by Greg Herren
I wound up going to Dallas. I was throwing clothes into a suitcase when my phone rang.
“Chanse, this is Jude. I think you should come here.”
I stopped, my hands full of black Calvin Klein underwear. “Really?”
“Yeah.” Jude swallowed. “It doesn’t have to mean anything. Really.” He paused for a minute, waiting for me to answer. When I didn’t respond, he said in a rush, “There’s no sense in wasting money on a hotel room. Just come here.”
“It makes sense,” I said, putting the underwear into the suitcase, relieved to finally have some kind of plan. “Thanks, I appreciate it. It’ll only be for a few days anyway.”
“Yeah. Exactly.” He sounded more relaxed, relieved. “You’d better get moving, okay? Call me from the road and let me know how you’re doing, okay?”
It had probably cost him a lot to put himself out there. We’d reached a strange place in our relationship. Then again, our relationship had never exactly been normal to begin with. He’d been a friend and former sex partner of my boyfriend, Paul. We’d really come together after Paul had died a year ago. A few weeks after the funeral, he’d come to New Orleans for Halloween weekend, and we’d had dinner together at the Napoleon House. I hadn’t wanted to go meet him, but finally figured it was better than just sitting around the house drinking vodka all night yet again. He was kind and sweet, and he could somehow, despite everything, make me laugh—and I’d almost forgotten what it felt like to laugh. We’d started talking on the telephone a couple of times a week. Paige warned me that it was a rebound thing, over and over again, like a broken record. “You’re not ready for this, and you’re going to wind up hurting him,” she warned.
But I didn’t care. Whenever I talked to Jude, I forgot. I was able to leave the misery and the loneliness and the pain behind and go to a different place. Not completely happy— there was always a sense of melancholy—but it was better than where I was. And it was infinitely better than the other ways I’d found, ways that involved way too much liquor and strangers with hard-muscled bodies with names I didn’t want to learn or remember.
It had been almost a year now, and the last time Jude had come to New Orleans, he’d made it quite clear we needed to talk about things. We’d been coasting along quite well, but I knew at some point the ride was going to end unless we made a commitment of some sort. I tried to avoid the subject at all costs. I didn’t want to talk about things. I knew I was being selfish and unfair to him, but I just didn’t want things to develop any further just yet. I liked the distance between our two cities, and the lack of real seriousness the geography created. And while Jude was helping me to forget and move on, I didn’t know that it was right that I should. The only way we could move forward would be for me to put Paul aside once and for all. And somehow, that didn’t seem right to me.
And besides, I’d been a really shitty boyfriend to Paul.
Jude finally gave up, resigning himself to defeat, but there was a brittle quality to the weekend after that. And after I’d dropped him off at the airport—where we gave each other a listless, perfunctory kiss, I cursed myself for a fool. As he got out of the car, I fought down the urge to get out and go after him. Instead, I watched him walk into the airport and then drove off myself.
*
It seemed like a million years ago now. I put my cigarette out, took a deep breath, and walked through the gate into the front yard.
The house was a graceful old Victorian, painted fuchsia. It had been split into apartments; two side by side in the front, a large one that took up the back of the first floor, and two large ones upstairs. Mine was the one to the left. It ran alongside the driveway into the small parking lot in the back. I unlocked my door and stepped into the house.
It was cool inside. I always kept my apartment at about the temperature of a meat locker, and Paige had apparently turned it down to the level she knew I liked. The light in the kitchen was on. I looked up at the eighteen-foot high ceilings. No sign of mold up there or on the walls—she’d said there hadn’t been, but I wanted to be sure for myself. I walked into the center room, which had been split into a hallway, bathroom, and small kitchen. There were dishes in the sink I’d left; there was mold on them. There were spores of mold in the coffee pot, which I’d left half-full. But the walls and ceiling seemed okay in there as well, so I looked into the bathroom. The towel I’d hung to dry the morning I’d left for Texas was stiff but okay. I flushed the toilet to make sure it worked, and turned on the spigot in the sink. Everything was okay. I walked back to my bedroom.
It was strange. I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting, but the apartment was exactly the way I’d left it. It was almost like I’d just left to go to the grocery store or run errands, not been gone for six weeks. The bed was unmade and my laundry basket was overflowing. That’s right, I was going to go do the laundry on Monday, I remembered, smiling at the memory.
That was before. Everything had changed in such a short period of time. Friday morning had been such a lovely day— hot and sunny and humid—typical of late August. I’d gotten up that morning, still a little distressed about not having heard from Jude since he’d gotten home. And a new client had called and fired me that morning.
Oh, yeah, that’s right, I thought, and walked back into the living room to my desk. Sure enough, in the top left-hand drawer were a deposit slip and her retainer check for $2,500. She’d hired me on Wednesday, and I hadn’t had the chance to get to the bank before she let me go.
I picked up the file I’d started for her, labeled VERLAINE, IRIS. I opened the file and took a look at the notes I’d written. Her business card was neatly paper-clipped to the inside. It was a thick, creamy-colored card, with her name in raised neat script on heavy vellum, and underneath in bold letters, Vice President of Public Relations. In the upper-right•hand corner was a multicolored logo featuring the prow of a freighter cutting through a breaking wave. In understated, slightly smaller letters underneath her title were the words VERLAINE SHIPPING COMPANY. On the bottom right, in the same understated font, were her office address, phone and fax numbers, and e-mail address: [email protected].
I’d given her my card that day too.
I walked through the house, opening the windows as far up as they would go. It was a warm, sunny day. October was always beautiful in New Orleans, no humidity and sweet cool breezes that made the curtains dance. There was a thick layer of dust on everything in the apartment. I walked back out to the car, and marveled again at the almost absolute silence. I opened the trunk and got out the ice chest I’d bought at a Dallas Wal-Mart—almost everything in the car had come from Wal-Mart. It never entered my mind when I left that I wouldn’t be back in a few days, so I’d packed haphazardly and only took enough clothes for four days. When the levees broke and it became horribly apparent to me I was going to be gone for a long while, I’d had to go buy clothes.
But even then, it never entered my mind I wouldn’t ever be coming back. Relocating and not returning was never an option. New Orleans was my home; I’d lived there for almost eight years. With no offense to Dallas, I couldn’t imagine relocating there and starting my business over again. Granted, it wouldn’t have been that much of a struggle; my main source of income comes from working as a corporate security consultant for my landlady’s company, Crown Oil. Crown Oil’s corporate headquarters were in Tulsa, but they also had a skyscraper in Dallas. I could easily get office space there, but it wasn’t what I wanted, where I could imagine staying for the rest of my life. No, no matter how bad it was, at some point I was returning to New Orleans. And with that in mind, I’d headed for Wal-Mart rather than Macy’s or Dillard’s or the Gap.
My closet was full of clothes, and so were my dresser and my armoire. I just needed some temporary stuff until I got back home, so why spend a lot of money? So, I drove over to the Wal-Mart and stocked up on cheap socks and underwear and T-shirts. I missed my clothes, my comfortable underwear, and was tired of wearing the che
ap shorts and T-shirts. And when I was finally able to begin planning my return to New Orleans, another storm came in.
“It’s okay.” Jude said, as we watched the progress of Rita as she approached the Gulf Coast, and the mayor of New Orleans ordered everyone who had returned to leave again. “It won’t affect New Orleans much, and you just need to stay here a few more days is all.”
Jude refused to let me pay for anything, which made me feel like shit. He refused rent money, grocery money, any offer to take him out to dinner. He was always polite about it, but firm. “I won’t hear of it,” he would say as he unpacked groceries, leaving me standing there with a hundred-dollar bill crumpled in my hand. “I’d like to think if the situation were reversed, you’d help me the same way.” Then he would bark out a bitter little laugh. “It’s what friends do, right?”
And I would squirm in my smallness, wondering if I would indeed open my house and wallet to him, and hating myself for even harboring the doubt.
And even though Jude’s bed was big and warm, and the feel of a warm body next to mine every night was a comfort, all I wanted was to be in my own bed, under my own roof, with my own clothes. The first night, I wasn’t sure what to expect—although I was grateful Jude didn’t put me in the spare room. We lay there, next to each other, the lights off, both of us awake.
Then Jude reached over and squeezed my hand. “It’s going to be all right, you know,” he said. “You’ll get through this. New Orleans will get through this.”
And I started to cry, and then he put his arms around me and held me tightly, kissing the top of my head while I sobbed, finally giving into the self-pity and misery I’d been holding off since Paul died. And then he was whispering to me, over and over again, “It’s okay, it’s okay, shhh, baby, it’s okay.”
No. I didn’t deserve Jude.
And when I decided to come back, he had helped me load up my car. I put my arms around him and held him.
“This is goodbye, isn’t it?” he asked.
“You deserve better than I can give you,” I replied.
He bit his lower lip and nodded. “Good luck,” he said, his voice shaking. “If you ever need me—”
I kissed his cheek, got in my car, and drove away.
*
There was a knock on my front door, startling me at first, but then I realized it had to be Paige.
She threw herself into my arms as soon as I opened the door, and I held onto her until her body stopped shaking and she was able to pull herself together. I wiped at my own eyes as she picked up a plastic bag. She shrugged. “I figured we could both use a drink.” She pulled out a champagne bottle and popped the cork, aiming away from the house so the cork shot out into the middle of Camp Street. She poured herself a foamy plastic cup full, and then poured me one. “Salud,” she said, tossing it all back in one gulp and erupting with a most unladylike burp. She sat down on the top step and waved at me to join her. I tossed back the champagne and sat as she refilled both cups.
“Christ,” she said, lighting a cigarette. “Can you believe what a ghost town this is?” She shook her head. “Man.”
“Yeah,” I said, unable to think of anything else to say.
A camouflage-painted Hummer went by with a machine gun mounted on the front hood. A group of National Guardsmen, the oldest of whom couldn’t have been more than twenty-three, rolled by. Solemnly, each one raised a stiff hand in acknowledgement, and Paige did the same back, all of them nodding.
“Nobody but nobody had better ever criticize the National Guard in my presence again, or the Coast Guard. Not if they want to live to see the morning,” Paige said, taking a long drag on her cigarette. “Anyway, welcome home.”
“Thanks for cleaning out the refrigerator,” I replied, lighting my own cigarette.
“Yeah, well, I needed something to keep me busy besides work and dwelling on everything,” she said, gesturing at her battered Toyota. “I went to Sav-a-Center and got you some things—soda, beer, you know, the essentials.” She flashed a grin at me. “They’re open, but only from ten to six, so remember that—and our bank is open down there, and I went by Bodytech today and there was a sign up saying they’re reopening tomorrow, so you can work out and everything. And the Avenue Pub is open. We can go get a burger there later, if you want. They have really good burgers.” She laughed. “I don’t believe they ever closed, you know? They used charcoal and sold burgers. God, I love this city.”
“How is it really? Here?”
“It’s still New Orleans, but it’s different.” She lit another cigarette from the butt of the one she was smoking. “Nothing much is open, and what is, is on limited hours. There are help-wanted signs everywhere.” She stared off at the park. “It’s—it’s—oh, hell, I don’t know how to describe it, Chanse.” She shrugged nonchalantly. “It’s still New Orleans, though, that I can say. And I am so fucking glad to be here.” She stabbed her cigarette out on the step. “So fucking glad to be here.” Her lip trembled and her eyes filled again, but she snapped back out of it, standing up. “Well, let’s get the cars unloaded, shall we?”
Chapter Two
There used to be two kinds of bars in New Orleans: the ones that have the big daiquiri machines and cater to the tourists; and the ones locals frequent, where they serve strong drinks, don’t charge an arm and a leg for them, and have atmosphere that isn’t manufactured. The Avenue Pub, on the corner of St. Charles and Polymnia, about a half block from Paige’s apartment, is one of the latter. I wasn’t a regular there, but stopped in every once in a while for a burger and fried cheese sticks. Most of the people who hung out there were working class, stopping in after work for a couple of drinks and staying longer than they probably should. Being gay, I always felt a little uncomfortable there. It wasn’t like I had GAY tattooed on my forehead, but I never really felt able to completely relax in a straight bar environment. It was stupid—I never felt like I was in danger of being gay-bashed or anything there, but I always preferred to err on the side of caution. After Paige had moved down the street a few months before the storm, she’d fallen in love with the place and made it one of her preferred hangouts.
New Orleans wasn’t the only thing different. Paige herself was different, in ways someone who didn’t know her as well as I did might not notice. The changes were a little subtle, small, but they were definitely there. For example, she was chain-smoking, lighting one cigarette from the butt of another. She’d smoked from the time we’d first met, but I’d never seen her smoke this much—even when she was upset, even when she was drinking. Her mismatched eyes (one green, one blue) were bloodshot, and there were heavy, dark circles beneath them. Her reddish hair, usually streaked with blond, looked unkempt, and about an inch of brown was showing at the roots. Her voice seemed a little higher in tone as well, as though she were on the verge of hysteria. Maybe I was just being hypersensitive, my own emotions on edge and raw. Maybe I also seemed different to her, changed in some ways that I wasn’t aware of and only someone else could see. All I could feel, all I was aware of, was that dead sense of numbness to everything.
She parked me at a scarred table near the jukebox, which was silent. A silver-haired man in a dirty sports coat that had seen better days, a weathered-looking man of indeterminate age in paint-spattered coveralls, and a whipcord-thin black man in jeans and a flannel shirt sat at the bar. All the tables were empty other than the one I was sitting at. A pretty girl wearing glasses and with her thick long black hair pulled back into a braid was grilling hamburgers, while another girl, maybe in her mid-twenties with reddish-blond hair, was pouring drinks with a heavy hand behind the bar. Paige came back with a glass of amber liquid and a sweating bottle of Bud Light, which she put down in front of me.
I looked at her glass. I had never seen her drink anything alcoholic besides red wine since we’d met in college. “What are you drinking?”
“I’ve developed a taste for whiskey. Sue me.” She took a long drink before closing her eyes and pressing
the glass to her forehead. “Damn, I’m getting another headache.”
I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t think of anything to say.
“We’re all a little crazy now.” She shrugged. “That’s something you’re going to have to get used to, bud. The whole city has post-traumatic stress disorder. There’s a big piece in tomorrow’s paper about it.”
“How late is this place open?” I started peeling the label off my bottle.
“Curfew’s midnight.” Paige lit another cigarette. “The soldiers take the curfew very seriously, too.” She flicked ash into a plastic Budweiser ashtray. “If you’re caught out after curfew, you spend the night in jail. You’ve been warned. Inside by midnight. Don’t be calling me to bail your ass out if you break curfew.”
“How are you doing, Paige?” On the rare occasions I’d been able to get her on her cell phone, we hadn’t talked long. Her emails were even briefer. Just reports on my apartment, that she was okay, and not much else. “Are you really okay?”
“No, I’m most definitely not okay.” She took another drink of her whiskey. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be okay again. It’s horrible, Chanse. The things I’ve seen…the stories I’ve been told…what a fucking nightmare. And it doesn’t seem to ever end…and what makes me the angriest is none of it had to happen. It didn’t have to happen the way it did. I hope everyone in Washington, from the White House to the lowest paper pusher at Homeland Security and FEMA, suffer long painful deaths in agony, just the way they left New Orleans to die. I swear to God I would just as soon shoot Michael Chertoff’s balls off as look at that son of a bitch. How that motherfucker can sleep at night is beyond me. It makes me want to believe there’s a heaven and hell, you know? And the Ninth Ward, Lakeview…” she shuddered. “It’s just awful out there, so dead…and sometimes I think I can still hear people screaming. And the city just reeks of death and rot.” She shrugged. “The Xanax helps a lot, though. It evens me out when I need it—but I seem to need it every fucking day. And I take pills to sleep. That helps with the dreams.”