Babylon Rolling

by Amanda Boyden

  “Cherry, you got a graft you gone get through. An’ then we got a care person stayin’ with us. Whatever situation Marie tell us about. How nice this be?”

  Cerise just gives her husband a look he knows.

  “It ain’t traceable,” he explains.

  “You don’t say.”

  Roy tries to go at it a different way. Cerise can see so in the way he shifts his body. He presses his hand to his bandages under his shirt in a cheap trick to get her sympathy. “What about we put it away for Lil Thomas?”

  She’d thought about that already. Into a trust. Something the boy’s parents couldn’t ever touch. “No.”

  Roy’s eyes search out hers till she gives him them. “Baby,” he says.

  “No.”

  “What you want me to do with this?” He’s sort of massaging the piles of money, mushing them all together and across his sheet.

  “Best you roll in it, husband.”

  He checks her eye. Cerise wonders how hard he’ll fight. “Yeah?” he asks.

  “How much you think a burnt-up hand is worth?”

  “Whatever you say,” he tells her.

  She holds up her mitten hands.

  “Whatever you say,” he says again.

  8

  Yesterday Fearius thought he gone teach them a lesson. But right when he went down the narrow, he could hear the whiteifieds leaving, just preppin the house for whatever the Florida peoples pay em to do. Fearius backed up the narrow and gave em their ten minutes to get out.

  But now, here, his best sale day possible, they back, draggin out bags of garbage and makin noise inside at straight up eight in the morning. Fearius walk slow down the block and think on things. Alphonse gave him a pager, but if Fearius decide to disturb Alphonse in the AM, Fearius best have a important code to send. Likely indeed, Alphonse just send back something saying for Fearius to take care of it himself. Fearius cant look like no baby with his thumb in his mouth.

  Juvey showed him how to stand up. Troy from Arabi who been in for over a year showed Fearius how to sharpen his toothbrush into a point on the cinderblock and where the one hitter be hidden in the showers and who to buy from for what smoke goes in it. How you dont ever get yourself into a place with no move, like with chess, get sneaked up on from behind. Keep your back to the wall. Eat meals at the corner tables an face the whole dining room.

  Hell, a boxcutter way sharper than a pointy toothbrush.

  And two against one aint bad odds. They sure gotta be a couple of slow bros yessiring, wont have any desire to take Fearius on. They have families and whatall to feed. Potbellied pigs in the house and ol ladies lyin on couches eatin candies.

  Look out, whiteifieds, Fearius say in his head, turning around. He step faster, leanin back more, and the tunnel start comin on the way it does, all the edges disappearing, almost like Fearius be walkin into a movie and get zoomed at triple speed to where he need to get to.

  Fearius push on the button for the blade in his pocket and turn down the narrow, same as it feel like he done a thousand times already now. He take the boxcutter out and drag it along the house, peels of chocolate paint flaking onto the ground. Voices leak out the rotten wood.

  And zoom, he be in through the back door.

  One whiteified nigga from yesterday stand in the kitchen shaking his head at the mess, dissing crackheads and unclean habits. He shut up when he see Fearius. The other voice still come out another room: “They’s just a worthless lot. Don’t work, don’t do nothing but poke needles into they veins and spread the HIV.”

  Fearius tap the boxcutter against his thigh, tip his head at the shut upped one in the kitchen. Fearius put on his cornerstore Chinese motherfucker face. “Best you wrap up yo shit now,” he tell the man and squints.

  The man raise his hands. “Whoa, whoa,” he say. He got on pink dishwashing gloves like some woman.

  Fearius laugh. “You done wif the pots an pans yet?”

  “I don’t know what you doin’ here, son,” the man say quiet at Fearius, “but I don’t have no troubles with nobody.” He keep holding his gloves up in the air.

  “It time you pack up and evacuate,” Fearius say, and in come the one from the other room.

  “What the devil?” This one have a surgeon mask droopin round his neck, wearing full ass zipped up coveralls. What they think, that they gone get AIDS from picking up garbage? Come to think on it, maybe if the garbage end up being needles an all, it possible.

  “Don’t mean y’all doin’ bad work, but it time you go now. They’s a hurr-a-cane.” He tip his head on the beats.

  Coveralls aint quite as accommodating as Gloves. His face start twisting up, and Fearius know it gone become a toothbrush situation from the past. Funny thing, Fearius teeth be white as rice now for all his carrying his brush through his juvey days. Coveralls look at Gloves who just stare.

  “Now,” Coveralls say, “this ain’t right.” He run his eyes up and down Fearius, and Fearius feel it like the man using his fingers, like the man deciding if he gone take Fearius or not, testing if Fearius skinny enough or soft enough in his heart to break. “Boy, get your crackhead shit out here now before it’s too late. What, you like ten years old?” Coveralls start walking forward. He has a old cold drink can in his hand, one turned into a pipe with a hole cut in the side, and a full garbage bag in the other. All a sudden, Coveralls throw the can at Fearius and swing the garbage bag then let it go. It whomp Fearius in the chest but it dont take him down.

  Coveralls come in.

  Fearius step back and get stuck against the counter. Coveralls sort of wind up a old school swing from down low by his hip, telegraphing his punch, and Fearius see he gone get hit hard if he dont move faster than the old fuck.

  It always about training, same as anybody fighting in a ring. Fearius just do what he practiced more than ten thousand times in Baby Angola. Fearius crouch and slap Coveralls punch out the way then flick his boxcutter light on the mans thigh.

  Coveralls grab onto his leg right away. “What the fuck you do, child?!”

  Gloves still have his hands in the air. Fearius watch the blood startin to darken Coveralls leg.

  Got to step up. Stand tall. “Likes I said,” Fearius drawl, standing straight again. “Time to evacuate.”

  Gloves nod and walk sideways like a crab over to the door.

  Coveralls be breathing hard through his mouth. Flies gone lay eggs in his teeth he making it so easy. “I see you,” he tell Fearius. “I see you.” He poke a finger in the air at Fearius face.

  Fearius squint up his eyes at Coveralls and say, “Can’t see nothin’.” Fearius wipe the boxcutter on his jeans. “And Nothin’ gone leave my house, ya heard?”

  The bleeder seem like he want to spit but change his mind. That or maybe he gone be sick to his stomach.

  Fearius raise his chin in the direction of the door and push out his lips.

  Coveralls look at his leg and back up at Fearius face. “Ain’t too young to go away for a while,” Coveralls say.

  Fearius shakes his head. “Naw. Ain’t nobody sending me away today. They’s a hurricane comin.” He steps aside for the men to get past him with less worry. “Time to pack up your womens and they bon bons.”

  Ariel carries bags of nonperishable groceries to the better of their two cars. “So you all can call me from the road?”

  “Did you just say ‘y’all’?” Ed asks.

  Please, she thinks. Get the hell out of Dodge so I can go to work. “I said whatever you heard, evidently,” she answers.

  “I heard ‘y’all,’ A.”

  “Then that’s what I said.”

  Miles and Elizabeth Gupta heft his bulging hockey bag to the curb. The girl has eyes the color of fake jade, lighter than clear green. Behind giant black lashes, the shade is sort of surreal, a color Ariel would normally attribute to contact lenses should she see it in the irises of some guest. But Elizabeth is seven. And she has educated parents.

  Indira rolls a suitcase down
their front walk and waves at Ariel with her free hand, ducking her head at the clatter of her suitcase over brick.

  “So you two have cell phones, right?” Ariel calls out to Indira.

  “Yes,” Indira says and nods. “And we have a charger for the cigarette lighter, so we will have all the power we need.”

  Ariel watches Miles interact with Elizabeth and once again knows what the future holds for her son. Miles, she thinks, will be raffish. An Errol Flynn. The girls will call incessantly.

  Ariel wishes she could concentrate on the exodus of her family and the nice neighbors, but she has to get to the Belle. She probably should have spent the night there last night already. Ed simply couldn’t comprehend her late-night return home even after her explanation of what she had to accomplish, of what needed to be done for a hotel in the French Quarter before a hurricane made landfall. His inability to understand her position, or more seriously, her importance at La Belle Nouvelle, feels purposeful and unkind. Watching Ella schlump her Barbie-pink backpack across their small patch of grass, Ariel winces with parental guilt.

  Can she do this? Can she really stay?

  She kissed the kids good night last night at three-thirty in the morning. She set her alarm for seven. She and Ed argued till five. And Ariel is as awake and energized as she’s ever felt in her adult life. She walks over to Indira. “Let me help you,” she tells the woman. Indira wears a sari the color of mashed sweet potato.

  “Oh, stop,” Indira says good-naturedly.

  Ariel wants to hug the woman and ask her to watch over her children like they were her own.

  “If I can’t carry my own luggage,” Indira continues, “what will I do when faced with carrying children on my back through floodwaters?”

  “Swim like a dolphin,” Ariel says. She would like to ask the woman to be her new best friend in New Orleans. They continue down the sidewalk. Ariel stares at her own shoes as they click on concrete. She wears good shoes. Impractical, sexy shoes. Today’s cocoa three-and-a-half-inch heels gleam in the morning sun.

  Indira rolls her suitcase up to their minivan and lets go. The handle of the suitcase slaps against the fender. “Oops,” she says. “I could be the dolphin nanny. Or the swimming babysitter.”

  Ariel laughs. The woman is odd.

  “Will I be responsible for fetching fish meals?” Indira asks.

  “I think we could negotiate duties.”

  Indira looks at her daughter and Miles beginning a tug-of-war on the Guptas’ front lawn.

  Ariel gives Indira a smile and says, “You know, college freshmen, soon, won’t have known a Cold War world.”

  “That’s one of the better reflections of hope we might have that I’ve heard about these days.”

  “So,” Ariel says. Miles yanks his hockey helmet from Elizabeth’s hands. “As my kids’ new adopted guardian and the securer of all things children in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, you must promise me that our husbands will not ordain potato chip dinners and beef jerky breakfasts.”

  Indira presses on the mound of luggage already piled into the open back of the minivan. “My sister’s sister-in-law and her husband will not allow any such dietary lapses. Well, I don’t think. They will likely be vegetarians still.”

  Ariel thinks Indira is glorious in orange. Saris would be easy to pack, flat and thin. And the wrinkles would wear out in an hour or whatever.

  Indira looks at the minivan and sighs. “I suppose the automotive industry is working on the self-loading vehicle already, don’t you think?” She pushes on the mound of luggage again. It doesn’t move. Ariel likes this woman. “If the hurricane hits New Orleans,” Indira asks, “will your hotel be safe?”

  “La Belle’s all cinder block under the stucco. A 747 couldn’t do it much damage. Ooh. Sorry. Bad taste.” Ariel’s forgotten how to talk to people outside of the hotel.

  “Good,” Indira says. “We can use that information to reassure Miles and Ella if they worry about your staying in town.”

  Ariel looks at her kids. They’re readying to go to Disneyland. Their glee is palpable. Worry?

  Sharon Harris comes out on her porch bitching at somebody still inside. Her metal screen door slams shut, the hydraulic thingy obviously broken. “Get it done, Klameisha. I’m not takin’ sass from you and your sorry behind on this day.” Sharon looks out to the street and waves at Ariel and Indira. “Hey, ladies!” she says warmly. She turns back to the screen door. “Formula, diapers, wipes, and water. You get that baby daddy to find them in this city and bring them by, and you best tell him to do it before my shift done or he can answer to me. Come here and shut the door.”

  Sharon turns and walks across the street. “How you two managing this hot mornin’? You scared?”

  “Are you staying, Sharon?” Indira asks.

  “Likely. I made ’em pack bags, but Nate and me, we got through Camille when we was babies ourselves. We probably gone stay. But you got any questions? You got water and batteries?”

  “I’m staying too,” Ariel says.

  Sharon’s eyes go wide. “Miss Minnesota’s stayin’?” Sharon laughs. “Well, good for you. You come over if you need anything. My schedule’s a lucky one this week. I’m off the next three days after pulling ten in a row. Just in time to sit in the dark with no television and no air-conditioning, forced to cook up everything in the house.” Sharon shakes her head. “Think I’ma stop at Tokyo Rose when I get home tonight an’ have me a Corona with lime.”

  “I’d join you,” Ariel says, “but they’ve got me in a room at the hotel for the next couple of nights. Holding down the fort and all.” Ariel shrugs. “It’s weird. Everybody keeps acting like it’s a big party.”

  “Well, girl, it is a big party,” Sharon says. “Where you off to, Miss Indira?”

  “My sister’s sister-in-law and her husband own a motel in Breaux Bridge. We have adjoining rooms with the Mays, minus Ariel.”

  Ariel thinks about telling the women that only her last name is May, not Ed’s, but decides against it. He’ll have enough to contend with on the road. On their road trip.

  “I suppose that’s inland enough,” Sharon says. “You all have fun. Miss Ariel, you want my cell number?”

  The woman is so foreign to Ariel, strange and funny and forward and generous. “That’s a good idea,” Ariel tells her. “Let me go get mine, and I’ll punch it in.”

  La Belle Nouvelle’s staff has lost it. Not really, but Ariel’s amazed. She’s absolutely sure many of them are gobbling up drugs. Which kinds, she’s not even certain. Far more than their usual, in any case.

  But everybody’s still functioning, so for now she’s not going to come down on a single one of the loyal crew. She’s short only three staff total. The rest have signed on for the full cruise. Beyond Douglas-Michael Smithson’s people calling last night to say he would not be making it to

  New Orleans because they were uncertain as to his abilities to get out—woo hoo!—Ivan’s fixing all sorts of other things as well. Henny’s going and Javier’s staying. And the Belle’s stocked with booze. To the tits, as Warren would say.

  Ariel stands in the kitchen near the load-in dock as the guys from French Quarter Ice dolly three hundred bags into the walk-in freezer. The Belle’s ice-makers could do all the work, but that little matter of a potential power outage screws everything up.

  The kitchen radio’s tuned to WWNO, and everybody nods and responds to what the announcers say: “If you’re just now getting onto the I-10, you will be in for a wait. Please make sure you have your gas tanks full, folks. It’s gridlock here at the 610/I-10 juncture, and it’s only expected to get worse.”

  One of the ice guys whistles at the news.

  Ariel wonders about I-90, the highway the Guptas and Ed took to get to Breaux Bridge, then wonders about how gridlock goes away. If nobody moves, then how does gridlock get fixed? How long can gridlock hold out against a hurricane? Ariel would just drive on the shoulder, she decides. Or maybe everybody else would have the sam
e idea. Ariel sees the parents with kids about to piss their pants, the people with crappy cars running into the red temp zones, all of them driving on the shoulder and picking up pieces of metal and highway garbage. They’d get flat tires and kick up roadkill onto other cars …

  She could walk to the corner store and buy condoms.

  “I-90 looks to be no better,” the woman on the radio says. “The mayor urges anyone evacuating to consider alternative routes.”

  “People, west is not best today,” her radio partner chimes in. The man sounds like he sings the blues in his spare time.

  “Ain’t that the truth,” a new dishwasher hollers out.

  “Fo sho.”

  “I hear ya.”

  “To Ivan!” Javier calls out suddenly. He holds an imaginary shot glass aloft. “Arriba,” he says.

  “Arriba!” The pretend glasses go up, including Ariel’s, as per tradition.

  “Abajo.” He moves his hand low.

  “Abajo!”

  “A centro.” Javier pokes his hand away from him.

  “A centro!”

  “A dentro.” And in it goes.

  “A dentro!”

  Ariel tosses hers over her shoulder as always. She thinks she can remember the toast. It’s sort of a play on words. She had one quarter of Spanish in junior high before she switched to German, the popular language back home. Pretty much, they just sang songs and sat on dirty handwoven carpets in the hippie Spanish teacher’s classroom. Ariel still knows the lyrics, phonetically, to the one about the cockroach.

  Javier leans into the stainless steel countertop in front of him. His teeth show white against his skin. Ariel can feel the shape of his hips from a distance.

  “Now to Brett Abernathy for an update,” the blues-singer-in-disguise says.

  Another bluesman comes on to describe Ivan, the numbers, the longitude and latitude and speed and direction, but Ariel doesn’t listen, or not exactly. She tries, but she has trouble picturing the thing in time and space without a meteorologist’s hand gestures moving over a map.