by Barbara Hall
“Are you six?”
“Yes, of course. How old are you?”
“I’m thirty-seven,” Nora said, surprised at how old that sounded. “My name is Nora.”
“Well, I’ll tell him, but he might not want to talk to you. He’s not really a phone person.”
“Give it a try, okay?”
The kid dropped the phone with a clank. Nora waited for a long time. She could hear the television blaring, and she thought about hanging up, but suddenly Leo’s voice came on the line, dark and deep, severe and sure of itself, just as she remembered it.
“Yeah, this is Leo. Who’s this?”
“Hi, this is Nora Braxton. You gave me a ride in your cab the other night.”
He said, “I give a lot of people a ride in my cab.”
“I was about to be mugged. You saved me.”
There was a long silence and she thought once again about hanging up. Then he said, “Oh, yeah. How are you? Are you okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine. But I’ve been thinking about what happened, and I feel I didn’t thank you adequately enough. That is, I didn’t give you a big enough tip.”
He laughed. “You don’t have to tip me for saving your life.”
“I’m friends with Poppy Marchand,” she said.
There was a pause. She could hear him exhaling.
“How do you know Poppy?” he asked.
“We went to college together. We shared a house in Charlottesville, at UVA.”
“I’ll be damned,” he said.
“She’s here now. She’s at the hotel where I’m staying, but she also lives here.”
“Yeah, I heard she had come back. Her old man is dead, thank God. Judge Marchand. He was a piece of work. Did you know him?”
“I might have met him once. At a parents’ weekend, or graduation.”
She was lying. She had not, to her knowledge, ever clapped eyes on Judge Marchand.
“Well, tell her I said hi,” he said, sounding as if he wanted to end the conversation.
“Okay, but I’d like to see you again.”
“Why?” he questioned.
Nora cleared her throat. “Well, I think you kind of saved my life. At least, you saved me from something terrible, anyway, and I’d like to buy you a drink.”
There was a pause. She could hear the TV still, and then the loud screeching of his daughter’s voice, demanding his presence.
“I’m playing chess with my daughter right now.”
“Oh,” she said, thinking she had never played chess with her daughter.
“I’m taking her to her mother’s around ten tonight. Her mother lives in the city, so I could meet you after that.”
“Where?”
“Harry’s Corner Bar,” he said, “on Chartres, just past the convent.”
“Oh, great. I’m at the Collier House. That’s not far.”
“So, I’ll see you there,” he said, not interested in her geography.
“Okay, but . . .”
He hung up. She sat holding the phone, wondering what she had gotten herself into. She felt she wanted to tell someone about this idea, to get someone’s permission. She called Poppy’s room, but got no answer. She called Simone’s room, and after several rings she picked it up, sounding sleepy.
“God, I’m sorry, did I wake you up?” Nora asked.
“No, not really. I’m just resting.”
“Well, I was thinking of going out this evening, and I wanted to make sure you would be okay.”
“I’m fine. I’m going to stay in. I thought we could do something, but now that I’m in my room, I feel like staying here.”
“You don’t sound so good.”
There was a long pause and finally Simone said, “I have a big day tomorrow, Nora. I have to meet with the district attorney and be prepped for the trial. So, you could say I’m not doing so good.”
“Oh. Right,” Nora said, wanting to kick herself. In fact, she did slap herself on the forehead in a gesture of admonishment.
“But after that, I’ll probably want to go out and do some drinking. So we can celebrate tomorrow.”
“Celebrate?”
“Us being here. Me being alive. That kind of thing.”
“Yes, right.”
Another long pause ensued, and Nora realized she just didn’t know how to talk to her friend anymore. Was this normal? Was she being a coward?
Simone anticipated her thoughts and said, “Nora, nobody knows how to talk to a rape survivor. I’m used to that. So don’t worry about it.”
“It’s not that, really . . .”
“Yes, it is. It’s like having cancer or something. I don’t expect you to understand. I’m glad you can’t understand, and I hope you never have to.”
“I just want . . . I want to be a good friend.”
“You are a good friend,” Simone said. “You’re here.”
Simone hung up then, and Nora felt grateful to be released. But she didn’t feel so much better about herself. She had come here thinking they were going to have a nice vacation. If she had known the purpose of the visit, would she have come so willingly? In her heart she suspected that she was a terrible coward, and that she would have been hesitant to be apart of this.
She had never liked to look at anything really ugly. Once Cliff was injured in a skiing accident. Skiing in rough terrain, he had hit a rock, broken his ski pole and driven it several inches into his leg. The doctor had put a tube into the wound to help it drain, and Nora was supposed to clean the area around the tube every night until it was removed. But she couldn’t. She had stood there, paralyzed, with cotton and alcohol in her hand, as Cliff urged her on. “It’s not on you, Nora. I’m the one who has to feel the pain.” But that was the point. It was other people’s pain she couldn’t endure. Her own didn’t frighten her. She had chickened out, and he had grabbed the alcohol from her and cleaned his own wound while she waited outside the door, covering her ears so she wouldn’t have to hear him yell. No wonder he lost faith in her. The waitress would probably clean his wounds. The waitress was made of stronger stuff.
It was the worst thing in the world, Nora thought, the worst thing you could possibly learn about yourself—that you have no courage. But maybe it was an acquired skill. Maybe courage could be learned.
♦♦♦
She started to get ready at seven o’clock. She knew it would be a lengthy process. She showered, changed clothes three times, dried her hair, put on makeup, took it off, put it on again. She finally approved of herself in a black sleeveless silk dress and clogs. She watched PBS until ten o’clock, then tied an apricot-colored cardigan around her neck and walked out into the night. The air was damp and forgiving, after the fierce thunderstorm. There would be about an hour of coolness, she realized, before the heat moved back in to stay. Cars sloshed through puddles as they drove past. Tourists had returned to the streets, traveling in packs, dressed in their shorts and oversized T-shirts and baseball caps. Looking at them, Nora feared she was missing the point of life. But maybe they were just as doubtful, just as miserable after they got home.
It seemed like a long walk, only because she was thinking of Simone and her situation. She kept picturing the crime, Simone walking down a quiet street, then hearing footsteps, then feeling herself thrown against a wall, her whole life about to change. What did she think of in those moments? Did she try to fight back? Simone was tall and strong. Could she have kicked the guy, scratched him, bitten him the way Nora had bitten the football player? Did anything like that occur to her, or did she just freeze and submit? It was hard to imagine not having the impulse to fight back. It was not a question Nora had thought to ask, but it had been simmering in her mind. The guy didn’t have a gun or a knife, after all. Couldn’t she have taken him? Maybe he was big. Maybe it all happened so fast. She didn’t really want to know the answers to these questions, and she was ashamed of herself for thinking them. She was ashamed that somewhere in her brain a question had lodged itself like
a piece of shrapnel—couldn’t Simone have prevented it?
She finally arrived at Harry’s Corner Bar. Walking in, she could see that the evening was not going to evolve as she had planned. She thought the clubs would be crowded and lively, but this one was mainly empty, except for a few stalwarts at the bar, and some locals playing pool at the other end of the room. She felt conspicuous here, like an alcoholic out on an evening prowl. The jukebox was playing loud, a CCR song, “Fortunate Son.” She liked the song, and she felt vaguely cheered by it. It reminded her of college parties, those days when people crowded into the living room of their house, clutching plastic cups full of beer, talking all manner of nonsense, laughing, dancing, trying to get drunk. In college, the goal of the evening seemed always to be getting drunk enough to forget what you were doing, something to which she never subscribed. What the hell was the point of that? That was why in her fourth year she gave up drinking and got stoned instead. She found that she didn’t forget so much when she was smoking pot. The drug seemed to slow things down, to intensify rather than obliterate. And there wasn’t the hangover to deal with the next day. Just a dull aching in her lungs and a scratchy throat. When was the last time she had smoked a joint? A few years after Annette was born, she thought. Cliff had brought one home and they had smoked it and played Scrabble, and eventually collapsed in fits of giggles on the floor. The munchies had hit them and they had made banana bread, which was rubbery and awful, and they ate it right out of the pan, pulling it apart with their fingers. She smiled, remembering it, wondering if it hadn’t been their last happy time together. Did Cliff still get stoned, but now with the waitress?
She sat at the bar, and the bartender swooped down on her immediately.
“What’s your pleasure?” he asked.
She laughed. “Do bartenders really say that?”
“It’s late and I’m bored,” he admitted.
“I thought this city was always at work,” Nora said.
“It’s boring around here,” the bartender said. His hair hung down past his shoulders, and there was a paltry goatee fomenting around his mouth. “Jazz Fest was last week. That was wild. Now everyone is tired.”
“I’ll have a Bloody Mary.”
“No, you won’t. We make ‘em from scratch here and I’m too lazy to do it.”
“Oh. Well, how about a martini?”
“Done,” he said.
He started mixing, pouring liquids into a silver shaker, and a man with a leathery face approached her and said, “You having a good time here, little lady?”
“I don’t know. It’s too early to tell.”
“You an East Coast girl? You look like a New Yorker.”
“No, I’m a Southerner.”
“God bless you. Give this woman a drink on me,” he instructed the bartender.
“She hasn’t had her first one yet,” the bartender said.
“No matter. She needs another.”
The bartender put two martinis in front of her and stood there, as if he wanted to watch her drink. She sipped the first one. It was ice-cold and delicious. She ought to drink more, she decided, feeling the gin turn from cold to hot as it slid down her throat.
“Gonna be hot tomorrow,” the bartender said.
“You should be used to that.”
“You here on vacation?”
“Not really. Although sort of, I guess.”
“What do you think of our city?”
“I almost got mugged yesterday,” she said, biting into an olive.
“No shit. In the Quarter?”
“Yes, over on St. Ann’s, I think.”
“Yeah, you gotta be careful. Pretty girl like yourself, walking around alone.”
She blushed. It had been ages since anyone referred to her as a girl, let alone pretty. She felt embarrassed by how much she needed to hear it. Two more sips of the martini and she felt like she wanted to ask for details. What’s pretty about me? The blond hair? My eyes? They were blue until I was six, then they turned this strange blue-green color. But they are okay, aren’t they? Am I fat? Would you leave me for a waitress?
Fortunately, she didn’t say any of this.
Instead she said, “My friend got raped.”
The bartender seemed surprised to hear it. A look of concern spread across his face.
“In New Orleans?”
“Yes, a year ago. They caught the guy. The trial is on Wednesday.”
“Goddammit,” he said. “This place is going to hell in a handbasket. Well, I hope they fry the bastard.”
“They don’t have the death penalty for rapists, do they?”
“They oughta,” he said, taking a swig from a bottle of water. “Women get the short end of the stick, don’t they? I mean, guys can’t really get raped. I guess they could, but most of the guys I know wouldn’t mind. Sorry if that sounds tasteless.”
“I’ve heard worse.”
“But damn, to force a woman to have sex? That’s just wrong.”
Nora stared at him. How old was he? Barely twenty-one, she had to think, given how much trouble he was having sustaining facial hair. Was this how the younger generation saw things? Force a woman to have sex, pay with your life. Did she ever think in such absolutes? Even now, she wasn’t sure what she wanted to see happen to Simone’s rapist. Jail, certainly, for a long time. But death? She did not feel that kind of rage yet. Maybe she would when she laid eyes on him.
“Is she doing okay, your friend?”
“Oh, yeah, she’s fine,” Nora said, and then she was a little disturbed at how cavalier that sounded. But Simone was fine. Until she told them about the rape, Nora would never have guessed anything had happened to her. Except that she was painfully thin. And on the phone, she had sounded drugged. But so what if she was? It was okay to take painkillers when you had your wisdom teeth out. Wouldn’t it be okay to take a sedative to recover from being raped?
Suddenly the bartender looked up as the door opened and said, “Leo, my man! How’s tricks?”
Leo Girardi headed toward the bar in a lumbering gait. He was a little heavier set than Nora remembered, and not quite as handsome. She had fantasized him into some kind of Harrison Ford–esque hero, and now the reality of him was coldly disappointing. She felt a sudden urge to leave.
He sat beside her without looking at her and spoke instead to the bartender. “Hey, Jess, slow night?”
“Pretty damn slow. Leo, this here is my friend, the martini drinker. I don’t know her name.”
“Nora,” she said to Leo, and he finally looked at her and smiled.
“I know Nora.”
“Damn, it’s a small town. What’s your poison?”
“One of those,” Leo said, nodding at her martini.
She slid the extra one to him. “I can’t finish the one I have.”
He sipped it and studied her as he drank. She did the same. His face looked a little more attractive now, not quite so doughy, and his dark eyes were very pretty—feminine, almost—deep-set with long eyelashes. She tried to picture him in high school, when Poppy knew him. Nora could imagine him about twenty pounds lighter, with more hair, long the way boys wore it then, swept over one eye, wearing a tie-dyed T-shirt and ripped Levi’s. She liked the image.
“How’s it going?” he asked.
“Oh, fine, I guess.”
“You didn’t bring Poppy with you.”
Nora felt uncomfortable, wondering if he had only come here with the hope of being reunited with Poppy.
“No, I didn’t. She wasn’t at the hotel when I left. We had kind of a stressful day. She’s married now, you know.”
He nodded. “I heard she left her husband.”
“Oh, well, I’m sure they’re trying to work things out.”
“Like you and your husband?”
“No, we’re not trying at all. He’s in love with someone else.”
“Amazing,” he said, looking at her.
“Why?”
“Well, you seem like pe
rfectly fine wife material to me.”
“You don’t know me.”
“No, and you don’t know me.” He took large sips of his drink and wiped his lips with his sleeve. “What did you call me for?”
“I told you, I wanted to thank you.”
“Yeah, but that seems kind of strange to me.”
“Well.” She didn’t know what else to say. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, the way she used to in high school when she had long hair. Now it seemed foolish, as she had almost nothing to tuck. “What do you teach?”
“Excuse me?”
“In school. What do you teach?”
“Ethics,” he said.
She nodded, but thought he was probably kidding. She had never had an ethics class. She didn’t realize there was such a thing.
“What kind of ethics?” she asked.
“Kind? There’s no kind of ethics. You can’t place a value judgment on ethics, odd as that might sound. I present moral dilemmas and ask my students to construct a response. That’s all. Your ethics are what they are. That’s what they learn. Even the absence of virtue is a form of ethics. If you reject altruism, if you reject belief, that is an ethical position. Your ethics in that case are called nihilism. A rejection of all accepted norms and principles is a code of ethics. If that weren’t the case, then philosophy wouldn’t exist. Descartes, for example, decided it was necessary to doubt everything in order to formulate a single belief. Martin Luther, Meister Eckhart, Socrates, Hegel, Kierkegaard, they all thought it was their duty to deconstruct existing beliefs. So people of their time thought of them as unethical.”
Leo took a sip of his drink and continued talking. “But people like the Buddha and Kierkegaard would say that the only unethical stance is the absence of a stance. That is, the lack of consciousness. Kierkegaard called such people aesthetes, a word he borrowed from the Greeks. Meaning, people who only seek pleasure and who reject consciousness. He thought such people were not actually alive.”
“Aesthetes,” Nora said. “You mean, like, artists?”
“A common misconception,” Leo said, though he didn’t clarify.