Still his instinct protested. Something was askew. The dining table, for instance, was covered with a white cloth and the good china—the Bones’ wedding gift—was stacked on the counter. Mutton, when he thought about it, seemed far too rich a meal for two people, particularly if one of those people was Maze, who rarely possessed an appetite. Through the bedroom door he noticed her blue toile dress, which she hadn’t worn since the going-away party the officers’ union threw for the cadets, laid out on the bedspread. Most peculiar, however, was what she had done with his painting—one of the watercolors, a cacophony of orange and red and brown that bore some resemblance to a rotted pineapple, superimposed on a broadsheet from the New Orleans States, on which a headline was still visible: MAN SHOOTS SELF AS GIRL LOOKS ON. Maze had pinned the painting to the wall.
“You might profit from a wash.” She smiled. “Should I draw the bath?”
“The painting.”
“Oh?” she said, as if just noticing it. “It’s one of my favorites. I wanted to put it where I can see it more often. It seems silly to hide it away in the closet.”
She was lying and she was also guilty of going through his stuff behind his back, but this wasn’t the time to take it up. “The tablecloth,” he said. “The dress. The mutton.”
“It’s a holiday,” she said brightly. “I thought I’d put the day to use, do something nice.” Her smile broadened to unnatural dimensions.
“Maze.”
She laughed. “Worst part of being married to a detective—you can’t get away with anything.”
“You make a terrible criminal.” He removed his boots and his socks, careful not to spill too much sod on the mop-streaked floor. “So what am I taking a bath for?”
“You’re taking a bath in the interest of public hygiene. And because we’re having company.” She wrinkled her nose. “It was going to be a surprise.”
“Your folks?” He removed his jacket and folded it on top of his shoes. He detached his holster from his belt. “You know how much I love surprises. And your folks.”
“But this was going to be such a nice surprise.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you call your parents nice.”
“Drat.” She sighed. “So much for fun.”
“What’s that mean?”
“I ran into an old friend of yours.”
Bill froze, one pant leg on, one off.
“Don’t bother. I’ve taken care of everything.”
“What friend?” asked Bill, through a warped grin. But he knew the answer. He pulled his pants back on.
“Your old friend from the war. Lenny. He’s a plum. But I should warn you.”
“Lenny.”
“He’s got a disability. He lost an eye.” She paused, spatula in hand. “What are you doing? Take those off, I’ll soak them.”
“Tell me exactly what happened.”
“I thought you’d be happy to see him.”
Bill went to the window. The street was clear in both directions. Everyone was at the Biff Bang. There was only the rag lady, making her regular circuit of the neighborhood. “Did he come here?”
She shook her head halfway. “I was making groceries.”
Bill saw Perl, the wily former pickpocket, trailing his wife to the market. He’d have waited for the right moment before approaching, hat in hand, with a broad smile. Ma’am, I don’t intend to bother you, but I think I’ve seen you before—in a sweetheart photograph. Are you by any chance married to my old friend Bill Bastrop?
He was breathing heavy again, so heavy that he had to sit. Then he stood back up. This was no time for sitting.
“What has gotten into you?”
“Losing an eye’s the least of it,” he said. “The man has lost his mind.”
“Really, Bill.”
“He’s not a friend of mine.”
“He said you saved his life.”
“What else did he say?”
She paused. “It was actually a funny coincidence.”
Bill paced, trying to put it together. Perl had followed her to the market. Why? What did he want with Maze?
“He just got into town. He was trying to find you.”
“He’s been in town. I’ve seen him.”
“This is getting strange, Bill.”
“He’s an angry, mixed-up man.” Bill’s blood was high and it was all he could do to retain consciousness, but he had to avoid setting any snares for himself. “Somehow he got the crazy idea that I’m the person responsible for his misery. I got promoted over him. Never forgave me for it.”
“You must be thinking of someone else. This fellow was a gentleman. He owes his life to you. He loves you.”
Bill was beginning to understand Perl’s game. “Go back to the beginning,” he said. “Tell me everything.”
There wasn’t much to tell. The market was closing at noon for the Fourth, so she got there early to shop for supper. She had purchased the greens, eggs, and tomatoes and was standing at the butcher’s stall, sizing up the pork chops, when a man with an eye patch and a warm smell approached the counter.
“A warm smell?”
“Like oak. Like cigars. Or old furniture. But none of those exactly.”
The butcher informed the one-eyed man of his specials on beef tail and suet. The customer, smiling, explained that he was not looking for meat, but for a citizen—a friend from the service. I figured I might begin at the market because, well, everyone’s got to eat, don’t they? He gave Bill’s name and Maze’s heart jumped.
Why this is his wife! the butcher exclaimed. Imagine that!
“Imagine,” said Bill.
“You think he followed me into the store?”
Bill had an image of Charlie moaning on the ground like a hunted bison, the blood staining the grass black.
The war veteran introduced himself as Leonard Perl. He said he’d served with her husband in France. He pointed to his eye patch. He might have mentioned me, said Perl. He laughed. Bill better have mentioned me!
Maze’s excitement gave way to embarrassment. She did not recall hearing about a Leonard Perl. She suspected Bill was beloved by his comrades, even if he was too modest to say, but—she apologized—the only man she remembered from her husband’s platoon was a tall fellow from Houston who had sat with Bill on the train home. He must forgive her—
That’s funny, said Perl. ’Course all I ever do back home is blubber about Billy Bastrop. A good man, your husband. Made of the real stuff.
You were close with Billy?
Ma’am, he saved my life.
A right man, said the butcher, Mr. Bastrop. Once you get to know’m.
Perl noticed that the butcher had given her a stack of old newspapers. She explained it was for Billy, that he painted on the paper. The paintings were his release.
“You told him about my pictures?”
“He was impressed.”
I know the feeling, Perl had said. War can tear out a man’s nerves. Playing with paint is less harmful than most of the other methods men use. Nobody but a man’s wife could understand what he felt and even most wives didn’t understand.
It was Maze’s idea, the surprise supper party. Bill would be gone all day at the carnival so she’d have time to prepare an elaborate meal. She’d been reserved lately, morose, but here was a chance for a new beginning.
Perl was delighted to be invited, grateful. Maze asked if he had a good appetite.
He did, he said. He had a tremendous appetite.
He volunteered to bring a bottle of wine, the finest he could find—best to splurge on the good stuff before it became contraband. She ordered the saddle of mutton. Perl insisted on treating. She wrote their address on a scrap of newspaper and asked Perl to show up at six thirty.
It was five past six. Perl, clearly, had never expected to show up to supper. Once he’d learned that Bill was working the carnival, he headed to City Park. But having lost Bill at the park, Perl would have built up an appetite all right.
In a blur Bill turned off the stove, reclipped his holster to his waist, and grabbed Maze’s wrist. She was too stunned to resist. They paused at the door while Bill clocked the street. Empty. At the corner he realized that she was still wearing her apron. It was tight around her knees, preventing her from running. He tore it off and threw it to the ground. She sobbed. Her sudden transformation, from winsome optimism to pained dread, lodged a splinter of sadness into his heart but there was no time for sadness. Her parents’ house on Camp was seven blocks away. They ran most of the way, Maze letting the fringe of her white cotton dress drag in the street, pausing only at Magazine Street to dodge the crowds returning from the fireworks.
“What a joyful surprise!” said Maze’s mother. “Why are you sweating?”
“Stove is busted.” Maze forced a smile. Her eyes were dry.
“What’s that?” came the gruff, baffled voice of Mr. Bone.
“The kids are here,” shouted Mrs. Bone, her voice echoing down the side hall.
“Is it Sunday?”
“I can’t stay, unfortunately,” said Bill. “No holidays for police.”
“I am terrifically sorry to hear that,” said Mrs. Bone, but her back was already to him. She puttered down the hall to the kitchen, where she began giving commands to their cooking woman.
“I’ll be back soon,” said Bill.
“Stay.” Maze grabbed his hand. “We’re safe here.”
Bill shook his head. He felt blunted, vague, as if observing the world through a dirty glass. “We won’t be safe until I see Perl.”
“Is he really that sick?”
“He’s deranged and violent.”
“He seemed so … normal.” Her eyes glazed. “How could a man keep secret so much hate?”
“Only a monster could do that.” It was the most honest thing Bill had said all day.
“To think—I invited him in our house. Our home.”
“I’ll solve it.”
“Can you get him arrested?”
“Yes,” said Bill, grateful for the excuse. “I’ll arrest him.”
She wasn’t entirely convinced, he could tell, but she must also have realized that there was nothing else she could say. When they kissed, she pressed her lips into his, hard, as if she wanted to leave an impression. And she did.
* * *
Leonard Perl stood on Tchoupitoulas Street in front of Bill’s house holding a giant bouquet of red begonias. He peered into the window. Bill slipped back behind the corner, catching his breath, palpating the waffled handle of his service revolver. About forty feet separated them. The revolver was accurate within twice that distance. But it was now evening and civilians were returning from the park in loud, jangly groups, swaying drunkenly and singing “It’s a Long, Long Way to Tipperary” and “Over There” (or at least the song’s first two words, repeatedly). Di Lello’s had reopened for business; it would be busy with neighborhood women buying last-minute items for supper. Across Suzette Street a trio of boys, brandishing the wooden pistols that had been distributed by the Elks at City Park, played Doughboys versus Huns, arguing over who were the Huns. Bill couldn’t just open fire in the middle of a busy neighborhood street. Could he?
A cloud of begonias pressed into his face. He inhaled sharply, his lungs filling with an extravagance of pollen that choked his shout into a jagged cough. The boys on the stoop paused long enough to laugh at the funny sight of a man giving another man a bouquet of flowers, before continuing their game. “Got me a live Hun!” one of them shouted. “Shoot ’em dead! Dig a grave! Harvest his skull!”
“I don’t want to kill you yet,” said the begonias. The petals stuck in Bill’s eyes and their lurid fragrance suffocated him but instinct prevented him from jerking too violently. “You’re still alive,” said Perl. “Stop and smell the flowers. There. There you are.”
Bill’s eyes teared and his coughing became rougher, scratching his lungs. Some part of him felt grateful to have forfeited agency. It was easier this way, to give up—to have good reason to give up. Nobody could fault him for giving up.
“Take the flowers, Bill.”
He put his arms around the bouquet. Red bouquet, he thought. Rouge Bouquet. He felt a slight depression of his waistband and realized that Perl had removed his .45. He heard the clinking of bullets dropping to the sidewalk. It had happened so fast. Perl wasn’t a particularly good marksman—certainly inferior to Bill, who’d had the benefit of training as a cop even before he entered the army. But Perl had his own talents, sharpened by years of experience picking the pockets of stevedores on the Brooklyn waterfront.
“Scream,” said Perl, “and you will die slowly through your belly in front of these children. Your wife will find you.”
Bill coughed helplessly.
Perl placed his palm in the small of Bill’s back and guided him in the direction of the river. They walked nearly a block before Perl spoke.
“Are you satisfied?”
Bill did not want to respond but his voice did not cooperate. “Yes.”
“It would’ve been better if I came as a phantom, returning from the after realm. But this will do.”
“Leave my wife alone. She doesn’t know anything.”
“She knows you’re a hero.”
Bill heard laughter. Three young women approached, arms interlocked. Perl pressed harder into Bill’s back. The men nodded, the women smiled, and the block cleared again.
“I know what you want to know,” said Perl.
“Then I won’t ask.”
“The hole was closing. You were nearest to the top but there were other men close. I was below you.”
Bill remembered the men below him, squirming like a tangle of earthworms, struggling to reach the air. He remembered the peristaltic opening in the mud above him, dilating and tightening. Standing on the crossbar of the top bunk, he had extended his fingers through the opening but no farther. A person on the ground might have been able to grab Bill’s wrist but there was nobody. With each contraction, the opening narrowed. As the men climbed the bunk beds toward the light, their weight sank them deeper. Bill tentatively explored the wall with one of his boots, seeking out a ledge or branch, but it was all crumbling sand. The walls quaked, the ceiling quaked, and he knew that there could only be so many quakes before total collapse. In camp they had trained for this exact situation. Should a group of men be trapped in a collapsed trench or dugout, the protocol was to help each man out, beginning with the man farthest from the open passage. They were to form a bucket brigade, the men being lifted, one by one, toward the air. But Bill saw the thatch closing and doubted there would be enough time.
His boot, still searching for purchase, alighted on a human head. The man was pulling himself onto the top bunk to join Bill. Without thinking—or acting so quickly that it was impossible to separate thought from action—Bill used the man’s head as a footstool. He strained, his boot twisting on the man’s scalp, and extended his arm far enough to gain purchase. The fractured ceiling boards buckled but did not collapse and he hauled himself out of the dugout. Later he remembered feeling the soldier’s fingertips grasping at his boot, but he convinced himself that he had invented this.
After a few sharp gasps of fresh air he reached his arm into the hole, feeling for another hand. He shouted but could not hear his own voice. In the burning forest there was no hearing and he wondered if he was making any noise or if he was only screaming inside his head. For an eternity—or perhaps a minute—he kept at it, his cheek pressed against the thatch roof of the dugout and his arm reaching down, grasping only air. Finally he ran to the next dugout for help. By the time they returned the thatch roof was no longer visible. There was only a steep pit.
“I tried to rescue the others,” Bill said. “When that failed, I sought help. But it was too late.”
“You ground the heel of your boot in my eye.”
“That isn’t true.”
Perl jabbed his own gun—a Colt semiautomatic by the
feel of it—into Bill’s rib. “You ground your boot into my eye.” He spat forcefully. He seemed in danger of executing Bill in the middle of Suzette Street.
They walked the final block in silence. The wharf was empty. Even the skeleton staff that manned the warehouses and fuel stations during the holiday had left for supper. The westering sun, sparking the cheap tin roofs, made his eyes water. He considered the mechanics of reaching for Perl’s weapon. They’d walked three blocks already; Perl’s guard would be down. He could grab Perl’s wrist with both hands and twist the gun out. He was stronger and, if not quicker, he would at least have the advantage of surprise. He thought about how easy it would be and thought about it some more but still he kept walking with his arms hugging the begonias.
“You ground your boot into my eye,” said Perl with a note of wonder, as if happening upon a startling detail for the first time.
They passed through the waterfront shantytown—the warren of shacks in which the port’s business was conducted. The asphalt beneath their feet gave way to gravel. They weaved amid sandbags and shipping pallets. The city was no longer visible behind them.
“Drop the flowers.”
The overwhelming fragrance of the begonias was replaced by the overwhelming fragrance of roasted beans. They had entered the coffee wharf, dominated by a warehouse filled with large white sacks of beans like overstuffed couch cushions. It would be so nice, so lung-inflatingly pleasant, to lie on a coffee cushion and take a nap in the falling light. He thought again about making a move for the semiautomatic but the desire had grown even fainter. In the grip of real hazard, mortal danger, the recklessness had evaporated. He had regressed to his old condition, which perhaps was his permanent condition: a cowardice thick as wet cement. Maze came into his head: Maze’s hazel eyes as the breeze played with the bedroom curtain; Maze listening faithfully to his account of Rouge Bouquet; Maze’s terror and confusion when he left her with her parents. He wondered if she could see through the clothing of his heroic language to the nakedness of his fear. She must have sensed on some lower level that at Rouge Bouquet he had disgraced himself irreparably. If so, did she feel disgust—the same disgust he felt when he thought of the men trapped in the dugout beneath him?
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