Sonny lifts himself out of the chair. He can feel his heart hammering in his chest, and the sudden swelling of the veins in his neck, and a hollow ache down deep in his gut.
“Well if it ain’t Juliet Beauvais,” he says.
She curtsies and holds a hand out, which he accepts with too limp a shake.
“Sonny,” she says, edging closer, “I was afraid you’d gone and forgotten me after all these years, especially now that you’re world famous and all.”
The line sounds rehearsed, and it’s poorly delivered. But Sonny forgives her that when she comes to her toes and presses her mouth flush against his. He doesn’t want to respond, doesn’t want to like it. But that was always his problem when it came to Juliet. It never really mattered what he wanted.
2
THEY WALK TO DECATUR STREET AND sit at a table in the fan-blown shade of Café du Monde. Juliet orders beignets and café au lait and Sonny a black coffee.
Sonny can’t seem to make himself speak. A fist has seized his larynx and holds it tight. His brain has gone to mush.
The silence, at first uncomfortable, quickly gains a more complex dimension, that of suffocating embarrassment.
“This is hard,” she tells him.
“You’re right.”
“Harder than I ever dreamed it would be.”
“Yeah? For me too.”
Unable to bear looking at her any longer, Sonny seeks comfort in the familiarity of their surroundings: the old neon sign at Tujague’s Restaurant, a fire-eater on the sidewalk, sightseeing mules wearing straw hats crowned with plastic flowers. Lifting a hand, he attracts the attention of a busboy. “Ice water, please.”
“You gonna be all right?” asks Juliet.
“I guess I’m hot.”
He wishes he were still at the fence, alone in the dark, watching the trees blow in the sky. It’s too hard loving anyone. Too hard having to look at them again.
“You know what just came to me?” Juliet says. “Give us each a puka shell necklace and put us in platform shoes and polyester and it’d be like old times.”
“Was that 1971? I thought those things came later.”
She inhales cigarette smoke, then noisily blows it out. “Yeah, maybe you’re right.”
Their order arrives and Juliet folds one of the beignets and dunks it in the coffee and eats with her head tilted close to the marble-top table, her hair dragging the surface and picking up traces of confectioners’ sugar. “I’d nearly forgotten,” she says with a satisfied groan.
“Not bad, huh?”
She holds up the beignet, what remains of it. “This little piece of fried dough is the most incredible thing I’ve ever put in my mouth.”
Against his will a smile comes to Sonny’s face. He knows exactly what she’s getting at. “I can place another order,” he says.
Juliet shakes her head, her mouth still white with sugar, cheeks fat and lumpy. “No. I’d better save room for the oysters.”
“Oh? Are you having oysters too?”
“We both are,” she says. “Oysters at Acme then a Lucky Dog on Bourbon Street then hurricanes in the courtyard at Pat O’Brien’s. After that we’ll stop by the little Takee Outee stand for egg rolls and beef-on-a-stick.”
“I’m not sure the Takee Outee is even there anymore, Julie. You might want to consider something else.”
“Fine. Then I’ll just have you.”
A surge of heat inflames Sonny’s face. He resists an urge to jump to his feet and topple the table over and storm away. “You’re being a little presumptuous, aren’t you? Forgive me for bringing up anything unpleasant, Julie, but you must take me for a fool. I saw one of your movies. Is that what you call them, by the way? Are they movies?”
Juliet puts the half-eaten beignet back down on her plate. “You’re going to hurt my feelings, aren’t you? Yes, I think you are.”
“You’ve got some explaining to do, Julie. You can’t just waltz back home and pick me up for beignets and not expect to answer questions about where you’ve been for the last fifteen years.”
“There’s a picture in my head, Sonny. A picture of Mama sticking a cassette in the VCR, returning to her chair and punching the Play button on her remote control. Does that explain it?”
Sonny stares into her eyes but he can’t tell whether she means it. “That’s pretty damned sick. I hope to God you’re not serious.”
She wets the tip of her finger and dunks it in the drifts of sugar on her plate. When she brings the finger up to her mouth it leaves a mark on her upper lip. “There weren’t but a handful of movies,” she says, “all of them for the same production company. It was such a bush-league outfit I never really thought anyone would see them. Before agreeing to appear on camera, I signed a contract saying that I work with one actor only, and that was my boyfriend—now my ex-boyfriend, of course.” Juliet nods to emphasize how important this is. How Sonny should pay attention. “Believe it or not, I did it because I wanted to eat, and because I had rent to pay, and because I was stupid. It was the worst mistake I ever made in all my life. I don’t think you’d want to be judged by every mistake you made in the past. The difference between your mistakes and my mistakes is that mine are on videotape. It was a long time ago anyway. I can’t believe we’re talking about it now.”
Sonny can feel himself cooling off. And it seems he’s breathing better. He can hold her eyes with his eyes without much effort. “Exactly how long ago was it?” he says.
“Oh, a year, year and a half.” From the way she sounds it could be a lifetime.
They finish and walk parallel with the river on Decatur, passing cafés and souvenir and praline shops, squeezing past tourists who, mesmerized by competing jazz combos stationed every few hundred feet, crowd the sidewalks and make the going slow.
In time they come to the French Market, an area that Juliet has always identified with home even though it now seems less designed to serve the shopping needs of neighborhood residents than to satisfy the whims of tourists looking for an authentic Creole experience. At this hour the place is nearly deserted, as most of the vendors have gone home for the evening. Juliet stops to observe garlands of garlic hanging from the rafters, too far to reach, and no doubt placed there to ward off evil spirits. On the tables balsa-wood crates for produce stand empty.
Where, she wonders, are the salesmen in porkpie hats popping open paper bags and dickering loudly over prices with customers? Where are the ancient French Quarter dowagers determined to cook fresh or not at all?
Juliet pouts to show her disappointment.
“If ever I lose my Beauvais family legacy this is where I hope to end up,” she says. “Selling okra and acorn squash and lima beans and homemade fig preserves.”
“Remember years ago how crazy the market used to get every spring when the first batch of Creole tomatoes came in from Plaquemines Parish? I remember the fistfights, people practically killing each other to get to them.”
“Yes,” she says. “And that’s how they’ll be for my squash and okra.”
As they stroll from one end of the cool, dark pavilion to the other, Juliet describes how it felt to be in the Beauvais earlier today, to see the rooms and smell the smells. All the same old ghosts were hiding in the shadows, and she wonders if Sonny noticed them on his visits there. Her father and her father’s father. The father of her father’s father. They whispered to her when she went upstairs to her bedroom. They begged her to return and bring the house back to its former glory. Put simply, they didn’t want a Lavergne and a cleaning woman living among them any longer.
“You’re joking, right?”
She shakes her head.
“You’d think ghosts would have better things to do than haunt a house,” Sonny says. “And then to concern themselves with nice people like your mother and Anna Huey. . . .”
“Maybe they know something you don’t.”
“Think so? Like what?”
“I could give you a list, Sonny. Show you the
proof. Would that help?” Before he can answer she says, “My feet are tired. Listen, why don’t we go back to my room and lie down.”
They start on their way again, silent now as they head uptown. Juliet takes his hand in hers and studies each of his fingers. Blips of oil paint stain the skin and his nails are cracked and dirty, palms padded with calluses.
“I was going to be a writer,” she says. “Remember that?”
“You were always scribbling something.”
“And you were going to illustrate the dust jackets for my books.”
“That was a long time ago, Julie.”
She brings his fingertips to her mouth and presses them against her lips. “Only half a lifetime,” she says, a wash of tears coming to her eyes.
They enter the hotel at Bourbon Street and cross the lobby and Juliet feels a bump of fear anticipating another visit from management. To her relief, however, the coast is clear but for the usual guests studying maps and arguing about which is the greater priority, taking a cemetery tour or a riverboat cruise. Juliet and Sonny board an elevator and she turns to face his reflection in the great brass doors. “I never stopped thinking about you,” she says. “Some nights I’d wake up and want to call and ask you to come get me and take me home but I never could. I was too ashamed.” She looks away from the doors and he is staring at her. She reaches for his hand again. “I’m not asking you to forgive me. That would be wrong. You should never forgive what I’ve done.”
“I do anyway, Julie.”
“You can’t.”
“Yes, I can. And I do. I forgive you, Julie.”
She begins to cry and Sonny offers a handkerchief from his pocket, as colorful with paint stains as the rest of him.
What feels like terror grips him the moment they enter the room. Hoping to shake it off, Sonny walks out on the balcony and takes in the sights from the street below. When that doesn’t settle him, he goes back inside and turns on the TV and flips through the channels. In the bathroom he flushes the toilet and tests a blanket of facial tissue. To complete his inspection, he holds the phone to his ear and listens for a dial tone, then he punches the keypad for the front desk. “Just checking,” he says when a voice answers.
He puts the phone down. “Everything seems to be in working order,” he says to Juliet.
“You forgot my Bible,” she says, pointing to the dresser. “Don’t you want to check and see if they got all the words spelled right?”
Sonny opens a drawer and finds the Gideon’s. “Looks good to me,” he says, riffling pages.
Juliet is leaning against the wall, arms crossed at her chest. She seems to be trying to make sense of something. “Sonny, you’re scared of me.”
“I’m not scared.”
“You’re scared, Sonny.”
He sits on the edge of the bed and lowers his face into his hands. “Yeah,” he says. “I guess I am.”
Sonny is praying now, the words loud in his head: “Lord, send somebody up that elevator to save me. Send me a disaster to fix. A Louis run over in the street. The murder of a cat to avenge. Lord, send somebody. Send something.” Then it comes to him: if not the voice of God, an inspired answer, a way out. “My cart!” he says. “Jesus, Julie, I left my cart down at the square! I forgot all about it. Listen, this is bad. I mean, the few artists that are still working this late—my friends—they’ll watch it for as long as they’re down there, but I really do need to lock it away for the night. Before everybody goes home.”
Juliet nods and rests the back of her head against the wall. “Sonny, I’m coming over there. Want me or not, I’m coming, do you hear?” And this is what she does. She comes over and crowds the narrow space between his legs.
“Go get your cart, if that’s what you need to do.”
She places her hands on his shoulders and Sonny feels his face moving to find her, feels it pressing against the warmth of her belly.
She grabs her skirt and hikes it up, and his hands trail after the fabric, climbing from the backs of her thighs. She holds the skirt at her waist and leans her head forward looking down at her pubic hair waxed to a narrow strip. “Do you remember me without panties?”
He doesn’t answer and she says, “I wasn’t like this then, all shaved down there.”
“It was still you.”
“I’m halfway ashamed to think how I was. The world has changed so much. The world didn’t even have VCRs back then. Can you believe that? It’s 1986, Sonny. Can you believe we’re thirty-two years old? Why, when I was a girl at Sacred Heart thirty-two was ancient. It’s how old old people were. And now it’s young, it’s almost babyfied to me.”
“When it comes to age we’re all going in the same direction together, Julie. Everybody is.”
“Speaking of babies, our little boy would be fourteen years old now, a teenager.”
Juliet can feel his shoulders tense in her hands. He jerks his head back.
“I’m certain it was a boy. I knew instinctively. We were going to have a son.”
“Do we really have to talk about that now, Julie?”
He presses his face against her again and takes her in his mouth and when he looks up she’s still watching with the skirt in her hands. “Tell me you love me, Sonny LaMott.” He is silent and she says, “Tell me. Tell me you love me.”
“I love you,” he says.
“Tell me again.”
“I love you.”
“Again.”
“I love you.”
A minute passes and she steps back and starts pulling at his clothes and it seems a long time before he can get out of his pants. She looks at him and her face brightens with mock surprise. “Oh, Sonny. Oh, no. Not with that big thing you’re not.”
They come together and together make their noise and they could be seventeen again with the levee beneath them and the sky bright with stars. When it’s over, Sonny begins to weep and Juliet holds him tight in her arms and rocks him and tries to console him. “Oysters,” she says. “Big and juicy plump ones. Oysters so cold and briny they make your teeth hurt. Then a Lucky Dog and then hurricanes in the courtyard at Pat O’s with the fountain shooting flames and someone asking if you want your picture made and the palm fronds rattling and the waiters in green jackets doing their tragic massuh routine thinking you’ll tip them better.”
“Yes,” Sonny says. “All that.”
Sonny pushes the cart to Chartres Street and the parking garage at the rear entrance of the Royal Orleans Hotel where he rents a space in a thicket of VIP slots on the ground floor. Juliet follows a few steps behind as he moves along the crowded streets, guiding the cart through cars stuck in traffic, bumping people who stand in the way. “Coming through,” he calls. “Make way! Artist coming through!” She enjoys watching him. The effort brings a dark expression to his face and his arms tighten with knots and sinew.
Even in the old days Juliet wished she were as humble as he, and not so easily bored and distracted, not so hungry to consume all that she could of life, the good and the bad. She recalls a night when Sonny invited her over for dinner at his parents’ house. By force of will alone she had kept from barking out an appreciative laugh in the middle of the meal, so tickled was she by the simple, thoughtful beauty of the affair. Mrs. LaMott was a large person who dressed as if for church, and whose many chins jiggled even when she was sitting still. Her appearance was almost as folksy as that of Juliet’s mom, and yet her generosity was beyond compare. Sonny’s father, likewise, was quick to please; in particular Juliet was moved by his eagerness to share his knowledge of the purple martin, a type of bird she’d never heard of until that night. “They’re great fliers,” she remembers him saying. “Sometimes they almost seem to be performing, like at an air show. Also, they eat bugs.” Mr. LaMott, wearing an autumn jacket in a house cooled by wheezing air-conditioning units, sweated so much that stains bloomed on his shirtfront even as Juliet watched. The LaMotts were nothing like Dickie Boudreau’s parents, who employed their own cook, and w
ho talked about the meaning behind the massive abstract expressionist art on their walls with such passion and intelligence that it left Juliet feeling slightly intoxicated. But their sweetness—the same sweetness that first attracted her to Sonny, and that provides a burp of pleasure now as he muscles his cart down the street—made up for their lack of sophistication. “What do you think?” she recalls Sonny asking her at evening’s end. In response she leaned over and kissed him, knowing that to answer candidly meant admitting that what she liked best about them was how perfectly they fit her image of the Bywater working class.
“You’re a manly damn man, Sonny LaMott,” Juliet yells to him now.
“You’d be too if you had to do this every day twice a day.”
“It’s a miracle you don’t get hit by passing traffic.”
“Or beat up. People don’t seem to appreciate being run over by me and my cart.”
They leave the garage and visit the places and do the things she listed in the room, then they occupy a bench on the Moonwalk overlooking the river and watch the brightly lighted boats passing by, the party rigs and the paddlewheelers. They kiss as tourists tramp past them on the wooden boards, and she touches him and his warm, beautiful hardness climbs all the way over to the knot of change in his pocket and beats in time with the beating of his heart. In the moonlight the leaves of the birches flash silver and the water moves and from behind them comes the musical clopping of buggies on the old black streets, the mules snuffling, drivers barking.
“Can we do it here one night?” she says.
“We can do it wherever you want.”
“On this bench?”
“Here,” he says, placing a hand on the spot.
They return to the room and Sonny performs with less fear and anxiety than before and without the crying jag. The curtains are open and so is the door leading to the balcony. From the street she hears police sirens competing with the wolf calls of drunkards. Juliet has always enjoyed sex in hotel rooms. “Which one tonight?” Dickie Boudreau used to say, flashing a credit card.
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