Boulevard

by Jim Grimsley

  Everyone is acting surprised that such monsters could live among us, but my opinion is that there are many more like Lalaurie. We are keeping slaves, after all. They are under our power, we may do with them what we like.

  Even if she had stayed, Lalaurie, I mean, would she have been punished? Last time, she was barely touched, and all her slaves returned to her, after she flung a little girl from the roof of her house, and that’s the story I believe, I tell you, no matter how many times I’m told the child fell while running away from Lalaurie, trying to escape a beating, because in my mind it amounts to the same thing, whether it’s true the one way or the other.

  They headed into the Bourbon Pub, the sound falling around them and pressing against them, music throbbing, but instead of walking to the stairs that led to the disco, Mark led Newell to the back room and they stood in the dark for a while, Mark pressing against Newell, the two of them touching each other, people in the room but so what? Newell’s hand sliding inside Mark’s clothes, Mark sliding his hands inside Newell’s, the whole process amazing, so slow, both of them, lingering, the light low and the shadows shifting, the two of them moving small and precise and seeming quaint and almost private with each other, though they were at the center of a ring of spectators. They were mostly lost to the fact that they were anywhere at all.

  Later, upstairs, dancing, at first with some inches of space between them, then belly to belly, their bodies rippling to the beat. The disco mostly empty, a few bodies drifting among the pillars, looking at reflections in the mirror, the lights whirling, the heat making them cling together.

  They danced till sweat poured down them, and sometimes Mark heard every detail of the music, but on two different occasions he stopped hearing anything at all; he could see the beat and even feel it in a way, but he heard nothing, as if he were dancing and holding Newell in a bubble of silence, something perfect and unutterable, the shuddering of a heartbeat, the heat of breath.

  In the back room Newell knelt and took Mark in his lips, teased him, touched him here and there, each move slow and deliberate. In Mark’s perception the process was slowed and teased by the drug, the slowing of time to a trickle, every touch of the mouth intense. Later in his memory it would blend with the dancing, this long interval in the dim lit room moving his hips against Newell’s face, Newell’s hands sliding inside Mark’s shirt along his back, the circle of silence around them. Mark felt as if he were melting along the wall, draining into Newell.

  A mob has gathered in the streets, I’m frightened out of my wits, and Marie and André and Louise and the kitchen help are all begging to join it, so I’ve said yes, get out, go do it, I don’t care, but get back here before my husband gets home. Mind me you do that. And they swore each and every one they would be back. But they know my husband’s with his mistress in St. Jean tonight, he may not come home at all. So they hurried away and left me here with old madame. They joined that crowd in the street. You know that house is just around the corner from mine. Well, practically so, anyway. And I can hear the sounds now, there are thousands of people in the streets and they’re tearing the Lalaurie house to pieces.

  The papers pulsing in his hand like a rainbow, sheets of colored fire, and the smell of talcum, a velvety odor with an aftertaste of four o’clocks. Like sitting in a garden. His vision of the past became so acute sometimes. While getting a blow job in the Bourbon Pub, he was thinking about the existence of the self, its construction. The fact that he could alter it and yet remain, or even become more intensely, a construction. To feel more intensely the construction of the picture in his head, the running picture, himself the moviegoer. When he closed his eyes it was all so sweet. Getting a blow job in the back room of the Bourbon Pub on acid with a relative stranger at the helm down there in the murk, and Mark himself bemused at the thought of history. A perfect moment in the search for the good and the beautiful.

  Outside in the French Quarter of 4:30 A.M., they wandered a long way, toward the riverfront. They walked together, and for a while they were holding hands.

  Singing, music in Mark’s head, sensation ringing through him. I have walked past the Lalaurie house today. It sits an empty shell, as though the woman and all her cruelties had never existed, or as if it required so complete a scouring to cleanse the crimes away. I never saw anything like it. They say the mob took it apart board by board. The Lalauries have not yet surfaced anywhere that I have heard about, though there are rumors she fled to France. I believe she should be brought to justice, but she never will be.

  Newell said, in the lower part of the Quarter, “Let’s slow down, this is too fast.”

  “Okay.”

  “I can’t go so fast, everything is moving.”

  “Okay. Are you all right? It’s not much farther.”

  Newell nodded, as if he knew where they were going, though Mark hadn’t said. “I feel like my head is flying.”

  “You said that.”

  “I can see everything.”

  “Come on. We’re almost there.”

  “Where?”

  “Leigh’s house.”

  “But Mark, it’s five A.M.”

  Mark grinned, feeling suddenly clear about something. “She’s awake. She’s with a friend of hers. Come on.”

  Newell seemed reluctant. Mark took his arm. They walked down Dauphine and turned on Barracks and Mark buzzed the gate and after only a little while somebody buzzed him in. They headed through a lush court-yard.

  The front door was open and they went upstairs, Mark leading, heading into the sitting room, when Newell suddenly stopped. “I don’t want to go in there.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t want to. I don’t know who they are.”

  “They’re my friends. They’re doing the same drugs we’re doing. We’re just being friendly.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Meet them.”

  “I feel so funny in my stomach,” Newell said.

  Mark took his hand, knocked on the door to the sitting room.

  “Come in.” It was Leigh’s voice, but Jack opened the door.

  Jack took one look at Newell. Only one. Mark flushed with jealousy toward both men, and watched Jack, a glaze of fascination in his eyes. Newell hardly noticed, stepped into the room past Jack. Jack asked, in the deep voice that Mark could feel on his skin, “What have we here?”

  “He’s my friend. Newell.” Mark added, “He works at Mac’s bookstore.”

  “The famous Mac,” Leigh said.

  “I never saw you at Mac’s.” Jack was standing very close to Newell. “You gave him some of the acid? He gave you some?”

  Jack and Newell locked eyes.

  Leigh was on the settee again, she had been reclining but now she sat up and was shaking herself alert.

  “I got my share,” Newell said. “My head is way beyond.”

  Jack laughed. Mark took Newell’s hand, led him to a couch. He motioned Newell to sit down. Jack was watching the whole time, but went to Leigh, who relaxed when he slid beside her.

  “You’re the cutest thing,” Leigh said to Newell.

  “He was wearing a dog collar,” Mark explained. “At Mac’s.”

  “You tried to choke me in it,” Newell added. “I didn’t like that.”

  Jack smirked. “You didn’t?” They were eye to eye again, Jack and Newell. Jack’s broken nose, thin lips, hard eyes.

  “No.”

  “Mark’s just pushing your limits.”

  “You could be right.” Newell ran his fingertips along his scalp again. His eyes rolled back, no longer aware of Jack. “He pushes really nice.”

  Mark laughed. Newell stood from the couch. “I want to go.” He smiled at Leigh. “We just came to visit.”

  The room was quiet, water dripping somewhere. They looked at one another as if they had been having dinner together.

  “You don’t have to leave so soon,” Leigh said, but she was pleased, and giggled.

  Mark waited by
the door. Now Jack was looking at him, at Mark, for the first time, because Newell wanted to leave with Mark. Now Mark could be pleased with himself. But Jack went on sitting beside Leigh. Who was smiling quietly, holding the top of her robe together with her hand, the robe spotless, the lightly wrinkled skin of her face, her throat, so fine. Her freshly colored hair, honey brown. Mark’s father said she was one of the beauties, her year, one of the great ones in the ball circuit, because of that skin; Father remembered Leigh, after Mark had written her. One of the beauties.

  Jack was looking at Newell, and said, “You should come back.”

  “I just need to walk right now.”

  “You should come back for more.” Jack was displaying himself, offering something. “Of the acid. We have more.”

  “I have enough,” Mark said, and Newell had already stepped through the door as if no one were talking to him.

  “What a night it’s been,” Leigh said. “Take care.” She turned to Jack as Mark closed the door.

  Newell stared into the courtyard. “Your friends are nice,” he said. “They must have money.”

  “Leigh does. Jack has Leigh.”

  “She’s beautiful.”

  “She was famous in New Orleans as a debutante. Do you know what that means here? Mardi Gras, and all?”

  “No,” Newell said, so Mark explained as they walked, a sentence at a time, but soon gave up, and Newell said, “You can tell me later. It will make more sense.”

  “You want to go back to your apartment? We could go to bed. But I don’t know if I can sleep.”

  “Yes.”

  But yes to what? “I should have got a joint from Jack.”

  “He was full of shit.”

  “Jack?”

  “Yes. He was so full of it.”

  Mark laughed.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Just things. Never mind. Do you have anything to drink in your house?”

  “Yes.”

  When they went into the courtyard the older woman and the young one were outside again but in nightgowns and the young one was screaming, “Why are you acting like this? You won’t let me sleep.”

  “Please, Millie, I’m sorry.”

  “You should leave me alone.” The young woman, Millie.

  “Come inside. Please.”

  “I don’t want to come inside.”

  “Please, come in the house.”

  Both were silent when Newell stepped into the loggia, Mark beside him, Mark staring at the women in the shadows, who were looking at the ground now, pretending no one was anywhere near. “She’s crazy,” Newell whispered. “That girl is young. Her daddy is going to find out.”

  “Who is she?”

  “Louise is my landlady. Millie is the girl. Her daddy works for Louise. Lord.”

  They headed inside, their whispers echoing in the high ceilings. No light, but everything was visible in the spill from the front windows. When Newell closed the door they stood apart and alone in the quiet. Mark sat on the bed and Newell sat beside him.

  It was like being in love. Like falling that way. Not that, but like it.

  I was in the mob myself for a while, hanging outside the courthouse waiting for news the day of the trial. We had been hearing more and more about the story, and what I kept wondering was how easily it could have happened to me, when my husband was keeping Leitha. Leitha was the one who lived in the back cabinet, not me, but she came close to behaving as if she were the wife of the house at times, when M. was away especially, after he would sleep in her bed and get out of it for his breakfast and take a carriage to the train for business in St. Louis or Memphis or Birmingham. At one point I wondered if he would put me by and bring her upstairs, I really did, though Marie was constantly telling me that my husband would not lose his senses like that, his own people would turn against him if he did. But here was this woman Pauline, a slave just like Leitha, who shut up her mistress and her children in a room and beat them and nearly starved them. And that poor woman and her children so abused, her husband the author of the whole affair, through his unwholesome relations with Pauline, through her unnatural elevation to a place of authority over the wife of the house, and to my horror I find I can remember Pauline’s name but not the name of the wife. I was picturing myself, and Leitha with the whip. I suppose I do this to make myself feel better for the fact that I am the mistress, but am chattel at the same time. Though the truth is I’m well aware M. built Leitha a house in the Fauborg, and now he has a family there as well, a nice daughter of mixed blood; and as far as I know he may have other women; there’s a lot of money, and it all goes somewhere; and, anyway, I knew when I married him that he was too fond of women for his own good.

  Pauline will be hanged. I think I will watch her die.

  The history roiled in his head, words to say to Newell, to explain the look on Leigh’s face, the somber acceptance of strangeness, of a small scratch at the top of her breast. But why explain to Newell? What could be the purpose? What was it that Mark was feeling that made him want to tell Newell exactly what he meant? What was it that would change in Mark if he could recite the history perfectly, even once?

  Louisiana was purchased from the French when Napoléon needed money. He had not yet killed enough people and wanted to kill more. Without money it was harder to pay for the war he wanted, and the colony was irksome anyway. Le nouveau Orléans. So he sold the whole continent to a man who only wanted the city. Thomas Jefferson bought the Louisiana colony for ten million dollars and was called a visionary for it, when really, who would have passed it up, a deal like that? As good as getting Manhattan for a handful of beads, any day. Mark studied the past because he felt confused about the present. About who he was. Though it was silly to look so far back for an answer, wasn’t it?

  Louisiana had been purchased from the French, the very ground he was lying on sold from one nation to another. What kind of price for it today? What price to sell land that doesn’t really belong to you anyway, the nationality of the land, the sovereignty of it? What price?

  Eight hundred dollars in the year 1834 would buy a human soul after all, or at least the body containing the soul and all the labor that could be forced out of the body during one lifetime.

  Three dollars to go into the Parade disco for the night, dance as long as you like, and one drink included in the price of the cover.

  “You’re not even thinking about this, are you?” Newell asked at one point, after they had gone to bed, and the question took Mark out of his head.

  “What we’re doing? I’m thinking about it some.”

  “I feel the same way.”

  “Do you?”

  “It feels good. To lick you and stuff. But at the same time I could stop.”

  “I know,” Mark said. They lay together in the quiet. “I’m thinking about some things right now.”

  “What?”

  “Strange true tales of Louisiana.”

  “I only know the strange true tales of Alabama,” Newell said.

  “Alabama, right. But you don’t live there anymore.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  Already slowing down in his head, the head space diminished in the time it took to notice and still diminished more. Mark wondered what he would keep of this feeling, looking at this fresh face on the pillow, the white skin, the dark eyes. Newell watched back with the same calm seriousness, when, in a kind of revulsion, Newell disentangled himself, stood and went to the gallery.

  In a moment Mark would say, “You need some plants. We should get you some plants today. For the balcony.” He could feel the thought in his head, the words in his mouth. He would let himself say them, if only to cause Newell to turn his way again. If only to cause Newell to wonder. As if this were the beginning of something.

  Pleasure for Pain

  On Sunday, two days before Halloween, Newell was sitting in his room reading the Times-Picayune front news section when somebody knocked quick and light on the door and opened
it. Millie walked in and closed the door behind her. He had spoken to her only a few times in the junk store and had seen her in the courtyard now and again, lately, talking to Louise.

  “I’m sorry to bust in on you, but I had to get away from her, I swear.”

  “Hey, Millie.”

  “She will not leave me alone, Newell. What am I going to do?”

  “Who won’t, honey?”

  “Louise.”

  She had tears in her eyes. Her hair needed washing. She must be sixteen, he thought, if that old. She had a smell to her like socks, but cold.

  “Sit down, right there.” Newell brought her a glass of water and a wad of toilet tissue to wipe her eyes. She took the tissue and dabbed at herself.

  “I told her I don’t want to mess with her anymore, but every weekend when I work she finds one reason and another for me to come back to her rooms. We don’t even open the store till one o’clock on Sunday, but she wants me to come here in the morning so she can get me alone.”

  “I thought you liked it.”

  “I did, but it wasn’t right.” She folded her arms across her simple chest, pulling at her pink sweater, taking it off.

  “And you told her you don’t want her to do it anymore?”

  “No. What I told her was it makes my skin crawl just to hear her voice. But she still won’t quit trying.”

  “You really told her that?”

  “Yes.” Holding one elbow in one palm, she swung from side to side as if she were waiting her turn at jump rope.

  “When?”

  “Last weekend. And first thing yesterday morning she starts asking me to help her with some boxes in her house, and I says all day no, I can’t, and lucky we had customers all day and I found plenty to do. But this morning I knew what she wanted and sure enough as soon as we got in that apartment she was after me again.”

  “She was after you?”

  “Touching me, and ….” She breathed out in a long sigh. “Things.”

  “Did you tell her to stop?”