Colorblind

by Peter Robertson

  * * *

  On the morning of the third day, I walked back to the Square. Mel’s bike was still chained up; her crate had been replaced by another one, which was overflowing with a fresh supply of beads and flowers and notes and photographs of two famous film stars and flyers that announced a funeral march planned for Sunday morning of the next weekend. It would start late on the Square, and end where Mel had lived, an apartment building on St. Claude Avenue and Feliciana.

  Near the bike, a young boy was selling flowers from a box. I bought a small bunch and placed them inside the crate. The act of death was no more or less a hustle in New Orleans than anything else.

  * * *

  A remarkably large and detailed obituary ran that same day in the newspaper. Melvin Taylor had been thirty-eight when he died. His surviving relatives were a sister and a father, both from Indiana, and both now in town to make funeral arrangements. He had been murdered by an as-yet-unnamed male tourist, several days after the two of them had encountered each other during one of Mel’s street performances, and then, shortly after that, in an unnamed Quarter bar. No motive for the murder was provided in the article.

  Melvin Taylor had left Indiana when he was eighteen. He had finished high school there. He had known he was gay for as long as he could remember. He had loved old movies with Joan Crawford and Bette Davis. His favorite film was Gone with the Wind. There was a photograph of Mel from her early days in New Orleans and she looked uncannily like Marilyn Monroe. Melvin always insisted that he was an old-school gay drag queen, not a pre-op or post-op transsexual or transgender or anything else currently fashionable or tantalizingly ambiguous.

  Funeral arrangements were pending. Donations could be made to the local gay-lesbian-transgender-straight alliance chapter. An address and a website were both provided. There would be a march on Sunday. Details of the march were also available at the GLTSA, and on the radio station website, where most of the street events were found.

  I decided to stay at least until Sunday. I called Nye. It had been a very long time since our last conversation.

  “The place where you are staying is available to you until the middle of next week,” he told me.

  I thanked him for taking care of the lodging arrangements.

  “How was Colorado?” I asked him. It felt as if I had been away from home forever.

  “Wonderful. You now have a tenant.”

  “Can I ask who?”

  “You most assuredly can.”

  “Then who?”

  “Neal.”

  “I thought he was my gardener.”

  “You might want to think of him now as a temporary live-in gardener.”

  “He’s no longer with Gus.” It wasn’t a question.

  “That would be accurate. He showed up at your place one night when I was there. He was upset and emotional. I made him tea, which he drank with an incredible amount of sugar.”

  “And thus we solve the sweet mystery.”

  “In moments of crisis many turn to sweetness for a temporary solace.”

  “Thank you for being there for him.”

  There was an extended silence. I had no idea why. Then he finally answered.

  “It was entirely my pleasure.”

  I had bought my little Boulder place from Neal and his partner Gus. They had happily sold me the dwelling, but the green-thumbed Neal had been unwilling to let go of his wildflower-clogged garden, and I was happy to have him keep on making the place look lovely, while I hogged all the horticultural credit.

  It was a winning arrangement. He showed up and worked. I served him wine. He told me wistfully how much he worshipped Gus. I served him more wine, and was careful to nod on cue at the end of each fiercely pro-Gus utterance.

  But I never quite warmed to his younger partner. Gus seemed dramatic and flighty. I did like Neal. I liked his flowers. I liked his patience. I admired his pursuit of beauty, even if I thought it occasionally misplaced.

  “You didn’t ask me if Neal could stay.”

  “I didn’t. How you would have responded?” Nye asked.

  “I would have said yes.”

  “That was the presumption I made.”

  “Can I ask how long he intends to stay?” I asked curiously.

  There was another long pause from his end.

  “I would suggest you ask Neal.”

  I changed the subject.

  “Tell me how much you’ve missed me at work.”

  Was that a derisive snort?

  * * *

  Two funerals in less than a week seemed gloomily excessive, even if the New Orleans concept of funereal did seem an altogether funkier version of the death rite.

  Mel’s certainly hit the ground running. From the outset, it was an exercise in hollerin’ good-time raucousness, but it ultimately transposed itself into something far more wrenching in a keening emotional coda.

  Strippers and drag queens, even the band, must have set some sort of record for streaming mascara. Everyone lamented loud and wet behind Big Tootie’s Triple D Brass Showgirls funking it up big time to the sounds of “Zulu King.” The brass was blasting and drums were drilling balls out, accompanied by showgirls who were a buxomly vision averaging three hundred pounds per head.

  We all got to participate. The words to the chorus were easy to remember.

  There were a few familiar faces in the crowd, including the older cop from the death scene who spotted me and nodded once in what looked a lot like approval, and the cardboard and spray-paint robot from the Square who had occupied the performance space close to Mel. If he recognized me, he chose not to show it. He was attending in full costume, and he wasn’t alone. Many other street performers came decked out in full office attire.

  A middle-aged woman who could only be Mel’s sister was marching in front. She smiled as strands of beads were placed around her neck and her cheek was kissed. Beside her was an older man in a wintry gray suit who walked with some difficulty. His face showed little reaction as the same gifts were bestowed upon him.

  Our route passed by the park and my rented place on Elysian Fields. We got to the corner where Mel had dropped under the front of my car. From there we turned right and walked another three quarters of a mile to arrive outside the apartment building on St. Claude.

  We paused there. Bouquets of flowers, full to-go cups, parade-quality trinkets, Halloween-quality wigs in various shades of blonde, a paperback Tennessee Williams anthology, an expensive-looking coffee table collection of Marilyn Monroe photographs—all were placed on the cracked steps, once someone had procured a broom and swept away the dirt and garbage.

  This would be the officially designated parade end, but there was an unplanned addendum.

  If we chose to, we could proceed another block along St. Claude to arrive at a bar, the very same bar where I had once sat in a peeling leopard-skin booth and watched gay Mardi Gras hardcore porn shot on grainy VHS tape. The subject matter hadn’t been my choice or, as far as I could tell, the choice of anyone else in the bar. The beer had been crypt cold and cheap, and mostly the place was filled with shitty art, shitty artists, a huge mural of a planet, and a smattering of tourists either terrified or thrilled or weirdly transfixed in a location somewhere in the middle.

  The sidewalk outside the bar was offered as an ultimate destination. There were tables covered in bottles of generic vodka and cranberry mix and crushed ice and bowls of pureed cherries, which were to be combined in a secret ratio to manufacture the Flaming Mel, the event’s signature potation. There was also a well-stuffed donation jar.

  It was an agreement arrived at unspoken.

  We were all more than game for a brace of Mels.

  The sugar-sweet beverage thoughtfully came in a funeral souvenir plastic to-go cup. There were actually two versions. Both had a grainy picture of Mel on the side. One was as
Marilyn. The other was as Blanche.

  The fat man in a ginger mid-length wig and black leather pantsuit directly in front of me clearly had the right idea.

  “I’m getting myself one of each because I loved Mel both ways and this way I get to drink much more booze much faster and y’all should be doing the same as me. You hear what I’m saying to you?” he sagely and breathlessly advised.

  I followed suit eagerly and reached for two Mels.

  When both our hands were filled we clinked our plastic Mels together.

  I was singularly uninspired. “To Mel.” I drank from one.

  “To Mel,” he responded. He drank also from one.

  “To Mel.” I drank from the other.

  “To Mel.” He did likewise.

  We were done with the toasting. We both looked somber and grave.

  There lurked a larger problem. I spoke up urgently. “Which one are you drinking first?” I asked.

  He looked at both of his cups in some confusion.

  A light dawned. “You drink one first,” he told me, “and I’ll drink the other at the same time and that way we cover both at the same time.”

  I smiled slowly at him. It seemed like the wisest of plans.

  After careful consideration I chose Blanche.

  He was left with Marilyn.

  He was gallantly acquiescent.

  In forty-five short minutes we had partaken of numerous Flaming Mels and the showgirls were softly playing hymns, standing still and tall under the bar awning and sweating a good deal less. Mel’s sister had spoken and offered us her thanks. Mel’s dad had attempted to do the same, but had been unable to summon much beyond a smile.

  The music and the vodka worked its magic. We began to sway and sob as the atmosphere dive-bombed into one of abject loss.

  When a clear a cappella voice broke into “I Wanna Be Loved by You” we managed a rally, but it was a brief respite from the pathos.

  I ventured inside the bar for a light break from the maudlin.

  It was cleaner than I remembered. The décor about the same but less shambolically disarranged. The back room was bigger, or else emptier, and the stage was in use. I had the feeling that the music was incidental to the events outside, an honored booking made before the annexation of the place in the aftermath of a sudden tragedy.

  They were five pale young men from Mississippi and the Hamtramck section of Detroit playing leering rockabilly on upright bass, drums, two guitars, and a pedal steel.

  The lead singer deployed his acoustic guitar like Elvis in movies while looking like Jerry Lee at his swaggering finest. He sung two short songs badly and indifferently before surrendering the microphone to the lead guitarist who wore horn rims on a babyishly round face. He played a vintage Telecaster through a Tweed Deluxe amp manufactured sometime in the reverb-rich fifties.

  All the way from the Killer to Buddy Holly.

  He sang the song shyly and expertly and gave the microphone back to the lead singer with a relieved smile when he was done.

  The room was almost empty.

  The next song implored us to come home to Louisiana.

  For all the strut, he was a piss-poor excuse for a singer, and he was preaching to the choir.

  I used the restroom and ventured back outside to the sidewalk lamentations for Mel.

  Unsolicited remembrances were forthcoming. Most were tearfully sentimental. Many were warm. Some were close to incoherent. Many more specialty Mels were consumed.

  At some point, I learned that Mel had adored small children.

  It was very hard not to cry again.

  Later in the evening we mourners ventured indoors after draining the sidewalk table dry. The event struggled to evolve into a cash-paying venture, and some ugliness ensued during the transition. Many of the gathered were revealed to be less than wealthy and the strapped mourners included Mel’s two relatives. There were sundry grumblings. Management dug in their collective heels. A proposal was hastily arrived at and those of us with the wherewithal were asked to pony up and supply the funding for the rest of the night, which we dutifully did.

  As a result of my largesse, I was kissed on or near the mouth several times.

  At some point the rockabilly band ceased playing and a flood of desolate drunks then torch-sang from the stage.

  I slurringly told anyone who would listen how I came to know Mel.

  Mostly they smiled at the unlikeliness of the tale, which seemed a little less surreal each time I recounted it.

  I must have walked home sometime in the early morning.

  Sixteen

  The Internet presence of the plagiarizing poet Norman Allan Haig was restricted to four short entries. It took me about as long as drinking one large cup of coffee to peruse them all.

  He had no published books or chapbooks to his name, and there was a notable absence of websites hosted by or dedicated to him. His work had appeared in only two anthologies. “Circumstance” was part of the collection Crossing Cumbernauld, and “Devotional” was included in a compendium titled The Highland Moderne. Haig was reported to have read his work in public twice: once at a library-hosted young adult readers’ poetry night, and once at a poetry ‘n prose slam in a Leith wine bar.

  My extensive listening to Crofter allowed me to read “Devotional” in Moderne and quickly ascertain that it owed nothing remotely discernible to Logan Kind.

  Norman Allan Haig was unknown and, if I was any judge of poetry, likely to remain that way. His lifting of Kind’s lyrics had been noted by Stephen Park and apparently by no one else.

  The effort to further expose his literary theft seemed of little practical worth.

  It would be best to let it go.

  Another small secret revealed.

  My morning coffee was finished. My stomach was not quite ready to receive anything more substantial.

  * * *

  A patch of neutral ground runs as a grassy median right down the center of St. Charles Avenue. The streetcar stop is right outside a diner on the corner, where St. Charles and Carrollton Avenue intersect. Later in the day I parked my car, optimistically got myself a small burger and fries to go, and waited to board the more whimsical of public transportation.

  My notion was to intermittently abandon the streetcar and wander the Garden District. There were a few places I had wanted to visit: some storied old hotels, a pretty park I remembered liking a lot, and the appropriately gothic home of a famous author I had once read. The rest would be largely a matter of impulse and impetuousness.

  Most of the afternoon lay ahead of me as I sat on the grass and ate.

  The large number of tourists waiting outside the diner forced me to reconsider my plans. I can’t claim to know the exact seating capacity of a streetcar offhand, but my guess was that the line in front of me would easily fill the next half dozen cars.

  So I elected to walk down the length of St. Charles instead. It was warm and sunny and the median already had an assortment of bikers and joggers and dogs and their attendant walkers. It would be easy to fit right in.

  The famous author’s house was closed to the public that day. Maybe it was for the best. The author herself had sold the property where she and her poet husband had once lived, and had moved north and west over a decade ago. The former convent-orphanage building where her doll collection had once been housed was in the process of becoming a block-long condominium development.

  Best to keep right on walking.

  Outside a university building I was cheerily invited to help fund the ongoing restoration of the city’s many cemeteries. I handed my money over without protest.

  The dead will always need the help of the living.

  In a remarkably short time, I was standing in the shade of a huge oak tree on the 3800 block of St. Charles in the Upper Garden District. I gazed up at the large por
ch columns and the wicker chairs and low tables on the verandah. Crisp-shirted waiters milled about attentively serving the supping clientele who lapped me by several decades. There were several sipping their Sazeracs. I had been in this exact place once before, sipping a Sazerac as Kate had rushed out of town. I was abandoned, left to sullenly contemplate the hotel’s lovingly restored antiques and the dark-stained paneling.

  As I studied the people on the porch more closely, I noticed one older gentleman was staring back at me, leaning forward in his chair, wedging both his hands between his chin and the elaborate handle of the walking stick, the walking stick that I recalled was much more prop than necessity.

  My mysterious benefactor was once again resplendent in the tweedy attire more befitting the lord of the manor on a ramble around the estate on a blustery day.

  He was the source of my crisp hundred-dollar bill, my most glaringly generous of patrons.

  My wave was one of hesitant acknowledgment.

  His reciprocal motion was a beckoning gesture of welcome, so I approached.

  There was an open seat beside him, which he pointed to, and which I silently accepted. Within seconds a waiter had materialized at my shoulder. There was a menu on the table but I boldly ordered without seeking its guidance.

  “I’ll take an IPA if you have one, and I’d like to buy this fine gentleman a drink if I may.” I made this request as pleasantly as I could.

  Yet the waiter clearly hesitated.

  Then the fine gentleman spoke up for himself. “You may not, sir. I limit myself to two drinks before sundown.” He pointed to his nearly empty glass. “And this, I must sadly confess, is already my second. But I do thank you for the kindness.”

  I turned to the waiter, who was still hovering, and who was clearly relishing the archness of our exchange thus far.

  I decided to play along.

  “Would it be possible for me to purchase a drink that could perhaps be served to this gentleman sometime in the near future?”

  An eyebrow was lifted. My request was clearly unorthodox. The waiter again deferred to the older customer. Brief nods were rapidly traded.