by Chris Wiltz
LaDonna sat at the bar, Luc in the background shining wine glasses with a towel for the scene.
Ramon adjusted the tripod and got behind the camera. “Okay, LaDonna, whenever you’re ready, chiquita.”
Ramon liked to spice up his vocabulary with Spanish words and endearments, some of which Karen thought he made up, when he was behind the camera, but his name was about what was left of any Spanish ancestry. He was a New Orleans-born, light-skinned black man, good looking with his stubble goatee, huge brown eyes, and major bling in his ears—about five carats of what Karen assumed was cubic zirconia. He’d gone to the University of New Orleans in Film Arts. His major achievement had been to get an intern position on the movie Ray.
LaDonna had on the peplum dress Ramon had bought her. She’d made up her eyes with a little gold at the corners. She gathered her braids then shook them out, sat up straight, shoulders back, and looked directly at the camera.
“The evacuation after the flood was hard. I’m just lucky I stayed at the club that night and wasn’t at my house when the levees broke. One of my neighbors stayed ’cause she had a son with cerebral palsy, a grown man who was so crippled he was bed-ridden. When she got out of bed, the water was at her ankles. Her husband managed to get her and their son to the attic, then to the roof of the house. By that time the water was filling the attic fast. He tried to get her mother to the roof. She said the water came so fast that the last words she heard her mother say was, ‘I can’t breathe,’ then she watched the two of them drown in the attic—right through the hole he kicked in the roof.”
She stopped, waved her hand at Ramon as she looked down and wiped below her eyes. He got her saying, “I can’t tell that story,” before he turned off the camera.
“Don’t tell it, bebé.” He went to her and put his arms around her. “You were gonna tell about the evacuation. Go back to that.”
LaDonna composed herself. She talked about the evacuation, and this time Karen felt the mud between her toes from LaDonna’s cousin’s house in Erath after they ran into the second storm, Rita.
She told her story to the point that they arrived back in the Marigny, how they had to talk their way into the city because it was sealed off, no one allowed in, except LaDonna told them she was a restaurant owner, so they made an exception.
“Strange is what it was. I mean, that’s the best word to use. It all looked the same, no flood mess, no roofs on the street or anything, but still it was strange. The club had been broken into, all the liquor stolen, but I guess I expected that.”
She rambled on for a while, not sounding feisty, not able to gather her thoughts. She talked about going to the two bars that were open, Molly’s and Johnny White’s, people wanting to be around each other. “Like we just wanted to make sure we were all there. ’Cause none of us knew what was going to happen. We had the news people around some of the time, the Guard, but they were, like, surreal. What was real was us. The people who still lived here, who weren’t going anywhere. Sometimes I thought of us as a tribe of people who lived in this ancient, crumbling urban jungle. We had to go out and search for food. We cooked together, ate together. Every once in a while someone would go home and disappear for a day, and we’d all go pound on their door to make sure they were okay. We didn’t have any plans. It was like being free, but it was a bizarre freedom. We were free from the future. No future existed.”
La Donna got up, paced a few steps one way, then the other, then she stood in front of the camera. Luc had stopped wiping the glasses; Karen leaned forward on the table, holding her breath.
“We got up every day because it was the beginning of another day. What we had to do—just go out on the street and see what was happ’nen in our territory, see if anyone had found food, if anyone new was around. We didn’t do this with a whole lot of purpose. We were very lethargic. We had the resolve to keep on going, but we didn’t know where and we still don’t know where. We have resolve but we lose our focus. We don’t concentrate too well. Our memories seem to be impaired except for what happened after the floods. Here we are at the beginning of another hurricane season, and we still drink too much and sleep around too much. You know, that really bothered me at first, all the sleeping around that was goin’ on. Then I realized it was an affirmation of life, that’s all it was, sayin’, “Here I am, I’m alive!” Except it complicated lives that were already complicated, not by having anything to do or too much to do, but because we were all living so close to each other and because of the uncertainty of it all. People don’t realize how much they depend on planning the future, even if it’s just the next day, to fill up their lives, to make them meaningful. But we’ve kinda lost our—what is it?—our desire to plan? The need to plan? You can’t plan for an uncertain future. I don’t know what it is.” Her eyes moved around the room, looking for something but it wasn’t there. “What it is,” she said at last to the camera, “it’s the Katrina effect.”
She sat in the nearest bar chair, told Luc she needed a glass of water. The camera, on its tripod, rolled on, but Ramon came out from behind it, his eyes closed, one hand clutching his chest. He took a step then he fell toward LaDonna.
“Oh my God,” he said.
LaDonna swiveled the bar chair to him. “What?”
“Oh my God.” His voice sounded strangled. He leaned on the bar. He looked as though he could be sick.
“Ramon, baby, what is it? What’s wrong?”
LaDonna pushed the bar chair back so hard it fell. Luc ducked under the counter, Karen got up from the table.
“Ramon, are you having a heart attack? Talk to me.” She took his upper arm in both hands and gave him a gentle shake. “Ramon! Are you stroking out? Jesus, what’s happening?” She turned toward Karen then Luc.
Ramon opened his eyes, he took her hands. “Ssh,” he told her. “That was a beautiful moment, LaDonna. Beautiful.”
“Oh, for Christ sake.” She grabbed her hands away from him. “You’re a goddamn freak, you know that?”
“What?” He sounded hurt. “I can’t be moved? That was moving, LaDonna. This gonna be a great piece of work. And besides, you gave me the name of it—The Katrina Effect.”
“The only piece of work around here…” She saw the camera light on. “Ramon, go turn the fucking camera off. There ain’t gonna be no piece of work if we run out of money.”
“It’s a tape, LaDonna, costs nine bucks.”
“Yeah? Like nine bucks is nothin’? Nine bucks buys a tape. Isn’t that what you just said? So turn the fucking camera off.”
“Mujer, you killin’ me, you know that? Fuckin killin’ me.”
“You’re both killing me,” Karen said, and she picked up her purse and started for the dining room to get things ready for the lunch shift. When she reached the foyer, Jack, Solo and the Bullmastiff were standing at the front door.
Where the hell was Buddha?
Fifteen
Karen unlocked one side of the double glass door. “Solo,” she said, “welcome to La Costa Brava.”
“Thank you, Karen.”
He had on a cream-colored raw silk suit with a blood red shirt and the requisite matching handkerchief. His outfit lit up the foyer. The gold cross was still around his neck to accent his silky smooth chest.
Jack followed him in, said, “Sweetums,” and planted a big one on Karen’s lips. She broke away, aggravated. Outside Ernesto gave her what she thought was an evil look, though maybe he simply couldn’t help the way he looked, and moved so he stood like a sentry to the side of the door closest to the restaurant window. Karen closed the door and locked it. La Costa didn’t open until 11:30, another hour.
Solo heard the commotion in the bar and walked through the foyer toward it. LaDonna and Ramon were still bickering. Karen slid to Solo’s side, calling, “LaDonna, Ramon.” Once she had their attention she said, “This is Solo Fontova, from Miami. Solo, LaDonna Johnson, Ramon Thomas—” she gestured toward the bar “—Luc Celestin.”
Solo, not
big on shaking hands with men, acknowledged Ramon with a slight nod and didn’t look at Luc at all. He seemed mesmerized by LaDonna. He took her hand in both of his, as he had taken Karen’s so many times, and said, “The pleasure is all mine.” He grazed the walls and ceiling with his eyes, and in his formal, accented English he said, “You have a very appealing establishment, LaDonna. I would like to see the rest of it.”
“Come on, then, I’ll show it to you.” LaDonna shoved the tripod she’d just folded at Ramon and led Solo into the music room.
Ramon said to Jack, “I see you found her,” meaning Karen. “Hey, man, the movie is going good. I can show you some footage, see if you still interested in investing.”
Karen stared at Jack as she said to Ramon, “Jack loves to gamble. I’m sure you can count him in for a sizable chunk.”
“My man.” Ramon and Jack bumped fists.
“And Ramon?” She turned toward him. “Don’t ever tell anyone where I live again.”
He bunched his fingers together and put them on his sternum. “But, girl, you know I never been to your house.”
“That’s lame, Ramon. Don’t do it again.”
He dropped his hand. “Aiight.” He went back to packing up the equipment.
Karen took Jack to the restaurant side. “I don’t know what you’re up to, Jack, but I know I’d prefer it not to be under my nose.”
“I never told him I’d invest. I told him I might know someone interested.”
“Like Solo?”
Jack shrugged. “You never know.” He gave her his best smile.
“In that case, give the fifty to Solo and let him become a movie mogul.”
“You give it to him, sugar. That way, maybe he’ll be satisfied with fifty. He already upped the ante on me to seventy-five.”
LaDonna and Solo wandered into the dining area. LaDonna was saying, “There’s nothing much to show you upstairs, a messy office, a storeroom, and a room with a mattress on the floor. Where I live at the moment.”
“Your house…”
LaDonna nodded. “My family home. Destroyed. That’s what the movie’s about, the flood and what happened afterwards.”
Solo closed his eyes briefly. “Your family home—that is a terrible thing. I am deeply sorry.”
“No doubt you’ve heard plenty of this in Miami but here we didn’t have a natural disaster, I’m sure you know. This was a major failing of the government, the Corps of Engineers.” LaDonna was beginning to sound like the movie all the time. She caught herself. “But don’t let me get started. I save the rage for the movie.”
Ramon entered on the word “movie,” just as Solo said to LaDonna, “Perhaps you will let me take you to lunch today, tell me more about what has happened to you, about your movie.”
Karen would have sworn LaDonna was about to accept, but Ramon put his arm over her shoulders and said, “That would be great, but can we take you up on that maybe tomorrow, the next day? We’re shooting down in the Lower 9 this afternoon. Come on down, take it in, you want to.”
Solo turned to Ramon, his face stiff. “Thank you,” he said, always polite but not his usual gracious self. “Perhaps another time. I have business appointments this afternoon.” He took LaDonna’s hand again and raised it to his bloated lips. “We will talk again soon.” As he let his hand drift down with hers still in it, his eyes cut to Ramon, then back. Ramon’s grip on LaDonna tightened; his whole body got tight.
Well, look at that, Karen thought. She waited for a reaction from LaDonna, but LaDonna was being her cat self.
***
As Karen, Jack and Solo took a table in the dining room, Solo said, “Your employer LaDonna, she is a very accomplished woman.”
“She is. Too bad you missed the scene Ramon shot just before you arrived. Impressive.”
“I’m sure.” Solo adjusted himself in the chair. “I will make it my business to see it.”
Luc brought three mimosas in tulip glasses to the table. “Anything else?”
Karen shook her head. She waited until Luc was out of hearing range and said to Solo, “Is there anything you’d like to know about Ramon?”
Jack made a sound that was a grunt covered by throat clearing and slid his chair back so he could stretch out his legs. Both Karen and Solo ignored him. He slurped down a quarter of his mimosa.
“I know everything I need to know about Ramon, thank you, Karen.”
“Just thought I’d ask.” She caught a movement in her peripheral vision and turned toward it—Ernesto in the big window, checking on the boss. She turned back to Solo. “What about Ernesto? Do you think he’d like to come in?”
“No. He is fine where he is.”
“It’s pretty hot out there, Solo. Maybe he could use something to drink. Luc could bring him something.”
“He needs nothing. ’Nesto is like a camel of the desert. He drinks long but infrequently. He will wait for his cerveza this evening.”
“So he’s old enough to drink?”
“Karen, you try my patience and you waste my time. I am here to talk about my money. I suggest that one of you—” he shifted his eyes from Karen to Jack “—produce it quickly. Today.”
Jack laughed, his mouth at his glass. “Don’t look at me, Solo. I don’t have it.”
Solo’s eyes went to Karen.
Karen said, “Believe whoever you want to believe, Solo. You know both of us. Take your best guess.”
“Look, Solo,” Jack said, his humor excellent, “she offered it to me while you were chatting up LaDonna. I told her if I gave it to you, it had to be seventy-five. You’d accept fifty from her, wouldn’t you?”
“You’re calling me a liar, Jack? Right here in front of Solo?”
“One of us is a liar, sugarbuns.”
“I don’t believe Solo has ever known me to lie or steal money from one of his games. Or leave town with it.” She said to Solo, “How do you justify Jack running out on you, leaving Miami in the middle of the night?”
Solo slapped the table, a rare show of anger, and Karen jumped to catch his mimosa before it turned over. “This,” he said with quiet fury, looking from Karen to Jack, “is nothing but a fucking cheap Mexican standoff. Excuse me, Karen.” Polite but flavored with viciousness. “I hate Mexicans.”
He paused a moment to pull down his suit jacket, and when he spoke, he was Solo the businessman once again. “No more talk. You do not tell the truth. Whatever the two of you are up to, it will stop now. For the trouble you are causing, I will expect a hundred. I will keep raising my price until you think your life isn’t worth that much.” His eyelids dropped and Karen thought he’d never looked more like an iguana or one of those reptiles of the desert. “This action you have promised, Jack. It had better be worth my time.”
“It will be, Solo, I’m telling you. We’ll get this done then we’ll work on the hundred, promise.”
Solo held up one hand. With utmost deliberation, he got up from the table and walked out the front door. He looked straight ahead as he and Ernesto passed the front window, but ’Nesto, of course, could not resist one more tough, threatening look.
Karen and Jack sat, watching until they were out of sight. Jack tilted his head, a lopsided grin on his face. “We’re pretty good, aren’t we?”
“At what? Getting our lives threatened?”
“I don’t get it, Karen. The way you’ve been acting. Trying to give me the money back, like you can’t wait to get rid of it. Why don’t you just give it to Solo?”
At that moment, Karen realized that she would give the money to anyone but Solo. If Jack wanted to take it and give it to him, fine, but she wouldn’t do it. She also realized the bind she’d put herself in: How could she give away tainted money without passing on bad karma? For fucksake, that karma crap had popped into her head as naturally as if it was coming right out of her mother’s mouth.
“What money?” she said.
Jack threw his head back and laughed.
Then she said, “Jac
k, I need you to get me some drugs.”
“Sure, baby. Tell daddy what you need.”
***
Late that night Pascal Legendre and Jimmy Johnpier sat in the office above the dark Le Tripot, nursing at one of Pascal’s expensive portos.
“Okay,” Pascal said, “you got her to go to dinner with you. Impressive. I owe you a big one on that. I hope you saw a fair number of people you knew at Commander’s.”
“A fair enough number, thank you. But quality, not quantity is the issue. That blowhard Chapman Fitzhenry was there. Chappy thinks he’s quite the ladies’ man. His eyes were popping and he was dying to make a play, but, alas, Mrs. Chappy was with him, which means most of uptown will be flapping their yaps tomorrow.”
“Jimsy, I don’t know why you give a great goddamn, but congratulations.”
“It’s the game, Pascal. If you’ve got a lot of money and you live uptown, you get to play. You qualify on both counts, but you don’t indulge. I realize, of course, that you stay down here much of the time.” He tilted his head in the direction of the bedroom down the hall from the office.
“I prefer it down here. It’s too quiet uptown. I like the action, everyone coming and going. Well, almost everyone…I might sell the house.”
“The only thing I’ve ever regretted was every piece of property I ever sold. It’s the Garden District, Pascal. Hang on to it. One day maybe you’ll want to play in that yard, indulge in the game. Maybe us swells, we’re a dying breed, but I would have bet my soul it’s just plain ole human nature. Of course, I’ve never considered you quite human.”
“Maybe you’ll tell me how to take that.”
“With dignity. You are who you are, and I consider myself lucky to be your friend and business partner. You are an enigma, though, young as you are, anti-social as you are, yet successful as you are.”
“Thank you, Jims, and I have picked up a few tips from you over the past few years, so I’m not a total loss.”
