The store after the restaurant was called The N'awlins Pantry, and tag-lined ‘The One Stop Shop For All Your Cajun Cooking Needs’. It looked, I had to admit, like it was the place.
I wanted to see Rita-May, but I was scared shitless at the thought of just walking in. I retreated to the other side of the street, hoping to see her through the window first. I'm not sure how that would have helped, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. I smoked a cigarette and watched for a while, but the constant procession of cars and pedestrians made it impossible to see anything. Then I spent a few minutes wondering why I wasn't just attending the convention, listening to dull, safe panels like everybody else. It didn't work. When I was down to the butt I stubbed my cigarette out and crossed back over the road. I couldn't see much through the window even from there, because of the size and extravagance of the window display. So I grabbed the handle, opened the door and walked in.
It was fantastically noisy inside, and crowded with sweating people. The blues band seemed to have turned a second bank of amplifiers on, and virtually everyone sitting at the tables in front of them was clapping hands and hooting. The air was smeared with red faces and meaty arms, and for a moment I considered just turning around and going back into the toilet. It had been quiet in there, and cool. I'd spent ten minutes splashing my face with cold water, trying to mitigate the effect of the joint we'd smoked. While I stood trying to remember where the table was, the idea of another few moments of water-splashing began to take on a nearly obsessive appeal.
But then I saw Rita-May, and realized I had to go on. Partly because she was marooned with the conventioneers, which wouldn't have been fair on anyone, but mainly because going back to her was even more appealing than the idea of water.
I carefully navigated my way through the crowd, pausing halfway to flag down a waitress and get some more drinks on the way. Because obviously we needed them. Obviously. No way were we drunk enough. Rita-May looked up gratefully when she saw me. I plonked myself down next to her, glared accidentally at Dave Trindle, and lit another cigarette. Then, in a clumsy but necessary attempt to rekindle the atmosphere which had been developing, I repeated the last thing I had said before setting off on my marathon journey to the gents. ‘It just goes to show,’ I said.
Rita-May smiled again, probably in recognition at the feat of memory I had pulled off. ‘Show what?’ she asked, leaning towards me and shutting out the rest of the group. I winked, and then pulled off the most ambitious monologue of my life.
I said that it went to show that life took odd turns, and that you could suddenly meet someone you felt very at home with, who seemed to change all the rules. Someone who made stale, damaged parts of you fade away in an instant, who let you feel strange magic once again: the magic of being in the presence of a person you didn't know, and realizing that you wanted them more than anything else you could think of.
I spoke for about five minutes, and then stopped. It went down very well, not least because I was patently telling the truth. I meant it. For once my tongue got the words right, didn't trip up, and I said what I meant to say. In spite of the drink, the drugs, the hour, I said it.
At the same time I was realizing that something was terribly wrong.
This wasn't, for example, a cookery store.
A quick glance towards the door showed it also wasn't early afternoon. The sky was dark and Bourbon Street was packed with night-time strollers. We were sitting with the conventioneers in the Absinthe Bar, I was wearing last night's clothes, and Rita-May's rose was still behind her ear.
It was last night, in other words.
As I continued to tell Rita-May that I was really very keen on her, she slipped her hand into mine. This time they weren't covered by the table, but I found I didn't care about that. I did, however, care about the fact that I could clearly remember standing outside the Café du Monde and wanting her to touch my hand again.
The waitress appeared with our drinks. Trindle and his cohorts decided that they might as well be hung for a lamb as for an embryo, and ordered another round themselves. While this transaction was being laboriously conducted I stole a glance at the bar. In a gap between carousing fun-lovers I saw what I was looking for. The barman who'd woken me up.
He was making four margaritas at once, his smooth face a picture of concentration. He would have made a good photograph, and I recognized him instantly. But he hadn't served me yet. I'd been to the bar once, and been served by a woman. The other drinks I'd bought from passing waitresses. Yet when I'd woken up, I'd recognized the barman because he'd served me. That meant I must have bought another drink before passing out and waking up in the bar by myself.
But I couldn't have woken up at all. The reality of what was going on around me was unquestionable, from the smell of fresh sweat drifting from the middle-aged men at the table next to us to the way Rita-May's skin looked cool and smooth despite the heat. One of the conventioneers had engaged Rita-May in conversation, and it didn't look as if she was having too bad a time, so I took the chance to try to sort my head out. I wasn't panicking, exactly, but I was very concerned indeed.
Okay, I was panicking. Either I'd spent my time in the toilet hallucinating about tomorrow, or something really strange was happening. Did the fact that I hadn't been served by the barman yet prove which was right? I didn't know. I couldn't work it out.
‘What do you think of Dale Georgio, John? Looks like he's really gonna turn WriteRight around.’
I didn't really internalize the question Trindle asked me until I'd answered it, and my reply had more to do with my state of mind than any desire to cause offence.
‘He's a talentless fuckwit,’ I said.
Back outside on the pavement I hesitated for a moment, not really knowing what to do. The N'awlins Pantry was indeed where Rita-May worked, but she was out at lunch. This I had discovered by talking to a very helpful woman, who I assume also worked there. Either that, or she was an unusually well-informed tourist.
I could either hang around and accost Rita-May on the street, or go and get some lunch. Talking to her outside the store would be preferable, but I couldn't stand hopping from foot to foot for what could be as long as an hour.
At that moment my stomach passed up an incomprehensible message of some kind, a strange liquid buzzing that I felt sure most people in the street could hear. It meant one of two things. Either I was hungry, or my mid-section was about to explode taking the surrounding two blocks along with it. I elected to assume I was hungry and turned to walk back towards the square, in search of a muffeletta.
At Café du Monde I noticed that the dreadful trumpet player was in residence, actually in the middle of one of his trademark long notes. As I passed him, willing my head not to implode, the penny dropped.
I shouldn't be noticing that he was there. I knew he was there. I'd just been at Café du Monde. He was one of the reasons I'd left.
I got far enough away that the trumpet wasn't hurting me any more, and then ground to a halt. For the first time I was actually scared. It should have been reassuring to be back in the right time again. Tomorrow I could understand. I could retrace my steps here. Most of them, anyway. But I couldn't remember a thing of what had happened in the cookery store. I'd come out believing I'd had a conversation with someone and established that Rita-May worked there. But as to what the interior of the store had been like, I didn't have a clue. I couldn't remember. What I could actually remember was being in the Absinthe Bar.
I looked anxiously around at tourists dappled by bright sunshine, and felt the early-afternoon heat seeping in through my clothes. A hippy face-painter looked hopefully in my direction, judged correctly that I wasn't the type, and went back to juggling with his paints.
On impulse, I lifted my right hand and sniffed my fingers. Cigarette smoke and icing sugar, from the beignets I'd eaten half an hour ago. This had to be real.
Maybe there had been something weird in the joint last night. That could explain the blackout on
the trip back to the hotel, and the Technicolor flashback I'd just had. It couldn't have been acid, but some opium-based thing, possibly? But why would the man have sold us it? Presumably that kind of thing was more expensive. Dealers tended to want to rip you off, not give you little presents. Unless Rita-May had known, and had asked and paid for it – but that didn't seem very likely either.
More than that, I simply didn't believe it was a drug hangover. It didn't feel like one. I felt exactly as if I'd just had far too much to drink the night before, plus one strong joint – except for the fact that I couldn't work out where in time I actually was.
If you close one of your eyes you lose the ability to judge space. The view flattens out, like a painting. You know, or think you know, which objects are closer to you – but only because you've seen them before when both of your eyes have been open. Without that memory, you wouldn't have a clue. And that's how I felt now. I couldn't seem to tell what order things should be in. The question almost felt inappropriate.
Suddenly thirsty, and hearing rather than feeling another anguished appeal from my stomach, I crossed the road to a place that sold po-boys and orange juice from a hatch in the wall. It was too far to the French Bar. I needed food immediately. I'd been okay all the time I was at Café du Monde – maybe food helped tether me in some way.
The ordering process went off okay, and I stood and munched my way through French bread and sauce piquante on the street, watching the door to the N'awlins Pantry. As much as anything else, the tang of lemon juice on the fried oysters convinced me that what I was experiencing was real. When I'd finished, I took a sip of my drink, and winced. It was much sweeter than I'd been expecting. Then I realized that was because it was orange juice, rather than a margarita. The taste left me unfulfilled, like those times when you know you've only eaten half a biscuit, but can't find the other piece. I knew I'd bought orange juice, but also that less than a minute ago I had taken a mouthful of margarita.
Trembling, I slugged the rest of the juice back. Maybe this was something to do with blood sugar levels.
Or maybe I was rapidly going off my head.
As I drank I stared fixedly at the other side of the street, watching out for Rita-May. I was beginning to feel that until I saw her again, until something happened which conclusively locked me into today, I wasn't going to be able to stabilize. Once I'd seen her the day after the night before, it had to be that next day. It really had to, or how could it be tomorrow?
Unless, of course, I was back in the toilet of the Absinthe Bar, projecting in eerie detail what might happen the next day. About the only thing I was sure of was that I wanted to see Rita-May. She probably wouldn't be wearing what I'd seen her in last night, but I knew I'd recognize her in an instant. Even with my eyes open, I could almost see her face. Eyes slightly hooded with drink, mouth parted, wisps of clean hair curling over her ears. And on her lips, as always, that beautiful half-smile.
‘We're going,’ Trindle shouted, and I turned from Rita-May to look blearily at him. They hadn't abandoned me after all: they were leaving, and I was still conscious. My habitual irritation towards Trindle and his colleagues faded somewhat on seeing their faces. They'd clearly all had a lovely time. In a rare moment of maturity, I realized that they were rather sweet, really. I didn't want to piss on their fireworks.
I nodded and smiled and shook hands, and they trooped drunkenly off into the milling crowd. It had to be well after two o'clock by now, but the evening was still romping on. I turned back to Rita-May and realized that it hadn't been such a bad stroke of luck, running into the Trindle contingent. We'd been kept apart for a couple of hours, and passions had quietly simmered to a rolling boil. Rita-May was looking at me in a way I can only describe as frank, and I leant forward and kissed her liquidly on the mouth. My tongue felt like some glorious sea creature, lightly oiled, rolling for the first time with another of its species.
After a while we stopped, and disengaged far enough to look in each other's eyes. ‘It just goes to show,’ she whispered, and we rested our foreheads together and giggled. I remembered thinking much earlier in the evening that I needed to ask myself what I thought I was doing. I asked myself. The answer was ‘having an exceptionally nice evening’, which was good enough for me.
‘Another drink?’ It didn't feel time to leave yet. We needed some more of being there, and feeling the way we did.
‘Yeah,’ she said, grinning with her head on one side, looking up at me as I stood. ‘And then come back and do that some more.’
I couldn't see a waitress so I went to the bar. I'd realized by now that the time switch had happened again, and I wasn't surprised to find myself being served by the smooth-faced barman. He didn't look too surprised to see me either.
‘Still going?’ he asked, as he fixed my drinks. I knew I hadn't talked to him before, so I guessed he was just being friendly.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Do I look like I'm going to make it?’
‘You look fine,’ he grinned. ‘Got another hour or so in you yet.’
Only when I was walking unsteadily back to our table did this strike me as a strange thing to have said. Almost as if he knew that in a little while I was going to pass out. I stopped, turned, and looked back at the bar. The barman was still looking at me. He winked, and then turned away.
He knew.
I frowned. That didn't make sense. That didn't work. Unless this was all some flashback, and I was putting words into his mouth. Which meant that it was really tomorrow. Didn't it? Then why couldn't I remember what was going to happen?
I turned back towards Rita-May, and it finally occurred to me to ask her about what was going on. If she didn't know what I was talking about, I could pass it off as a joke. If the same thing was happening to her, then we might have had a spiked joint. Either way I would have learned something. Galvanized by this plan, I tried to hurry back through the crowd. Unfortunately I didn't see a large drunken guy in a check shirt lurching into my path.
‘Hey! Watch it,’ he said, but fairly good-humouredly. I grinned to show I was harmless and then stepped back away from the kerb. The woman I'd thought was Rita-May hadn't been. Just some tourist walking quickly in the sunshine. I looked at my watch and saw I'd been waiting opposite the store for only twenty minutes. It felt like I'd been there for ever. She had to come back soon. She had to.
Then:
Christ, back here again, I thought. The switches seemed to be coming on quicker as time wore on, assuming that's what it was doing. So, eating the food hadn't worked.
By the time I reached the hotel I'd started to forget, but I'd had enough sense left in me to take Rita-May's rose from my pocket and slip it into one of my shoes. Then I buried the shoes as deeply in the suitcase as I could. ‘That'll fuck you up,’ I muttered to myself. ‘That'll make you remember.’ I seemed to know what I meant. It was six in the morning by then, and I took a random selection of my clothes off and fell onto the bed. My head was a mess, and my neck hurt. Neither stopped me from falling asleep instantly, to find myself on Decatur, still waiting opposite the N'awlins Pantry.
That one took me by surprise, I have to admit. I was beginning to get the hang of the back and forth thing, even if it was making me increasingly terrified. I couldn't stop it, or understand it, but at least it was following a pattern. But to flick back to being at the hotel earlier that morning, and find that I'd hidden the shoes myself, was unexpected.
It was all getting jumbled up, as if the order didn't really matter, only the sense, of which there was none.
The people in the po-boy counter were beginning to look at me strangely, so I crossed back over to stand outside N'awlins Pantry itself. It felt like I had been going back and forth over the road for most of my life. There was a lamppost directly outside the store and I grabbed hold of it with both hands, as if I believed that holding something physical would keep me where I was. All I wanted in the whole wide world was for Rita-May to get back.
When she did, she wal
ked right up to the table, straddled my knees and sat down on my lap facing me. She did this calmly, without flamboyance, and no one on the nearby tables seemed to feel it was in any way worthy of note. I did, though. As I reached out to pull her closer to me, I felt like I was experiencing sexual attraction for the very first time. Every cell in my body shifted nervously, as if aware that something rather unusual and profound was afoot. The band was still pumping out twelve-bar at stadium concert volume, which normally blasts all physical sensation out of me: I can't, to put it bluntly, usually do it to music. That didn't appear to be the case on this occasion. I nuzzled into Rita-May's face and kissed her ear. She wriggled a little closer to me, her hand around the back of my head, gently twisting in the roots of my hair. My entire skin felt as if it had been upgraded to some much more sensitive organ, and had I stood up too quickly, in those jeans, I suspect something in my trousers would have just snapped.
‘Let's go,’ she said suddenly.
I stood up, and we went.
It was about three a.m. by then, and Bourbon Street was much quieter. We went up it a little way, and then took a turn to head back down towards Jackson Square. We walked slowly, wrapped up in each other, watching with interest the things our hands seemed to want to do. I don't know what Rita-May was thinking, but I was hoping with all of my heart that we could stay this way for a while. I was also still girding myself up to asking her if she was having any problems keeping track of time.
We got to the corner of the square, and she stopped. It looked very welcoming in the darkness, empty of people and noise. I found myself thinking that leaving New Orleans was going to be more difficult than I'd expected. I'd spent a lot of my life leaving places, taking a quick look and then moving on. Wasn't going to be so easy this time.
What You Make It: A Book of Short Stories Page 10