Elise Blackwell - The Lower Quarter

Marion

The vinyl felt cold through the thin smock, but otherwise she was comfortable, finding the pain more fascinating than unpleasant this time — not erotic like the pain Clay delivered yet revelatory in its own way, each tiny bite into her skin a clue to who she was.

This time, too, she had a mental image of the result, could feel her wings or fins or wing-fins spreading across her back. She relaxed and listened to the loud Mozart string quartet, the satisfying hum of Eddie’s gun, the low beads of his voice when he talked, which wasn’t often or for long.

How strange it must be to work on skin rather than canvas, to make art on an object that moved. The canvas just sat there, stony in its silence, never talking back, never resisting but never cooperating, either — its own form of resistance, really, in its refusal to participate.

“Did you hear about those kids in the warehouse?” Eddie asked after a while. “I’ve been worrying it was that couple with all those dogs that are always parking themselves outside. I feel bad because I wished they’d go away, but that’s not how I meant it. Six people died, and four dogs. They were just trying to stay warm.”

Marion’s shoulder blade tensed under Eddie’s hand, and he asked her what was wrong, his voice gentle. “My brother,” she whispered under the music and the noise, and he stopped, laying a cool hand flat on her back.

Dressed, shirt covering her now-itching back, Eddie told her what he’d heard and she told him about her brother’s return, their last conversation.

“Don’t worry until you know,” Eddie told her. “The odds are against him being there.”

Perhaps Henry had been right about family connection because the possibility that he was dead sat metallic in her stomach. She’d always assumed they could repair their relationship later, much later. Her vision of it was vague, and in it their hair was gray, their faces fallen or pinched, but still it was something she held in her mind as a piece of her future.

Eddie reiterated, “The odds are against it, and even if he was there, some who were made it out.”

Marion nodded, but her throat constricted with her effort not to cry.

“You got to work later, right?”

Marion nodded.

“Let’s walk you down there and get you a drink. Maybe folks will be there who know something.”

Marion nodded again and let him lead her down Decatur toward Molly’s, grateful to be told what to do.

The dark-haired bartender from the lounge across the street was peering into Johanna’s workshop’s windows, white towel hanging out of the back pocket of his jeans. He turned to them as they approached. “I saw some guy come out of here earlier — just didn’t look right. Johanna didn’t come across for lunch today, either.”

“Maybe she just had a visitor, you know,” Eddie said.

“Something about the guy didn’t look right, the way he looked around when he left. And who comes down here in a suit anymore? Anyway, I knocked hard and I rang the bell and she didn’t answer. Place is locked up and looks okay, so I guess all is fine. Kind of saw it out of the corner of my eye, anyway, while I was serving a table.”

“You hear about the warehouse fire?” Eddie asked him.

“Yeah, bad thing, really bad thing.” But, no, he hadn’t heard anything about the identity of the kids involved other than that they were homeless, or something similar, who’d come to New Orleans, and that they’d had dogs with them. “Some people got out,” he said. “If any good can come out of such a bad thing, maybe it’ll inspire some of these kids to go home and make peace. Or at least do something if they’re going to stay here, you know?”

Marion tried to remember the faces of the couple often squatting on Decatur but couldn’t. The girl had blond dreadlocks and was pretty filthy-looking, but Marion’s memory would fill in no more detail. A couple of the dogs she remembered, though: a black-and-white border collie mix and a tan terrier-type dog with wiry fur.

“You didn’t do any work on them, did you?” she asked Eddie.

He shook his head. “Nah. That couple with the dogs came in once and asked about prices, but they never came back. She had some nice ink on her already. One of them I recognized because no one except this guy in Copenhagen draws like that. Never travels over here, so she went to him. The guy’s tats were pretty run of the mill. You know, you could create a chronology of trends by working up from his ankles or wrists. Tribal first and then all that followed. Tribal, my ass.” Eddie’s laugh was small and disdainful, but the disdain didn’t seem to run deep. “But her — she’d shown some originality. Plus the money to back it up.”

Eddie walked Marion to Molly’s. “I’m going to come back and get you at the end of your shift, okay?” He waited for her to nod. “So you stay here until I get here. And you call me if you hear anything.” He took her phone, flipped it open, and pressed buttons. “I’m 7 on your speed dial, for good luck. You make yourself a drink before you make one for anyone else.”

Inside the girl with pin bangs was working the bar. “We’re both on — finally got enough business. Which half you want?”

Marion shrugged, trying to remember her name. “Hey, Suzette?”

“Yeah?” The girl raised her plucked eyebrows higher.

“You hear anything about that warehouse fire?”

The eyebrows lowered and knitted slightly — an expression of sympathy Marion was unused to. “Sorry, but no.”

The shift wasn’t busy, but it was steady. Marion kept moving, glad to have time passing. Occasionally she and Suzette met in the middle, but mostly Marion worked the back and Suzette the front half of the bar and the window orders. That meant that Suzette had higher turnover, Marion had more locals and heavy drinkers, and they each earned their half of the tip jar.

“It’s nice not to have the whole stretch for a change,” Suzette said while they were splitting the cash. “And you’re good.”

“Thanks.” Marion tried a smile.

“Hey, want to get a drink with me sometime soon? I have a mad crush on a bartender across the way. I’m dying to see what’s there, but I don’t want to come on too strong or have him think I’m the kind of girl who drinks alone in the afternoon. Come with me — maybe one day next week?”

It had been years since Marion had had a girlfriend and a long time since she’d had a friend at all unless she counted Clay or Eddie. She was starting to think she could count Eddie, but it would be nice to have a friend who didn’t want to go out with her. “Yeah, that sounds good.” Later she wished she’d said fun or great or something more enthusiastic than good , but she’d done the best she could for a girl whose only brother might be dead. Maybe she’d follow up by reminding Suzette about the drink or even getting her phone number. Eddie had made a calculation when he’d made himself 7 on her speed dial, but that had been generous. There was no one at all between him and 1, which was nothing but her voice mail.

Eli

He imagined, perhaps even planned, a painting of a city block containing an apartment building with the facade missing to reveal the rooms. In the middle of that building was a room containing him, Johanna, a bed, a table, books, flowers. The other rooms, indeed the whole rest of the city, would not be detailed. Those nearest them would be suggested in brushstrokes, while those farthest away would be only smears. An unfinished world, containing only them and the things they touched. This represented how he felt when he was alone with Johanna, the rest of the world pushed away. Or, more accurately, they were the whole of the world, or at least the only part of it that signified. In the painting, the flowers near the bed would be bright — the only yellow in the whole painting.