by Ben Neihart
A new float passed in front of him. On this one, a sea dragon's mouth slowly opened and closed; inside the mouth, spotlighted in blue among the pointy teeth, were three children who danced across the rubbery tongue and threw strings of plastic beads to the crowd. In the sea dragon's nostrils and eye sockets, more children threw plastic. The float gleamed with hard fiberglassiness.
The phone rang again, and this time Seth picked up on the first ring. "Yeah?"
"We just watched you on television," said Rae Schipke, and the temperature of Seth's heart dropped fifty degrees. "Wait, can I put you on hold for a minute?"
"I'm not going anywhere," he said steadily.
"That's right. You might try, but you're not going anywhere."
The line went cold. Schipke's airy self-control filled Seth with dread. Of course she was jacked off, but you couldn't tell from her voice. She had that expertise of demeanor, like famous people. When she gave one of her nauseating motivational lectures to reporters or foundation supplicants, love of the moment seeped from her pores. She'd picked up mannerisms from Diane Sawyer, of course, and Lynne Cheney, and Sharon Stone, and smaller portions of John Sununu and Bruce Willis. Which was not to say that the hard core of her own personality didn't radiate clearly through the borrowed material.
The phone whirred and crackled and then Rae Schipke came on the line: "Hi, I'm back. Just watched you on TV."
"So you told me."
"Well, you looked gorgeous and robust."
"Thanks."
"Let me tell you what the downside is."
"What's the downside?"
"I'm glad you asked."
"On TV, you look brawny and capable, but you also look like the piece of shit you are." Rae was quiet for a moment, and then she said, ''You fucked me."
"Yeah," Seth mumbled. "Can't deny it."
"How did you think that you'd get away with fucking me? I'm going to bite a hole in your cheek and suck your brains out. You have never had reason to feel the kind of fear you should feel now."
"Rae..."
"Don't interrupt me and don't hang up on me. What's that noise I hear?"
"It's a parade."
"You're on St. Charles? I'm writing that down, motherfucker. You're on my list."
"I could be on St. Charles. I could be in Metairie. I could be in Algiers. There's parades everywhere."
"How's the crowd? Are the blacks happy? That's all I fucking care about. I don't sleep nights if I think the black people aren't pacified."
"Jesus, Rae. Be quiet for a second. You're giving me a fistula."
"Get a fucking proctologist," she began, and then tore off on another run of invective.
He held the phone away from his ear while she went on. She was not going to calm down. She was not going to work it out of her system. Rae's system had been soldered shut a long time ago by master mechanics; everything that was in her engine was going to stay in her engine: ice, then water, then steam, then condensation, without a molecule escaping.
The parade was coming close to its end. Hooded black guys holding torches passed in the wake of a funky high school marching band whose percussion regiment danced in dips and back steps. The music was enormous; it glimmered from the instruments and crashed over the top of Seth's car. He experienced a few shudders of ecstasy. His eyes welled up as he imagined himself abandoning the Toyota and joining the parade, leaving behind his car for the police to impound and then rip apart and test for signs of his murder.
"Okay, okay," he said into the phone, settling it back into place along the side of his face.
"... and the faggots and the hobo white niggers and the chicas and all the rest of them? Are they all drunk and kissy and occupés with the spectacle? I put them all on my list."
"My ass is bleeding, Rae. I'm sorry, but you're going to have to stop riding me. Lower your voice."
"I need to see you."
"I'm sorry."
"Seth, come talk to me baby. I have something for you."
"I have plans."
"You do?"
"I'm disappearing."
"You have no idea. You have just sewn up quite a verdict against Rae Schipke. A judgment of twenty-five million dollars against the Shaw Foundation. Is that cute? Your shit is green and pulpy and all over my face, bitch."
"Goodbye, Rae."
"Is the boy with you?"
Seth gazed blankly out the window. One of the last floats, the length of two eighteen-wheelers, passed. Grass-skirted muscle men waved frantically from their perches. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"The boy. You introduced us at the health club."
The clock of his memory spun backwards in a rush. For a moment, he couldn't remember anything before the trial, the sequestration, the verdict. Then, projected against the red screen inside his eyelids, he saw the boy in the alcove beside the pool. A nice morsel. A little male for his taste, but he'd always allowed himself the occasional lapse. "That boy? Him? Are we talking about the same boy?"
"Yes him. Joe Keith."
"What does he have to do with you? Rae, he couldn't be more inconsequential to me."
Mellow laughter floated from the phone. "This ain't standard operating procedure, is it darling? We haven't grown this relationship successfully, have we? From the start, it's been cross-purposes and competition."
"Goodbye, Rae. Just for the record, I think you got what you deserved."
"Just one more thing." The phone went dead for a moment, and then there was the sound of wheezing gasps and thin whimpers.
The sound made Seth's chest constrict. He closed his eyes. "What's that?"
"A friend."
"Who's that, Rae?"
"I came looking for the boy. This is who I found. I'm with his mother." After a short pause, she said, "You took my life away from me. Like that, I'm gonna get the balance right."
Seth was quiet.
"I have eyes," she said gruffly.
"I don't dispute it."
"I saw the look in your eye when you came out from fucking him in that little dark space beside the pool. The both of you dripping wet."
"Rae, that's not what happened. I didn't make a loving bond, if that's what you're thinking. I have not thought of that kid even once. You've made a tremendous, insane mistake. Get away from those people. Leave them alone. I know that you're a bad enough bitch to kill. With your back against the wall, you'd kill. If your life or money were at risk, you'd hurt, maim. But do you have the kind of steel fucking stupid fury to hunt down and revenge-kill a random innocent boy? Or his mother?''
"No. No, no, no. Don't put this back on me."
"It's on you, Rae. It's all on you."
"I'm disappearing tonight. Poof! And I will leave my mark on you. I will!" Her voice dwindled away in static.
"Rae. If you want to disappear, just go."
She buzzed back on the line. "If you suffered an attack of shame and conscience in the jury room, that's one thing. One thing. There are rules in the world, and one of them is that the innocent will suffer. In this life, I've had to take whatever opportunities I could. Now, okay, I'm going to offer you an address. If you don't come to me, or if you shamefully call the police, then it won't be only me and you who disappear."
"What are you doing, Rae? Rae."
"Get a pen," she said. "Here's the address."
White girls in high-cut leotards danced across the Rock 100 float, four enormous speakers connected by catwalks. The whole thing was done up as a barnacle-encrusted pirate's chest full of cheerful booty. Seth looked away from the girls to the tail end of the parade, straggling hooded black men dragging their torches. The spectators were dwindling away—blacks and whites, idiots and drunks and families and lovers and weaklings.
All of them, all of you, Seth thought, oblivious to the times and to the fate of their city. It was late in the century for people to pretend they were safe in their revelry on the stinking streets.
I resign, he said to himself. I'm sinking down
into the mire. Glub glub glub.
He turned on the radio, twisted the dial until he found white noise. He closed his eyes.
He had done a hundred bad things, a thousand, ten million. Why stop there? He had taken careful part in an infinite amount of wrongdoing. But only once had he almost killed someone. And it was a stain that he could never—not with any amount of penance—erase. He had been filled with intent. He had been a monster, and he could be one again—any old time.
He saw himself sprinting across the front of the Tulane campus on a dripping June night. Light spilled from posts, making small pools, but most of the grounds were dark canopies of linden leaves and brush-top palms and droops of willow branches above meandering lawns and puddled macadam walkways. There was a dead quiet.
The campus was cut in half by Freret Street. He crossed, at a crouching pace, and picked up speed, bounding across the lawn of brick-and-glass Woldenburg Hall, up the overspilling apron of steps. He used a stolen access card to get into the building. The glass door locked behind him.
His breath hung in his ears. Hhuh, hhuh, hhuh. He stood noiseless in the marble lobby, gathered himself, pulled a nylon runner's hood over his face, and then padded down the hall of locked doors to the offices of the Citizen Law Clinic. Dim light showed beneath the door. Seth listened for a minute. Silence. He knocked.
"Hello?" called the voice inside.
Seth didn't answer. Was it the right guy?
"Who is it?" the voice called.
Seth smiled. Yes. It was Jim Yonce, with his suit against the Shaw Foundation, his loud talk. Rae Schipke wanted a scare put in him, and Seth wanted—he really wanted—to prove his mettle.
He knocked on the door again and shouted, "Physical plant!"
Yonce was yawning when he opened the door. His hair was pressed to the side of his head; he'd been asleep. Behind him, a desk was covered with file folders and two blazing lamps. The blinds were down. His smile crumpled as he tried to close the door.
"I don't think so," Seth said. He lifted the knotted bunch of thin wires over his head and shouldered his way into the room. He kicked the door shut behind him. There was one millisecond when he thought he might turn around, but it passed.
"No, no, don't," whimpered Yonce, trying to cover his face with his hands.
He was a picture of powerlessness. The man. Advocate, doing good on behalf of the community.
"Your time has passed, man," Seth said, and he brought the wires down across Yonce's legs.
Yonce fell to the floor.
The wires slit his T-shirt so ribbons of blood soaked the fabric. They tore into his face, the tip of his tongue, the open mouth trying to call for help.
"Desist!" Seth shouted.
Yonce didn't move, and Seth kicked him in the ribs, brought the wires down again. He was lost in his fury.
Now, horns beeped around his car. He jolted upright in his seat, fixed his eyes on the clear space in front of him, and accelerated between the parting police cars. He turned left, zoomed up the highway ramp. All that he could see through the sinuous curve of his windshield were the beams and moons of headlights and the sky that was full of dark, pitted clouds. He could still hear the music of the parade, but he didn't know where, in relation to his car, it was. He laid on his horn and sped into the mess of traffic heading out of the city.
12:45 a.m.
Rampart Street was the far frontier of the Quarter. In the first block off Canal, you could entertain the illusion that you were protected by the private police who watched over the crowds milling around the cavernous Saenger Theater, all lighted up for a show, and the New Orleans Athletic Center, dark for the night except for its adjoining garage, but the farther away from Canal that you traveled, the emptier and wilder Rampart became. One block after the next was made up of empty parking lots littered with hubcaps and windshield glass; ramshackle, boarded-up, ice-creamy houses; pithole, hard-luck bars blasting old Journey songs and the stench of stale whiskey sours and sweet metallic smoke. Across the street from the strip of bars was a cemetery fortress, high gates surrounding aboveground crypts.
Joe and Welk, arms around each other's necks, stood at the far end of the street, where it intersected with Esplanade, looking up at the red sky.
"We'll see, we'll see," Welk said.
"I'm gonna be so fried," Joe said. "I'm so late."
"Do I have to say it? I don't wanna say it." Welk was using his deep voice; Joe could feel it in rumbles along his rib cage. "I'm gonna be all embarrassed if I come right out... and say it.,. and you say you don't wanna."
"I wanna. You don't have to say stuff. We can just like stand here." To have Welk hanging on him, anchoring him to the spot, was a perfect kind of burden.
"We don't need to be out here on the street, dude, all messed up."
"I'm not messed up."
"Pipe down, pipe down."
"What's that up there?" Joe pointed to a misshapen blob that was parked along the curb in the next block. It looked like a car that had melted down, some funky prototype without wheels.
"Let's check it out."
"Whatever."
"Do you want me to find you a fucking cab, man?"
"I guess I kinda should go home."
"Cool. You'll go home. Just come with me to check that thing out. How's that? We'll be almost to my place, and I'll get you a cab."
After a moment, Joe said, "Okay."
They detached from each other and began walking in silence. So this is how it's going to end, Joe thought. My big deal night. Sweet. Even as disappointment welled up in his back and sinus cavities, Joe was also experiencing giddy relief, and the thought of lying in his bed at home took its soothing place in his heart. Tomorrow, he'd get his mom to drive somewhere out in the country, maybe Mississippi, that quarry outside Picayune, and they'd swim and shoot photos and find a fish fry.
Joe watched Welk out of the comer of his eye. The guy had a gait. It was slouchy, but because he was put together so strong, his indifferent posture came off as predatory and wanton. He was shghtly bow-legged, maybe perfectly so, and his tense, red-brown, freckled arms chugged along in rhythm like casual pistons.
"I see you looking at me." Welk laughed, high pitched and friendly and surprised.
"I got something in my eye."
"Yeah: me."
"Arrogant sumbitches are a blight on me, ding."
"You like to look at me?"
"Chill, special dude."
" 'Cause I like to look at you."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah."
"I keep getting a picture in my head."
"I bet you do, many kinds."
"Of me and you, fucking."
"Har-dee-har."
Welk threw on his brakes and lunged at Joe, caught his head in the crook of his elbow, and pulled Joe's head against his chest. "Har-har," he said. "Listen to how fast my heart's beating, man. Listen to that."
Joe's cheek was tight against the rise of Welk's chest; his chin was in the hollow just below. "I hear it," he said.
"That's 'cause of being with you."
"Or the white powder."
"Not the powder. I had a taste.'' He let go of Joe and started to jog away.
"Hey, I didn't mean to be all grindy," Joe said, following.
Welk, not answering, picked up speed, and then stopped on a dime in front of the mysterious, blobby vehicle.
Joe came up behind him. "A float."
"I don't want to know how that happened to this." Welk tapped the hulk of painted wood and fiberglass with his toe. "I think it was supposed to be a whale. Cut off at the fins."
Joe bent toward it, hunching on the edge of the curb. He touched one of the teeth, which was hard and cold like a real tooth, but painted gray and flaking. He slipped forward, petting the red, furrowed tongue, which was made of plastic. With just a nudge, the tongue sunk on hinges and then popped back into place. He rubbed his hand on the rough inside of the cheek, crawling farther, hand over hand until he was completely insi
de.
"Hey, Gepetto," Welk said, "don't let the leviathan devour you, dude."
Joe stretched out on the tongue, which hobbled up and down. "I'm getting sleepy, so sleepy. I can feel the juices breaking down my skin. I'm starting to lose consciousness." His voice disappeared out the other, raggedly torn end of the wreckage.
"Is there room for me?"
"There's definitely."
"Can I?"
"Enter the beast, sir, with caution and respect."
"I shall." The outer shell began to shake as Welk climbed in. He bounced on top of the tongue and slid up Joe's body until his face was beside Joe's. "Kiss me."
Joe obliged, and as he explored the inside of Welk's mouth he settled into the lull of the whale's tongue movement, which Welk, by laying his own upper body on top of Joe's and kicking a foot against the inside hull, controlled. Welk's fingers were intertwined with Joe's, and bending Joe's in a backward arc over the edge of the plastic tongue.
"What?" Welk said, pulling his mouth away.
"Let's go," Joe said, trying to hold his smile shut so he didn't actually devour Welk's whole amazing face.
"Where?"
"To you know where."
The Sanctuary of Lady Rampart filled a square block on the river side of Rampart, two blocks past the float debris. The front was barren of plants or trees, and the only sign of identification was a small silver plaque embedded in the brick facade: THE MYRTHA SHAW WING, it said in demure lettering. A wide sweep of cement steps led to barred double doors, each of which had a globe-sized pane of dark, stained glass in its center. The main structure was four stories, but there were shorter, more modern additions on either side, absorbed into the main structure by a similarity of window: dozens of skinny barred windows about the height of surfboards, most of them dark, but a few glowing with electric candles. "We have to go in the back," Welk said. "I kind of missed my curfew. If I ring, the sentry'll have to sign me in, and I don't know which one it is. We'll sink."
"Fine. But if we can't do this easy, I don't know. I'm so late, when I get home it's not even going to be funny."
"Your mom's going to—"
"Don't even go there, dude. I don't even wanna think about it. That's gonna make me totally rank. Just don't say another word about it."