He paid the boy and gave him his tackle since the fishing would not be any good until a few days from now when the water went down, and he would have to return to the show before then. He went back to the hotel and read the newspapers in the lobby for a while. He ate dinner at the café and walked down the street as the glow of the late afternoon sun lessened to twilight and the faint evening wind blew through the trees on the courthouse lawn. He had nothing to do except shoot pool with Clois and the others or get drunk or go whoring, and he didn’t feel like doing any of it.
He caught the night train to the city. As he rode through the dark fields, he realized that his hometown held nothing for him anymore. Time had removed him and it would not allow him to go back. The fishing had taken him back for a short while to the way things had been two years ago, but he knew now that he existed only in the present moment of the wheels clicking over the tracks, and time would carry him farther away from the world of small towns and Saturday night whorehouses and the red clay cotton fields and the nigger funeral marches and fishing for bass in the ponds during the early fall.
He was hopped when he arrived back in the city. He had opened one of the white packets from his suitcase on the train, and he stayed high on cocaine and whiskey for the next two days. He slept little, and he lost any sense of night and day. Later, he could not remember how much he had taken or drank. He walked the streets all one night, and was asked to leave a bar after he became involved in an argument with another man. He picked up a prostitute, although he didn’t recall it afterwards, and she rolled him for his watch and wallet. On Saturday he was with April in their room, and he hadn’t changed clothes or shaved since he had gotten off the train. His shirt was soiled and there was a thick feeling in his head.
“You’ve got the show tonight,” she said. “Don’t you understand what I’m saying? Listen to me.”
He wanted to get out of the room. He didn’t know how he had gotten there, anyway.
“Don’t give a goddamn,” he said.
“You let those hicks know what you are and you’re finished.”
“Kick the habit with Live-Again.”
“Oh, you stupid—”
“Sonabitch said something in a bar.”
“Will you please listen to me? You have to go to the auditorium at eight o’clock.”
“I ain’t going.”
Virdo Hunnicut didn’t see him that night, or he would not have let him go onstage. J.P. had shaved and put on fresh clothes, but there were razor nicks on his face and his blank eyes showed that he was still high and his fingers couldn’t find the right chords on the guitar. April talked to the director, and they decided to let him sing without his guitar and to use the band for accompaniment.
“What the hell is this? Give me my goddamn guitar.”
“Your wife thought it might be better if you just sang tonight,” the director said.
“I ain’t singing with no band.”
He went on the stage and the lights were hot in his face and made his eyes water. He heard the people applauding for him, and then the auditorium became quiet and he was standing behind the microphone with the guitar in his hand. The director was saying something to him in a hoarse whisper from the wings. Go on, man. They’re waiting for you. Still he didn’t begin. He looked out at the audience for almost a half minute. There was the scraping of chairs and a few coughs in the silence. Some of the people thought it was a joke and part of the show. For God’s sake, do something, the hoarse whisper said. Those who thought it was a joke laughed, and then the laughter stopped and it was silent again. The building was hot and poorly ventilated. He started to sing. His voice sounded strange and far off. He hit the wrong notes on the guitar and he couldn’t remember the lines to the song. He stopped playing and looked out at the audience. His face was sweating from the heat of the lights. Get him off there, a voice from the wings said. He started to play again and it was worse than before. He suddenly became aware of where he was, and he tried harder to get the song right. He was singing the words faster than the tempo of the guitar. His throat went dry and his voice cracked. Then he heard someone in the audience; it was a single sound from one person, not loud, but it carried through the auditorium: “Booooooooooh.”
Avery Broussard
Early the next afternoon he had dinner with Suzanne at her apartment. It was on the second floor of an old white brick building on Dauphine. The red of the bricking showed through where the paint had flaked away, and there was a balcony around the courtyard and a big willow tree by the iron gate; the flower beds in the court were planted with Spanish daggers and jasmine and oleander, and the interior was furnished from antique shops in the Quarter with dark handcarved wood chairs, an old Swiss clock, French curtains, and a folding Oriental screen decorated with dragons and embossed birds separated the living and dining rooms. The back room where she worked had a skylight that was stained green by moss and rainwater and there were big glass doors that opened onto the narrow brick-paved street below. There were reproductions of Cézanne and Velázquez and Goya along the walls and a charcoal sketch of a street scene near St. Louis Cathedral was attached to her easel, and five or six pastels of other scenes in the Quarter which she sold to the tourists in Pirates Alley were spread out on her table.
She wore a white dress and her hair was dark like her eyes, and her figure was fine to look at. She served the food from the kitchen, and there were drops of perspiration around her temples. As she reached across Avery to set his plate he could see her dress tighten across her breasts and he thought of the first time he had taken her fishing in the rowboat and they had put into the bank, and he had to look away from her. She put a slender green bottle of Barolo wine in front of him and two glasses. There was an empty wine bottle with a wicker basket around it in the center of the table and she had burned red candles down over it until the sides were thickly beaded with melted tallow. She put a fresh candle in the top and lighted it and sat down across from him and served the spaghetti and the light of the flame reflected in her eyes and made them look darker.
“Don’t you like it? I think it’s one of the best in the Quarter,” she said.
“What?”
“The apartment.”
“Yes.” He was still thinking about the way her dress tightened.
“I knew you would like it. I furnished it myself. It was a mess when we first took it. I think it must have been a brothel. Strange men knock on the door sometimes and we have to convince them that we’re not running a business.”
He poured the wine for her. She sipped it and looked at him over the top of the glass. He tried not to think about the times they went down the bayou in the rowboat. He knew she would know what he was thinking, and their conversation would become strained and he would blurt out something and both of them would be embarrassed. He felt her dress brush him under the table. He pulled his foot back under the chair self-consciously. They finished eating and went into the living room. They took the wine bottle and the glasses with them. He sat down on the sofa while she opened the doors to the balcony to let the breeze in.
“What did you do in Spain?” he said.