Louisiana Breakdown

by Lucius Shepard

  “Stuff?”

  “You know. The way you were squeezing me.”

  “Oh, that,” she said. “I learned all that when I was fourteen. My cousin Amelia bought this woman’s magazine had an article…‘How to Exercise Your Love Muscle.’ We practiced every day ’til we got pretty good at it. Difference was, Amelia was savin’ it for the man she was goin’ to marry. Me, I couldn’t wait to try it out. I earned myself quite a reputation.”

  “I bet.”

  “Didn’t you ever have a woman do that for you?”

  “Yeah, but not quite so…”

  “Not quite so what?”

  He looked embarrassed. “So expertly.”

  “Told you I had a history. It don’t bother you, does it?”

  “No…hell. But you keep taking me by surprise.”

  “I got a few more surprises. Just you wait’ll tomorrow.”

  “Why wait ’til then?”

  “I gotta go to work in a couple hours! I’m gon’ be draggin’ as it is. But you can sleep in. I’ll catch a ride into town and leave you the pickup. When you wake, come on over the diner. I’ll fix you breakfast.”

  He settled himself beside her so they lay face-to-face and placed a hand on her cheek. The touch brought a wave of sleepiness—the Form granting her its peace.

  “Vida,” he said.

  “Mmmm. What?”

  “Nothing.”

  He gathered her into his arms and she nestled against him, feeling the tug of dreams, no longer wary of them. She slept hard at first, gone deeper than dreams into her own darkness, and when she surfaced the dream that came was bright and calm. She was walking naked in an orchard of trees with golden leaves and glass fruit. The grass, too, was golden, and a tiger with gemmy eyes padded along beside her. The leaves of the lower branches trailed across her skin, leaving glowing lip-shaped marks whose warmth faded like the warmth of kisses. Winged emeralds disguised as June bugs flashed back and forth. Then in a clearing ahead she saw an armored knight all of glass standing above a slain beast. The belly of the beast, mounded high as a hillock, was gashed and bleeding, and the gauntlets of the knight were gloved in blood, as if he had reached inside the wounds to bring forth some fleshy treasure. The sight was at odds with the serenity of the orchard. Vida had no sense that the knight was Marsh, yet she knew it must be him, and that she was the beast he was pillaging. She took a step back, afraid he would spot her. But the tiger leaped forward, shattering the knight into a thousand shards with a single blow, then proceeded to lick the blood from the broken glass until no sign of her enemy remained, apart from a glittering wreckage among the grass blades that appeared no more threatening than a bright scattering of pollen or a crystalline residue of time.

  8

  Breakfast

  VIDA’S MOONLIGHT DINER HAD FIVE EARLY BREAKFAST regulars: four old men who sat at the end of the counter slurping oatmeal and peering down Vida’s neckline when she served them, and fat, bald, red-faced John Guineau, the editor of the Grail Seeker, who came each morning at a quarter to eight and sat in the booth nearest the door—though he scarcely fit into it, a slab of his pin-striped stomach overlapping onto the tabletop—and read his own newspaper while risking cardiac arrest by eating four sausage patties and a large plate of French fries, and downing three cups of chicory-flavored coffee. They had all known her since she was a bulge in her mama’s belly, but they rarely engaged her in conversation. Which was fine with Vida. She liked quiet mornings. Liked the sun slanting through the Venetian blinds onto the Formica counter, the smell of bacon frying, and the shine on the grill. She would have never thought she’d enjoy running a diner, but she had learned to relish the routine and the continuity of faces, the same day after day except for the occasional tourist and long-hauler. It had come to be her natural element, the place where she felt most protected from Marsh, too involved with the clutter of business to pay attention to his manipulations of her thoughts. But as she prepared to bring Guineau his breakfast that morning, on turning to pick up his fries, instead of potatoes she saw a writhing heap of tiny men and women, naked, their skins golden-brown, entangled in a complexity of sexual congress on the white plate. She put a hand to her mouth to stop an outcry, but was unable to take her eyes off the miniature orgy…an orgy that was, she thought, likely happening right now at Marsh’s penthouse, and he was inviting her to reclaim her rightful place at the squirming center of his show. She heard Guineau calling to her, saying he could use his food, and she lifted the plate, careful not to touch its contents, and carried it over to the booth.

  “You slow this mornin’, girl.” Guineau plucked up a tiny nubile woman with golden tresses, her legs kicking, and popped her into his pink mouth.

  Chewed.

  Vida stared in horror as he doused the humping bodies with ketchup, then picked up a lovemaking couple and bit them in half while still joined. She backed away, fetched up against the counter.

  “Hell’s wrong with you, Vida?” Guineau grabbed his fork and impaled two slim golden-brown men out of a daisy chain and sucked them off the tines.

  “Just the heat’s got me flustered.”

  “It ain’t hot.” Guineau dunked a young girl headfirst into the ketchup bottle, twirled her around long enough to drown her, and chomped off her limp dripping-red torso. “Might be hot for tourists, but not if you Louisiana-bred. Maybe you got a touch of fever, you.”

  Vida retreated into the kitchen, leaned against the freezer until her heart stopped racing. Anson, the cook, grinned at her from the stove, his round black face glowing with sweat; he gestured at the freezer.

  “Woman, you gon’ hafta crawl inside that thing, you wanna stay cool,” he said.

  She waved dismissively. “I needed a break from watchin’ John Guineau eat.”

  “I hear that. One of these days they gon’ hafta use the Jaws of Life to pry his ass outa that booth.”

  She gathered herself, took a deep breath, and went back out into the front, avoiding even a glance at Guineau. She gave the four old men a refill of their coffee; they watched her pour with enfeebled gratitude and enervated lust. The oldest, Toby Abijean, had spilled his oatmeal, and moved to kindness she mopped it up, bending low to provide them a thrill. They stared with rheumy eyes, slurped and wheezed, and once she had finished they returned to their gaspy conversation.

  Guineau had cleaned his plate of fries. He unwedged himself from the booth, swatted at his belly with the napkin, and heaved over to the register; he plunked down exact change plus a two-dollar tip on the cash tray and said, “Fries were extra good this mornin’, Vida. You do somethin’ special with ’em?”

  “Naw,” she said shakily.

  “Well, they were extra good. Whatever you didn’t do, don’t do it again.”

  He chuckled at his joke and gave her a pat on the arm. A few seconds later the bell above the door jingled at his exit. Vida left his table uncleared. She checked to make sure the old men were all set, then stepped into the larder and opened a gallon tin of peaches. As she pried at the lid, her eyes went to the shelves—it was as if she had been transported life-sized inside a dollhouse skyscraper and was looking at a cross-section of three floors…the floors of Clifford Marsh’s penthouse, populated by his sycophants. A menagerie of male and female creatures dressed for a masked ball. Gathered in small groups. Gesturing. Alive. Glittering two-legged birds with hared breasts; men in comic opera military uniforms; a hunchback with a priapic mask who scuttled about butting people in the rear end with his obscene nose; a girl of no more than twelve, naked except for the fact that her flesh was covered with painted words such as Cunt, Sodomize, Fuck. Vida had seen it all before; it was typical of Marsh’s parties. She gazed dully at the scene, accepting that he had penetrated her last refuge, that he could now find her anywhere. Then she spotted him. Standing at the edge of the third floor. A miniature silver-haired devil in a tuxedo, with a grinning tanned face almost unmarked by time. Looking at her. He waved gaily, then beckoned. Seized by ha
tred, she reached out for him, but before she could close her fist, he and all the rest had misted away, replaced by boxes of soda crackers and cans of tomato sauce.

  Despairing, Vida rested her brow against a shelf. She thought about Jack and the thought strengthened her. If she could get away from Grail. If she could just get away. She swallowed, closed her eyes, straightened. It felt as if something was flapping inside her head, troubling her concentration. “God,” she said, the word sighing out. She took hold of the can of peaches and pried up the lid. The can was empty of peaches. She might have been looking through a ceiling peephole into Marsh’s bedroom. At the bottom of the can was a bed with a black satin coverlet on which her younger self reclined naked, a white shape that from her apparent height resembled an old-fashioned keyhole in a black door with a strong light shining through it. A dozen men, also naked, ringed the bed. They were vigorously stroking themselves, preparing to soil her.

  She shrieked and knocked the can onto the floor. Peaches everywhere. Puddled syrup. She slipped in the syrup and nearly fell. She screamed in rage, in terror, and began ripping down boxes and cans from the shelves. Crackers and salt and mustard mired with the syrup. She collapsed in a corner, staring at the mess she’d made. A knock sounded on the larder door. Anson called out, “Vida?” When she didn’t respond, he tried again.

  “I’m okay,” she said.

  “Some man here to see you,” Anson said.

  Marsh, she thought. He had sent his demon.

  “He say you promise to fix him breakfas’.”

  Jack.

  “Tell him…” She pulled herself to her feet. “Tell him I’ll be a minute.”

  She fixed her face, using a labelless can for a mirror, and on her way through the kitchen, she told Anson to hustle up a Cajun omelet and bacon. Jack was sitting in the last booth, facing away from the old men. She brought him coffee, kissed his cheek, and sat opposite him.

  “You all right?” he asked. “You look a little ragged.”

  “Now you to blame for that, ain’tcha?” She put on a smile she did not feel. She wanted to tell him about Marsh, but believed that might scare him off before the Form could fully manifest. “What you plannin’ on doin’ today?”

  “Beats me. Maybe sit on a bench and spit tobacco. I’ll fit right in.” His blue eyes seemed to find the fear inside her and give it a caress. “You still like me this morning?”

  She restrained herself from saying she loved him—it wasn’t time yet. “I like you fine,” she said. “Maybe even a little more’n that.”

  “I was thinking the same about you.” He rested his arms on the back of the booth, as if draping them over the shoulders of two invisible friends. “So you going to fix me breakfast?”

  “Believe me, you’ll eat a lot better you let Anson do the fixin’.” She glanced toward the kitchen. The old men were peering at them, probably trying to imprint Jack on their memories, polishing the story they would tell about Vida and her new man.

  The kitchen door swung open—Anson came out carrying two plates. He ambled over, gazed suspiciously at Jack, and set the plates in front of him. Jack said, “Hey, thanks,” and Anson said to Vida, “You need somethin’ else, jus’ give a holler, you.”

  As Jack ate, Vida studied the way his jaw muscles clumped, the cording of his neck. “Where were you headin’?” she asked. “’Fore your car broke down?”

  “Florida.” He dabbed at his mouth with a napkin. “New Smyrna Beach. Friend of mine’s letting me use his beach house for a few months. I’ve been wanting to do some writing, and that’ll be a good place for it.”

  “Writin’ music, you mean?”

  “Songs.” He forked up a bite of omelet and chewed. “This is great!”

  “Anson’s a treasure,” Vida said absently. “That what you do for a livin’? Write songs?”

  “Mmm-hmm.” He swallowed the bite. “I can sell songs all right, but nobody wants to hear me sing ’em. My voice isn’t that strong.”

  “I think you got a nice voice.”

  “Only time you ever heard me sing is last night. Anybody can sound decent singing along with a record.”

  “Well, let me hear somethin’.”

  “Now?”

  “Nobody’s gon’ be listenin’ ’cept me. Those old men wouldn’t hear a bomb goin’ off.”

  Jack set down his fork. “I didn’t bring a guitar.”

  “Don’t have to be much. Just give me a taste.”

  “Okay,” he said. “But it’d be better with a guitar.”

  He closed his eyes and sang. The song was a ballad, and his voice was whispery, so sweet and soft it took Vida by surprise and she didn’t connect with the words until he was halfway through a verse:

  “…maybe I’m a dreamer, maybe I’m a fo-ool,

  Maybe I’m just a lonely ma-an

  But maybe I got the answers to

  Those questions that are troublin’ you…

  All you gotta do is ask…”

  He tapped out a reggae rhythm on the edge of the table as he hit the chorus:

  “You can’t hide your love from me,

  You can’t hide your love from me…

  Well, you can run but…

  You can’t hide your love from me…”

  Jack broke the song off abruptly, looking uncomfortable. “It needs a guitar,” he said.

  “Oh, dear!” Vida pretended to fan herself. “I’d be embarrassed to tell you what sort of physical reaction I just had.”

  “Yeah, right!” he said, but she could see he was pleased.

  “Bet the girl you wrote it for like to fell over backwards when you sang it to her.”

  “I wrote that this morning,” he said. “Not long after you left.”

  She felt herself blushing, pleasurably confused. “For me? You wrote it for me?”

  He nodded.

  She scrambled to call up the words, the message the Form was sending her…maybe I got the answers to / all the questions that are troubling you / all you gotta do is ask…It needed guidance, it needed her to come a step forward.

  He caressed her elbow. “Say something.”

  “I’m overwhelmed.”

  “Nobody wrote you a song before?”

  She shook her head. “Guess I never gave nobody a chance to feel like writin’ one.”

  A green low-slung sports car wound out past the diner, raising dust from the shoulder, gaining speed as it headed for the city limits sign and the speed trap beyond.

  “Well,” Jack said. “I might have a few more for you.”

  It seemed to Vida that her focus kept having to shift a shorter distance between Jack and the Form. They were becoming the same. Knowing that lent her some courage. She had only to get through another day or so. Then the Form would be manifest, and it would carry her away.

  “You still headin’ for New Smyrna Beach…when you leave?”

  “Depends,” he said, meeting her eyes. “We might have to talk about that.”

  “God, I hope you got some idea what you gettin’ into.”

  He grinned. “Not a clue.”

  “I got serious trouble. People say I’m crazy. I wish that was all of it, but it’s not. I pissed off the wrong people.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You’ll think I’m crazy.”

  “No, I won’t.”

  “You will!” She snapped the words, then her tone softened. “You will…I know it. There’s times I think it sounds crazy, me.”

  The door jingled. Two long-haired men in T-shirts and jeans, trucker wallets chained to their belts, took stools at the counter; the old men gazed at them anxiously.

  “I gotta work.” Vida fingered a pen and order book from her apron pocket.

  He put a hand on her wrist, lightly restraining her. “I want to know everything about you. Nothing you say is going to change how I feel.”

  She saw the Form peering out at her from the shadows in his eyes. “All right. But I hope you mean it, �
�cause this is gonna give it a test.”

  9

  Magic Time

  OCCUPYING HALF A GLASS STOREFRONT ON EAST Monroe was a shop with the word REMEDIES rendered in gilt stick-on letters at the center of a clear oval; the remainder of the window had been spray-painted black, embellished with silver ankhs, golden crescents and stars, and various arcana that Mustaine could not identify. Smaller letters on the door inscribed the legend:

  NEDRA HAWES

  Oracles and Psychic Divination

  The other half of the building was given over to something called Say Cheese! The blinds being drawn, Mustaine could not determine whether the name signified a photographer’s studio or a cheese shop. Either way, he thought, this confluence of the mystical and the mundane reaffirmed his opinion that in Grail these two apparently opposing systems were both conjoined and clearly demarked, like puzzle pieces that fitted together yet depicted separate elements of an overall design. He peered in through the clear oval of the remedy shop window and in the gloomy interior made out display cases, mounted shelves, an ajar door from which a fan of yellow lamplight spread. He tried the door and found it unlocked, but decided against entering. What would he do once inside? Perform some act of mockery? Buy a geechee charm? He leaned against the parking meter out front, facing toward Le Bon Chance, which was situated down a ways and across the street. The grubbiness of white cement block and dead neon dice and empty gravel lot exposed by the strong sun. Now and again a car zipped past, heading for Biloxi and points east. An elderly black man in a pink long-sleeved dress shirt and worn overalls, with a ladies floppy-brimmed straw hat shading his face, came limping along the sidewalk, followed by a hinge-gaited hound with a blue bandanna knotted about its neck. Mustaine recalled a bass player who had auditioned for his band in LA; he, too, had dressed his dog in a bandanna. When he failed to make the band, he had assaulted the drummer’s girlfriend, accusing her of casting a spell and thus causing him to play poorly. Mustaine had since held a jaundiced view of dogs with bandannas.

  As the black man passed, Mustaine said, “What’s up?” and the man, without looking up, said, “Muthafucka gon’ kill our ass, he get heah befo’ Wednesday.”