Fearius spent his whole life coming to one bonfire or the other for the holidays. Tradition in the N.O. aint no joke. He has some warm memories of Moms and Pops bringing them when they kids. It always so crazy to see the big piles go up in flames, people gathering and drinking, everybody happy, snackin, dragging they dried up Christmas trees and throwing em on top a the piles like those spears they throw at the Olympics. This year, the Mid City pile big as a house, almost. It got couches and chairs in it, including a whole damn regular tree, a oak or whatever.
“How you gone make this New Years my best ever, Fearius?” Taliqwa ask over her shoulder, backing up into him.
“Girl, I show you five times in one day what makin your year the best ever.” He come around her front and suck on her mouth. She taste like vanilla ice cream.
“Stop,” she say, pushin on him and smiling. “You messin up my gloss.”
“Gimme some more that,” he tell her. She come back at him and he grab her neck when they kiss. He like how she tug his tongue in and breathe around it, makin a slurpy noise, the same way she do his dick. Taliqwa aint shy, and Fearius aint stupid enough to ask her where she learned her tricks. He might could fuck her for months and not get tired of it.
“Hey,” Taliqwas girlfriend say, “get a room.” Taliqwas friends all a little stiff, one of em going to private school, but they awright. The two dudes visitin from Baton Rouge. Fearius already know they scared of him, which make it a great New Years Eve, one where Fearius dont have to fight his way up to whatever place he hafta fight up to normally. Top dog, even for just one night, feel nice.
“Really,” Taliqwa say and slap Fearius on his chest. “Cut it.” He been working out, doing push ups and sit ups and what in his room at night. His physique lookin fine these days. An he got Taliqwa to prove it, yo.
Fearius pull the bottle of Hennessy from his inside pocket. “Girl,” he tell Taliqwa, “get those cold drinks out the cooler.”
“Can mine be weak?” one the other girls ask.
“Whatever you want. It New Years Eve.” Fearius way outside his normal grounds, so he need to look for bangers and other wardies, but he think he gone be fine here in Mid City. No dying for two years at the New Years bonfires over this way, which be a little surprising considering what all people throw into the flames when it heat up. Fearius seen people toss in all kind a shit. Never mind the gasoline, a bottle rocket take your eye out if you dont see it comin. He wonder on if those tsunami people in Indonesia and wherever, if they knew what hit them. He think it way better to not know, not see it comin at all, but he aint worried tonight in no way.
Fearius like to think he know the difference between a gunshot sound and a fucking firecracker, but maybe he dont when some go off right behind them. In his coat, he dont flinch big enough for the rest of em to notice and call him out.
He got his Jericho in his pocket now, a 9mm, so Fearius aint afraid of shit besides maybe Alphonses wrath. Son a bitch have a noose around Fearius neck so tight he can hardly breathe. That and whats done happened to Muzzle. He out his leg cast but now he hooked on the painkillers and got his sorry motherfucking ass fired from the firm. His bros plain ol stupidity sure dont put Fearius in a better position with Alphonse. Muzzle livin somewhere off the Claiborne with a slut, last Fearius heard. She keep him in his meds.
But it New Years Eve, and Fearius allowed to have some fun. Even Alphonse give his blessing for it today, toll Fearius to find him some pussy for the holiday. Fearius dint bother telling him he already had some.
They sip on Hennessy and cokes. Fearius let Taliqwa hang on him some more. They watch the hippies run around playing with hoola hoops and ribbons on sticks. All the hippies high on E, Fearius think. Ecstasy out the roof on cost, not even worth it for the firm to take it on, last way too long. Hours and hours. Just a dopey drug, make everybody want to kiss on everybody the way Fearius hear it. Sort of the way he feel right now with Taliqwa being so nice.
She not the sharpest knife in the drawer. He like that saying. And it just fine with Fearius. He have all kinds of street smarts, but he not so big on schooling neither. Fearius like her happy approach to the world. He needed him some happy approach. Each and every single time he come around, she pounce all over him like she aint seen him in a year.
The bass come at them first before Fearius see the car moving slow as a shark fin down the one side the boulevard still open to traffic. Best Fearius can see, they crammed inside like sardines. Like a initiation.
Fearius take Taliqwas arm and pull her behind him then tell the rest of em to move back behind him too.
Granted, they deep into the crowd. Lots of hippies and white drunks would be goin down first, but Fearius sure as hell dont like what he see. His hand go in his pocket.
16
“Daddy,” Ella says, walking down the steps of her school, waving a piece of paper, “I got the baby.”
“What?”
“I got the baby.”
Ed has no idea what his child is saying. “What do you mean, Ella?”
“I ate the baby in my cake.” She nods her blond head on her skinny little neck. “The cake is a big doughnut with purple sprinkles and with frosting.”
Ed is scrambling. “You had a treat at school today?”
“It’s called …” Ella holds out her backpack for Ed to take. She nods her thank-you. “It’s called … a … it’s called a, a … I bited the baby. Miss Morgan says I bring the next one.” Ella shoves the piece of paper into Ed’s hands.
“You’re supposed to bring a baby to school?” Ed has no idea what’s going on. Maybe a premature training day with the girls to make sure they don’t want to get pregnant early?
“In the Mahdi Gra cake,” Ella says, and there they are. The magic words. It’s all about Mardi Gras. Has it started already? Ella got the little plastic baby in the, hell, what’s it called? He looks down at the teacher’s photocopied instructions. In the king cake. It means Ella has to provide the next cake to continue the utterly incomprehensible tradition. The coffee cake ring, decorated in acid-bright Mardi Gras–colored sugar crystals, has a baby baked into it somewhere. If you get the piece of cake that contains the baby, you get to host the next king cake party. Last year, Ed was beyond confused. Baking small hard plastic things into food eaten by young children at school struck him as a lawsuit in the making.
Now he recognizes that the seasonal chaos has begun again. He’s not ready.
“The king cake,” Ed says.
Ella bobbles her head in a nod once more. “Ya-huh, the king cake,” she repeats. “I got a purple piece. With frosting.”
“Sounds good,” Ed fakes.
Where they live in the city isn’t necessarily terrible as far as the parades and traffic and tourists are concerned, but Mardi Gras makes Ariel’s trip to work in the Quarter almost impossible on the streetcar. She’ll have to start driving to the CBD again till Ash Wednesday. Not so hot for their carbon footprint.
Ed holds Ella’s hand as they walk up to the corner where they always wait for Miles to come running out the school’s south door, and Ed realizes anew that he doesn’t trust Ariel anymore. He has the distinct sense she’s been doing something stupid for months. Still, he refuses to take the extra measures. He will not plant tape recorders or buy spyware to check her e-mails and internet usage. He can’t bring himself to do it. He hopes only that she will stop whatever it is on her own. His passive approach seems the wrong one, even to the Buddhist side of him, but Ed no longer knows how else to be.
Lately he’s had the desire for some company in his misery. He’s decided that today he will walk across the street when Ariel returns home from work and have a pre-dinner cocktail at Tokyo Rose. The bartender who helped with the Cerise and Roy Brown accident seemed to be a nice young guy, someone who might lift Ed’s spirits.
Miles bounds down the school’s steps and hurdles a bush. He runs as though he’s being chased by a fire-breathing dragon, or a giant mechanical monster, or a gang
of flying monkeys. It will be something or other.
“We have to go!” Miles screams. “The zombies are coming!”
Today, the zombies attack.
“Right now?” Ariel asks as she walks in the front door.
“Yup,” Ed tells her. “You had your time away. Now it’s my time.”
“Well—” she says, and Ed is past her.
“I won’t be too long,” he says on the porch. “Dinner’s in the oven. Ready at seven. You can set the table, right? Salad’s in the fridge.” Ed heads straight across the street. For all he can tell, it’s a perfectly fine place.
Ed opens the front door and, in the dim light, sees a number of people on stools around the bar. He has glanced inside before to simply see what it contained, but, to date, he has never had a drink in Tokyo Rose. That’s about to change.
He steps in. His eyes adjust. It’s a little place. And there’s a naked guy at the bar, right in the middle of the bar, sitting by himself. The guy has tucked himself in, but his ass is bare on the vinyl seat. He’s drinking a pint of something. Ed sees a pile of clothes beside his stool. Ed looks towards the door he just entered then back at the naked man.
“A free drink of your choice when you’re naked,” a blond, bearded man seated at the bar tells Ed. He vaguely recognizes the man.
“Really?”
“That’s seriously with a capital S,” the man tells Ed.
Ed hesitates then takes a seat around the bar corner from him.
“How you doin’, Rescue Man? Nice to see you.” The guy smiles. “Shane. Originally we were hopin’ that women would be taking off their clothes.” He shakes his head as if he remembers something funny. “Pedro wrote it on the board one Mardi Gras night two years ago. It stuck. Now it’s our Mardi Gras special. The bar figured out they can make way more from the gawkers coming to check out the nakeds than they lose on the free drinks. Usually the ones takin’ off their clothes start out confident and end up not nearly so much. Naked people can get pretty uncomfortable fast in a bar full of clothed people.” The man’s ready to launch into a nonstop lecture. He’s clearly used to talking to strangers.
“Guess that’s true,” Ed says about being stared at naked. He feels like he hasn’t spoken to an adult for a very long time. Ariel doesn’t count for a number of reasons. “It’s Shane?”
“Yup. We met at the accident, but I wouldn’t expect you to remember me.”
Ed looks at the young naked man down the way. He seems like a college student, maybe a fraternity brother working up his courage before a hazing. A couple of black guys talk loudly at the far end, not paying any attention to the naked man.
“Almost always, only guys take their clothes off, we found out,” Shane says. “Their tits don’t catch the light, you know what I mean.”
A woman might feel awkward drinking a drink, sitting at a regular bar without a shirt or bra on, Ed supposes. Or pants or underwear. A man can hide his genitals in his lap, but breasts grow from a different part of the torso.
Ed looks for a bartender and glances at the naked man again. The guy gulps his beer as though he can’t wait to get his clothes back on.
Why wouldn’t the French Quarter strippers flock to the place to—how has he heard the Harrises say it lately?—get their drink on, before heading off to work for the night? And then Ed has another slow-brained realization. Strippers work for way more than drinks. Probably most of them, anyway. The professionals just wouldn’t bother.
“Our very own Tokyo Rose was in Gentlemen’s Quarterly magazine,” Shane says. “They wrote about the Mardi Gras special. You may or may not be surprised by how many people have taken their clothes off in here since they ran the article.” Shane pauses. “Rescue Man.”
“Sorry. Ed,” Ed says and stands, leaning to extend his hand. Something has just occurred to him. “Do you, would you know—is my neighbor hanging out here sometimes? Philomenia?” Ed has wondered about her dignified traipsing across the street for a while.
“Who?” The blond man stands and shakes Ed’s hand.
“The lady,” Ed says, and the good pre-med bartender comes out from a back room and over to Ed. What’s his name? José? “How you doing,” Ed says and extends his hand again. “Good to see you under different circumstances.”
“Yeah, hey, good to see you.”
“Ed,” Shane tells the bartender. “And that’s the man who invented the naked drink, Pedro. Pedro, Ed, Ed, Pedro. All right then. Pedro, put Ed’s drink on my tab.”
“What’ll you have?”
What do people drink in bars? “Whatever the naked guy’s having,” Ed says loudly enough so that the naked man turns and raises his glass in a toast.
“Good call,” Pedro says. “Pilsner Urquell ain’t cheap. Way to stick it to Shane.” Pedro flips a pint glass up from a low shelf and moves to the taps.
“The little shit has a surly bartender act,” Shane says.
“Hey, Shane. Did I tell you Urquell’s gone up? Twenty bucks a pint.”
“Well, Rescue Man deserves a drink, whatever it costs.”
The naked man, the bearded man, and Rescue Man. When Ed gets his drink, the three hold theirs up. “Cheers,” Ed says.
The naked man finishes his and grabs his clothes off the floor.
Ed decides he wants to know badly enough. When the young man’s put on his boxers, Ed asks, “Why?”
“Why not?”
Huh. Why not. Ed could have two free drinks in a row if he took his clothes off for the next one. When’s the last time he took off his clothes in public? Has he ever? Sure he did. Years ago. They had the protest at Reed. Ed smiles at the memory. Over two hundred of them, a mad, penis-and-breast-slapping dash across campus.
Why not a naked drink?
Because he has dinner later. The kids would know things weren’t right if he didn’t come home on time. He’s always home. He’s the constant. Ariel’s schedule sure doesn’t let her be any kind of constant. That and Ariel herself. What time is it? He could have a second pint. He’ll buy it, though.
“So, have you had your naked drink already?” Ed asks Shane. The beer tastes great, Ed thinks.
“I take my freebie as late as I can. When it’s the darkest.”
“That’s the truth,” Pedro says from the bar sink. “The man might look like he’s drinking in Margaritaville, but trust me, you don’t want to see the rest.”
“I’d never let Miss P see me naked,” Shane says. “I’ll have mine after she leaves. She is a lady, after all.”
“Philomenia, the neighbor, you mean?”
“Is that her real name?”
The naked drinker, finished dressing, raises his hand. “Hasta mañana, Pedro. I’m bringin’ the boys.”
“Bring the ladies, would ya?” Pedro says. Ed is aware of the television-style banter of their talk. He can understand why men would want to leave the house for a drink in the evening.
The door tinkles with the sound of rusty jingle bells on a string as the man goes out. “Has Philomenia seen any naked people yet?” Ed asks. He practically guzzles his beer. It’s delicious. “Does she even drink?”
“She’s had three drinks in three months,” Shane says, “and I bought her all three. She’s turned down thirty times as many.”
The entire scenario blows Ed’s mind. Why is Philomenia, of all the neighbors, hanging out at Tokyo Rose? Ed was certain she thought the place despicable.
“She cooks the pants off everybody I know,” Pedro says, washing glasses.
“Really?” Ed asks. What’s the deal, they moved onto a block of amateur chefs? “She brings food over? When naked people sit at the bar?”
“It’s the first day of the season,” Shane says. “She doesn’t, well …” He looks at Pedro. They both start laughing. “Likely Miss P doesn’t know about the Mardi Gras special.”
Oh, to be a fly on that wall! Ed thinks.
“Look,” Pedro says. He walks over and puts his hands on the bar, leaning into his sho
ulders. He’s a good-looking kid, Ed notices. “We love Miss P’s cooking, and she’s been real nice to us lately. But she’d been after the owners, the manager—everybody—for fuck, what, five years? Since we opened. Calling the cops every other night till the cops themselves told her she had to stop or she’d get charged with something.”
“I can’t say I’m all that surprised.” Ed drains his beer.
“You know it, Rescue Man,” Pedro says. “Next one’s on me.”
Well, if Ed’s offered two free beers in quick succession, why should he turn them down? The zombies haven’t come to get him yet.
Cerise sits in her director’s chair on the front porch and watches the block. She hasn’t been out in a while, but it’s Mardi Gras season, something that used to make her feel happy. Even back when she filled her days up behind the register checking out lines and lines of drunks buying canned beer to take to the parades, she still liked the season. Always seemed to her the days welcomed the upcoming year.
Today, though, just isn’t provin’ to be the same. She lifts her claw out of instinct to say hello to passersby but then puts it back down quick. Cerise might as well have a wooden hook on the end of her arm. A damn shame. It’s all contained now, something she never used to think about, that skin contains the rest of your body.
She can’t hardly move the claw, and she can’t stop thinking she’s waving her backside at the passing people, considering from where they took the graft. Cerise turns both her hands over in her lap and looks down at the palms. The left one is colored right, but the right hand—the right looks like something she might’ve patched on Marie’s trousers when she was little. It don’t work good, but she massages her fingers like she’s told.
Funny, getting to be a left-hander in old age has changed her whole life. Never mind she can’t use her right hand. It’s like her whole head’s been made to shift to the other side like the Discovery Channel says.
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