Yes Yes More More

by Anna Wood

  *

  As Annie strolled down to the French Quarter the next morning she walked into a sweet nugget of the world so good she almost cried. Four children wheeled past on bicycles, streamers flying from the handlebars, their wet little mouths squealing. At the beignet place tourists sat alongside local families and workers in suits, all with powdered sugar and paper napkins and cups of coffee. A long row of market stalls was a strip of energetic exchange and interrupted saunter, sales and chatter, bags passed over piles of oranges and bananas, change dropped and recovered or forgotten. Further away by the river people promenaded in shorts and vests, in pretty dresses. On the right, a band of teenagers played trombone and violin and drums; others sat or stood around, watching, dancing, clapping. On the left, on Jackson Square, a family had spread themselves on the grass – men with beards and smiles; slender women, clean and efficient; an older woman, maybe a grandma or an aunt, with a paperback and a shawl; two fat babies; a little boy playing with a bottle of water. They were cheery, having fun, shouting jokes and sharing food, putting on silly voices to make each other laugh, kissing and hugging, squeezing and nuzzling.

  I’ll stay in New Orleans, thought Annie. Why would I leave? She sat on a bench, leaned right back as if to widen her view and thought of the Mississippi rolling just out of sight. She loved the water and for all kinds of reasons: the bathing and the cleaning, the desire to be drenched and submerged, the crushing blankness, the soft dark weight. She imagined herself paddling in the river, then gliding just under its surface, part of the flow of it, a city mermaid. Her mind relaxed into the smooth wet daydream for only a few seconds before something tickled her gaze. The beautiful boy walked into view, in front of the coffee shop. He stayed a little way ahead of his friends, who chatted just behind him. He had bare feet and cut-off shorts but didn’t seem affected or scrappy in his Huckleberry Finn-ness. He looked over to the square and saw the family, and he smiled at the babies. They were the first thing Annie had noticed prompting a response from him.

  A kind of nervousness, something like modesty, made Annie’s eyes drop to the floor just as it seemed the boy might look at her. She prickled, felt bleak, adolescent, embarrassed. But she was giddy too, at the thought of him walking past and perhaps noticing her, though probably not, but walking past anyway with his dirty feet, his soft joints, his long fingers and curly hair.

  She looked at her hands, kept her head still, and listened to the boy’s voice, a high and wavering voice, as he responded to his friends. They were buying coffees and “Nah, thanks,” he didn’t want one. But then, “Actually, yeah, I do,” he said. “And a beignet.”

  “One more, for Jerry,” one of the others said. And that was his name, then. She wasn’t sure she liked it.

  “Just plain, black, whatever, no sugar,” Jerry said. Jerry. Plain, black, whatever, no sugar.

  She liked the sound of Jerry, maybe. A bit too much like a pet’s name, but that didn’t seem so bad. And she liked the way he said ‘beignet’, with a slightly embarrassed flourish.

  Sitting there in the shade, she took yesterday’s newspaper from her bag, settled in further, began to read. After not even one minute, though, she decided it was a waste to look at anything other than the beautiful boy, when the beautiful boy was so nearby, and she looked up and around hoping he hadn’t gone already.

  There he was, sitting on a low wall with his friends, facing her across the street and the marketplace. They had pastries and coffees in their hands, and they leaned one way and the next, heads tilting in time, as if they were singing but she couldn’t hear any song. Four of them, in shorts and T-shirts, having fun and looking so much like toddlers that she was surprised their feet could touch the ground. One boy, with blond hair, seemed to be Jerry’s closest friend, seemed to look at him a little more, smile when Jerry spoke. As the four eventually walked away, off stage-right, Jerry walked ahead again but then the blond-haired friend closed in behind, put his hands on Jerry’s shoulders and pushed himself into the air before falling back to the side of Jerry, wobbling into him, and the two began to chat, almost in confidence, and walk side-by-side.

  Annie was charmed and jealous. She turned back to her reading for a few seconds, but then walked over to the market and got a bag of peaches. It was a hot day now, a day with nothing to do. Her mind began to feel grey and dull, even as her mouth was filled with sweet sharp fruit goo. Annie thought about Jerry, and walked over to where he’d been sitting. She rested there, in his spot, and pleasure welled up in her.

  She started to plan the rest of her day. She would browse the city, investigate the streets, eat lunch, buy a dress, find a little park. Then, as she sat there, Jerry and his friends headed back towards her. Surely they would notice her, surely Jerry would notice that the two of them were in the same place yet again. But he did not. Beautiful boys, she thought, don’t look around them as much as everyone else does. And then she realised that his legs were bony, that his eyes had dark circles and his fingers were actually a bit grubby. He is puny and filthy too, she thought, and felt consoled.

  *

  From then on, day in and day out, the sun shone hard, slow and steady. The heat was barely ever ruffled by the sticky soft air. Faces glistened and shimmered. Soft crumbling walls and tendrilled plants provided shade and good smells while Annie sat and ate breakfast, drank tea, drifted along on the hours. The evenings were balmy, of course, and fragrant, of course, with drinks and dancing and good food, and strolls along the riverside. Travelling alone, it is easy to go for days without really speaking to anyone, just a few hellos and pleases and thank yous, sometimes a neighbourly chat with a stranger at the bar, friendships in miniature and gentle flirtations, although no more old-fashioned dancing with big moustachioed men.

  Then a few days after she booked into her new hotel, sitting at her bedroom window and watching the street, something wonderful happened. There was Jerry, outside, with his friends, and they walked up and into the lobby. This was where they were staying. It was as if she’d known, and Annie almost panicked that she had known, that she’d followed him, but it wasn’t true. This was a real coincidence. She smiled. Beautiful Jerry, so close. She listened to see if they were on her floor, in the same corridor as her, but she didn’t hear a thing from inside the building, just chatter outside and the rain softly falling.

  She did not think about flights again. In the new hotel she unpacked everything, tidied her cases out of sight, with her passport tucked away inside them. She steadily filled the drawers and wardrobe to brimming with silky clothes she bought in secondhand shops and cutesy boutiques. She got familiar with a few cafes and a couple of good restaurants, and got to be more than a tourist in the hotel bar. She drank sazeracs, nearly always, and watched and listened, and sometimes chatted to the bartender – a young, cherub-cheeked woman – about books or music or wine or a pair of new shoes (bright purple) which Annie had bought that day and which skidded a little on the hotel’s floor but which looked strange and fabulous and were therefore – they agreed, while the bartender made another sazerac – worth the risk, the danger, the potential banana-skin slapstick comedy of it, even (probably) enhanced by it.

  Annie was bewitched by this easy life, so brilliant and simple and busy. “Busy doing nothing,” she’d sometimes sing to herself. What a place this is, with so much nothing to do. A small city and a great drifting river. Annie was pleased by everything. Her skin felt the touch of clothes and moisture and air, and the occasional glances of people around her. She did not want excitement, exactly, she wanted a routine packed with pleasure. Over and over and over again. There were times, when she sat at the bar, or walked the dark avenues, or looked over the water, or read at an outside table, or watched a band play in the street, when she remembered London and felt guilty to have left her flat and her job and her friends. But she liked it better here. The days flowed past.

  Annie saw the beautiful boy, Jerry, most days, not just because they were staying in the same hotel but because
they naturally seemed to be in the same places: he’d be sitting in the lobby with his friends when she walked out one evening, she’d pass a shop window and notice him inside, they would have lunch a few tables apart in the same restaurant – Annie would be paying her bill as he arrived, or vice versa.

  Most often she saw him on his way somewhere as she sat in Jackson Square or on that low wall. She’d settle into a spot late morning and stay there for two or three hours with a book or a magazine, although she often didn’t read a word. And he would walk past. She expected that one day he wouldn’t appear, but he always did. Maybe he was on a long, long holiday too. Sometimes he would look her way and smile, say hello. Sometimes she would smile back. An almost daily occurrence, a delicate coincidence that strung one day to the next.

  Soon she recognised his physical habits: the angle of his head when he was listening, the lope of his walk. How he would half-hug a friend when they met. How when he was sitting he would rest a foot across his knee and run a finger back and forth along his shin. How sometimes, in his group of friends, he would step back from them very slightly and stare at the wider scene, at old men walking by, or their pet dogs, or the sun setting beyond the bridge or a boat going past. Annie enjoyed everything about him. Half-formed thoughts swelled and stretched inside her, thoughts that had long been flattened by language and properness. Time alone in the warmth can elate your sleepy soul. So decided Annie, and smiled.

  The boy walked across the square one morning while she was sitting on a bench by the gate. She could smell the air, full of sugar and fruit and damp. She put her hands flat on her legs, pushed down hard, felt the cloth of her skirt under her palms, on top of her thighs. The dazzle of the light, she thought, and every moment of your life. She laughed, then stopped, wondering if she had made any noise, or too much noise.

  That same evening, while she was sitting at the hotel bar, Jerry and his friends came in and sat at a table by the front window. Annie noticed the bartender look towards them and inhale, as if she wanted to breathe them in. She caught Annie’s eye, and told her that they’d been staying at the hotel for a few weeks, were due to be here a few weeks more. Studying, she said. Sweet guys. From Idaho, maybe, or Wyoming.

  Annie hadn’t said a word, hadn’t revealed a syllable of desire, and this information had popped out, unasked for and excellent. She would stay too. For a while. She’d had no thought of leaving, really. The money trickled into her bank account, topping up her savings, and she could rent her flat out for more if she needed to. These facts would waft in, and she saw them clearly, dealt with them, never worried. It was admin and she’d had years of admin. Floppy little grey puzzles to solve, and she solved them. It didn’t take long anymore. What took time was feeling the smooth firmness of the bar, the sticky glow of the lights, the pretty refractions through all the liquor bottles, the freckles on the bartender’s cheeks and nose, the bursts and silences of the traffic outside.

  Annie rested her chin on her hand, looked down at her shallow brown drink, looked across at herself in the mirror, then turned slightly as Jerry and his friends were getting up to leave the hotel. There is something delicate and strange about two people who don’t know each other but who see each other so often. There was a quiet esteem, Annie felt it. She watched, or half-watched, as Jerry and his friends gathered up to go and she didn’t feel creepy or awkward. He was so beautiful that she sang stupid soppy songs in her head.

  The others hadn’t noticed her, but Jerry quite unexpectedly looked right at Annie as he walked out of the bar. Relaxed, in a slow stride, he smiled at her with an unabashed, me-and-you smile. It was a smile that offered everything, besotted and beguiling. He walked right past and Annie turned back to the bar, shocked silly. A few minutes later, the beautiful boy came back into the lobby without his friends. The bartender looked at Annie, smiled, raised her eyebrows.

  “You want a drink?” the bartender asked him. God love her.

  “Mmm, gimme a beer. Thanks.”

  He gave Annie a polite nod, as if he was arriving at a job interview, then sat on the stool next to her.

  “I’m Annie,” she said. She’d straightened her back and sat with her elbows on the bar and one hand dangling towards her sazerac. Classic sexy-older-woman-at-a-bar pose, she thought. Maybe.

  “Jerry,” he said, and smiled a gentler version of that lobby smile. “Where you from?”

  “London,” she said. “Well, not originally.”

  “I love London. I went there for three months one summer. Got shitfaced, saw lots of art.” He said ‘shitfaced’ in a Dick Van Dyke voice, enjoying himself, and said ‘art’ with a hoity-toity comedy flair.

  “Two of the very best things to do in London.”

  “What brings you here?”

  “Holiday. A break.”

  “Nice. This is such a great city. I don’t want to leave. We’ve been here a few weeks, and it’s time to head back home soon. Which’ll be just awful.”

  He laughed, because it wouldn’t be awful really, and took a swig of his beer. Annie looked at his neck while he drank, looked down to his easy posture, felt a bit giddy and had another sip of her drink.

  They talked about music, because the bartender was playing The Kinks (“another fucking great English band,” Jerry said, as if they’d just released their first album). They talked about the weather and it wasn’t even boring. They talked about The Country Club and The Decatur Lounge and some places she didn’t know in the Garden District. He listened and enthused and seemed to look at her in very much the same way that she was looking at him.

  “Another drink?” she said, when he’d finished his beer. “What would you like?”

  “I’d like to go to bed with you,” he said. He looked either terrified or excited, she couldn’t tell. Annie glanced at the bartender, who showed no sign of having heard.

  He leaned towards her, inhaled softly, and actually bit his bottom lip as he smiled at her. For a moment she thought about the fact that she might, for all he knew, say no. Then she asked the bartender if she could take her glass upstairs.

  “Sure thing, Annie,” she said, with a wink.

  His room was on the same floor as hers, but he had a view out the back, and twin beds – he was sharing with the blond boy – instead of her grand double. A bottle of whiskey sat on the side, next to the tiny fridge. It wasn’t a complete mess, but it wasn’t tidy either. Shoes, pants, unmade beds. Tangles of headphones and phone chargers, a few books (she noticed two Kurt Vonnegut paperbacks, felt pleased and then laughed out loud at herself for feeling pleased).

  There was a sofa, as well as the two beds, and that’s where she sat while he poured drinks – whiskey on ice. Huge whiskeys. Then he knelt down in front of her, his hands on her thighs, and she leaned down to kiss his beer-and-whiskey lips. He pulled down her top and pushed up her skirt and kissed her, and he looked extremely happy.

  “Ha!” he said. “I need to make sure I slow down a bit.” He laughed again and kissed her, very gently and with his hands pulling down her pants. She felt great.

  And for a while she barely moved, barely did anything at all really. She just wanted to watch him and enjoy. She wanted that good solid obliterating fuck. Then they spent an hour or two, playing and fucking, and then they dozed off, and then she went back to her own room before his friend got home and walked in on them.

  *

  Sitting at the end of her own bed, looking out the window early the next morning, Annie watched the still, blue sky. The stars disappeared into the dawn. Everything might in fact be about to collapse, she realised. Chaos may actually ensue. Messy horror.

  She found it tricky to think of anything other than Jerry. The heat and the wet and the promise of flood all seemed to be in his service. That day she read, a little bit, and ate at the cafe with the beanburgers and the wheatgrass smoothies; she visited the art gallery and went out for fancy dinner. Going back to her room that night, she stopped outside his hotel room, stood almost pushed up again
st it, drunk and careless and wanting to eat him.

  She did wonder whether she was a silly fool who needed to get a grip. Silly fool, she’d think, get a grip. It was someone else’s voice though and she didn’t listen. She thought of her mum, and her grandmas, and aunties, and great-aunties, and women drinking and smoking and dyeing their hair, badly, and wearing good coats and shoes and lipstick and having a good time. She thought about the boy’s body.

  Even when he wasn’t there, she felt like she was watching him. She let possibilities loom from the corner, and she didn’t turn to face them.

  The next evening, after she’d eaten a hot fishy soup in a bar around the corner, Annie got back to the hotel and found there was a band setting up in the courtyard through the back of the lobby. It was the woman and the men she’d seen busking in the street a few times, and they were dolled up – silky dresses, shirts and ties – and sitting on the hotel’s fancy chairs, sipping from the hotel’s fancy glasses. Guests surrounded them, some sitting and some standing with drinks in hand, waiting to indulge the local show. Hotel staff – the bartender, the man from reception, a waiter, a cook – leaned in the doorway or against the wall, ready to be back at work at any moment. And Jerry was there, with his friends. They were sitting on comfy chairs, great upholstered armchairs, which they must have carried outside from the lobby. How well did they know the staff here? They sat, they slouched, limp and warm.

  Annie perched on a chair by an iron balustrade. The trumpet trumpeted and the singer sang and Annie relaxed. The band played louder and louder, and Annie watched Jerry smiling. He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and then he looked right round, over his shoulder, straight at Annie. He saw her, in her chair, leaning back against the railing, one arm draped over her head like a ballerina toy, and he mimicked her pose. It made her laugh, just a little, and he laughed back too, in just the same way. Other times, when he had caught her eye, his friends had called him over, taken his attention. This time they did not notice, they were watching the band, and the boy looked at her for another second or two before slowly dipping his head and looking back up towards the music. Annie looked at him, the back of him, thought of how he would die too, shrink away, and she felt a satisfying sadness, an excitement at the thought of him ripening and then rotting.