought about tossing the hat in the trash can at the corner, but he’d just bought it that afternoon from Meyer the Hatter, and it hadn’t been cheap.
Maybe he’d been hasty to leave the bar. He broke into a sweat when he realized he’d forgotten to tell the bartender the girl was coming back, leave her drink. His vial was empty; he’d crushed his last tablet.
A wave of anger made his skin feel hot and prickly. Where was the little bitch, anyway? Judas Priest, the amount of time women could spend in a bathroom. She could be in a line of women. He was on fire thinking the only thing to do was run back into the bar and save her drink, if it wasn’t already down the drain.
Then he saw her coming from the direction of the courtyard. She looked as though she was heading to the door. “Son of a bitch,” he said. A couple walking down the street gave him a wide berth. She hesitated a moment, changed directions and went back to the bar. The cowboy scraped his shoulder falling against the concrete, he was so relieved. He had saddlebags of sweat under his arms.
***
While Raynie put on some lipstick and fluffed her hair in the bathroom mirror, she decided she’d had enough of Mr. Longhorn or wherever it was he said he’d come from. She remembered when she’d sat in the courtyard once seeing a long brick-walled corridor with a gate to the street. She left the bathroom and cut through the courtyard only to find the gate locked. She’d have to go through the front room in full view of the bar. If he saw her and tried to follow…well, she’d think of something.
He wasn’t at the bar. His beer bottle was pushed away as though he’d finished it; her drink—she hadn’t drunk half of it—sat where she’d left it.
Raynie looked toward the men’s room to make sure he wasn’t coming out of it and went to the bar. She saw the napkin. What an idiot. But he was gone. She sat in the chair, put her shopping bag in front of it, and resumed her evening. She sipped her drink and watched the crowd. Most of all she enjoyed being Raynie Devereux who was much more real since she’d gotten a job. She thought about Earlene Dick. She was different now. The way she’d handled the cowboy. The way she didn’t mind so much being alone. No, she was happy to be alone, to think about her new life that started tomorrow, but for tonight aloof, unapproachable, the mysterious woman at the bar.
It didn’t last long. Raynie started feeling weird. Everything was getting kind of blurry. She thought for a minute she might fall out of her chair. One drink never did this to her. Maybe Pimm’s Cup was one of those liquors that was a lot stronger than it tasted. When was the last time she’d eaten? That muffin? She couldn’t remember. She didn’t feel bad; she felt pretty good even if her equilibrium was off. She’d better get back to the rooming house and get something to eat.
She bent to pick up her shopping bag and had to hold on to the bar to keep from falling out of the chair. She got to the doorway okay but was confused about which way to walk. All she knew was she’d better walk. Her legs—hm, what were they? Slippery little devils. Like eels. Raynie got this image of herself walking down the street on two eels, each of them wanting to slither off in a different direction. Funny if you thought about it.
She went straight. She passed in front of the Royal Orleans Hotel. The doorman in full dress was her last memory. She wouldn’t remember that he said, “Hey, baby, you okay?” She wouldn’t remember the cowboy saying to him, “A little too much sauce. Couldn’t wait for me to pay the bill.” She wouldn’t remember that the cowboy no longer talked with that drawl or that he put his arm around her to hold her up or that by the time they got to the end of the block and turned down Royal Street she tried to push him away.
She only tried once. After that it was all she could do to put one foot in front of the other.
Six
LaDonna told Karen that when she met Ramon, she fell harder than she ever remembered falling before, even as a twenty-year old whose first big love was a musician who played at the club, the son of one of her father’s old band members. He’d gone to New York to seek fame and fortune, which he never found, but wouldn’t let her go with him. It seemed to her that she’d cried for a year.
Ramon had stars in his eyes too. He wanted to make films. After LaDonna told him
about her famous first love, he decided to start his career with an hour-long docu-drama about a New Orleans musician and his band, a behind-the-scenes look at their personal lives and the business: plenty of music, sex, and show-stopping outfits.
“He said I was his muse, and I fell for it, Honeycutt, just like I was twenty years old all over again. He said if the band decided to leave New Orleans, we’d both follow them.”
As plans progressed, Ramon got more ambitious: a series of shows—a chef, a club owner, a landlord—he’d pitch to cable TV to make seed money for a feature film.
“A landlord?” said Karen.
“Well, you know, he was spinning ideas. He’s the inventive type, can make a day in the life of a landlord sound interesting—an apartment building, a couple of cross dressers, an exotic dancer, a dominatrix…”
Karen nodded. “I get it. The personalities and occupations change, but there’s always, sex, music and outfits.”
They had already started shooting when Ramon’s money-man had trouble closing a deal and the cash flow stopped. Ramon asked LaDonna to fund the show until the deal went through. LaDonna took out a short-term loan, using the club as collateral. Along came Katrina. The money- man’s deal never closed, and a few months later the bank called the loan. Karen wanted to know why they wouldn’t roll it over.
“They did, but I couldn’t make the payments. What we’re saying here is no business after the floods.”
“How much money are you talking about?”
“Fifty thousand. Ramon’s sayin he should have some money for me by the end of the month. He’s negotiating with Showtime. I’m sure he’ll be wildly successful out there.”
“Where is he?”
“L.A.”
“Permanently?”
“Who knows? At least until Bebe Boudreau—the Zydeco musician? The subject of the pilot. Till Bebe calms down. Ramon ran off with some of his money too. And his girlfriend.”
“So no more Bebe, no more docu-drama? I thought it was called a reality show.”
“Who cares what the fuck it’s called. It ain’t hap’nin. There was nobody here to work after the storm. Bebe wasn’t even here. He went back to Lafayette, to his roots, he said. Ramon hung for about a month, then he went to Lafayette, and took la chiquita to L.A. At least the first star didn’t take another woman with him.”
“But, still,” Karen said, “same thing all over again.”
“The way Ramon sees it, everything happens for a reason.”
“What reason? New Orleans got wiped out because of all our sins and corruption? The Decadence Festival?”
LaDonna waved her off. “Ramon’s not a religious fanatic. He isn’t talking about the big picture. He doesn’t talk about anything but himself.”
“What’s he into? There are no coincidences, only signs?”
“That’s not guy-think, Honeycutt. What he says, all this forces him to set the shows in a larger, more universal venue. L.A. He says he was headed there anyway.”
“He explained this to you?”
“Uh-huh. The muse, remember? He got in a habit of telling me everything a while back.”
Karen said, “Calling regularly, is he? He left, what, six months ago? Don’t tell me—there’s trouble in paradise. Bebe’s girlfriend is homesick or something.”
“She misses her mama.”
“For Christ sake. How old is she?”
“Eighteen.” LaDonna held up her hand.
“I wasn’t going to say anything.”
“Like hell. And speaking of mothers, yours dropped by a couple of weeks ago, a few days before you strolled back to town, come to think of it.”
“The woman has radar,” Karen said.
“Why didn’t you tell her you were coming back?” LaDonna cut Karen a look. “Or is she psychic?”
“That’s what she’d say. But let’s not get off on her quite yet. What are you going to do about the loan? Can you go to another bank?”
LaDonna shook her head. “It’s taken care of.”
Karen glanced at the papers on the coffee table. “The men you were with downstairs?” When LaDonna didn’t answer, Karen said, “Don’t tell me you sold the place. Luc said you might.”
That irritated LaDonna. “Luc Celestin needs to keep his stuff to himself. He’s the only male busybody I know who isn’t gay. No, I didn’t sell it.”
“Are you thinking about selling?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you want to?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what I want to do. It’s everybody’s problem around here. It’s the Katrina effect.”
“What you need to do is figure out if someone’s ripping you off. The receipts look like most of the town’s already evacuated for the next big one, but still, the liquor disappears.”
“Maybe you can figure it out.”
“Maybe you could give a shit, LaDonna.”
“Maybe I will.” LaDonna stood up and went to her desk.
Karen took her compact from her purse to check her makeup.
LaDonna said, “You haven’t called your mama?”
Karen got out a lipstick. “I’m not ready to have my life taken over by swamis and shamans and psychic healers yet.”
“She says she’s done with all that New Age crap. That’s a direct quote. She’s using her own name again.”
Karen looked up from the mirror. “You’ve got to be kidding? No more Moksa Prana?”
“Nope. She’s Judy Honeycutt, and she’s an entre-preneur.”
“Oh yeah? And what kind of business is Mom entrepreneur-ing?”
“Fixing up storm-wrecked houses.”
Karen made a face. “She works for a contractor, has for years. How does that make her an entrepreneur?”
“She got her own contracting business. Brought the labor in here with her, good-lookin thing, lot of muscle, him hanging all over her. She said he convinced her. Otherwise, she thought about a day spa. Says she considered manufacturing wigs, maybe buying into a direct mail company, maybe taking over a car detail shop.”
Karen put the last touch on her lipstick and snapped the compact shut. “There’s always a world of possibilities with Mom.” She went to the small bathroom off LaDonna’s office and opened the door so she could see herself in its full length mirror.
“What’s with all the mirror gazing?” LaDonna said.
“Luc offered to buy me a drink.”
“Now there’s a worthless hunk of stuff.”
“It’s something to do.”
“At least he’s your age.”
Karen turned to her. “You know, I don’t really think age is such a big deal.”
“Good,” LaDonna said. “You can try to convince me of that sometime.”
Karen called Luc from LaDonna’s office. LaDonna was sitting at the desk now. She said she was going to get some work done. She stopped shuffling paper to listen to Karen’s end of the conversation.
When Luc answered his cell phone Karen could hear a lot of background noise.
“Hold on,” he said. “Let me step outside so I can hear you.”
She could hear his muffled voice talking to someone. She said to LaDonna, “He’s with someone, maybe a date.”
“I got to admit,” he said a few seconds later, “I’m surprised you called.”
“Of course you are. I’m supposed to be working.”
“I mean I’m surprised—never mind. I’m glad you called.”
“I’d be lying if I said I’m into spontaneity, although sometimes it works out,” she said. LaDonna nodded her approval. “Where are you?”
“Harry’s Bar.”
They both waited for the other one to say something. Karen said, “We can have that drink another time.”
“Hell no. I’m not going to give you time to change your mind. Give me half an hour, and we can have it tonight. Tell me where.”
“I’ll meet you there.” Karen gave LaDonna a wicked smile.
“No. I
’m ready to blow out of here.”
“Do you know Tom River’s Ace?”
“Right down the street. Half hour.”
Karen hung up. “He’s dumping a date to meet me.”
LaDonna said, “Honeycutt, never let it be said I didn’t tell you that when they’re young snakes, they don’t even know they’re snakes yet.”
Seven
The girl didn’t weigh much, but she was going to be dead weight soon. The cowboy was at the corner of Royal and Dumaine, seriously regretting that he hadn’t caught a cab when he was in front of the Royal O, even if he’d had do to it with that palace-guard doorman watching. He shifted her weight against him to get a better grip on her. Her right tit was proving to be a nice little handle, but he moved his hand below it so he could concentrate better. He wasn’t sure he should take her to his apartment, which was five blocks away on Bourbon or just check into the hotel three blocks away at the corner of Dumaine and Burgundy. The real problem was what to do with her afterwards. He didn’t want her to wake up at his apartment; if he checked into the hotel he could just leave her there. But how the shit was he going to explain her condition when he checked in? By the time he walked another three blocks he was going to have to sling her over his shoulder.
He had one more block before he had to decide. Judas Priest this girl was heavy. He got that feeling, his skin crawling with red ants. He clutched the girl so tight she moaned.
“Walk you stupid bitch,” he said.
***
On her way to meet Luc, Karen stopped at her apartment on St. Philip to change out of her work clothes. She wanted to make it quick so she could get to the Ace a little early, do some catching up with Tom Rivers. LaDonna told her he’d opened soon after the storm, still the watering hole of choice for the people who worked at the TV station around the corner and the restaurant workers who came after hours to unwind.
She let loose her streaky blond hair from its ponytail, shed her jeans and La Costa Brava T-shirt, and put on a short red stretch skirt with a black top that laced up the back. She decided the outfit was too overtly sexy. She stood in front of her closet, staring into it, pushing a hanger back now and then. She took out a pair of pants, held them up to look at them and discarded them on the bed. She did the same with another pair of pants, a skirt and a couple of dresses. She checked her watch, said, “For Christ sake,” decided to wear the red skirt, went to her dresser, and took a black spandex camisole from the top drawer. She put it on and over it a sheer T-shirt silk-printed with a woman smoking a long cigarette. The cigarette was a man. On top of his head at the glowing tip was a red rhinestone. In her hand the woman held a pack of cigarette-men, brand name Lumels.
