Ace Atkins - New Orleans Noir - The Classics

I closed my eyes and then looked once more. I saw again what I must have seen at first and ignored, the thing I had come to see. On Albert Sidney’s deformed and earless head, almost covering the awful disarray of his humanity, he had a wealth of reddish golden hair, rich and curly, proper aureole of a Celtic deity. Or a surfing king.

We had dinner at some anonymous restaurant in Alexandria, and then found a room at a motel not far from Pineville. I had bought a bottle of whiskey. Inside, I filled a glass after peeling away its sticky plastic cover that pretended to guard it from the world for my better health.

— Should I have brought you? Irma asked, sitting down on the bed.

— Yes, I said. — Sure. Nobody should... nobody ought to be shielded from this.

— But it... hasn’t got anything to do with... us. What Howard wants to do, does it?

— No, I said. — I don’t think so.

— Howard was all right. If things had gone... the way they do mostly. He wasn’t... isn’t... a weak man. He’s brave, and he used to work... sometimes sixteen hours a day. He was very... steady. Do you know, I loved him...

I poured her a drink. — Sometimes, I said, and heard that my voice was unsteady. — None of us know... what we can... stand.

— If Howard had had just any kind of belief... but...

— ... He just had himself...?

— Just that. He... his two hands and a strong back, and he was quick with figures. He always... came out...

— ... ahead.

She breathed deeply, and sipped the whiskey. — Every time. He... liked hard times. To work his way through. You couldn’t stop him. And very honest. An honest man.

I finished the glass and poured another one. I couldn’t get rid of the smells and the images. The whiskey was doing no good. It would only dull my senses prospectively. The smells and the images were inside for keeps.

— He’s not honest about...

— Albert Sidney? No, but I... it doesn’t matter. I release him of that. Which is why...

— You want me to go ahead with the divorce?

— I think. We can’t help each other, don’t you see?

— I see that. But... what will you do?

Irma laughed and slipped off her shoes, curled her feet under her. Somewhere back in the mechanical reaches of my mind, where I was listening to Vivaldi and watching a thin British rain fall into my garden, neither happy nor sad, preserved by my indifference from the Gulf, I saw that she was very beautiful and that she cared for me, had brought me to Alexandria as much for myself as for her sake, though she did not know it.

— ... do what needs to be done for the baby, she was saying. — I’ve asked for strength to do the best... thing.

— What do you want me to do?

— About the divorce? I don’t know about... the legal stuff. I want to... how do you say it...? Not to contest it?

— There’s a way. When the other person makes life insupportable...

Irma looked at me strangely, as if I were not understanding.

— No, no. The other... what he says.

— Adultery?

— And the rest. About Albert Sidney...

— No. You can’t...

— Why can’t I? I told you, Howard is all right. I mean, he could be all right. I want to let him go. Can’t you say some way or other what he claims is true?

I set my glass down. — In the pleadings. You can always accept what he says in your... answer.

— Pleadings?

— That’s what they call... what we file in a suit. But I can’t state an outright... lie...

— But you’re his counsel. You have to say what he wants you to say.

— No, only in good faith. The Code of Civil Practice... if I pleaded a lie... anyhow, Jesus, after all this... I couldn’t... Plead adultery...? No way.

— Yes, Irma said firmly, lovingly. She rose from the bed and came to me.

— Yes, she whispered. — You’ll be able to.

The next evening the plane was late getting into New Orleans. There was a storm line along the Gulf, a series of separate systems, thin monotonous driving rain that fell all over the city and the southern part of the state. The house was cool and humid when I got home, and my head hurt. The house was empty, and that was all right. I had a bowl of soup and turned on something very beautiful. La Stravaganza . As I listened, I thought of that strange medieval custom of putting the mad and the demented on a boat, and keeping it moving from one port to another. A ship full of lunacy and witlessness and rage and subhumanity with no destination in view. Furiosi , the mad were called. What did they call those who came into this world like Irma’s baby, scarce half made up? Those driven beyond the human by the world were given names and a status. But what of those who came damaged from the first? Did even the wisdom of the Church have no name for those who did not scream or curse or style themselves Emperor Frederic II or Gregory come again? What of those with bulbous heads and protruding tongues and those who stared all day at the blazing sun, all night at the cool distant moon? I listened and drank, and opened the door onto the patio so that the music was leavened with the sound of the falling rain.

It was early the next morning when Bert called me at home. He did not bother apologizing. I think he knew that we were both too much in it now. The amenities are for before. Or afterward.

— Listen, you’re back.

— Yes.

— I got Howard straightened up. You want to talk to him?

— What’s he saying?

— Well, he’s cleared up, you see? I got him to shower and drink a pot of coffee. It ain’t what he says is different, but he is himself and he wants to get them papers started. You know? You want to drop by Bo-Peep for a minute?

— No, I said, — but I will. I want to talk to that stupid bastard.

— Ah, Bert said slowly. — Un-huh. Well, fine, counselor. It’s cabin 10. On the street to the right as you come in. Can’t miss it.

I thought somebody ought to take a baseball bat and use it on Howard Bedlow until he came to understand. I was very tight about this thing now, no distance at all. I had thought about other things only once since I had been back. When a little phrase of Vivaldi’s had shimmered like a waterfall, and, still drunk, I had followed that billow down to the Gulf in my mind.

There were fantasies, of course. In one, I took Irma away. We left New Orleans and headed across America toward California, and she was quickly pregnant. The child was whole and healthy and strong, and what had befallen each of us back in Louisiana faded and receded faster and faster, became of smaller and smaller concern until we found ourselves in a place near the Russian River, above the glut and spew of people down below.

Acres apart and miles away, we had a tiny place carved from the natural wood of the hills. We labored under the sun and scarcely talked, and what there was, was ours. She would stand near a forest pool, nude, our child in her arms, and the rest was all forgotten as I watched them there, glistening, with beads of fresh water standing on their skin, the way things ought to be, under the sun.

Then I was driving toward Metairie amidst the dust and squalor of Airline Highway. Filling stations, hamburger joints, cut-rate liquor, tacos, wholesale carpeting, rent-a-car, people driving a little above the speed limit, sealed in air-conditioned cars, others standing at bus stops staring vacantly, some gesticulating in repetitive patterns, trying to be understood. No sign of life anywhere.

The sign above the Bo-Peep Motel pictured a girl in a bonnet with a shepherd’s crook and a vast crinoline skirt. In her lap she held what looked from a distance like a child. Close, you could see that it was intended to be a lamb curled in her arms, eyes closed, hoofs tucked into its fleece, peacefully asleep. Bo-Peep’s face, outlined in neon tubing, had been painted once, but most of the paint had chipped away, and now, during the day, she wore a faded leer of unparalleled perversity, red lips and china-blue eyes flawed by missing chips of color.