Hey, Joe

by Ben Neihart

  "Yeah," Wy said. He put the flat of his palm on the side of Joe's neck. "If you were a girl, I'd ask you out." His voice was soft. His breath smelled like bananas.

  Now Joe rolled onto his other side, pulled the joint from his jeans pocket, and settled into the next Nirvana song. "Work it, Kurt," he said, and lit up. He watched the ember flare and subside as he hit on the joint—three times in quick succession. He wished that Wyatt were here; if he were, Joe thought that his own teeth and tongue might fly out of his mouth and attach to the side of Wy's neck. He wished that he could just see an item of Wyatt's clothing: his wide brown belt, the one with a tarnished buckle, or his stupid Dr. Seuss hat.

  "You wanna share?" It was Kel's soft voice, just verging on a giggle. She was standing at the head of the sofa, hovering over him.

  "Yeah, girl." He hurried to sit up. "Here, sit down." He patted the cushion next to him.

  She fell beside him in a heap; her arms landed at her side and bounced back into the air. "He's just terrible," she said. "But I'm never going to get sick of him."

  "Who?" Joe asked.

  "Martin. You know my boyfriend, Martin? With the attitude?"

  "Oh . .. yeah. I do." He looked at her face in the green-tinted dark. She was making a grimace. "How long have you dated Martin?"

  "Too long," she whispered, more to herself than to Joe. She took a hit on the joint and looked up at the ceiling.

  "How long's too long?"

  "But, you know ... I feel one way with him and not with anyone else. And that one way is the way I wish I felt all the time. Even if it is impractical. I get so fucking into him. When he kisses me—you know how it is when some guys kiss you..." She giggled, and then she looked directly into Joe's eyes; she gave him a smile of awful recognition, as if seeing him for the first time. "You know how awful—how totally bottomless—that kind of guy, that kind of kiss ... God, it can just ruin everything, can't it, Joe?"

  7:00 p.m.

  Myrtha Murphy Shaw had long ago seen civility and good humor pass from New Orleans public life, but still she was astonished by the hatred that everyone she knew seemed to feel for Rae Schipke. Yes, Rae had used bad judgment. Yes, what Rae had done was wrong. But in any summation of all that had transpired between Rae and the Lady Rampart orphans, surely the orphans came out ahead. They had built their own gilded roost—exploiting their guile and beauty; all that Rae had wanted in return was some affection. Who could begrudge her that?

  A pain shot up into Myrtha's back and she doubled over, crying out shrilly, gripping the silk knees of her Beene trousers. With her face tucked against her arm, she sucked in a potent waff of Shalimar, with which she'd drenched herself in the morning, before their first trip over to the courthouse. The jurors, thank goodness, had remained in disagreement, and Myrtha and Rae had come quickly home. Tonight, the judge had said, we will have a verdict or we will have a mistrial; in the latter case, Rae would disappear, take up residence in Myrtha's Brazilian home.

  When the pain had subsided, Myrtha drew herself back to her hobbled height. She looked around doe-eyed at the suite in all of its red splendor: musliny wallpaper and satin tapestries and fluttering velvet curtains. She put one foot forward and began lurching daintily, with outward-turned toes, toward the stone wishing well that stood in the center of her room. She had, earlier in the evening, angrily dropped the phone into the still well water.

  Now she cocked her head, listening intently. She thought that she heard Rae bustling about in another part of the building. Myrtha cupped her hands around her mouth and let out a holler: "Hello, Rae! Hello, dear Rae!"

  After she caught her breath, she made it the rest of the way to the wishing well. As she had expected, the phone lay belly-up in the shallow bowl among pennies, nickels, and seashells. She dipped her hand into the water and pulled the phone out. With the help of her other hand, she flicked it open and pushed the TALK button and held the phone to her face.

  No dial tone.

  Nothing.

  Scraps, old girl, she told herself. You've ruined another.

  But before she let the phone fall to the floor, she allowed herself a wicked smile and whispered into the mouthpiece, "Count your fingers, count your toes."

  7:10 p.m.

  The front door exploded open, its bells jingling, and heavy footsteps thudded into the store.

  "Hey, bitch, your fun has come." It was White Donna, a disc jockey on WKTT, the alternative-rock station that Joe listened to when he wasn't listening to the rap and soul ballads station.

  "Willkommen," said Kel. "What's up with you, girl?"

  "I'm okay. Sort of."

  Joe curled into a sitting position, then pulled himself off the couch. He stood at dopey attention, watching Donna, a spindly, broad-shouldered, tall, self-important chick with her crispy scarlet dreadlock extensions knotted up in tie-dyed rags. She wore a long, clingy black dress and white mules—a good look for her, Joe thought, with her stretch, solid legs.

  Kel hung up the phone and leaned across the sales podium to embrace Donna, as she hadn't when Joe entered. For a moment, he felt as if he'd been jilted, but quickly he drew himself back to swoonish attention and observed the women's every gesture. If he ever wanted a model of seductive, self-assured posture, he had White Donna.

  She pulled herself back from Kel, clapped her palms together, and broke into her imitation of Kevin Costner, who, she insisted, had eaten her out when he was in town filming JFK. She'd made similar claims about Antonio Banderas, Deion Sanders, and N'dea Davenport. Joe doubted her.

  "Just lemme get my nose in the pudding," she rumbled now, sounding nothing like the Kevin Costner that Joe remembered from Robin Hood. Her head was cocked to one side; her mouth was open; the silver rings in her nose sparkled. Joe admired the way she kept her hands at her side, didn't make them all fluttery and feminine during her impersonation of a manly coot like Costner.

  Letting the performance fall away. Donna asked Kel, "How's tonight for dinner? To Nola? You wanna come with us?"

  "Expensive," Kel said with wispy disappointment.

  "Yeah? Maybe." Donna propped her elbows on the top of the cash computer. "I wish you'd come. You're so fun to go out to eat with. You always eat so much."

  "I know," Kel said dreamily, "but I can't."

  "Why?"

  "I can't."

  "There's something wrong with your life priorities."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "Oh, my God," Donna said indignantly, "you're on a budget! I thought you were kidding."

  Kel's eyes narrowed. "Kinda."

  "That's so lame, Kel."

  "I'll go to dinner," Joe called from the dark hollow of the lounge.

  "Joe!" Donna said. "What's up, boy?"

  He pushed himself toward her, past the bins of CDs and cassettes, past the hanging racks of band T-shirts; he kept his bleary gaze fixed on her chin. When he was within a yard of her, he said, "I'll go out to dinner with you."

  "My boyfriend's going, too." She turned her face sideways and grinned, trying to meet his eyes. Her cheek and chin were bathed with weak dusty evening sun. "Is that cool with you?"

  "Yeah—wait, you still dating Black Chris?"

  "Well..."

  "He's good for you?"

  "Yeah?"

  "Oh, fuck," Kel said sweetly, "Now I wish I could go, too. It sounds fun. Mommy, Daddy, and Joe."

  "I'll buy you dinner," Joe said, shifting his eyes hopefully. He had his own credit card. He had his own bank account. His daddy had taught him how to make a budget and how to ignore it when the occasion was right.

  "I really can't, sooka. I'm not supposed to go to the Quarter for a few weeks."

  "Huh," Joe said.

  Donna covered her eyes with one buffed hand. "I can't even believe this shit. What's wrong with the Quarter? What is it now? Next thing, you'll say you're moving to San Francisco. Why does everyone want to leave. Go someplace better. What's better about San Francisco?''

  "Nothing?"
Joe offered.

  Kel shuddered. "Ooooh. I'm not moving. If I do, it's maybe to Houston. Not to San Fran."

  Donna dropped her hand from her face. "Good."

  "Houston's cool," Joe said. "Wyatt K.'s there this weekend."

  "It's okay," Kel said. "Houston will do. In a pinch. Don't get carried away with your love of Houston. I could tell you about Houston if you really wanted to know."

  "But how come you can't go to the Quarter?"

  "Let's just say ..." She held her hands in front of her as if displaying grapefruit.

  "Don't tell this boy your dirty shit." Donna laughed and then put her arm around Joe's shoulder. "All your nasty stories to this poor boy. You.''

  Joe tried to nestle closer to her so that her scent would linger on his T-shirt. "I would like to hear some dirty stories."

  "Come over here," she said, pulling him toward the tall metal New Release display, looking past his eyes at Kel. "I want you to tell me some songs to play tomorrow. I'm sick of the songs I've got, and the competition's gunnin' for me."

  Joe was sitting on the window ledge beside the front door, watching the dimming street and the twirling leaves of gnarled-limb trees, when a Jeep full of buzzhead shirtless guys pulled into the gravelly driveway that ran beside the store and skidded to a stop. In jubilant unison, the boys raised their husky arms over their heads. Bubbles of rhyme flew out of their stereo speakers; Joe could hear it inside the store: sly, clear-voiced Ladybug chanting, "Nickel bag, a nickel bag ..."

  "It's them," Kel said, looking over her shoulder out the window. She was taking inventory of the indie label cassettes. "Wow, they showed up."

  "Who are they?" Joe asked.

  "Some of the orphans. Rad orphans." She broke into a high, childish voice: "All we ever get is gru-el." She pulled herself away from the cassettes and went back to the sales podium, found the remote control wand, and pointed it toward the back of the store; the keyboards and cymbals of a bullshit new dance-music group swelled to fill every corner. It wasn't the good kind of disco, whose beats made Joe's hidden emotions apparent to him; it was a dull, ballady song tricked up with a bunch of swirls and kabooms.

  White Donna, at sonic ground zero in the lounge, shook her dreads, wiggled her arms at the shoulder, and on every fourth beat clapped her hands satirically.

  "I don't know if I believe the orphans," Kel blurted over the music. "You never know who's lying these days." She pressed her face beside Joe's, watching out the window. "Those guys have a pretty burly aspect to their chests and arms. You wouldn't think they could get abused—you know?"

  "They're in their prime, that's for sure. Whatever." Joe felt a blackness approaching his peripheral vision, like a premonition that he was about to lose consciousness: he thought for a moment that maybe his desire for the boys in the Jeep had gushed out of his brain and heart, bounced off the window, and come back on him with a vengeance. He bit down on the inside of his cheek. "They're from that orphanage? Really? Why are they here?"

  "I know some of those guys."

  "Which ones?"

  "Him and him," Kel said, putting her finger to the glass, pointing.

  "That's a help."

  "Yeah. You'll meet them if you'd like. Do you want to meet them?"

  "It's just weird." Joe continued to watch, transfixed by their fucking around. Kel leaned against him, her chest folding against his shoulder.

  After a while, she asked, ' 'Why?''

  "Nothing."

  "Oh. "

  "I'm gonna go check them out." Joe unhooked her arm from around his waist and started away from her.

  "They're kind of rough. Be careful."

  "Please, queen." Joe swung the door outward, paused, and stepped onto the front porch. Clicking the door shut behind him, he self-consciously turned toward the Jeep, from which jazzy beats continued to flow: the rapper Butterfly singing, "Babies man, we're just babies, man..."

  "What's up?" Joe called. His voice was swallowed up in the stereo's fat, squiggly samples, so he shouted out again to the four guys. They were all dark skinned, reddish brown, with ropey arms and strong necks and baldish round skulls.

  The music went silent; after a moment of crackling feedback, the boy who was driving shouted into a handheld microphone, and his voice thundered out of the heavy speakers: "Hello, friend! Justice for the Lady Rampart orphans!" His voice was woody and deep; it chopped syllables short.

  Joe's temples and armpits and the backs of his knees tingled with perspiration. "Whoa," he said. "Is that your slogan?"

  "Yup," the voice bellowed.

  "I guess it's direct." Joe didn't recognize the four guys, but that didn't surprise him: all over town, you'd run into people you'd never seen before, people whose faces and bodies and demeanors were so arresting that you couldn't believe the town would contain them. But these boys—especially the driver with the scruffy chin stubble and bulky shoulders. If these were some of the famous orphans, why hadn't they been on TV? Joe'd watched a lot of the coverage, looking for a guy he knew who was serving on the jury.

  "You do us a favor, man?" asked the one in the front passenger seat. He was maybe too buff—or maybe not; there was cute blond hair on his craggy, sunburned chest and belly.

  "What?"

  "Where's Kel?" the driver said, this time without the microphone. "She told us we could hang one of our banners here."

  "Kel's inside." He considered backing against the front door, knocking on the glass to get her attention, but decided not to. "She told me to come out and help you guys."

  "Donna said she was gonna be here," said the blond.

  "All right," said the driver. "Donna. What's up with Donna lately?"

  "She's helpin' Kel," Joe said. "She's in a bad mood."

  "You wanna help us?" The driver's voice hung right beside Joe's ears; it had traveled across the front porch, snuck up on him, and now it was lingering.

  Joe found himself loping down the stairs, off the porch. Each step closer to the side of the Jeep made the driver's appearance more radiant. Joe stumbled a few final steps and wrapped his hand around the side-view mirror. "Hey," he said.

  "You're going to help us?"

  "Yeah," Joe said. "Let's get it on. Let's hang this banner."

  "Look who's down with us," said one of the two boys in the backseat. They were twins, with identical eyebrows, foreheads, and mouths.

  "Righteous," said the first boy's twin, whose nose and voice were bigger than his brother's.

  "He's cool. I can tell." The driver started to get up, the muscles in his belly tightening. He snatched a folded-up sheet off his seat; then he leaned over the edge of the Jeep, locked his knees, put his free hand on Joe's shoulder, and dumped himself over the door. As he landed, the side of his chest and belly pressed against the length of Joe's arm. The back of Joe's neck tingled.

  "Here." He handed Joe two corners of a sheet and then, holding two corners himself, backed away so that it opened. The words orphans and victory, in blocky red Magic Marker, were poorly centered but, Joe thought, kind of compelling. "Let's hang it across the front window. When we win this trial, we're going to have some serious independence, dude, and you can say you helped out. You'll have, you know, a place in our hearts."

  "Okay."

  They thudded up the stairs to the front porch. "We can hang it from that spandrel," the boy said, pointing at the top of the window. "Looks like somebody tore the wood off; we can use those nails sticking out of the brick."

  "Those?" Joe pointed.

  "Yup."

  "I better go get a ladder."

  "No time, bud. No time to waste. I'll hoist ya." He twisted his neck; it was peeling, and there was a dirt handprint across his Adam's apple. He noticed Joe watching him and laughed. "We just came from downtown. Got interviewed for the news tonight. They got us to horse around for the cameras."

  "Fuck," Joe said.

  "My name's Welk."

  "I'm Joe Keith."

  "You ready to hang this banner
?" He handed Joe his corners of the sheet, bent at his knees, and locked his fingers to make his hands into a step.

  "You're not gonna drop me?"

  "No."

  "You're sure."

  He reached across the space between them and with his finger drew an X on Joe's chest "Never. Besides, what do you weigh—ninety-five?"

  "Bullshit." Joe lifted his left foot up into the hand step. "Ready," he said, and he was floating up into the air. He grabbed Welk's shoulder, but the shock of touching him made Joe let go. He put his free hand on the side of the house and tried to break the corner of the sheet over a nail. "Can you move me a little to the right?" he asked Welk.

  "Done."

  Joe lurched sideways and felt Welk move his chest and stomach closer to him—against the backs of Joe's legs—for balance.

  When Joe was done, Welk lowered him to the ground but kept his palm flat against Joe's lower back. One of Welk's fingers slipped beneath the waistband of Joe's boxer shorts and then pulled back out.

  The Jeep horn beeped.

  As Joe turned around, Welk's hand slid around the side of his T-shirt "Thanks, man," Welk said, thick voiced.

  "Yeah."

  "I gotta run." Welk's eyes were drifting shut

  "Yeah well, are you in high school? How old are you?"

  Eyes flew open. "Not any more. I'm emancipated. I'm nineteen. I go to, um, Tulane. Sophomore. How old are you?"

  "Sixteen."

  "I can play that."

  Joe closed his eyes and let his heart bust around inside his ribs. Then he went for it "You wanna hook up later, get a beer?"

  Welk drew his head back in an exaggerated double take. "Boy!"

  "Well?"

  "Could be."

  "Do you go to Tipitina's ever? Lafitte's ever? You ever go to Oz?"

  "I might."

  "Look, I don't mean to sound all grindy and eager," Joe said, "but... well, do you wanna meet up later? It would be cool to talk to you about the trial and shit. I know someone on the jury."

  "No way."