SO, NEWLY UNEMPLOYED, I lay on the couch belching beans and Crystal hot sauce, waiting for Keith LeRoy. Bat kept strafing the room: he'd dash in, jump on a rug and ride it across the floor till it crashed into wall or furniture, then retreat I'd fed him, so this had to be some kind of higher complaint. Maybe he was afraid I'd no longer be able to provide for him in the manner to which he'd become accustomed.
I drifted as though on a raft: asleep, awake and somewhere in between, sounds around me settling in half-acknowledged, setting off sparks that caught at the dream-tinder.
Clare sat at the table by me. The sound of cars passing outside became her fingers on the keyboard. I'd just surfaced from a quart of gin, lying on the couch: she was home. Another review? Yes. It's going well? Fairly well, yes. Then, in the dream, I was again asleep.
Without transition I stood inside the ER doors, watching all those people rush towards Clare's room. White tile and bright light everywhere. Her overnight bag in my hand. Hairbrush and toothbrush, toothpaste, shampoo, one of the oversize T-shirts she wore to sleep in, all her usual meds.
Then in a dimly lit room I sat beside LaVerne as she poured martinis from a chilled pitcher, telling me about her childhood, her mother, and trains.
I looked up at her photo, the one Richard Garces gave me.
So many things I wanted to tell you, Verne.
I know.
I loved you more than any.
But with the same disabilities. Yes.
We can make up for our actions. But for our inactions, what we fail to do…
Do you think it's any different with me, Lew? With any of us? Let it go. This new woman you've met.
Deborah.
She makes you happy?
Yes.
Then cherish Iwr, Lew. Tell her the things you never told me. Hold her close. And let her hold you.
I'll try… Verne?
She was gone.
When I was a kid, twelve, thirteen, my father built a shoe-shine box for me. I'd said I wanted to earn my own money and a week later he handed me this thing. Solid hardwood box with a drawer for supplies, steel footrest above, a rod on the side for shoe-shine rags. Amazing piece of workmanship. He'd even stocked it with polishes, a brush, pieces of old towels. That Saturday he took me along on his usualrounds, Billy's D-light Diner, Clcburne Hotel Barber Shop, Blue Moon Tavern, DeSoto Park, and introduced me to his friends, many of whom, it happened, needed shoe-shines. I came home that day with almost eight dollars. I don't think I ever touched the box again. I spent the money on books. Paperbacks were a quarter back then. Seven dollars and change bought a lot of books. And earned a lot of grief from my mother, who for weeks complained of my wasting all that money, buying more books when I had a room full of them already.
When my own son was nine or ten, he asked for a magic cabinet. You'd put a ball in there, open doors and it would vanish, then you'd close and open the doors again and the ball would reappear. He'd come across the design for it in an old Popular Mechanics he found somewhere. So, calling upon what little I could rememberof my father's skill, I built the cabinet for him, even painted on mysterious Chinese symbols. The cabinet sat on a shelf in his room for years, Janie told me, never used but always in clear sight.
"You comin' 'long or not?" Keith LeRoy said above me.
I looked up, for a moment disoriented.
"Let myself in, since you wouldn't answer the door. Hand got sore, standing out there knocking. You really oughta get a decent lock, man, you care about any of this shit."
I swung my legs over the side of the couch and sat up.
"Say that 'cause something for sure been goin' on 'round here, way there's eyes behind every window while I'm comin' down the street."
I told him about the juvenile muggers.
"Damn, they do be startin' early nowadays, don't they. So… You coming with?"
I came with.
Keith LeRoy led me to a dark green Mercedes parked in front of the house and when I looked at him questioningly told me, "Friend's car." He turned the key. The engine cleared its throat once, very discreetly, then was purring.
"Your friend takes good care of his car."
"Yeah. He's the kind takes care of everything.
Business. Car."
"Friends."
"Yeah. 'Specially friends."
LeRoy signaled, watched in his wing mirror as he waited for a bread truck to pass, then pulled out. Went up Prytania to Jefferson, then left to Tchoupitoulas.
Twenty minutes later we were seated at a corner table near the door, me with coffee, looking up at the name painted in block white letters on the window outside, FUNKY BUTT, LeRoy with a draft beer, checking out two young ladies drinking margaritas at the bar. Paint had run between thefinal T's, making it look more like FUNKY BUM. I didn't know about the butt part, wasn't sure I wanted to know, butfunky was dead on.
The bartender/waitress/cook, obviously a woman of many talents, dropped hamburgers on the table before us and stalked back towards the bar. Never know what might be going on up there while you were away. The hamburgers came in plastic baskets lined with waxed paper. Already grease was seeping through onto the tables.
I watched steam rise from the hamburger, grease spread below, as I finishedmy coffee. LeRoy downed his hamburger in four truly impressive bites. I'd just started mine when he said "There's your man" and stood.
He walked over to meet him. Neither made any move towards a handshake, anything like that, of course. They stood talking. Delany's eyes cut towards me.
It's not something you see too often on TV or in movies: the detective standing up with grease dribbling down his chin to apprehend a suspect.
I started for them just as Delany turned to leave. LeRoy's hand shot out and clamped on his upper arm.
That was when Armantine Rauch stepped through the door.
"Boy's with me," he said.
LeRoy looked once into Rauch's eyes and let go of Delany, stepping back, amis half-raised, palms out.
Rauch's eyes turned to me. We stood in mutual regard, no expression on our faces. Absolute quiet in the bar.
"We know one another?"
He must have seen something in my eyes like what LeRoy saw in his. A solid, compact little blue-steel22 appeared.
"I sure as hell hope there ain't no goddamn heroes here."
The gun gave him confidence. Now his eyes could let go of mine. They swept the room. Shon Delany, still afraid to move. Keith LeRoy back against the wall. The girls at the bar, swiveled about to watch, skirts hiked high on their legs.
"Had about all I can stomach of heroes."
He smiled. Let the gun fall down along his leg.
"Man get a drink around here?"
"Sure you can, darlin'."
Rauch whirled about-and into the baseball bat that landed expertly just below the supraorbital ridge, at the bridge of his nose. He went back, and down, like a door slammed off its hinges, just as inert.
LeRoy lowered his hands. I picked up the. 22, which slid towards me when Rauch fell. The girls swiveled back to the bar to slurp up the dregs of their drinks through pastel straws.
"Dam sonsabitches. Think they come in here and mess with my customers. Doan never learn." She laughed to herself. "Learned him anyways."
As I said, a lady of many talents. First sign of trouble, she'd gone out the back door and around. With her Louisville slugger.
Not a game I much care for, baseball, but it has its points.
Bartender/waifress/cook/enforcer, she stepped behind the bar again and announced: "Last call, ladies and gentlemen. Might want to order doubles. Cops be here soon enough."
I knew just what she meant.
All kinds of undesirables dropping by this afternoon.