Lou Berney - November Road

She sat down at her table and started tinting a new portrait. The Moore baby, three months old. He was propped on a carnation-shaped swirl of satin that, Charlotte decided, required a subtle shade of ivory.

The president had been shot. Charlotte wasn’t sure if she’d truly grasped that yet. At the bank she’d watched as Hope Norton dropped her armful of folders. As Bonnie Bublitz in the teller cage burst into tears. As Vernon Phipps had walked out of the bank in a trance, leaving behind on the counter a stack of five-dollar bills. Jimmy Feeney kept asking, “Is this a joke? Earl, is this some kind of a joke?”

The smell of linseed oil and apple-flavored pipe tobacco. The hum and chuckle of the radiator. Charlotte worked. She continued to remain curiously unmoved, curiously removed, by the news from Dallas. For a moment she couldn’t remember what day of the week it was, or what year. It could have been any day, any year.

The phone rang. She heard Mr. Hotchkiss walk to his office and answer it.

“What’s that?” he said. “What? Oh, no! Oh, no!”

The parents of the Moore baby, their third, were Tim and Ann Moore. Charlotte’s first babysitting job had been for Tim’s pack of younger brothers. Ann’s sister was none other than Hope Norton, who was married to Virginia Richardson’s older brother, Bob. And yes, yet another link in the chain: Ann’s cousin on her mother’s side was Dooley’s boss at the hardware store, Pete Winemiller.

“Oh, no,” she heard Mr. Hotchkiss say. “I don’t believe it.”

The president had been shot. Charlotte could understand why people were shocked and upset. They feared an uncertain future. They worried that their lives would never be the same.

And maybe their lives wouldn’t be the same. But Charlotte knew that her life would remain undisturbed, her future—and the future of her daughters—certain. A bullet fired hundreds of miles away didn’t change that.

She dipped her brush and stroked rosy pink life into the Moore baby’s black-and-white cheek. Her favorite movie, as a child, had been The Wizard of Oz, her favorite moment when Dorothy opened the door of her black-and-white farmhouse and stepped into a strange and wonderful land.

Lucky Dorothy. Charlotte dipped her brush again and not for the first time imagined a tornado dropping from the sky and blowing her far away, into a world full of color.

Sunlight slid over Guidry, and the dream he’d been having jerked and blurred like film jumping off the sprockets of a movie projector. Five seconds later he couldn’t remember much about the dream. A bridge. A house in the middle of the bridge, where no house should be. Guidry had been standing at a window of the house, or maybe he was on a balcony, peering down at the water and trying to spot a ripple.

He flopped out of bed, his head as huge and tender as a rotten pumpkin. Aspirin. Two glasses of water. He was prepared, now, to pull on his pants and negotiate the hallway. Art Pepper. That was Guidry’s favorite cure for a hangover. He slid Smack Up from the cardboard sleeve and placed it on the turntable. “How Can You Lose” was his favorite tune on the album. He felt better already.

It was two o’clock in the afternoon, or what residents of the French Quarter called the crack of dawn. Guidry made a pot of scalding-hot coffee and filled two mugs, topping off his with a healthy shot of Macallan. Scotch was his other favorite cure for a hangover. He took a swallow and listened to Pepper’s saxophone weaving in and out of the melody like a dog dodging traffic.

The redhead was still knocked out, the sheet on her side of the bed kicked away and one arm flung over her head. But wait a second. She was a brunette now, no longer a redhead. Fuller lips, no freckles. How had that happened? He remained perplexed—was he still dreaming?—until he remembered that today was Friday, not Thursday, and the redhead had been the night before last.

Too bad. He could’ve dined out on that story for weeks, how he was so good in the sack that he’d banged the freckles right off a girl.

Jane? Jennifer? Guidry had forgotten the brunette’s name. She worked for TWA. Or maybe that had been the redhead before her. Julia?

“Rise and shine, sunshine,” he said.

She turned to him with a sleepy smile, her lipstick flaking off. “What time is it?”

He handed her a mug. “Time for you to beat it.”

In the shower he lathered up and planned his day. Seraphine first, find out what she had for him. After that he’d get started on the deal that Sam Saia’s boy had brought him at the Carousel the other night. Was Saia’s boy steady? Everything Guidry had heard about him said so, but better to ask around and make sure before he committed himself.

What else? Pop into the bar across from the courthouse to buy a few rounds and soak up the scuttlebutt. Dinner with Al LaBruzzo, God help us all. LaBruzzo had his heart set on buying a go-go joint. Guidry would have to handle him delicately—he was Sam’s brother, and Sam was Carlos’s driver. By the end of dinner, Guidry would have to convince Al to convince himself that no, no, he didn’t want Guidry’s money after all, would refuse even if Guidry got down on his knees and begged him to take it.

Guidry shaved, trimmed his nails, browsed the closet. He picked a brown windowpane suit with slim notched lapels and a Continental cut. Cream-colored shirt, green tie. Green tie? No. Thanksgiving was less than a week away, and he wanted to get into the spirit of the season. He swapped the green tie for one the deep, dusty orange of an autumn sunset.

When he stepped into the living room, he saw that the brunette was still there. She was curled up on the sofa—not even dressed yet, ye gods—watching the television.

He went over to the window and found her skirt and her blouse on the floor where they’d fallen the night before, her bra hanging on the bar cart. He tossed the clothes at her.

“One Mississippi,” he said. “Two Mississippi. I’ll give you till five.”

“He’s gone.” She didn’t even look at Guidry. “I can’t believe it.”

Guidry realized that she was crying. “Who?”

“They shot him,” she said.

“Shot who?”

He looked over at the TV. On the screen a newscaster sat behind a desk, taking a deep drag off his cigarette. He looked limp and dazed, as if someone had just dumped a bucket of cold water on him.

“The motorcade had just passed the Texas School Book Depository in downtown Dallas,” the newscaster said. “Senator Ralph Yarborough told our reporter that he was riding three cars behind the president’s car when he heard the three distinct rifle shots.”

The president of what? That was Guidry’s first thought. The president of some oil company? Of some jungle republic that no one had ever heard of? He didn’t understand why the brunette was so broken up about it.

And then it clicked. He lowered himself next to her and watched the newscaster read from a sheet of paper. A sniper had fired from the sixth floor of a building in Dealey Plaza. Kennedy, riding in the backseat of a Lincoln Continental convertible, had been hit. They’d taken him to Parkland Hospital. A priest had administered last rites. At 1:30 P.M., an hour and a half ago, the doctors had pronounced the president dead.