She said, “It’s bad, Cassandra. Really bad. I really do think I’m going to have to kill him if he doesn’t stop walking on my head.”
But Cassandra was no longer paying attention to Julie. “Wouldn’t mind having him walking wherever he wanted to.”
Julie turned to see a tall lanky man she’d noticed in the restaurant a couple of times before. He had the kind of looks that grabbed you, even in Lippi’s, where movie stars were thick on the ground—a thatch of dark hair shot with silver, a wide sexy mouth, dangerous brown eyes.
“He’s probably an ax murderer,” Julie said. “Those gorgeous ones usually are.”
“Whatever. He’s still got to eat. And he’s in your station. Now you go, girl. Sell him some expensive wine. Earn yourself a big tip.”
The handsome man had a heartbreaking smile. “Good evening yourself,” he replied to her greeting. Then he and his dinner companion, an older man, proceeded to order a lovely meal: quail eggs with caviar, a frisée salad, lobster ravioli, a hundred-dollar bottle of Champagne. They were fun to serve, savvy diners without pretension. They both flirted with her, mildly.
It was the older man, on his way to the men’s room at the end of the night, who stopped Julie and pressed a card into her hand. Too bad, he was much too old and not the one she would have chosen. “I’m sorry,” she was about to say, “but my boyfriend….”
“Please call my son.” He smiled. “He’s too shy to ask you himself. I swear he’s a great guy, though probably I’m prejudiced.”
Julie stared at the business card for a long time. Jonathan Lemmon. He was with one of the big Wall Street brokerage houses. Jon Lemmon.
*
“I’m going to shoot him,” Julie whispered to herself the next morning at six a.m.
She lay in bed staring up at the ceiling. She thought that she could see the footprints there.
It was just a coincidence, right? John Lennon. Jon Lemmon. It didn’t mean a thing.
Her upstairs neighbor was not the man whose card was tucked in her purse.
(Was he?)
She jumped up, found the card, and dialed the office number printed there, Jon Lemmon’s private extension. He wouldn’t be in, of course. It was way too early.
(And perhaps he was still upstairs.)
(And perhaps she was losing her mind.)
“Hi, this is Jonathan Lemmon. Sorry I’m not in to take your call, but leave your name and number and I’ll get back to you soon.”
It was the voice of the man she’d met the night before. Julie had never heard the voice of the man upstairs, not even the baffled tones of an answering machine. Only his footfall.
Julie hung up without leaving a message.
Then she fell back on her bed, clenching and unclenching her fists. Tears ran from the corners of her eyes and onto her pillow. She was going crazy. She had stepped way over the line. She no longer knew what was real and what was imaginary. Her sleeplessness was killing her.
*
“I’m going to shoot him.”
The actress up on the stage delivering that line was young and thin like Julie, but blond, whereas the sleek curtain of hair Julie pulled back to gaze at Jon’s profile in the theater was inky dark.
Jon caught her look and aimed his wonderful smile at her. She felt the electricity down her thighs. She’d been tingling with excitement since he’d answered the message she’d left at his office the second time she’d called. He’d seemed so pleased. Dinner and the theater? He just happened to have house seats for the biggest hit on Broadway. Cassandra, what an angel, had agreed to work her shift for her.
Julie found Jon easy to talk with. So sweet. Funny. With lovely manners.
“Feel like a nightcap?” he said as the actors took their final bows. “How about the bar at the Rainbow Room?”
Oh, yes, indeed. For she was Cinderella at the ball, dreading not the pumpkin but Jon’s turning into Bigfoot, fearful of hearing his step overhead moments after arriving home. It was an insane notion, she knew that, but she couldn’t help herself. She wanted to stay here forever, at the top of Rockefeller Center, gazing out across the dazzle that was Manhattan, the center of the universe, her adopted home. She had a Cosmopolitan, a drink first created at this very bar, then another. She didn’t want to go, didn’t want to know. But she couldn’t drink all night.
“Ready?” Jon was smiling at her.
She slipped from the barstool, and his hand grazed the small of her back. Oh, God, how long had it been since she’d felt like this? Had she ever, really? Exactly this way?
Jon saw her home. The very most a woman expected in this city was that a date would put her in a cab and hand the driver a twenty.
But maybe Jon wasn’t just seeing her home. Maybe he was going home too. Maybe all he had to do was take the elevator one floor up.
Yet he didn’t release the taxi. “I’ll just be a minute,” he said to the cabbie. He kissed her hand at her lobby door. “I’ll call you tomorrow,” he promised, then watched until she was safely inside.
She couldn’t very well wait to see if he paid off the cab and sent it on its way. She blew a kiss to him as the elevator doors closed.
But once in her apartment, she waited. And waited. And waited. She counted to one hundred, but there wasn’t a peep from above. She strained and strained, but all she heard was the ringing of her own ears, then a fire engine outside.
Finally Julie undressed, climbed into bed, and slipped between her smooth cool sheets. She stretched languorously, happier than she’d ever known she could be, and nodded off.
It was after two a.m. when Julie awoke to the familiar echo of hard-soled shoes. “I’m going to shoot you,” she whispered into her pillow, then plummeted effortlessly back into the void.
*
“I’m going to shoot him.”
“Who?” Jon said lazily, drugged by their lovemaking.
“The bastard who lives upstairs. Wait and see. He’ll wake us up at six.” She paused. “You are staying over, aren’t you?”
“Unless you kick me out.”
“No way.”
“Good. Tell you what. If he wakes us, I’ll go upstairs and blow his brains out. But right now…” He reached for Julie’s warm flesh, held her tight.
“You would never torment your neighbor like that?” She couldn’t help herself. She had to ask.
“Never. I’m only interested in tormenting you.” He nuzzled that little indentation at the top of her breastbone, then tickled her ribs.
She fell happily into his heat, a delicious contrast to the icy air from the AC. Jon Lemmon was so wonderful. He was the best thing that had ever happened to her.
“What are you giggling about, you sexy wench?”
“I was just thinking. When I first heard your name, I thought you said John Lennon.”
“I get that sometimes.” His tongue was lazy and oh so sweet as it traced a route south. “But somebody shot John Lennon dead a long time ago.”
“I know. In 1980. Shot him stone dead.”
*
“I’m going to shoot him.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, Julie, but I thought you said your neighbor had laid off. Or, we agreed, perhaps it’s that you don’t hear him as much anymore since Jon’s come into your life. Since you’re happier, more relaxed.”
Julie stared across the room into her shrink’s kindly face. He was such a nice man. He truly did care about her, she’d always felt that. He wanted to help her. But what was he going to say when she told him that the apartment upstairs was silent only on the mornings that Jon was in her bed? He was going to think she was really crazy. He might even want her to check into a hospital for observation.
“Let’s go to your place,” she’d said to Jon more than once. He’d told her he lived in a loft in TriBeCa, on North Moore. The night before, she’d really pushed.
Jon said, “Sure, hon. We will. But, like I told you, I’m in the middle of renovations. It’s such a mess. I don’t
want you to see it like this.”
“But I’d love to. The before and after, you know?”
“Okay. But wait until there’s a floor in the kitchen. A couple more weeks.”
*
“I’m going to shoot him,” Julie moaned into her pillow. “When he gets back, I’m going to shoot him.”
Jon had been gone for a week, on business to Hong Kong, he said.
He’d called her a couple of times. He was awfully sweet on the phone. But after each call, she’d been more miserable than before. She couldn’t shut off the questions in her head. How did she know where he was calling from? He could be anywhere. Though for sure he wasn’t upstairs. There hadn’t been a single sound from there since the moment Jon had left for wherever he was. Was Jon really John? Julie couldn’t stop weeping. She hadn’t slept a wink.
*
She’d figured out how to prove it once and for all. Julie had a plan. She knew exactly what to do. All she had to do was wait.
Jon’s plane had arrived at JFK two hours earlier. One hour to claim his bags, go through customs. Another for the ride in from the airport. And now, right on schedule, came the first footfall.
“No!” Julie screamed in anguish. “No, please God!” Her heart was broken, her worst fears realized.
For a moment, she forgot her plan. Instead, she grabbed for her broom and pounded and pounded as if, with the force of her pain, her fury at the unfairness of it all, she could change the reality of the man upstairs. She pounded so hard, the handle broke through the plaster ceiling, and dust and debris drifted down around her.
But the sound didn’t stop. Instead, the footsteps grew louder and faster. The man, Jon, oh Jon, stepped and stomped and kicked. He tangoed. Do-si-doed. Riverdanced. She pounded again and again, and he clogged. His Wall Street shoes smacked the hardwood in a fusillade of blows. Then, finally, he bellowed. His voice was muffled, but she could understand the words. “You bitch!” he cried. “You crazy bitch!”
His words snapped Julie back to her plan. It was now or never, do or die. Julie snatched up the phone and dialed Jon’s number, the number he’d given her for his loft in TriBeCa. “Please, God,” she prayed, but there it was, the incontrovertible evidence. The phone rang once in her ear, as it rang upstairs, and then it stopped. Julie doubled over at the anguish in her gut.
“Hello? Hello?”
“Jon?” she gasped.
“Julie? Sweetie? Are you all right?”
“Where are you?”
He laughed. “You called me. I’m home. I got in only a few minutes ago. I had my hand on the phone to call you, darling. Are you okay? You sound terrible.”
“I heard your footsteps. I heard you answer the phone. I know it’s you up there.”
There was a long silence on the other end of the line. Then Jon said, “Julie, sweetie, dear heart. We’ve got to do something about this.”
“I know what to do. I know exactly what to do.”
*
“I’m going to kill him,” Julie said to herself with each step as she climbed to the floor above. To Jon, to her tormentor, her sweetheart, the love of her life. Waves of grief washed over her. Her brain pounded. Why? That was all she could think. Julie couldn’t get past the first word of the question. Why? She was so tired. The torture had gone on so long. Far too long. So many years.
She unlocked the door at the top of the stairs.
She stepped into the hallway and made her way slowly to the door of the apartment directly above hers. She pounded once, twice.
The door flew wide.
The man standing there in the doorway, the man with fury inscribed across his face, was no one Julie had ever seen before.
“You’re crazy, you know that?” he shouted, then he pushed out past her, slamming and double-locking his door.
He headed down the stairs. Julie followed. She was right on his tail.
“You’ve made me crazy!” she screamed. “You wake me up every single morning. This is all your fault.”
“Ha! That’s a good one.”
Down, down, they went, the man in his Wall Street shoes, clattering on the stairs, Julie silent and swift in her bare feet.
They whirled through the bottom door, through the lobby, past the fake palm trees, the low benches, and out onto the sidewalk.
“I have to talk with you!” she shouted. “You have to stop this!”
But the man didn’t slow. So she grabbed the back of his suit jacket and whirled him around. They froze, an odd couple, one fully dressed, one in her nightclothes, out in front of their building, just outside the lobby door.
“Outta my face!” the man who was not Jon Lemmon shouted. “Get a life, why don’t you?”
People, smelling of shampoo and aftershave, slowed in their rush toward the subway station, staring at what looked to be an al fresco marital dispute.
“I have a life,” Julie cried. “Had.” The sadness in Jon’s last words to her echoed in her heart. Then from a pocket of her pj’s she pulled the sleek Glock 19 revolver she’d brought back from North Carolina on the train. No metal detectors on the choo-choo. “But you’ve ruined it. Destroyed it. And now I’m going to have to shoot you.”
But Julie was hesitant, derailed by the toll her sleeplessness had taken. By confusion. By tears.
Then John Linden, Julie’s upstairs neighbor and a junior-high math teacher whose summer-school students daily terrified the bejeezus out of him, pulled a .38 from the shoulder holster he wore, illegally, beneath his jacket. “Not if I shoot you first,” he said.
And then he did.
Crossing Elysian Fields on a Hot, Hot Day
“I’m so hot I could die,” said Lily Cheri Boisson Davidson standing at the bus stop at the corner of Royal and Elysian Fields. Eight-thirty in the morning, the temperature 90, humidity the same. It didn’t even help to take a shower in New Orleans in July. You couldn’t towel off fast enough to keep ahead of the sweat.
Lily wouldn’t be doing either of these things if she were still married to Clark Davidson. No sweating, no waiting for the Royal Street bus to take her from her hot, hot little shotgun house in the shabby but outlaw chic Faubourg Marigny neighborhood to her job at the Levee Bookstore in the French Quarter near Canal.
“If you hadn’t run off and left Clark you’d be summering in Pass Christian,” Lily said in an exaggerated falsetto, imitating her mother’s voice for the amusement of her friend Bernard standing beside her.
Yet as she spoke, Lily could see the lovely rambling beach house, hers and Clark’s, but Clark’s really. Wide, low-hipped with porches all around, live oaks dripping with Spanish moss, St. Augustine lawn right up to where Bayou Mallini began. The very thought of it made her heart ache.
“Don’t I sound just like Daisy?” she said, making the effort to grin.
Bernard laughed and nodded. Lily did a dead-on impression, though she didn’t look a thing like her mother. Daisy Boisson was every inch the Uptown lady, her hair tinted blue to match her blood, and she was built like a three-cushion sofa. Outfitted in white from Memorial Day to Labor Day, Daisy fought the heat with Jean Naté and baby powder. All summer long she smelled like lemon cake.
Lily, at 35, was long and lean with flashing black eyes and a mop of dark curls she twisted up and pinioned with a trio of tortoise hairpins she’d received in trade for her diamond-encircled gold wedding ring in the ladies’ room of Tipitina’s juke joint.
That exchange had taken place the night after she’d come home early from a Nuke the Duke fundraiser—back when the former, according to him, Klansman David Duke was running for governor—and found her husband Clark in bed with the wife of his law partner/best friend.
Since then Lily had worn nothing but black, and her mother Daisy told her bridge friends that her daughter was in mourning for the demise of her marriage.
“Pure horse twaddle,” said Lily, referring to the mourning as she dammed a rivulet of sweat pouring down her neck. “Black simplifies things and
just means clothes are one less thing I have to worry about since Clark made off with all our money.”
“Uh-huh,” said Bernard, thinking that Lily could wear an old tablecloth and be the height of chic, whereas here he was in head-to-toe vanilla Armani feeling like something the cats dragged in.
“Also, black, I don’t have to wear underwear, never could understand how women can do that in this heat anyway.”
Bernard rolled his pale blue eyes behind his horn rims. Ladies’ undies were nothing he’d given a lot of thought to, though there had been that one girl back in college before he’d figured out….
“Besides, I ask you, how can I mourn Clark if he’s not dead?”
Bernard made a cross with two carefully manicured forefingers and held them in front of Lily’s face.
“Don’t you start that witchy business again with me,” she said.
But Bernard had known Lily since their mother’s maids had wheeled their prams down the crumbling sidewalks of St. Charles Avenue, around the roots of the live oaks, and even then it had seemed as though all Lily had to do was imagine something and…Poof!
She’d phone somebody, and he was already on the line. Picture someone, and there he stood at her door.
Bernard called it witchcraft. Lily called it coincidence.
“Well, if I’m so good,” she said now, one hand on a hip in the same pose she’d struck when she was four, “how come I can’t make this damned bus come on and get here before we melt into the banquette? Do you think New Orleans buses even have a schedule, Bernard? Or do they just run whenever the drivers manage to sober up and pull themselves out of bed?”
*
Charles Robinson, an even six feet of bus driver, was mad enough to spit nails. As he was racing out the door, already late for work, his girlfriend Sharleen’s momma Dorothy had announced that, thank you very much, she’d love to stay another few days.
Sharleen had already been cranky for weeks, ever since the arrival of the email announcing Dorothy’s impending visit from Alaska. A photo of Dorothy’s plaque from the Fairbanks Chamber of Commerce as Minority Entrepreneur of the Year had been attached.
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