Patricia Geary - Strange Toys

Every breath you take… I’ll be watching you!

Cheekbones like slabs, straight black hair, and those clear clear brown eyes—

The face is Alonso’s.

“Julie, let’s go.”

“No way, José! We caught us some live mountain bass!”

Before there’s another chance to protest, two men hover over our table. Both are tidily dressed, chinos and pressed flannel shirts. The blond has a rather splendid mustache and the brunet has a neatly trimmed beard and a gold ring, very discreet, in one ear.

“Y’all aren’t local girls,” Blondie observes in a soft southern accent with a predatory undertone.

“Not girls, women !” Brownie admonishes.

“We’re from Lafayette.” Everything about Julie’s voice sounds like trouble.

“Not you !” Brownie protests in my direction.

“Yes, me.” A giant gulp of gimlet for protection.

“Not born there.”

“Okay, have it your way. Not born there.”

“I can always tell.” He smiles smugly.

“Bully for you.”

“Back, Hulko!” Julie commands. “Be nice.”

“Look who’s talking,” says Blondie.

“Hulko?” asks Brownie.

I look from one face to another, all the cute little games and whatnot, and here’s my thought: I do not want to be here!

On and on in my head:

I DO NOT WANT TO BE HERE!

I DO NOT WANT TO BE HERE!

I DO NOT WANT TO BE HERE!

I WANT TO BE THERE!

Then be there! A familiar voice seems to whisper in my ear.

The strangest thing happens: time simply stops. My companions are frozen before me like fish under glass. Yet my own body is capable of movement.

The music sustains itself on one note, indicative.

The entire bar has become a wax museum, atmosphere of the embalmed. Only the holograms undulate, as if the stasis of the room provides them with sudden life, sets them free.

A figure walks toward me, a man, stalking over the air as if it were water.

Alonso. Natch!

“What do you want?”

He stares at me, his eyes so clear you could see all the way to the Rio Grande.

“Why are you here?”

Again, the eyes, the expanding eyes big as Ferris wheels. They come to swallow you up.

“Can you help me?”

At that, he extends his palm, but it is as if his arm were a kind of accordion, the way it magically lengthens itself, then retracts, the body not having budged an inch.

My own palm opens up and this is what it holds: my long-lost juju.

I want to follow him. I want to ask him a thousand questions. I want to be with him forever, but already he is thinning out, turning into air, into memory, and even with all of my muscles pulling for power, I know that I will never, ever see him again.

Not in this world.

“What’ve you got there in your hand?”

The world cranks on again, the slow whine accelerating to normal noise, like a vacuum cleaner that’s been unplugged with the switch on, replugged.

My palm closes up quick. “Nothing.”

“Then why did you pick it up off the floor?”

Three pairs of eyes watch me curiously. “Pick it up off the floor?”

Julie sighs. “Yes! What’s wrong, you going sieve-brain on me? You leaned over, picked up something under the table, stared at it like it held your future, and now you tell me ‘nothing.’”

“Can we go to the women’s room?”

“I don’t have to go.”

“Julie!”

“Okay, okay. Isa comin, Massah.” She shuffles along behind me, hamming it up for the two guys now seated at our table.

We weave our way through the suddenly crowded bistro, and indeed it is an interesting clientele. The plaster hand and its hallucinated flame wink, imaginary as the unperceived-to-the-eye daily rotation of the earth.

The women’s room is maybe three square feet, and a staggering number of women, clowns piling out of Volkswagens, are crammed inside, slicking down their hair, spitting in their cake mascara, poofing talcum powder between their legs.

“You don’t want the brunet, you can have the blond.”

“I don’t want either one.”

“What was that on the floor, Mel Gibson’s telephone number?”

“There’s nothing wrong with those guys—”

“You can say that again!”

“Scuse me!” A fluffy redhead elbows me away from the sink.

“—But this isn’t me, not at all. Maybe you could stay and I could take a bus back. Or…”

“Look, what is it?” My friend gives me a look of sympathy. “If you’re this upset—”

“I am.”

“Then let’s split. No use ruining our lungs in here.”

Several women are utilizing aerosol cans, spraying away God-knows-what.

By tacit agreement, we duck out the back way, leaving our boys all alone at the table. But never mind—several women eye them happily, freshly concocted desserts.

Outside, the world is quiet and cool and calm. The raucous beat from the jukebox is softened by distance, and already by time. The sound evokes the sweet sadness of other people’s parties, when you pass by in the evening. The guests are dressed in pastel clothing; you hear the melodic tinkling of glasses filled with ice cubes.

“Oh well.” Julie’s voice is resigned. “The best part is over anyway. We could have gotten laid if we wanted to. Now you don’t have to think about herpes.”

Perhaps this departure is too selfish. My hand clutches the juju, which glows with its old familiar heat.

“Besides, they didn’t look very athletic.”

“I’m sorry,” I say as we emerge from the remote part of Decatur. It takes much less time to come back than it did to go in. “I guess I’m just not much of a party girl. You would have had a much better time without me.”

“It isn’t my specialty either.”

“Well, then you’re a better fake.”

We both laugh at this as we order café au lait to go from the Café du Monde, then head away from Jackson Square to the place where the car is parked. Even though it is well after midnight, the Quarter feels like an enchanted, timeless zone in which nothing ever closes, the night is never over, people never go home.

“These people know how to party .”

I shrug. “What does that mean anyway, to party ? It always sounds like so much fun, but all it ever turns out to be is people getting together and drinking a lot.”

“Ain’t that the truth.”

“For instance, we could say that tonight, we partied .”

“We did.” Julie points to the street we turn on.

And yet the other people are the ones, always, who seem to have fun.

“What’s the most fun you’ve ever had?”

We pass the happy drunks on Bourbon Street, badly dressed, overweight, and having the time of their lives.

“When I ran my first marathon.”

“There you are!” I sound triumphant even if the feeling isn’t there. “Special people, special ideas of what a good time is.”

“Right.”

We turn down the street toward Saint Louis Cemetery and all the old eerie feelings come back: cloudy night, distant chanting, whiffs of peculiar and pungent scents.

“Do you think those people are still there?”

“Pet, it’s none of your business!”

But as she opens the car, I can’t resist first looking, then moving through the old black trees and dangling moss. Before the thought is conscious or intentional, my feet are standing at the outer edge of the circle.

The same white-garbed worshippers chant and light candles and smoke dubious herbs. In whatever kind of altered state, they remain seemingly oblivious to my presence.

Yet this is the important part: the power of the circle is mine. They generate a clumsy, strong energy, and that energy becomes me.