James Burke - Half of Paradise

They went to a party one Saturday night and left early. It was like the other parties they had gone to. The rooms were crowded with people, and there was a progressive combo trying to play above the noise; the bass player passed out in the hallway, and Wally, the redheaded, blue-eyed Cambridge boy with a taste for Scotch, gave an imitation of a Baptist preacher. Someone opened the door of a bedroom at the wrong time and there was a scene and a girl began crying and left by herself since her date had been one of those in the bedroom. The people in the upstairs apartment knocked on the walls and floor, and Wally went out and came back with a bum he had found in Jackson Park and the bum got sick in the flower bed of the courtyard and Wally was told to leave by the hostess. The knocking on the walls and floor continued, and finally Avery and Suzanne left by the side door without saying good night to anyone and walked down the quiet cobblestone street in the dark and breathed the cool night air. They stopped in a bakery and bought some pastry and went to her apartment to make coffee.

She fixed café au lait in the kitchen and brought the coffeepot and the hot milk out on a tray and they drank it in the living room and ate the pastry.

“Did you mind leaving the party?” he said.

“Not if you wanted to go.”

“I like it better here.”

“I like it too,” she said.

“Who is Thomas Hardy?”

“He was an English writer.”

“Somebody asked me if I’d read him.”

“What did you say?”

“I told him I didn’t keep up with professional baseball anymore,” Avery said.

She put her napkin to her mouth as she laughed.

“I know who asked you,” she said. “It was the little buglike fellow with the baggy trousers. He’s Wally’s roommate. He pays the rent for both of them. He thinks Wally is a talented writer.”

“Is he?”

“He never writes anything,” she said.

“What does the bug fellow do?”

“Reads Thomas Hardy, I suppose.”

She poured more milk and coffee into his cup.

“Could you ask Denise to go out for a while?” he said.

Denise was Suzanne’s roommate. She was a pleasant, intellectual girl, and she would have been attractive if she didn’t wear a wash-faded pair of slacks and an unpressed blouse stained with paint all the time.

“She’s painting in the back room now,” Suzanne said. “Some woman is paying her twenty-five dollars to paint a portrait from a photograph.”

“Would she mind leaving for an hour?”

“I couldn’t ask her to. She’s been very good about everything, and it wouldn’t be fair to ask her to stop work because of us. She needs the money badly.”

“Do you want to go to the horse races tomorrow? The park is open for the season now,” he said.

“Let’s go to Tony Bacino’s. I’ve always wanted to see what it was like inside.”

“What is it?”

“One of those nightclubs where men dress up like women,” she said.

“I’d rather see the horses.”

“Don’t you want to go?”

“No.”

“Denise went one time. She said she saw two men dancing together. God, what a sight. Can you imagine it?”

“Do you want to go out to the park?” he said.

“I’ll go anywhere you ask me to. Are you angry?”

“Why would you want to see men dressed like women?”

“I don’t know. I was teasing. Don’t be mad.”

“I’m not,” he said.

“We’ll watch the horses and have a lovely time.”

“Could you pick me up at my room? They run the races in the afternoon and we’ll be late getting out.”

“We’ll do something first, won’t we?” she said.

“Yes. That’s always first.”

She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. They walked together out to the balcony and looked down over the iron railing at the flagstone courtyard with the moonlight on the flower beds. The white paint over the bricking of the walls looked pale in the light, and away in the distance they could hear the jazz bands playing on Bourbon. It was getting late and he kissed her good night and walked down Dauphine towards his rooming house.

On Sunday afternoon she was parked in front of the rooming house in her sports car when he got back from work. She smiled when she saw him. His denims were stiff with dirt, the skin of his face was stained from the black smoke that comes off a fresh pipe weld, his crushed straw hat was frayed at the edges and the brim was turned down to protect him from the sun. There were two thin white circles around his eyes where he had worn the machinist’s goggles while cleaning the slag out of the welds, and his shirt was split down the back from being washed thin. He talked with her for a moment at the car and went up the front walk and across the veranda into the house. He showered and shaved and changed clothes and came back to the car. She slid over on the seat and he got behind the steering wheel.

They drove to the apartment and parked the car in the brick-paved alley behind the building, and later they went to the park. The best racing in New Orleans was at the Fair Grounds, but it was open only in the winter season, and the races at the park were generally good. They sat close down in the stands near the track. The sun was in the west above the trees on the other side of the park, and the track was a quarter-mile smooth brown dirt straightaway. At one end was the automatic starting gate, and the three-year-olds were being lined up for the second race. The silk blouses of the jockeys flashed in the sun and the horses were nervous in the gate just before the start. Then the bell rang and they burst out on the track and charged over the dirt, still damp from the rain, and the mud flew up at their hoofs; they stayed close together at first and then began to spread out, the jockeys bent low over their necks whipping their rumps with the quirts, and as they neared the finish a roan had the lead by a length and Avery could see the bit working in its mouth and saliva frothing into the short hair around its muzzle while the jockey whipped its rump furiously, his knees held high and the numbered sheet of paper pinned to his blouse partly torn loose and flapping in the wind. They thundered over the finish line under the judges’ stand, the clods of dirt flicking in the air, with the roan out ahead by a length and a half, and the jockeys stood up in the stirrups and tightened the reins.

“Isn’t it exciting?” Suzanne said. “I’ve never been before. It takes your breath away.”

“Do you like it?” he said.

“Very much. Why didn’t we come before? Can we bet?”

“If you want to.”

“How much do you bet?”

“Anything.”

“Bet two dollars for me in the next one,” she said.

“On which horse?”

“Any one. You decide.”

Her eyes were happy, and she wore a white dress with a transparent lavender material around her shoulders, and she had on one of those big white summer hats with the wide brim that Southern ladies used to wear to church on Sunday.

“Let’s bet on that one,” she said. The black one. Look how his coat shines. Isn’t he handsome?”

Avery left the stands and bet her money and two dollars of his own at the window.

“I bet it across the board,” he said.

“What does that mean?”

“You collect if he wins, places, or shows, but your odds go down.”

“I know he’s going to win. Look at him. He’s beautiful. Watch how the muscles move in his flanks when he walks.”

They were taking the horses down to the starting gate.

“I wish I could paint him,” she said. “Have you ever seen anything so handsome? Does a horse like that cost much?”

“Yes.”

“I wonder if Daddy would buy one for my birthday.”