by Andy Finch
Draven isn’t sure what to do. Was he dreaming again? He huffs and decides it would be better to digest this in the morning. For the moment, he cuddles up to his lover. His arms caress him in an open hug.
“I love you,” he says into the night air. Ian doesn’t respond.
4
Today was rough.
The stress of Mardi Gras looms overhead. The paper has begun to fill with parade talks and schedules. This year would feature an all dog parade, playing both downtown, uptown, and the West Bank. Draven couldn’t really care about who was in the floats, it was just his job to take pictures of all the pretty colors and people. His photos always garnished the front pages, both in magazines and newspapers, sometimes an online blog or two, too. Even now his brain constricts with the pressure the festivals would place on him. He tries not to think about it, really, but it was hard not to.
The photo of the mural Geneva had painted sits in his hand. He plays with the corner, creasing it and running the color off. A debate plays out in his imagination. Should he bring it to his boss? Would it be best to publish it himself? He snorts, letting himself enjoy just a second of relief. It fades. It becomes something worse. The rhythm of blood throbbing in his skull returns. It hasn’t truly subsided since his return from the hospital. It goes away when he sleeps, after taking his nightly medication consisting of antibiotics, morphine, and Prozac. He’s aware now of the pill bottle laying in his photographer’s bag. It was his morphine. Ian said to bring it this morning, “just in case.”
“Why would I need it?” Draven remembers saying in the morning. The orange bottle would come to know his palm as a second home.
“In case you start hurting again,” Ian has punctuated with a kiss before leaving for his job. Draven wasn’t given the chance to argue.
At first, he decides against it. The orange bottle will remain in that cell for as long as he could manage. The pain wasn’t that bad. It was stress. It had to be. Or maybe he was catching a cold. Something had been going around the newsroom. Draven nods to himself, agreeing with his conclusions. But a nap seemed too tempting right about now. He could take one for his headache and let it calm down as he sleeps in this leather seat. Would he get scolded by his boss? Draven hopes not.
He reaches for his bag, but before his hand can teeter any further inside, an apprentice of the company comes into Draven’s office. A pile of papers was tucked neatly under his shoulder. Draven does not remember her name. It started with an L, he was sure, but he couldn’t remember more than that. Instead, her name was the Lanky One in Draven’s too-bleak imagination that came out only while he was at work. Her lips were the color of plums, but they were thin and didn’t wear the color well. Her dress suit had wrinkles, too. It would be a marvel if this company kept her around as an apprentice.
“Mister LaVeaux would like to see you,” she says, “Now, please.”
He almost scoffs in her face, but he allows her this one chance at authority. Generosity weaseled its way in the gossip flowing around the newsroom, after all. The rolly office chair beneath him squeaks as he stands up. He kicks his photography bag under the desk, protectively, then he follows her down the hall that leads to the biggest room. The boss’ room. She steps to the side, gesturing for him to go in. It was a setup, he thinks. She would guard the exit before he could escape. And he’d get an earful of swearing from his boss about something or another. Mister LaVeaux cared only about the money. And he’d throw all responsibility out the window for the money to flow back into his pockets.
He steps inside, no cloud of reserved anguish looms overhead. There was trepidation, though. And stares full of greed. Mister LaVeaux’s possessions were like him. Fat with greed but starved of any affection. Draven would pity the guy if only he’d show more compassion to the less-than-fortunate employees working under him. Maybe that was why he was so lonely, Draven considers. He was just a prick wearing a mask of despondency to get even more people under his grasp. For that, Draven would have to compliment him. That took an emotional maturity Draven would not know.
There are news clippings hung in frames. Frozen in time. The oldest dates back to the first of November in 1967. The acquisition of The Saints team. The fleur de lis engraved in ink looks even more stunning in the lit frame. The next clipping of most importance finds its home in time in 2005. It was August when this piece was written, a few days before Katrina would make landfall. The writings on the aged paper discuss the possibility of an evacuation. Draven wonders what the authors had thought in the moment of writing. Do they ever look back and scoff? He certainly would.
“Good morning, Draven,” his boss says, “I heard you been busy with your li’l camera there. Mind sharin’ the wealth?” His accent was not a Louisianan one. Draven thinks he might be from Missouri or Arkansas. Definitely not from here though, “don’t be shy, have a seat.”
Draven waves a hand, politely refusing to sit down. It was better to get the legs moving, he decides. There’s a satisfying pop that springs from his knees as he walks to the big desk sat right in the middle of the office. Mister LaVeaux knits his caterpillar brows together but says nothing to detest the refusal.
“There was an arts fest goin’ on,” Draven explains while picking at the few photographs in his pocket. Geneva’s mural was the first, he moves it to the back. Without warning, the ache behind his skull intensifies. Too much, too soon. He winces, hoping to himself that he didn’t make any audible noise, “Here, sir. I—“ light pours in through the window, nagging the headache on even further, “Mind if I… stand over there?” He points to the patch of shadow opposite the sun.
“Ya alright?” His boss cocks a brow before nodding permissions, “You lookin’ like a vampire over there.”
There is a beat of rests. Draven takes the photos from his pocket and sets them in his boss’s hands. The creases of Mister LaVeaux’s palm were ashy and dirty. Draven hopes he doesn’t smudge any of the good photographs.
“Headache,” Draven says, sucking in his breath as the pain pulses, “Bad one.”
His boss opens his mouth to make a noise, but nothing comes out. His attention goes to the pictures in his hands. The first one was an older mural done of Martin Luther King Jr. His message resonated with the people of this city better than anything else. The photo behind it was a sloppily done mural of Marie Laveau. The paint had faded after years of abuse, but her strong physique stands true even in the rotting colors. Next, were some works done by Brandan Odums, his famous Studio Be work. Last was Geneva’s mural. The portrait not displaying the strengths of this city, but it’s weaknesses. His boss watches it with keen eyes, eyeing the lack of colors.
“What’s this?” He asks, holding up the photo. Draven can barely make it out, his headache has begun to mess with his vision.
“My friend painted it—“
“She’s got skill,” he puts the photo down. He’s heard talk of Geneva’s work before in these walls. She does not need to be named for him to know who this mural belonged to, “I don’t like it though.”
It should’ve hurt. It really should have. Maybe it does, but Draven was far too preoccupied with some breathing-exercise said to help pain that he forgets to respond emotionally to the statement. He purses his lip, folding the top over the bottom, pulling away dried pieces of skin with his teeth. Only a nod comes as his response. His eyes don’t catch the faint glimmer residing in the glaucoma patches of his boss’ eyes. Right now, Draven’s too busy thinking about the bottle of morphine at his desk and how it would make this meeting much more bearable.
“I don’t like it for our paper,” his boss corrects himself, “You should send it into one of them northern companies. Those damn liberals will buy this up.”
There’s a laugh, but Draven doesn’t catch it. He nods again, still enthralled in his own thoughts. God, how he wanted the pain to go away. Now his shoulder nagged in protest. He nods again, trying to cross the lake of boundary set up by his headache, “You think so?” He finds himse
lf saying. His voice seems unfamiliar to him. Everything seems unfamiliar. And black. And cold.
The shadows suddenly feel too constricting but standing in the sunlight would be no better. The world doesn’t move. The clock resting on the wall, colored with a fleur de lis, does not tick. The fan hanging overhead has stopped whirring. And his boss has stopped drooling all over himself. Draven was alone. It has never felt any worse. The pain in his head, the chill in his bones. His head swims, sways with crashing waves. He thinks he’s about to go under, but then thick cigar like fingers press onto his forehead. He blinks. Once. Twice. His boss is standing over him. He’s on the floor. He has already gone under.
“God, Draven,” his boss puffs, “What the hell’s wrong witchu? Almost damn neared passed out in that corner over there,” his arms props Draven up, encouraging him to stand back on his feet. He does, “Maybe you should take a break. Yer little boyfriend called before you got here and said something about lettin’ you get some rest.”
Rest. It was a good idea. He nods. His boss says something else, something about work, but Draven was not listening. He was thinking of the pills waiting for him underneath his desk, buried in the cigarette-scented photography bag. The one thing that would make this day flow a lot smoother. Draven finds himself saying a matter of “yessir,” and “no sir,” as his boss blathers on about something. Finally, he’s dismissed. A pit of anticipation bubbles in Draven’s stomach as he’s free to go back to his own little office.
The pill bottle opens with a woop noise as he pries the white cap off too soon for the mechanisms to let it go. He takes one out, as instructed in the plain font of the pharmacist’s text, but he takes another for good measure. It would help, he justifies, it would make you happy. He’d be able to get through the day with a smile on his face, saying “yeahuh,” and “nuuh,” in a too-cheery voice that would surely win him the title of employee of the month, if he hadn’t missed most of the month from sick leave.
The world was a much brighter place when morphine ran into his system.
“You had a phone call,” The Lanky One explains. Her fingers wrapped in the coils of her hair, “Didn’t catch the name. He said something about wanting to speak to you before hanging up.”
She had appeared through the translucent door, the stack of papers now absent from the sheathe under her arms. Her makeup had begun to fade around the edges. The color of her nails match the plum just barely sticking to the skin of her lips, those lanky fingers point to the black phone sitting on his desk. Muttering on about something important, she leaves Draven to his own devices. He doesn’t need any further explanation to figure out who had been calling.
Instead of reaching for the office-owned phone on his desk, he fishes for his cell phone. Sure enough, three missed calls from Ian light up on the screen. The screen changes colors, white to black, as he puts it to his ear. It rings once. Twice. Then Ian picks up. Ian doesn’t give Draven a chance to say hello before he begins his worrisome chitter.
“I was worried,” Ian says, “I know I said I’d give you some alone time, but I got that bad feeling again—“
That bad feeling was an unseen rope that bonded their hearts together, as Ian had put it many months ago. It tugged and writhed whenever the other half was in danger or pain, he had also said. Draven wasn’t sure what to believe. One part of him, the inner child still wants to believe in the tooth fairy, agrees with Ian. That they were bound together with an invisible string. The other part of him, the adult Draven, didn’t want to give that myth a chance.
“I’m fine, babe,” he says, “I’m fine.”
“You don’t sound fine.”
Ian had a point. The pain still lingered behind his skull. Slowly, as the seconds roll by, it eases back with the coaxing from morphine. A pulse of warmth coating his muscles and skin. It hurt to breathe, the weight of his ribcage now triple-fold on his lungs, but he did not care. It was impossible to care about anything other than the morphine regimenting inside. Draven’s voice was harsh, raspy in his throat. It was one of those things Ian was able to pick up on, even without his magical string.
“I had a headache,” it was best to keep quiet about the fainting part of the day, “It’s going away.”
For once, Ian is silent through the phone. Draven pictures him sitting in the backroom of his workplace, fiddling with a pen and drawing doodles on himself as the phone rests between his ear and shoulder. Or maybe he was home early, and now busy painting his nails a solid black. It was his color, Ian had explained on their first or second date. Draven liked that. Ian takes a sharp breath on the receiver, lubed with distraught and the lack of believing.
“Be careful, okay?” Ian mumbles, his voice conveying a concern much unlike him. The kind of concern that knew it could only sit back and observe. Like watching a hurricane, knowing you had no power to stop it from running its course.
“I will be,” Draven knits his brow together, trying to figure where this concern came from. It evades him still, “I love you, okay? I’ve got to get back to work.”
Ian makes a noise of agreement, a mhm pressed behind closed lips, “Love you more,” he says before hanging up.
Draven sits there, kicking his feet, with the phone still pressed to his ear. There’s a tension that he cannot determine. A strain, but not on the heart. Ian must still be coping with Draven being gone and out of sight since the hospital. Draven agrees with himself before putting the phone onto his desk. Then he reaches for the orange bottle and takes another morphine.
You deserve it, he tells himself.
✽✽✽
The flash of the camera catches the eye of a tourist. Not in a good way either. They yowl a complaint, something about eye strain or another, then hurry on down to the Quarter. There was a clop of hooves coming from the horse-drawn carriage in front of Draven. The buggy, carrying two lovebirds beside the carriage driver, was pulled by a white stallion. A crow cawcaws, swooping down to snag a leftover meal on the sidewalk. It spooks the stallion. It threatens to buck, but the carriage driver diverts its attention back to the road. Draven snaps a picture.
The sun was too bright today. Winter was dry and open in the South, not that Draven really knew much about winter in the North. The sky was always clear, the ground was always dead, everything was frozen in time. There were no clouds to shade him from the sun’s knowing eye. The answer to the pain in his eyes and brain came quickly: the plastic vial in his camera bag that held all those M engraved pills.
He knew he shouldn’t. The other day’s use was called for. He wouldn’t have to drive; he was excused from the meetings that day. Here it was different. Maybe he could get away with only taking one, it wouldn’t be enough to throw him off. At least, he hoped so. But the low-grade orgasm that the pills brought was too tempting. It would ease that little burdening cloud hanging over him.
He drops his camera bag on the sidewalk, kneeling to zip it open and find the orange vessel withholding his morphine. Next to it was the big, bulky silver pads of Zofran. He grabs the bottle, untwists the cap, and takes just one, even if the others were singing for him to take another. He closes it back up, zips the bag, and continues with his day, but not before a passerby spit in his ear:
“Fuckin’ druggie,” she hisses before walking away.
Draven tries to yell back out to her, tell her it was not what it seemed, but he’s only graced with the back of her hand, middle finger extended as she walks down Decatur.
His phone buzzes in his pocket. A text from Geneva asking to meet her on Bourbon in front of The Swamp for some daylight drinking. He should say no, in fact, he’s almost tempted to write out a lengthy refusal, but a beer or two would make the day go by faster. It was only a short walk away, anyhow. He logs his camera bag onto his shoulder—his good shoulder—and walks in between the allies of Decatur, Chartres, Royal, and then Bourbon. Geneva waves for him down the street. Despite it being only noonish in the Quarter, Bourbon was already filled with people too drunk to walk and
partyers celebrating the New Year and Christmas early.
“Hey,” she greets before turning her heel to step inside. The Swamp boasted a green hue throughout, “I’m off today,” she says. She worked another job, outside of her freelance mudbug picking. She was an art tutor, teaching mainly in the nice homes Uptown, “Thought we might ring in the winter holidays with some warm food and drink, huh?”
“Whatever,” he rolls his eyes, but she knows he’s game, “I’m having one beer. Just one, okay?”
“Don’t count on me to keep you to it,” her smile is sweet with powdered sugar. She spends her lunch hours down in Café du Monde, usually sharing a beignet with her boyfriend, Jaylen, “I’m messing with you, don’t give me that look. I don’t plan on having too much either.”
“You don’t plan on it,” Draven corrects. They find a seat at the bar.
The bars in New Orleans—especially Bourbon Street’s bars—came in two flavors. Wholesome, happy, full of high spirits; or dead, rotten dreams, full of people suffering from alcoholism. The Swamp was one of the nicer bars, at least during this time of the year. Mardi Gras washed all the bars in a dark hue. No locals go out and enjoy the bars regularly when Mardi Gras rolls out of its bead-encrusted coffin.