The Ones Who Don't Say They Love You

by Maurice Carlos Ruffin

  Tourists commit all the right sins for my purposes: gluttony, sloth, and pride. They spend their days devouring clichés: salty gumbo, po’boy sandwiches with crusty exteriors and soft, chewy interiors, and sweet, powdery beignets. By evening, they’re stuffed to their medullas. Lounging on a bench in Jackson Square, their bellies distended, they say Wouldn’t it be nice if we went to see the plaque where the slave auction block used to be? It’ll be a blast. Jack and Lydia were here, and they didn’t get to see it. We could post pictures on social media and rub their noses in our good fortune. And then the tourists wander off without a map.

  New Orleans is like a brick. You pour water on it and there’s no telling where the rivulets will run. When tourists trickle through our neighborhoods, they puddle in places they would have done well to avoid.

  Like this courtyard, where, spiderlike, I’m hanging out behind a stand of poplar trees. A French family has fallen onto my web, four of them this time, a disgruntled man, a cigarette-sucking woman, a teen girl on a cellphone, and a boy in a fleur-de-lis baseball cap, rakishly tugged sideways. I know what you’re thinking. He’s not going to mug a family with kids.

  But you see, it’s already done. A simple shuffle into their path with the grace of Muhammad Ali in his prime.

  “Papa,” the boy says, misinterpreting our tableau. “Le rappeur! Le rappeur! C’est MC Solaar!” I quickly clear up the confusion.

  Next thing, I’ve acquired two new cellphones, a wad of euros, which I’ll convert shortly, and the most delightful Nicholas of Myra pendant, the jolly old saint of pawnbrokers and thieves. Quelle chance!

  Guilt? I feel none for three reasons. First, although my prey thinks otherwise, I’m unarmed. No gun. No knife. No club. If anything, I have only a face and body that are, in a sense, weaponized. And there’s nothing illegal about people giving me currency, portable electronics, or heirloom jewelry of their own free will. I’ve never once asked my patrons for a dime. I’m just a very aggressive beggar, if one really considers it.

  I discovered the generosity of people years before I had need of this knowledge. In my teaching career, I favored cashmere vests and tweed coats. Yes, I know. It’s stereotypical, but much of the reason I became a professor in the first place was so that I could look like a professor. Wear the sophistication of one. I may have even worn a bow tie on occasion.

  Once, I spilled a cup of heavily creamed Darjeeling, ruining my favorite ensemble, klutz that I am. I stripped in my office and would have had to go home to change if not for the oversized T-shirt some long-forgotten freshman had left behind during advising hours. I wore the T-shirt to the restroom. There was a janitor, I don’t recall his name, to which I often gave the briefest wave on my way to lecture. I caught him glaring at me.

  “Who are you?” he said.

  “What?”

  “Clean yourself somewhere else,” he said. “We don’t allow no homeless people to hang up in this building.”

  “Now, wait a second—” But the poor guy dropped his mop and left. In the hall, I watched him retreat in search of the campus police. A simple change of clothes had thrown me all the way down the ladder of my achievements.

  Second, I’m doing my benefactors a valuable service. How so? Ever had a health scare? A near-fatal car accident? Knowledge that a plane crashed and you survived only because you missed your flight? Invariably, I imagine, my supporters are much happier for having been graced by my presence. That arguing Norwegian American couple can return to Minnesota with a fresh appreciation for their general good fortune. And that francophone family now understands the primacy of their kinship. Having not died together, perhaps they will live together. All thanks to moi.

  Last? I deserve my take. Consider my profits reparations for each time some Becky or Karen crossed the street to avoid my path just as I greeted them. I regift that horror to you, my lovely brunette friends.

  It’s a red-letter evening. I’ve encountered no less than five separate groups since leaving home. I’ve been so effective that I notice an increased police presence in the Quarter. Blue shirts. Mounted patrolman. Ridiculously obvious undercover cops in heavily starched muscle shirts. Honestly, who starches a muscle shirt?

  As I stroll past a honky-tonk, I see a police sketch on the television. An approximation of my face. My heart skips a beat, but then I remember that anonymity is part of my power. How do my marks describe me? Well, he was tall. He wore a mask. And, um, he was really dark. No. Darker. Good luck finding me.

  On Barracks Street, the air smells of raspberry daiquiris and cigar smoke. Low, puffy clouds crawl southward. This is the quiet end of the Quarter, where magnolia blooms droop over the edges of flower boxes like partygoers who’ve had too much to drink. It’s getting pretty late when I spot a lone man ambling along. An overstuffed camera bag rhythmically bounces against the man’s side. His wallet winks at me from a back pocket. The man, in a flimsy surgeon’s mask, makes my mouth water. In this moment, I know how the king of the jungle feels when, on the grasslands of the Serengeti, he spots a hapless zebra foal, separated from his harem. This will be an easy one.

  Yet, the man advances at a remarkably brisk pace. His legs hardly seem to move at all, but he’s outdistancing me. Have I been spotted? Is he running for help? I have to jog to catch up with him, and I do. I need only make him aware of my presence to end this transaction, but just as I come within striking distance moonlight illuminates the high-cheeked plane of his face. Oh, my goodness, he’s black.

  This situation has never presented itself before. On the one hand, he’s clearly a tourist like all the others. On the other hand, it seems patently unfair to subject one of my own kind to such rough handling. When I say my own kind, I don’t speak necessarily of his skin color, although to be perfectly honest that is a factor. But note the thick glasses, the stiffness of his gait, the comically tight high waters. In other words, this man is part of my tribe. He’s a bona fide nerd.

  Will my powers even work on someone so like myself, my blameless twin? Or will we cancel each other out in a burst of vapor, matter and antimatter dissolved to nothing? What kind of idiot wanders through the Quarter at such a late hour with such nonchalance, no self-awareness at all? Doesn’t he realize that bad things happen to people who don’t exercise common sense? He must learn to take better care of himself before something truly terrible happens. Despite my current employment status, I know that I’m an excellent teacher. I draw my hood forward and ready myself for the lesson.

  “Hold it right there.” Someone taps my shoulder from behind. My solicitor is a policeman wearing an N95 respirator. He pulls a horse by the reins. I back away.

  “I said, ‘Stop.’ ” The policeman places a hand on his hip, near his revolver. “I need to ask you a few questions.” The horse bobs his head and snorts.

  I run.

  I hear the Mountie grunt onto his horse and, next, the sound of horseshoes against cobblestone. I sprint toward the still underpopulated, but not empty, heart of the Quarter. Neon signs glow in the distance. They’re too far away to read, but I know what they advertise: sex, booze, violence. And if I make it that far, I may lose my assailant in the morass of pleasure-seeking tourists, securing my freedom. Feet don’t fail me now.

  As I sprint past a produce cart, I yank the bedsheet from it, a sheet the proprietor apparently hoped would protect his stock from prying eyes. But my plan is foiled because the cart is empty. I hoped the cart was full of apples. I hoped that apples would spill across the street like in one of those ludicrous action movies. I hoped the applelanche would cause my overseer to lose his balance and tumble to the ground. But I hoped wrong.

  The horseman gains on me. I jump onto the sidewalk and bump past a pair of men peeing on the steps of the shabby old cathedral. The horseman follows me onto the sidewalk. My chest pounds. My temples thump. I won’t be able go much farther before I collapse from total exh
austion. Out of options, I fling the white sheet into the air.

  Buoyed on a breeze, the sheet snags my horseman’s body, robing him in spotless cotton. The horseman’s momentum carries him past me, as he grapples with his ghost. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

  Depleted, but triumphant, I turn onto a side street and promptly trip on a hole in the sidewalk, twisting my ankle. Broken pavement: my tax dollars hard at work. In no time, I hear my hooded pursuer approaching from around the bend. Soon, I’ll be a prisoner.

  “Darling?” I’m pulled to my feet and into a narrow, fenced alley. I lean against a rugged brick wall. It takes me forever to catch my breath.

  My savior is a sex worker, one of the countless women who unselfconsciously peddle their cupcakes and cookies at fire-sale prices. My heart aches for the desperate person who would look for street love at a time like this. The woman wears an ill-fitting blond wig and enough eye shadow to win RuPaul’s Drag Race, but this woman is achingly familiar. She pulls off the shield that had been covering her face.

  “Dell?” I ask. “What are you doing here dressed like that?”

  “Me?” She pushes my hoodie back and wipes sweat from my forehead with a soft towel she takes from her pocket. “You’re the one wearing a hoodie and jeans in the French Quarter. You hate hoodies. You hate jeans. You hate the French Quarter. James, you have a lot of explaining to do.”

  We tell each other the truth. Her end of it is that the oil company lost a government subsidy. In retaliation, they laid off the youngest, blackest, and, in this case, most female of their employees.

  “So, you’ve been selling yourself?” I ask.

  “Not in the traditional sense. No.” She explains that she never has sex with the men or even undresses. To the contrary, she merely escorts them to a room, quickly dons a gas mask with a portable ventilator—like the face shield, borrowed equipment from her old job—and knocks her quarry out with a puff of neurogenic general anesthetic. You know, sleeping gas.

  “I know what neurogenic means,” I say.

  “Actually”—she removes her wig—“it’s more of a trihalomethane solution of my own synthesis. Perfectly safe and very effective—”

  I place a finger over her lip.

  “You did all of this,” I ask, “to keep us from getting kicked out?”

  Dell pulls a stack of crisp bills from her very large patent pleather purse. I unfurl my crumpled catch.

  Dell counts the gathered money. We’re close to our goal. She smiles.

  “How did you know it was me you were saving?” I ask.

  “What a preposterous question, darling,” she says. “I’d know you anywhere.”

  Horse hooves tromp near the alley entrance. I motion for Dell to get behind me and wait in the shadows. If the horseman is back, I’ll give myself up rather than let us both be arrested. I wouldn’t want her to wind up in confinement with people like us.

  I peek through the wooden fence slats, but don’t find my pursuer. A horse-drawn carriage rolls past, but no sightseers warm its benches. My bedsheet drags behind, a carcass black with the grime of my city.

  Dell and I squeeze out of the alley, her hand in mine. Sirens wail from the direction of the river, and blueberry lights flash across nearby rooftops. No doubt the horseman called reinforcements. Best to skedaddle while we can.

  We altered our appearances as best we could. I trashed my hoodie in favor of the cream-colored polo shirt beneath. She stowed the wig and covered her mostly see-through costume with a wrinkled three-quarter-sleeve dress that had been wedged inside her bag. We look more or less like ourselves—a well-educated couple closing out an uneventful night on the town—or at least a harried approximation thereof.

  We make the northern edge of the Quarter in no time, especially impressive as Dell wears platform heels, which she commands without incident. I’ve only known her to wear low heels. Who is this woman? I’m hardly one to buy into patriarchal notions of feminine scrumptiousness, but the heels create quiet a spectacle of her long legs. I do think I’ll lobby for her to keep the heels once we put this strange business behind us.

  We cross Basin Street, a tranquil lane where defunct railroad lines are still visible, northbound tracks breaching the pavement like metallic tree roots. A police helicopter, its searchlight a probing finger, slides into the area we just left. Dell clutches my hand. We trot even faster.

  “Let’s stop here,” Dell says. “My feet are dead.” We remove our face coverings. She sits on a bench next to a parking lot.

  “Fine,” I say. “Where is the car anyway?”

  “The car?” She reaches into her bag, swapping the heels for flats.

  “Yes. Our car.” We own a jalopy. Both of us are terrified of debt, so we kept the car her parents gifted us when we married. It’s antique, an egg-shaped electric-gas hybrid with leaky door seals, but it’s ours.

  “Why didn’t you tell me that you’d resorted to psychological mugging?”

  “Me?” I say. “Why didn’t you tell me you were performing a Black Widow routine?”

  “James Young, don’t you dare change the subject. Caginess doesn’t suit you.”

  I was going to object, but instead I grab her hands and hold them.

  “I wanted to tell you everything but—it’s just that you’re such a good woman. You’re so brilliant and beautiful and hardworking and beautiful. Sometimes I feel like I don’t measure up. I wanted to get this one thing right for you.”

  Dell reaches over and grabs my chin. I lean into her and kiss her delicate lips. We pull apart. My mouth is hot, as if Cupid whacked me across my face with his bow.

  “About the car,” she says. “I sold it.”

  “You what?” I pull away.

  “Earlier this evening. You see, I only stole from the one man I mentioned.”

  “But I’ve noticed you doing your face up for weeks.”

  “That was just preparation. You know I’m a planner, darling. I wanted to perfect my look. But frankly the idea of doing that more than once is terrifying.”

  A young, maskless couple saunters our way. It’s clear that they’ve had too much to drink as they stumble like nectar-drunk honeybees. Sometimes life throws you an undeserved bone. Yes, I’m ready to put my unsavory enterprise in the rearview, but our rent remains due in just a few hours, and we’re still short of our goal.

  “How much more did you say we still need?” I ask. She tells me and does a double take from me to the couple who are getting quite close. They’re a good-looking twosome in scarves, tall and towheaded like models in a Swedish travel brochure.

  “Oh no, darling,” Dell says. “No more. We’re not doing that.” The couple walks by. I don’t want them to get away.

  I grab Dell’s upper arm. “We don’t have a choice.”

  “Who does?” the woman of the couple asks.

  Nestled in the folds of the man’s cozy peacoat, the dark nub of a gun muzzle aims at my stomach. We’re about to get mugged.

  “ ‘O dreams, my dreams, where is your sweetness?’ ” I say, under my breath.

  “This is no time for Pushkin,” Dell says.

  “We don’t want no trouble, O.J.,” the blond woman says.

  Downrange, helicopter blades echo through the alleys and courtyards of the Quarter. Above, clouds collide and intermix, inkblots for my analysis, a purling moth, waltzing lovers, a beast with no name. Dell and I raise our hands in surrender.

  Token

  Get to the office by six a.m. each morning; never leave before sunset; wear a suit and tie even on Fridays; rock a bow tie and wear nonprescription glasses so they believe you have a brain; speak only when spoken to, but be sure to respond because the last thing you want to be is a quiet one: they fear the quiet ones; when you look in the mirror, be sure to see only a sliver of yourself; keep your car washed
and your shoes mirror-shiny; be mocha-skinned, be walnut, be milk chocolate; let them consume you, and wipe their mouths with dirty linen, but don’t associate with the Negros who work around the building: the security guards in their pressed-white short-sleeved shirts, the baggy-pants-wearing maintenance workers, the errand boys and food deliverers; don’t let them connect you to any of those who look like you, because one of you is desirable, but more than one of you is a rebellion; never talk about Confederate monuments, police shootings, or protests; when you look in the mirror never find more than a drop of yourself; if you want to sell out, sell out smart; but I’m not a sellout so much as a double agent; this is how you drive to work; this is how you place your hands at two and ten o’clock; this is how you erect perfect posture in the elevator; this is how you greet your betters, which is everyone with white skin; you eat lunch at your desk, but always with the door closed; if they see you bite a hamburger or shovel fries into your pink mouth, they will have visions of savages with nose rings; they can wear nose rings, you cannot; never eat fried chicken on a workday because they will smell it on your smile; this is how you smile at your boss who called you soulful; this is how you smile at the descendant of the man who said Segregation now, segregation forever; this is how you smile when they call you by the name of another Black person; always go to the bathroom stall and always shut the door; never get caught next to one of the men at a urinal; they won’t look past the divider at what you hold, but they will wonder about what you hold and whether it belongs to a person or an animal; they may look for a tail and you too will wonder even with your firsthand knowledge; when you look in the mirror, find a mask, always a mask; don’t talk to the other people who wear suits and look like you; they can look like you, but like the white people better; don’t play golf; your name is not Tyler, and you are not white; but if you must play golf do not agree to caddy and do not beat your betters; comfort them with cheerful conversation; tell all who will listen how grateful and lucky you are to be on the team; this is how you appear to be twice the man you are; this is how you make hand motions that soothe; this is how you take a blow beneath your belt and fall to the parched earth; this is how you stay down and laugh it off; this is how you get up and let them pat your skull.