“All right,” Annie said. “Catch it this time if it comes our way. Didn’t you tell me that was good luck?”
Bump went into a gyrating windup to throw off the batter’s timing.
“Fumble fingers,” Annie said. “Mr. Fumble Fingers.”
Nevers grabbed Annie by the arm and squeezed, nearly lifting her off the bleachers. A pain shot down her arm.
“Ow! You’re hurting me, Harold!” The crowd roared to its feet as Metcalf connected with a loud crack.
“It’s just a game!” Nevers yelled in Annie’s ear. “You hear?” He shook her like a doll. “Don’t criticize people when they’re just trying to have fun, you hear?”
“Okay, okay.” Nevers stood up and looked at the field. Annie rubbed her shoulder.
Metcalf had rounded first. Near the left field fence, Little Bobby Devers, who usually played shortstop, glanced over his shoulder at the ball, then in front of him at the fence. He leaped and stretched. He tumbled to the ground and bounded up, showing the umpire the ball protruding from the top of his glove. A snowcone catch. The crowd went wild. Metcalf kicked second base with disgust and glared out at Devers.
The crowd began vacating the stands.
“Don’t we get to bat again?” Bliss whined to Arkie.
“Arkie laughed. “And do what? Beat ‘em six to four, or maybe eight to four? What would be the point?” Bliss was disappointed nevertheless.
In the car, Nevers acted like their spat hadn’t occurred. At the pier, he apologized for having to leave so soon. He said he had to be in Houston by midnight and would be gone for a week. He lifted Annie’s chin.
“Cheer up,” he said. “Your first payday’s next week. We’ll go into the city and celebrate.”
* * *
Monday was opening day for Terra Incognita. Annie greeted and seated the diners, fetched utensils and spices for Djurgis, ordered groceries, checked the customers out at the register, and balanced the books at day’s end.
By Wednesday, Annie found enough free time to make diary entries for the previous week and write her mother to tell her of the restaurant’s opening.
On Friday, two large parties of businessmen came in at noon, forcing Annie to serve as second-string cook while scrambling back and forth to the register. She was pulling a crab-stuffed snapper from the oven when Janice, one of the waitresses, called into the kitchen, “Register, Miss Annie.” Annie set the platter down and rushed out the swinging double doors right into Harold Nevers. Annie screeched and gave him a hug, then, remembering where she was, pulled him inside the kitchen.
“Sorry! I was in such a hurry, you’re lucky I didn’t flatten you.” She reached up and kissed his cheek.
Looking over her head, Harold saw Djurgis taking pots off burners and putting skillets on, kicking cabinet doors shut, stirring condiments into various dishes, and generally performing a razzmatazz of motions that would have qualified him for a circus sideshow.
“I guess this means we’re making millions,” Harold said.
“Not millions,” Annie smiled, “but more than I thought we’d make the first week.”
Nevers looked around thoughtfully.
“What the hell,” he said, shedding his jacket and rolling up his sleeves. “Let’s knock this out so we can paint the town red tonight.” Annie and Harold sweated together through the afternoon and set up Djurgis for the evening rush, then parted to get ready.
An hour and a half later, Nevers honked at the foot of the pier.
“Customers still coming in, I see,” he observed as Annie flopped in the car seat with a sigh of relief.
“The parking lot’s been full all day,” she said. “How was your week? You haven’t even told me.”
“The usual,” Harold began. He talked the few minutes to the turn-off onto Esplanade. “Here,” he said, reaching into his jacket. He tossed a white envelope on Annie’s lap.
“What’s this?”
“First payday, like I promised.”
Annie felt her heart leap. The labor of setting up the restaurant, the excitement of going places with Nevers, had made her forget she was working for money.
“Open it. It won’t bite you.”
Annie slid her finger along the tab. Her eyes enlarged as she saw the bills. She counted five tens and ten fives.
“A hundred dollars! This is too much, Harold. Really. For a week’s work?”
“Two weeks,” Nevers corrected her. “Including training.”
“But—.” Annie was speechless. “What do I owe you for room and board?”
“Your company.”
“Seriously, Harold.”
“Not a dime.” Nevers laughed. “Look, if you think you’re flush with a hundred bucks, wait until business starts rolling in on the weekdays, too. You’ll take in so much dough, I’ll wake up one morning to find you’ve skipped the state with the week’s till.”
Nevers parked at the Chevrolet lot near Canal and Rampart. As Annie stepped out the door Nevers had opened for her, he said, pointing down the long vista of Canal Street, “Now, let’s see you spend some of that loot.”
Annie was dumbfounded. In the twilight, several stores were just turning on their lights. The first word that came to her mind was carnival. In a single block, steady white lights spelled out the names of banks, hotels, pharmacies, department stores, and barbershops. Neon tubes winked red, purple, and green. On the Saenger and Loew’s State theaters, rows of light bulbs crawled around the marquees like incandescent centipedes. A streetcar rumbled around a curve, shooting blue sparks from the wires overhead.
Painted on the sides of buildings or hanging from canvas awnings shaped like umbrellas, advertisements competed for Annie’s attention. Luzianne Coffee. White Owl Cigars. For Rent. Royal Crown. Pepto-Bismol. Drink Barq’s Root Beer, It’s Good. The red Pegasus of Mobilgas. Over the Chevrolet dealership, an octagonal clock two stories high told Annie it was eight-thirty and urged her in fifteen-foot script:
Drink Coca-Cola
*
Enjoy Cooling Refreshment
Annie wanted to read all the signs and peer into all the windows. As they walked the first block, Nevers had to steer her around drainage grills and manhole covers that might snag a heel and trip her.
Pausing every few minutes to watch a green streetcar pass, Annie marveled at each one as if it were a metal dinosaur trundling down the avenue. They strolled under the Loews’ State marquee. “Twenty Degrees Cooler Inside” the letters promised. She saw signs for Krauss, Walgreen’s, and Godchaux’s. They crossed the street at Baronne. Nevers suggested they step into Maison Blanche.
“What’s that across the street?” she asked. “Katz and Bes—. How do you say that?”
“Katz and Besthoff,” Nevers said.
The three-story structure announced its wares in fat gold letters on a green backdrop: Pharmacy and Millinery.
“They ought to simplify that,” Annie suggested. “People don’t like to shop at places they can’t pronounce.”
“I’ll tell the owners you said that,” Nevers offered.
“No, really. Like, why don’t they just call it Katz?”
“And offend Mr. Besthoff? He’d never go for that, I’ll wager.”
“Well, then, how about a compromise, using their initials, maybe.”
Nevers tried the suggestion. “K and B, K and B. Nah, sounds cheap. It would draw the wrong kind of customer. They’d have to change their whole image. Merchandise, too.”
Annie looked at the billboard on top of the building. Beside the image of a ten-foot porcelain refrigerator was the word WESTINGHOUSE. Atop the sign, a circular thermometer, demarcated every ten degrees, was prepared for temperatures up to a hundred and twenty. Currently, the hand rested between eighty and ninety.
Annie stepped into the street and was yanked back to the curb by Nevers. A red van zoomed past. Reading the side of the vehicle, Annie realized she had almost been pressed by SWISS LAUNDRY.
Finally deciding on
D. H. Holmes, Annie and Harold threaded the aisles between dozens of counters, searching for something to buy.
“I don’t feel like I need anything,” Annie said.
“Spend the money,” Nevers encouraged. “That’s what it’s for. Tomorrow night, we’re going to the Roosevelt to listen to a big band. Why don’t you buy an evening gown?”
Thirty minutes later, Nevers regretted his suggestion. Annie had to stop and inspect every item she passed on her way to the back of the store. There, she stared up at the mezzanine, where a man played an organ that piped music to all three floors. Annie finally decided on an ankle- length cream gown with blue floral print, fitted bustline, and mutton sleeves.
Outside, she said, “I could probably use a new pair of shoes with my dress.” Annie started for Imperial’s.
“Not so fast,” Harold said. “Look, there’s Marks-Issacs just past Grunewald’s Pianos.”
Annie looked to where he pointed. She saw green neon tubes in the outline of a grand piano.
“Shoes are shoes, I suppose,” Nevers said, “but at Marks-Isaacs they have a special gizmo to help you with the fit.”
“Then Marks-Isaacs it is. Lead on.”
Inside the store, Annie selected several pairs of shoes, and the attendant returned with a stack of boxes. Annie finally decided on a pair of gray suede half-heels with ankle straps that tied. While the assistant reboxed the remainder, she said, “Would you like to see how they fit?”
“Oh, they feel fine.”
Harold said, “But you’ll miss all the fun if you don’t actually see how they fit.”
As the attendant disappeared with the boxes, a valet led Annie to a metal device and kneeled down. “Place your foot under here,” he directed. The man flipped a switch on the side of the box. A low hum amplified to a buzz. “Look here.” The man pointed to a dark glass covering her shoed foot. It took Annie a few seconds to interpret the image on the screen. She gasped and pulled her foot from the instrument.
“Can you believe that?” Annie said to Harold. “It’s not dangerous, is it?”
“Harmless. Put the other foot in and let’s have another look-see.” Annie inserted her left foot. She and Nevers studied the screen. The bones of her foot, surrounded by the outline of the shoe, appeared in faint white against a dark gray background. She moved her foot to the side.
“Look,” she exclaimed. “You can see the nails in the shoe.”
Nevers glanced at the valet and winked.
“Think we can fit her in and take a look at the rest of them bones?”
Annie slapped Harold on the arm. “Let’s see your feet.”
Nevers placed his foot in the slot. “These bones shall rise again,” he said.
Annie gazed into the X-ray machine. Pointing, she asked, “What’s that?”
“I have steel toenails,” Harold said.
Annie slapped him again. “Just one?”
“It’s my lucky penny. Carry it with me wherever I go.”
“Why is it lucky?”
“A few years back, I thought I’d lost every cent I owned, but when I got back to my flop on Magazine Street, I found it in my pocket. I was pretty down before, but that picked my spirits right up because I realized I had never been flat busted. Right then, I decided to hang on to it so I’d never be broke again. Worked, too.”
The first sign Annie read as they stepped out of the store onto the banquette said, “Dentists. Open until 11 P.M.”
“Amazing,” she said. “Doesn’t this city ever sleep?”
“You never know when you’ll need to pull a gold tooth to pay a gambling debt.”
“And I suppose you’ve got a gold tooth.”
“Two.” Nevers hooked the side of his mouth and bent down for Annie to look inside. The back two molars on the top left were in fact gold.
“I thought you didn’t gamble.”
“Don’t. The gold teeth are an investment. There wasn’t even anything wrong with them.”
“You’re a strange man, Harold Nevers.”
“Smart, too,” he replied, ushering her left onto Decatur. “We’ll walk down to Jackson Square, then take a streetcar back to the parking lot. How’s that sound?”
“Sounds good. My feet are killing me. I stood all day in—.” A castrato voice interrupted her.
“Hey, Mr. Harold! Where you been?”
Annie looked down. A legless man on a board raised a cup to Nevers. In his other hand, he wielded a stick with rubber stoppers on both ends.
“Wendel! Long time no see. I think you’re the one’s been gone.”
A swatch of disheveled hair the color of dried marsh grass sat on the man’s head. His skin was rough and scaly, like he’d been at sea too long. Beneath a ratty beard, a scarred smile revealed three or four decaying teeth.
“You got me there, Mr. Harold. Had me a girlfriend in Morgan City for a while. Kicked me out after a month, though.” The man lifted a short stump from the board and waggled it up and down. “Terrible thing is, I couldn’t kick her back. Ha!”
He rattled a few coins in the cup.
“How ‘bout you, miss? Spare some change for an old vet? I lost my legs for the good old U.S. of A. in the Great War, and look what I got in return. My own street corner. Ha!”
“You’re breaking my heart, Wendel,” Harold said, digging in his pocket. He dredged up a few coins and selected a fifty-cent piece. “Here’s a walking lady,” Nevers said, dropping it in the cup.
“Thanks, Mr. Harold. You always was the generous one. A walking lady for a legless man. Ha!” Wendel wedged the cup between his stumps, positioned the stick in both hands, and gripped the cement with one of the stoppers. The board reared in the front and twirled. Paddling on alternating sides with the stick, he shot down the banquette with a metallic sound.
Annie looked at Nevers quizzically.
“Roller skates.” He laughed.
“You shouldn’t laugh. That’s very sad.”
“He’s a con man.”
“That’s an awful thing to say.”
“The truth hurts. I knew him when he had legs. Couldn’t you tell he was too young for a veteran? That’s why he grows the beard. To look older. He lost his legs and half a hand in a dock accident at the Poydras Street Wharf. After that, the police hired him to act like a derelict, to be an informant, and, wouldn’t you know it, he actually turned into one. I guess he got into the role too much. That’s some tough luck, huh? They still use him, though.”
“I didn’t even notice the hand.”
“You should be more observant.”
At Jackson Square, Annie sat on a bench to rest. They watched people passing for a few minutes. She yawned and looked up at the clock on the St. Louis Cathedral steeple.
“Eleven-thirty! Where did the time go?”
Nevers said, “Imagine that. You couldn’t even get a tooth pulled at this time of the night.”
* * *
The vibration of the streetcar made Annie even sleepier. She leaned her head on the window. At Dauphine, Harold said, “One more block.” Annie opened her eyes. She saw a man running on the sidewalk, shouting wordlessly. Ahead of him, Wendel paddled furiously, dodging left and right around the walkers, picking up speed, opening the gap between him and his pursuer.
The Chevrolet lot was lit up like a baseball field, insects swarming around every lamp. On the blacktop, large overturned waterbugs with devilish antennae flipped around with a clicking noise trying to right themselves.
“We’re going to take this sleepy girl home now,” Harold said as he opened the door for Annie.
“When do I get to see your house?”
“Have to go out of the way to do that.”
“I’m sleepwalking now. Five more minutes won’t kill me.”
Nevers turned the ignition key and reached on the dash for a pack of cigarettes.
“Here,” he said, “this’ll jolt you awake.”
“Thanks, I don’t care for them.”
“How do you know? Ever tried one?”
They drove a few blocks in silence. Annie’s eyes were drawn to the lights that hurt them when she looked. She blinked. Her eyelids scratched like sandpaper. She glanced at Harold, then out the window, reaching her hand towards him in a gesture designed to retain her dignity while admitting desperation.
She sipped lightly on the first drags. Nevers permitted Annie her dignity by not speaking. They passed Chartres and Decatur.
At the next intersection, Harold said, “Tchoupitoulas.”
Annie lifted her chin. “How’s that spelled?”
“T-C-H . . . -O.” Nevers looked around for a sign. “U-P-X-Y-Z, or something like that,” he laughed. “Last week, a cop on the night beat found a bum hugging a light pole, so he went up to him and gave him a poke with his billy club. Dead as a hammer.” Harold took the cigarette from Annie and pulled at it. “Tried to jimmy him free, but he was stuck.” He handed her the cigarette. “Rigor mortis had already set in.” Nevers laughed. “Took two men to pry him loose. Then they couldn’t find a street sign to spell Tchoupitoulas, so they drug him to Front Street and wrote up the report there.”
Annie gave up a tired grin. Her eyelids drooped like a lizard’s.
Nevers turned left on Poydras and right on Commerce. He slowed and pointed. “There it is.”
Annie looked at the house. She thought of the bed inside.
“Could a body fall asleep in there?”
“Yep, but not tonight,” Harold said, easing his car away from the curb. “I have a bit of touching up to do before it’s ready for company.”
“Need to move the bodies?” Annie kidded.
Nevers laughed. “You can’t be that tired if you can still joke.”
Annie tossed the butt out the window. It made her feel worldly. She formulated the words in her mind and liked the way they sounded.
“No, I’m all right, but I’ll need another cigarette to get me home.”
* * *
Annie awoke at eight o’clock the next morning. By noon, she was strolling down Basin with Harold. A clot of men were yelling where it intersected Iberville.
A Savage Wisdom Page 9
