Ace Atkins - New Orleans Noir - The Classics

“I have seen this old and disgusting creature in her purple hat every night, quite plainly, for thirty years, and to my belief she has been murdered twice. I suppose it will take the third time.” He himself smoothly tossed down a drink.

The bartender leaned over and filled the young man’s glass.

“It’s within the week, within the month, that she comes back. Once she was shot point-blank — that was the first time. The young man was hot-headed then. I saw her carried out bleeding from the face. We hush those things, you know, at the Palace. There are no signs afterward, no trouble... The soft red carpet... Within the month she was back — with her young man meeting her at the table just after five.”

The bartender put his head to one side.

“The only good of shooting her was, it made a brief period of peace there,” said the fat man. “I wouldn’t scoff, if I were you.” He did seem the least bit fretted by that kind of interruption.

“The second time took into account the hat,” he went on. “And I do think her young man was on his way toward the right idea that time, the secret. I think he had learned something. Or he wanted it all kept more quiet, or he was a new one...” He looked at the young man at the other end of the bar with a patient, compassionate expression, or it may have been the inevitably tender contour of his round cheeks. “It is time that I told you about the hat. It is quite a hat. A great, wide, deep hat such as has no fashion and never knew there was fashion and change. It serves her to come out in winter and summer. Those are old plush flowers that trim it — roses? Poppies? A man wouldn’t know easily. And you would never know if you only met her wearing the hat that a little glass vial with a plunger helps decorate the crown. You would have to see it from above... Or you would need to be the young man sitting beside her at the gambling table when, at some point in the evening, she takes the hat off and lays it carefully in her lap, under the table... Then you might notice the little vial, and be attracted to it and wish to take it out and examine it at your pleasure off in the washroom — to admire the handle, for instance, which is red glass, like the petal of an artificial flower.”

The bartender suddenly lifted his hand to his mouth as if it held a glass, and yawned into it. The thin young man hit the counter faintly with his tumbler.

“She does more than just that, though,” said the fat man with a little annoyance in his soft voice. “Perhaps I haven’t explained that she is a lover too, or did you know that she would be? It is hard to make it clear to a man who has never been out to the Palace of Pleasure, but only serves drinks all day behind a bar. You see...” And now, lowering his voice a little, he deliberately turned from the young man and would not look at him anymore. But the young man looked at him, without lifting his drink — as if there were something hypnotic and irresistible even about his side face with the round, hiding cheek.

“Try to imagine,” the fat man was saying gently to the bartender, who looked back at him. “At some point in the evening she always takes off the purple hat. Usually it is very late... when it is almost time for her to go. The young man who has come to the rendezvous watches her until she removes it, watches her hungrily. Is it in order to see her hair? Well, most ghosts that are lovers, and lovers that are ghosts, have the long thick black hair that you would expect, and hers is no exception to the rule. It is pinned up, of course — in her straggly vague way. But the young man doesn’t look at it after all. He is enamored of her hat — her ancient, battered, outrageous hat with the awful plush flowers. She lays it down below the level of the table there, on her shabby old lap, and he caresses it... Well, I suppose in this town there are stranger forms of love than that, and who are any of us to say what ways people may not find to love? She herself, you know, seems perfectly satisfied with it. And yet she must not be satisfied, being a ghost... Does it matter how she seeks her desire? I am sure she speaks to him, in a sort of purr, the purr that is used for talking in that room, and the young man does not know what she seeks of him, and she is leading him on, all the time. What does she say? I do not know. But believe me... she leads him on...”

The bartender leaned on one hand. He had an oddly cheerful look by this time, as if with strange and sad things to come his way his outlook became more vivacious.

“To look at, she has a large-sized head,” said the fat man, pushing his lip with his short finger. “Well, it is more that her face spreads over such a wide area. Like the moon’s... Much as I have studied her, I can only say that all her features seem to have moved farther apart from each other — expanded, if you see what I mean.” He brought his hands together and parted them.

The bartender leaned over closer, staring at the fat man’s face interestedly.

“But I can never finish telling you about the hat!” the fat man cried, and there was a little sigh somewhere in the room, very young, like a child’s. “Of course, to balance the weight of the attractive little plunger, there is an object to match on the other side of this marvelous old hat — a jeweled hatpin, no less. Of course the pin is there to keep the hat safe! Each time she takes off the hat, she has first to remove the hatpin. You can see her do it every night of the world. It comes out a regular little flashing needle, ten or twelve inches long, and after she has taken the hat off, she sticks the pin back through.”

The bartender pursed his lips.

“What about the second time she was murdered? Have you wondered how that was done?” The fat man turned back to face the young fellow, whose feet drove about beneath the stool. “The young lover had learned something, or come to some conclusion, you see,” he said. “It was obvious all the time, of course, that by spinning the brim ever so easily as it rested on the lady’s not over-sensitive old knees, it would be possible to remove the opposite ornament. There was not the slightest fuss or outcry when the pin entered between the ribs and pierced the heart. No one saw it done... except for me, naturally — I had been watching for it, more or less. The old creature, who had been winning at that, simply folded all softly in on herself, like a circus tent being taken down after the show, if you’ve ever seen the sight. I saw her carried out again. It takes three big boys every time, she is so heavy, and one of them always has the presence of mind to cover her piously with her old purple hat for the occasion.”

The bartender shut his eyes distastefully.

“If you had ever been to the Palace of Pleasure, you’d know it all went completely as usual — people at the tables never turn around,” said the fat man.

The bartender ran his hand down the side of his sad smooth hair.

“The trouble lies, you see,” said the fat man, “with the young lover. You are he, let us say...” But he turned from the drinking young man, and it was the bartender who was asked to be the lover for the moment. “After a certain length of time goes by, and love has blossomed, and the hat, the purple hat, is thrilling to the touch of your hand — you can no longer be sure about the little vial. There in privacy you may find it to be empty. It is her coquettishness, you see. She leads you on. You are never to know whether...”

The chimes of St. Louis Cathedral went somnambulantly through the air. It was five o’clock. The young man had risen somehow to his feet. He moved out of the bar and disappeared in the rain of the alley. On the floor where his feet had been were old cigarette stubs that had been kicked and raked into a little circle — a rosette, a clock, a game wheel, or something...