“I’m about to explain.”
“I mean I don’t understand why you need me for this deal or any deal.”
She nodded at the cash in the middle of the table.
“Because I need some of that.”
“You should have more than I do. Your place was a goddamn goldmine.”
“Well. I don’t.”
“Don’t tell me that.”
“Why else would I be here?”
“Don’t tell me you didn’t have a safe.”
“I didn’t have a safe.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Because I stuck it all in the attic. That’s why.”
“Jesus Christ. The attic?”
She reached across the table and picked up his glass and drank.
“You got to have a damn safe,” he said.
“But I didn’t and now I can’t do nothing about it.”
“I told you to make some money and get out of it anyway. You could’ve done that a long time ago. And you should’ve quit when Judah came back anyhow.”
“It was too late to quit then. And it’s too late to quit now.”
“You got a new place already?”
“Already.”
“What’s it like?”
“It’s a dump.”
“Then don’t waste my money and get stuck in what you’ll owe. If you haven’t noticed Frenchtown is about run out of highfalutin brothels.”
“I’m not interested in chandeliers and brass rails this time around. You know what’s coming. We all do. And we all know it doesn’t matter what the law says, Frenchtown ain’t gonna stop drinking.”
William drew from the cigar. The others cut their eyes back and forth across the room, their curious thoughts shuffling from one to another in open expression.
“What are you thinking?” William said.
“I have plenty of space. Got a cellar below. It’ll hold plenty of bottles. Come the new year I figure I can get three or four times what a bottle is worth. Every saloon in Frenchtown is hoarding right about now but they’re gonna run out soon enough. They’re too busy gambling and whoring and God knows what. When they do, they’ll come to me.”
“And?”
“And that’s why I need money. To stockpile right now. And you can keep me free of the politicians and half the precinct has been in my burned up beds. Not to mention everyone in this room. This’ll be easy and you know it.”
William leaned back in his chair. Thumped a fat ash from the end of the cigar.
“I can’t,” he said.
“You can.”
“No. I can’t.”
“You have the money.”
“It ain’t that.”
“Then what is it?”
“Maybe I already got a deal with somebody else.”
“Then maybe you want to double what you can make.”
“That ain’t exactly all there is to consider.”
“What the hell else?”
He coughed. Drew on the cigar. Lifted the bottle of Scotch from the table and drank.
“What?” she said again.
“From where I’m sitting nobody in their right mind would get in the middle of whatever you and Judah got going on. That includes me.”
“This doesn’t have anything to do with Judah.”
“If it’s got to do with you it’s got to do with him. You don’t have to turn your head around too far to see what I got to lose.”
“It didn’t bother you the first time.”
“First time around I set you up because you know how to get a man all mixed up. And we all thought Judah was with the good Lord.”
“Or the devil.”
“Either way.”
“You weren’t mixed up. You and everybody else in this room got plenty in return.”
“Yeah. But nothing was being burned down and there weren’t any dead bodies. It was just a good time.”
“Then get him arrested. You can make one call and they’ll show up tomorrow and pin this all on him and that’ll be the end of it.”
“Judah didn’t light the goddamn fire.”
“He paid to have it lit.”
“And that’s a bigger problem. Whoever it was is out there walking around and I don’t want nothing to do with him either. I figure if a man is willing to get paid to burn down a goshdamn city block then if I get on your side of things Judah will damn sure send him my way.”
“You’re overestimating Judah.”
“You’re underestimating him. And everything else. Cause I got news for you. Judah is in a shitload of trouble already. You can’t pull that stunt and get away with it. Not even in Frenchtown. He’s a damn crippled war hero and it’s been hands off but that won’t last. Too many people got hurt. Too many people lost. Seems like everybody is waiting on him to just die and let it take care of itself. He better hurry.”
Colette leaned back in the chair. He looks satisfied, she thought. In himself. In all that bullshit. As if it was a speech he prepared and had only been waiting for her to appear in the middle of the night and ask for his help.
She stood from the chair. Her eyes changed. The tension falling out of them as she moved slowly around the table. She sat down in the chair next to him and gave him the look that always won. Then she reached over to his arm. She unbuttoned the cuff of his shirt and rolled up his sleeve and traced her fingers along his forearm.
“Please,” she said. “We can do this. There’s nothing to worry about. And you can have whatever you want. Whatever. Whenever. Like always.”
William put his hand on top of her fingers. He held them and said I don’t know if I can this time. You got the right idea but you’re a wildcard. Always have been. You and Judah should just drop it and go back to the way you were. Seems like the best thing for everybody.
She returned his patronizing smile. And then she dug her fingernails into the skin of his forearm. His eyes went big in confusion and then in pain. He tried to snatch his arm away but she had him. He shoved at her shoulder and then at her face but she wouldn’t let go and he yelled out to the others who hurried across the room and dropped their drinks and cigars. Get her off me get her off me. They grabbed Colette around the waist and legs and pulled and lifted her out of the chair, her body parallel to the ground and nails still dug into the flesh of his arm as if desperately clutching a cliffside. They gave her one more good pull and she came loose. Small red halfmoons lined William’s forearm and his face was blushed and his eyes glassy. He clutched his bleeding arm and screamed for them to throw her the hell out of here.
She didn’t fight as they carried her out of the door. But when they dropped her on the ground she got up and took a swing that grazed the back of somebody’s head. They faced her and she was heated and ready. And they slowly moved back toward the door as if wary of some wild animal, closing and locking it behind them. From inside William yelled don’t ever come back here or I’ll help Judah bury you.
She kicked the door and said give me my goddamn coat. Stood at the door a moment and listened to their voices and moving about. She turned around and realized Nick should be there but he was gone. She looked across the yard at the house and a light had come on downstairs. From the other side of the brick fence a neighbor’s dog began to bark and then the door opened and her coat flew out onto the patio and the door slammed shut and the lock clicked. She picked up the coat and put it on. The backporch light turned on and she crossed the lawn and hurried through the gate and out onto the sidewalk.
She thought she would find Nick waiting there. Or waiting at the end of the street. But she didn’t and she moved on through the dark and the feeling of being a stranger in this town came over her. As if she were walking these streets for the first time. As if she would ride the streetcar for the first time. She felt at the mercy of the world, something so light and fragile. Something weak and unacknowledged. In the cold night she was consumed by the idea that she wasn’t really there. Or that maybe she had never been. Or that maybe she was
no longer interesting. And maybe she no longer loved and that didn’t leave much to offer.
Am I really here, she wondered. Like Judah. He is here. But he’s not here.
She reached Jackson Avenue and waited for the streetcar. Her hands were deep in her coat pockets and her fingers tapped against her leg, skin and blood under her fingernails. She saw the single headlight of the streetcar moving toward her. She began to hum. She hummed and tapped her fingers and by the time the car arrived she was laughing out loud at the look on William’s face when he realized she was going for it. That she could hurt him.
I’ll show them, she thought.
The streetcar stopped and she climbed on. The only person riding. It bumped and then moved along the rail. She slid across the wooden seat and sat close to the window, her breath fogging the cold glass.
You and Judah should just go back to the way you were, he had said.
The way we were, she thought. Dancing at a masquerade ball and sitting at the river sipping gin and watching the sun go down and playing hide and seek between the market stands. Cheating together in school and swiping cigars from her father’s store and swiping quarters from the saloon cash drawer. Arriving at the moment they had known they were coming to since childhood when they married under a magnolia tree. Arriving at the moment they had known was coming when Judah said I have to go.
Why can’t you just go back?
Because I put my hardest part forward when I believed he was dead and that is what I am now. And she imagined the Judah before. Standing straight. Shoulders back. Lifting her onto the bartop in the saloon and pouring her a drink. Then she saw him as he was now. Lifting a cane. The war a part of his body. A part of his mind. His scars. She thought of Judah’s face and the crescent scar he hadn’t brought home and the night she gave it to him.
The rough night in the brothel, the out-of-town brothers who got what they wanted and then sat at the bar and drank and drank until they decided they didn’t have to pay. They had told the girls in the room they would pay downstairs and then they had told the bartender they were done and leaving. Colette had met them at the door and told them what they owed and they laughed at her. Told her to get her ass out of the way and she reached behind her and locked the door and they laughed harder. I’ll slap a damn woman, one of them said. You and me both, said the other. The piano player stopped playing and those sitting at the window tables or at the bar all went silent and watched.
“You won’t slap me,” she said to one. And then to the other.
“Saying it twice don’t make it no sweeter,” one said and he slapped his brother’s arm and they cackled. They both wore bushy mustaches and silver watches and shared the same sarcastic eyes.
She told them again what they owed and they again said we ain’t paying and move your whore ass away from that door.
They were drunk and slow and she was quick to her boot and quick with the blade and she had sliced one across the arm and the other across the cheek before either could put together what was happening. The brothers gawked and each saw the other’s blood and they went for her. She dodged them and by now the bartender had come around the bar brandishing a champagne bottle that he smacked over one head and then another, the bottle breaking neither time to the astonishment of all as it sent both brothers to their knees. Colette kicked one to the floor and she reached in his coat pocket and pulled out his cash-filled wallet and the other hit her hard in the side of the face with an all-or-nothing haymaker. The bartender cracked him again and this time the bottle shattered and he went limp and out.
Colette had gone to the floor. The wallet falling from her hand. The knife falling from the other. The room spinning. Men rose from their chairs and helped the bartender drag the brothers out of the door and into the street. Her girls gathered around Colette. Helped her sit up, then helped her off the floor and into a chair. A wet towel for her swelling cheek. Someone picked up the wallet and the knife and gave them to her and then the girls helped her upstairs and to her room. She drank a shot of whiskey and a glass of water and then lay down on the bed. Turned off the lamp. The wallet on the nightstand. The knife still in her hand, not ready to believe it was all over.
She had never asked Judah why he had chosen that night to come to her. Why that was the night that he let it all fall, his anger and his hurt, and limped across Frenchtown in the late night to be with his wife again. But that was the night he had chosen and he came to the front door in the deep hours. The bartender and two of the girls sat alone at the bar. When he came in, none of them spoke, only looked at him with surprise. He asked which room was hers and the bartender told him top floor at the end of the hall. He crept up the stairs like an insect, each step hurting him a little more than the one before, until he reached the top floor. He bent and gathered himself. Let the pain subside. Then he made his way to the end of the hall where he opened her door and the streetlight came in her open windows and he saw her asleep on top of the covers. She was on her side and the pale light lay draped across the curve of her body.
Judah leaned his cane against the wall and moved to the bed. Sat down carefully on the edge. He reached out with a careful and sorrowful hand to touch her, so many years since the last time he had touched her, and as he dropped the weight of his hand across her hip, she felt it and she rose panicked and fearful of this touch in the dark and with the knife that had never left her hand she swiped at the figure and he screamed and fell back and to the floor, the blood coming fast to the halfmoon slice that bent around his bewildered eyes.
She stepped down from the streetcar and minutes later she found herself standing in front of Judah’s saloon. A candle left burning on a table in the corner. The window to what had been their bedroom right above her. She heard a long and winding moan. And she knew it was the kind of pain that could only belong to him.
41
Nick found himself standing at the site of the fire. A pint bottle in one hand and a letter from home in the other. He had stood at the door of the pool house with his ear pressed against the cold glass until he heard William begin to promise consequences against Judah and then he slipped off into the dark. Hurrying back to the streetcar and then hurrying to Judah where he found him facedown in the bed and wheezing for breath. He turned him over. Got him comfortable. And then on his way out he saw the letter addressed to him lying on the floor. A letter from his father.
You need to be home for Christmas, it read. Your mother expects you. There is much time to make up. You are twentyeight years old. Not a young man anymore. I will expect you.
He swigged from the pint bottle. The liquor hitting him hard and fast. I’m twentyseven, he thought. He kicked at a smutty pile of bricks and closed his eyes and tried to see what used to be there. Tried to see the ghosts of the women and their smooth and bare legs and he tried to hear the clink of the glasses and the sounds of pleasure. He swayed as the liquor burned and then he did not see the women as they teased and touched but he heard the rage of the fire and he heard the screams and saw the blazing bodies and he felt it all and his head fell back and his mouth fell open and it was as if the great sorrow of the world came together in a deepnight mist that slipped down his throat and into his soul and he opened his eyes to chase away the screams. He tossed the letter onto the blackened mess and he drank from the bottle and when he started to walk again it was with a loose and drunken gait.
He staggered along. Inside the saloons they gathered in the smoky light and along the sidewalks of the brothels they stood in dark coats that fell open and their pale legs snaked out into the cold and Nick stopped and stared. Come on over here, they said. You look lonely, they said. Don’t be lonely, they said. He wobbled. Tripped but caught himself. Don’t run off, they said. Come back and let me make it all right, they said. But he kept moving though he kept thinking about what it would be like to hold out his hand and let one of them take it and disappear into a room where no one cared what they were doing and if he could get himself to stop thinking then
he wouldn’t care either. He came to a cart on the side of the street and he sat down. Around him were the echoes of music. The echoes of laughter. He sat in the somber light of the lamppost and drank and knew he would be sick but he drank more.
That was when he saw the figure walking toward him. Coming out of a brothel at the end of the street. He couldn’t tell if it was a man or woman until she was close as she wore a black fedora pulled down tightly on her forehead. A long gray coat flapped behind her. He rose from the cart, mesmerized by her lengthy strides and he pretended to almost bump into her and she gave him a sharp glance and never broke stride and the catlike glint in her eyes grabbed Nick and pulled him.
It’s Ella, he thought.
He tucked the bottle in his coat pocket and kept a halfblock behind and the woman walked without turning her head as if focused on some target way off in the distance. She kept a quick pace and he hurried to keep up. His breaths in little drunken gasps. She walked along Dauphine toward Canal, a lanky figure wearing the clothes of a different gender, pants too big and flapping on her thin body and the hat down across her eyes. At each corner she stopped. Lifted the hat and looked around. Nick anticipated her stops and he was already ducking into an alley or into a doorway or behind others on the street by the time she looked in his direction. The farther along Dauphine she walked, the darker Frenchtown became as if she were traveling deeper into a well. Fewer and fewer stood on the street. No music. Footsteps echoing. Shadowlike figures hovered in doorways or on balconies and the weight of those eyes fell on the woman and the man following her.
She reached Iberville Street and turned to the right and it seemed that the farther she walked, the more Frenchtown gave up. The buildings leaned against one another as if only trying to make it through the night. Smoke crept from opium houses and smoke hung in the night air from alleyfires lit by street people who stared drunkenly or hungrily into the low flames. Her pace slowed the deeper she moved into the dark and Nick closed in on her. Nervous and curious and he began to see her now like he saw her in the candlelight of the theater attic while they lay together on a pile of costumes or like he saw her in the sunlight of the cafés and he wanted to run and grab her and hold her and say here I am.
Nick Page 17