Elise Blackwell - The Lower Quarter

This vision and the feeling that came with it had allowed him to avoid thinking about Ted and Ted’s request, but after Johanna had left for her meeting, that darkness cloaked him. It turned chilling when his phone rang. Though he expected the call to be from Ted, he was not surprised to see the Puerto Rican phone number. When bad news is coming, it often arrives from multiple directions. His sister, presumably, or some other relative, calling to tell him that his mother or father had died or was in the hospital dying. He’d never thought about it consciously, but he realized when he saw the glowing numbers that it was a call he always expected, perhaps because it was the call he’d most feared in prison: the call for help when you are helpless to offer any.

The voice on the other end was not his sister’s. It was soft and low and had the same stirring effect on him it always had. He pictured again the contrast of black curls against a pale collarbone, the near-fatal shape of perfect lips.

“I’m calling because I’m worried about you,” she said.

His pause was long. “More than decade in prison and not one visit, not one call, not one letter. And now you call.”

“You told me that was the better way, but the point now is that no one called me while you were in prison to voice their concern about your well-being. I do care about that, no matter what you believe.”

“And now someone has called you.” He sat back on the bed, stretched his legs out on the floral bedspread, and leaned back against the wall. “To say what?”

“To say that you’re distracted, to say that you might make a bad decision because you’re distracted.”

“And the solution was for you to call, as though that’s not distracting?”

The stir in his loins that had always been automatic at the sound of her voice quelled. He would not have believed this was possible, not for the stretch of time before he was convicted or his first several years in. He realized that he was going to hang up on her and made himself delay, made himself first say good-bye and wish her well.

“Wait,” she said. “Do you still care about me?”

“I don’t know.” He sighed. “That painting — the one of you, the one I stole—”

“I’ve hardly forgotten.”

Her call was poorly thought out, but he doubted it was poorly intended, not by her. Instead it was merely casual in its concern. She wouldn’t board a plane, but she’d dial a few numbers. “Well, I wouldn’t know whether or not you’ve forgotten, now, would I? What I’m trying to say is that you’re like that painting now. It once meant a lot, and I invested a fuckload of time into it, so I have to still care. But it’s in a frame I didn’t pick out, in a museum far away, and I like the idea of it being there.”

“What I’m trying to say is that if you still care about me at all, and if you care about yourself, then you should just do what you’re supposed to do to stay out of prison.”

“And your interest in this is what?”

“Don’t you think I felt like shit the whole time you were in? When you finally got out, I decided I could stop feeling guilty and get on with my life.”

“And now I might be inconveniencing your plans?”

“I know you’re not an asshole, Elizam, so stop pretending to be one.”

“Good-bye,” he said. “I wish you well. If they call you back, tell them to go fuck themselves.”

“Stay out of trouble, Eli. If they send you back, it’s not on me this time.”

Now he did hang up on her, but she wasn’t the person he was mad at. Her call had had the effect Ted no doubt wanted, though: It had alarmed him. Ted had gone to at least some trouble to track down her name, or maybe he’d had that little trick in his pocket from the beginning, just in case his new employee didn’t conform to expectations.

Eli didn’t know what he was going to do, so he decided to maintain appearances, keep to his schedule. He had just enough time to shower and make the auction Felicia Pontalba had invited him to attend.

This time Eli had better taxi luck; the driver stayed awake at all traffic lights and delivered him to the front door of the auction gallery. Felicia met him just inside and walked him past a man who seemed to be some combination of greeter and bouncer.

“The lot is small today, which is good news for your time, but perhaps less interesting for you.”

She was packaged well in a dark blue tailored dress and heels, minimal makeup. Her hair had dried curly this time but was pinned back. Again Eli saw beauty in occasional glimpses and angles, but mostly he saw affability, affirming his first impression of her.

“Now, you’ve met the Broussards already, if I recall correctly.” A bit more Southern accent slanted into her voice with the standard politenesses.

“Characters, the both of them,” Eli said, returning to the platitudes that Felicia enabled and that had seemed to satisfy her before.

“This city has a knack for that. Anyway, they’re probably the only folks on the list I gave you who will be here today, since it was mostly a painting-related list. The Broussards are unusually catholic in their acquisitions, so they come to a lot of the smaller estate sales. They’re here today for a lot that will be mostly silver, and they’ll return Friday for porcelain.”

She escorted Eli to a refreshment table at the far end of the foyer and served a ladle of some sort of punch into a plastic cup. “For the larger auctions, we serve champagne — actually a knockoff, prosecco or cava or whatever’s on sale in quantity — but today I’m afraid all we have is punch. It does have a bit of a kick, though.” She winked as she said kick.

Eli thanked her and took a sip, the carbonation of some ingredient slightly stinging his upper lip. “Tasty,” he said, though it was nearly awful.

Felicia smiled. “Actually, I lied to you. Well, not technically, because he wasn’t on the list, but his father was.”

Eli raised his eyebrows and forced himself to sip again from his cup.

“I do believe I just saw Clayton Fontenot walk in. I told you about his father.”

“Yes,” Eli said, “I met his father.”

“But not the son?”

Eli tried to match her wide smile, but it felt tight around his words. “But not the son.”

“Catch me before you leave, then, and I’ll make the introduction. Odd that he’s here, really. The father uses him as an errand boy sometimes, but Mr. Fontenot wouldn’t be interested in anything here today. Plus I hear the son is about to turn thirty, which according to the most reliable local gossip means he’s about to come into all his money.”

The Broussards toddled over to greet him, calling him “Mr. Elizam,” which he did not correct, and Felicia took the opportunity to slip on to the next person.

“We’re hoping you can settle an argument for us,” Fatty said. “There’s a new chef in town whose gumbo has the darkest roux we’ve ever seen, bowl after bowl of it.”

Mignon picked up for him: “And we just couldn’t imagine how he could afford to pay people to stand around and cook a roux that dark, not to mention the risk of burning it.”

“And so we inquired and were informed that he darkens the roux in the oven .” Fatty whispered the last three words, holding his hand to one side of his mouth as though he were telling a shameful secret.

“In the oven!” Mignon exclaimed, making no attempt at secrecy.

“Here is the cause of much disagreement in the community. Mignon and I were at first as horrified as anyone, but then we thought about it and decided it’s actually a very clever idea. A wonder that others haven’t thought of it long ago.”

“But not everyone agrees?” tried Eli.