“I guess I missed that lesson.”
“You’re making fun of me, but I know what I’m doing. Everyone wants to fuck me. It’s not that I’m the most beautiful girl in the world, not even the most beautiful girl in this wretched coastal town – just the randiest and wildest, the one who looks underage and helpless. Men love underage minge.”
“How old are you? Tell me the truth.”
“Twenty-three, as I said.”
“And your real name is Delphine?”
She rolled her eyes. “Of course not. Practically all the people I know use aliases.”
“Are you running from the law?”
“Not yet.”
“I still don’t think it sounds like much of a life.”
“Let me tell you what I did a few weekends ago. My neighbor is this smug old fart who’s always bragging about his colonial past in the Congo, but he’s like the Flemish Hugh Hefner and he held this big party at his house with tons of bourbon and cocaine. He invited every vixen he knew and I was one of them.”
I interrupted her by chuckling.
“What’s so funny?”
“The word vixen always makes me laugh for some reason. It refers to –”
“I know it means a female fox. I’m not stupid, you know.”
“Sorry. Please continue with your story.”
“The party was great and I had sex with a gorgeous Flemish girl. She smelled really nice and she had small tits. I love girls, even though I love men more and I couldn’t live without cock. But once in a while I have to fondle someone else’s tits to feel good.”
“I get it. You’re bisexual.”
“That’s just a word. I’m a crazy lover.”
“I stand corrected.”
“I realize I’m quite skinny, but I have really nice tits and I’ve been in a few porn flicks. I guess I shouldn’t be proud of that, but I am.”
“I think you’re a very pretty girl, Delphine.”
She lowered her head and looked away. “I wish you hadn’t said that.”
“It’s my honest opinion.”
“I don’t want to be pretty. It’s what men say about a girl when they’re not interested in fucking her. I want to be sexy.”
“You are sexy.”
“This is the first time in five years I haven’t been aching to fuck.”
“It’s not a tragedy. You just need a rest.”
She looked up at me with pleading eyes. “Take me to your hotel room.”
“You don’t really want to go there.”
“Yes, I do.”
“To see if I’m hiding a wife?”
“Are you?”
“No.”
“Prove it to me.”
“You should learn to trust people more.”
“All right, I believe you. Don’t you want to fuck me?”
“You’re way too young for me. I’d feel like a dirty old man.”
She looked confused. “You knew how young I was before you came to Belgium.”
“Yes, I did.”
“You want me to believe you traveled all the way from Hawaii just to talk to me?”
“And to visit Bastogne. But your emails made me very curious about you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You’re a very good writer. I was impressed by the short story you sent me.”
Her eyes glistened with tears. She pushed my hand away when I reached out to touch her cheek.
“Don’t.”
“No need to cry about it.”
“I’m not crying.”
I filled up her glass with wine. “Drink. It’ll make you feel better.”
“I feel fine.”
“You seemed like a fascinating girl and I wanted to meet you. What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing,” she said, draining her glass.
“You want something to eat?”
“I don’t eat lunch. I’m on a diet.”
“Getting in shape for another porn flick?”
She glared at me with dagger eyes and poured herself more wine.
“Okay, bad joke. You want to go for a walk? You could show me the city.”
“Ostend is a shithole and I’m no tour guide.”
“I’d be willing to pay for your time.”
“To talk?”
“Talk and spend the day together.”
“I’m not that desperate for money.”
“Why are you so angry with me?”
“I don’t know.”
“I thought we were friends.”
She folded her arms. “Yeah, pen pals.”
“Isn’t that a kind of friendship?”
“Not in my experience.”
I sighed. “I can see I’ve put you in a bad mood. Why don’t we meet here again tomorrow afternoon at one and start from scratch? I promise I won’t say anything to upset you.”
She shook her head. “Are you for real?”
“As far as I know. Would you like to see my driver’s license?”
She frowned. “Yes, I would.”
I took the license out of my wallet and she examined it.
“You actually do live in Honolulu.”
“You must have thought I lied to you.”
“I don’t know what I thought.”
“Is it a date for tomorrow?”
She paused to make up her mind. “If you insist.”
Four days in a row I went to the bistro at one in the afternoon and waited for a couple hours, but Delphine failed to show up. I was more disappointed than surprised. On my last day in Ostend I plugged my laptop into the hotel room terminal to check my email. There was no message from Delphine.
In fact, I never heard from Delphine again. After I returned to Hawaii, I sent a long message to her email address with the online address where she could read some of Salinger’s work. It came back immediately with a notice that the recipient was no longer available at that email address. I would write her a snail mail letter, but she never gave me her street address and even if she had, I didn’t know her real name and I imagined that she moved often without leaving a forwarding address.
Sometimes I think of Delphine and wonder what happened to her. Behind all her brash talk, she possessed a certain fragile quality of injured innocence that touched me. She was an English waif lost in a jaded underworld ruled by Flemish fishmongers and fake Hugh Hefners, drugs and gorgeous bisexual women, aching to fuck her way out of the nightmare in which she was sinking as if into quicksand.
The Shadow of White Death
Debra Gray De Noux and O’Neil De Noux
The shadow of white death has passed
from my path in heaven at last—
Prometheus Unbound
Percy Bysshe Shelley
At fifty-six, I shouldn’t feel this old, even with a bum knee – a gift from an armed robber twelve years ago. It only bothers me when it rains. Unfortunately, it rains a lot here in New Orleans – fat rain that comes in waves, bending branches of the huge oaks, turning streets into canals, drenching this old city in water heated by an incessant, semi-tropical sun. My left knee loses its strength. So I walk with a limp for a while.
The rain at night, even during the steamy summer, is cool at least. One of the reasons why I like working the graveyard shift here in City Park. I took my New Orleans Police Department retirement last year and turned around to become a City Park Policeman, a glorified security guard with a newer vehicle than I drove with NOPD and my familiar .357 magnum in its leather holster on my left hip. Midnight to eight a.m. is perfect for a twice-divorced man living in a one-bedroom apartment. I sleep through the heat of the day and have my evenings free, until midnight at least. I watch a lot of cable TV.
Tonight, as I shave before going to work, I take a long look at my face in the mirror. When I joined NOPD, I was a slim one-sixty and my hair still dark brown, my face lean and angular. I’m no blimp, but I’m a pudgy two-twenty now and my hair is streaked with silver. I’m still six fee
t tall, but lack of exercise has turned my muscles into loose rubber bands.
I let myself go since reaching fifty, I guess. My blood pressure’s high and my cholesterol level is through the roof. My doctor prescribes medications, but I won’t take them. They keep me from sleeping and, to tell the truth, sleep is the only real pleasure I have left.
I drive my fifteen-year-old Toyota to the station, a converted golf club house. Our roll call consists of Sergeant Cincent and the twins, Ethyl and Methyl Ketone, burly women with square jaws, tiny eyes and overpowering perfume that smells like cherry Kool-Aid. Cincent is another retired cop, from Jefferson Parish, even older than me and heavier. He runs through the roll call messages. Someone’s vandalized the horse stable again, decorating it with graffiti. Ethyl or Methyl (can’t tell them apart with their identical Ketone name tags) raises an excited hand and volunteers to stake it out tonight. They ride together in our only two-person car. They’ll be able to watch more than one side of the stable, one hiding behind bushes. Ha.
Cincent and I ride in one-man cars. He’s CP-1 and I’m CP-2, in our new Ford Explorer SUVs, in case we need four-wheel drive to chase a squirrel-gone-bad through the park. City Park’s pretty big, but has nice streets, paved and all, right in the middle of New Orleans. A regular car would do. But who am I to complain? A big guy like me can spread out and take a nice cat nap in an SUV.
My patrol area of the park consists of about five square miles along the river side of the interstate. Cincent takes the lake side, mostly golf courses and a few baseball diamonds. The big golf club house is his too. I cruise my patrol area from Marconi Drive over to Carrollton to one of our second place statues, this one is General Beauregard scowling as he defiantly faces north. Statues of confederate generals always face north, never turning their back to the enemy, at least my old man told me that when he explained why we call them our second place statues. It happens when you lose a war and celebrate coming in second.
I drive down to the art museum, which has its own security guards and state-of-the-art alarm system, noting along the way how no one has stolen any of the ancient oaks or brick shelters. City Park is dotted with brick shelters built during the WPA primarily, big enough for two bathrooms and two large picnic tables.
It’s a typical unexciting night in City Park. At four o’clock, I park my SUV next to the haunted shelter just south of the interstate and the train tracks. Lunchtime and then naptime. The haunted shelter, one of the few pre-dating the WPA shelters, is made of stone with a red tile roof and only one picnic table and no bathrooms.
The ghost of a young woman is supposed to haunt the shelter. I read the reports, kids mostly have spotted her. She has long dark hair and pallid skin and wears a white gown. There’s a legend of course. The young woman died at the shelter over a hundred years ago, murdered by two men who tried to rape her. She resisted and was killed. There’s another story. She was a suicide, a jilted lover who couldn’t stand the heartache.
I don’t believe in ghosts or legends, to tell the truth.
I carry my thermos of coffee and lunch bag with two ham-and-cheese sandwiches and bag of Zapp’s potato chips to the shelter and sit at the picnic table. One dim streetlight breaks the darkness, giving the entire area a gray hue. The other lights are hidden behind the black branches and Spanish moss of ancient oak trees.
It’s so quiet here. A warm breeze filters through the trees, bringing scents of flowers from the botanical gardens. The moss dances back and forth, like curtains fluttering through an open window. I eat slowly then bundle up my trash and bring my thermos back to the SUV. With the windows down, the breeze flows over me as I recline the seat and close my eyes. I lean forward and check the squelch on my police radio to make sure it’s on, then put my hands behind my head.
I drift off easily.
I’m a light sleeper and a noise wakes me. The clock on the dash reads five-twenty. Sitting up, I look at the shelter and stretch. I pull the seat forward and reach for the ignition when I see her standing in front of the nearest oak. I blink twice but she’s still there, dark hair falling past her shoulders, skin as white as her gown.
I don’t believe it. I’d just been thinking about this so I blink again but she’s still there, standing stiffly, unmoving. I rub my eyes but she remains there. The ghostly Spanish moss dances behind her but her hair is unmoved by the breeze.
Slowly, I open my door and climb out. She doesn’t move as I close the door. I feel goosebumps on my arms and my heart pounding in my chest. She stares right at me with bright eyes, wide eyes, penetrating eyes.
I’m hallucinating.
No. My senses are too sharp for it to be an hallucination and this doesn’t feel like a dream. There’s an eerie taste to the air, a strange feeling on my skin, like a million flies batting wings against the exposed flesh on my arms and face.
She takes a step toward me and I waver, my left knee suddenly weak. Another step brings her into the direct streetlight and she glimmers, her skin iridescent, her pretty face like porcelain. Young, she looks to be about twenty years old. Her hair has a reddish hue and her lips are dark crimson. I can’t help but feel a chill of terror.
She’s beautiful and sad as she tilts her head to the side. The dark eyes seem to reach for me and do not blink as she stares for long seconds, minutes. A knowing smile comes to her full lips, but it’s a sad smile. Slowly she backs away and moves around the trunk of the huge oak, her gaze never leaving me until she’s behind the tree.
Another breeze flows over me and the air is suddenly different, the sharpness gone, the eeriness gone. I take a step to my side and limp around the tree, but she’s gone. It still takes a while for my breathing to return to normal. I lean against the fender of my SUV and try to think this out.
I look around. If someone’s playing a joke on me – I remember how some midshipmen from Annapolis went to West Point with a slide projector and tricked a buncha army cadets into believing they saw the ghost of Robert E. Lee – I’d better check around. As the strength returns to my knee, I search the area, but I’m alone. Climbing behind the steering wheel, I wipe the sweat from my face with a Kleenex and see the goose-bumps haven’t gone away.
“CP-1 to CP-2.” The radio makes me jump. I quickly answer Cincent.
“10–19. We have a complainant.” He’s asking me to return to the station house. Some complainant’s there. No way he’s handling a complaint.
I wait a minute before starting the engine, looking around as I pull away. If this was a practical joke, it was a good one. I still feel goosebumps as I arrive at the station where a beat-up station wagon is parked next to Cincent’s SUV. It’s Mrs Adderly again, back to complain about the pack of wild dogs – wolves she calls them – that raid her garbage cans and then escape into the park. She’s tried NOPD and the SPCA but no one’ll listen, except me.
In the two years I’ve worked City Park, I’ve never seen a dog in the park after midnight. Not one. I want to tell her that, sarcastically, tell her the werewolves have eaten them. The werewolves that come out of the nearby cemeteries when the moon is full. But I don’t.
Four o’clock the next morning, I park my SUV back at the haunted shelter. Hoping, just hoping I’ll see her again. Don’t know if I even believe I’m really seeing her, but the fright she gave me had my heart pumping, my skin tingling. I haven’t felt this much excitement in years.
I barely taste my sandwiches and chips. No way I’ll take a nap. It’s warmer tonight with no breeze, the humidity still high even with the sun long gone, as if a gigantic oven’s been left open. Sitting at the picnic table, I watch the oak where I last saw her.
At five sharp, something scurries through the dead magnolia leaves behind me and I turn but can’t see whatever animal is hurrying through the night. It’s too small to be a dog, unless it’s some sorta wild Chihuahua. I heard about them. Indigenous to Arizona or north Mexico.
Turning back to the oak, I keep watching and suddenly she’s there. Between the blink
of any eye, she appears. I feel a thousand needles along my back as she takes a hesitant step toward me then stops. I can’t catch my breath.
With the streetlight behind her, I see her body framed by the light. It’s as if her gown has fallen away. Her hands by her sides, I see her full breasts, her nipples and triangle of dark hair between her legs. This is no little girl. This is very much a woman and I’m excited as I stare at her, a wave of lust rising in me. Haven’t felt that in while.
In a blink, she’s next to me and I fall away from her, nearly tumbling from the picnic bench. Her eyes glimmer as they stare into mine. Green eyes, they are light and filled with emotion, so much I can’t pull my gaze from them. She raises her arms and spreads them open as if she’s about to hug me. There’s an ozone taste in the air, as if lightning has just struck. I cringe away from her and she pulls back. Her eyes bat at me and fill and tears stream down her face. Her lower lip quivers.
I cringe away from her and she stiffens and is suddenly gone. I catch my breath, sucking in a deep gulp of air. My heart thunders in my chest as I stand and look around, then take a shaky walk around the shelter and my SUV. Nothing. Not even a breeze.
The night is still and quiet, the thick air hot and humid once again.
Waking earlier than usual, I drive to NOPD Headquarters. I can’t help thinking, why? Why is she appearing to me all of a sudden? I’d taken naps at the haunted shelter before. Can’t figure it.
Up in the Homicide Division, I find Captain Mason, with his Marine Corps cropped hair and chiseled face. He shrugs when I ask him about old homicide records.
“What ya’ lookin’ for?”
“A murder in City Park. Or maybe a suicide?”
He turns to his computer, as ashes from the ever-present cigarette in his mouth fall on his narrow tie and asks, “When?”
I shrug and he shrugs right back.
“Victim would be a woman. Young.”
“Unsolved?”
When I shrug again, he leads me out into the squad room and punches in his password into a larger computer next to the coffee pot and shows me how to ask the computer questions.
The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 6 Page 10