Thomas Adcock - New Orleans Noir

He pulled out a joint. “Well, how about we smoke this in my car?”

She could hear the phone all the way up the stairs. She was coming home from waiting tables at Elizabeth’s Diner near the levee. The voice on the phone wouldn’t stop crying. A tugboat captain, the voice sobbed, reported a body caught on a floating tree near Poland Avenue Wharf in the late morning.

Her instinct was to get drunk. She listened to her instinct. She parked her bike at the corner of Lesseps and Burgundy and entered BJ’s, an old neighborhood dive bar, and proceeded to wallow. It was a skill she was good at. Several of the colorful older regulars had disappeared since the storm, but there was always another drunk to spring up and take the vacant barstool. She sat at a table away from the new faces.

A great many drinks later, the welcome feeling of indifference washed over her. Indifference over losing electricity every other day. Indifference over having to ride the bus for miles to find a decent grocery store. Indifference over nobody knowing what they were doing or how they were going to do it. She reckoned New Orleans as the best loverboy in the neighborhood who all the husbands cornered and mutilated while the wives wailed.

“Why are you crying?” He was dripping wet, his sparkly brown eyes mischievous. She jumped up and held him. Hard. He smelled of Old Man River.

“You’ve got a lot of explaining to do. Everybody thinks you’ve drowned.”

The strains of a brass band reached a crescendo. The bar door opened and a second-line entered loudly, marching drums, trumpets, tuba, trombones, good-time people swaying with the good-time music, customers smiling, waving their drinks as they danced.

“See what you’re missing?” she yelled to him over the cacophony.

She looked long and hard in the bathroom mirror and didn’t like what she saw. I wonder if I’ll die tonight , she thought, and sat on the toilet. Now that’s a sign you’re wasted , she mused, when you actually sit on the toilet at the Abbey .

Back in the bar, the jukebox was screaming a Tom Waits song about the end of the world. She spied Wyatt nursing a cocktail in the corner and sauntered over.

“That really sucks about Jimmie Lee,” he said after hugging her.

“Don’t tell anybody,” she whispered in his ear, “but he’s in hiding.”

Wyatt looked at her, incredulous.

“He’s too embarrassed.”

“You mean it’s a hoax?”

“Just like Tom-fucking-Sawyer.”

Wyatt grinned ear to ear. “I’m going to kill him!”

They laughed and drank with renewed vigor. They drank all night long and made out at the bar. She’d already slept with Wyatt. He had been number forty-six or so.

By the time they decided to part company the next morning, it was already humid and scorching. The thought of her air conditioner still on the blink prompted her to order an ice-cold cocktail in a to-go cup. She remembered the pill someone had given her the night before and popped it in her mouth. As she walked down the street, she heard the low purr of a muscle car. It stopped next to her.

“Gigolette!”

She leaned into the open passenger window. “Aren’t you dead? Did you fall off the dock or jump?” She grabbed his cigarette and took a drag.

“Funny girl. Thirsty?”

“Always.”

She climbed in and they barreled down to the Saturn Bar on Saint Claude. They sat in a booth drinking whiskey, smoking Camels, and listening to George Jones on the old dime jukebox. The pill took effect, making the music sound like she was in a tunnel. She looked at her hand and it seemed a mile away.

“You’re really gone, aren’t you, Jimmie?”

“Yes, I’m surely dead.”

“I must be crazy then.”

“I like you because you’re crazy, girl.”

“I’ve been a terrible, terrible person. Horrible. I’m just a wreck, Jimmie. Sometimes I think I stick around just so another hurricane can finish the job.” She wiped her brow. “Your funeral’s tomorrow. You coming?”

He took a drag off his Camel. “I think it’s going to storm again.”

She sat down on a stone bench in front of the mortuary in Metairie. The service was proceeding inside but she couldn’t bring herself to go in. Instead, she remained outside and smoked cigarettes. A pair of crows landed near her, cawing loudly. Thunder sonic-boomed in the distance.

“You going in or what?”

“You asshole, Jimmie! This prank has gone on long enough. You’re coming with me now.” She took him by the arm and pulled him to the front door. The crows shrieked as she opened the door and marched to the chapel.

“Look who I found!” she announced loudly to the room. Jimmie Lee’s grandmother, mother, stepfather, sisters, aunts, uncles, other relatives, friends looked up. The priest paused. Jimmie Lee’s cousin Ronnie slipped his arm out of hers and coughed. The priest held up the Eucharist and the service resumed. She watched Ronnie walk away to sit down with a girl who glared at her. She felt bewildered and faint, and ran outside to the parking lot as the rain came down.

She woke up suddenly from an afternoon nightmare about trapped, dying cats and dogs howling from the evacuated houses around her. Drenched in sweat, she arose and started the bath water.

She was depressed in the first place, so it was hard to differentiate the new despair from the old. Everything was a chore. Everything was broken. Someone opened the door to Paradise, and Hell walked in.

After the bath she donned a leopard-print wraparound dress with strappy high heels, barelegged. Too hot for stockings. Her long black hair reached to her lower back. The Latin migrant workers, brought in to secure blue tarps over roofless houses, wolf-whistled after her.

Drinking was a crutch, yes, but it got her through the day. Just for today, she would drink just for today, one day at a time. Maybe tomorrow would be better. Maybe she should sell everything and move west. West of Eden.

“Maybe you should slow it down, lady,” said the new bartender. New bartenders were the worst. She hated the new faces that appeared daily in the city. New faces from the rest of America, dull uninspired faces. She surveyed the bar and noted the appalling number of strange men. They all seemed to be staring at her. New predatory faces contending for spoils. Modern carpetbaggers descending upon a modern Reconstruction.

Wyatt sat next to her.

“You okay?”

“I’m ghastly, thank you for asking.”

“That was a bit of a fiasco at the funeral the other day. You’ve sure been acting loopy, come to think of it. Even more than usual.”

“It’s my fault he’s dead.”

Wyatt put his arm around her. “Come on, now, we all feel helpless about it.”

“I was with him that night. Just before.”

“Then what happened? What happened to you and Jimmie Lee down by the levee?”

Jimmie started the car, a rebuilt Mustang.

“Maybe we should ride around so we get some breeze,” he said, and pealed out into the late night. They drove around the Bywater, sharing the joint, then headed over the Industrial Canal to the Dead Zone. It was black as black can be. No streetlights, nothing. Just the gleam of the waxing moon on the eerie razed stubble of a landscape that was once a neighborhood. Acres of toxic silt. Mountains of trash. Even the crows wouldn’t land here.