“The movies.”
“Sure. We could—”
“Hey! All ri-i-ight!” Julie steers her car into a genuine parking space.
Suddenly, when we exit the car, the air is very quiet. We seem to be on the far edge of the Quarter, the few streetlights peculiarly bright.
“Where are we?” I point to dark old trees dripping heavy moss; the raised tombs and gravestones are white as teeth in the night.
“Saint Louis Cemetery.” Julie checks the doors to make sure they’re locked.
“Do they still bury people there?”
“I don’t think so. Come on.” She pulls my arm.
“Then what’s all that?”
There is a small crowd inside the graveyard. People dressed in white from headcloth to sandals are sitting in a circle lighting candles.
Déjà vu.
Low chanting begins.
“That’s where Marie Laveau is supposed to be buried. Now, come on!”
Is this where the strange sense of excitement is coming from?
“Pet!” Julie whispers urgently. “Come on, they won’t want us gawking at them. And it’s no big deal. People leave flowers and fruit and shit there—it happens all the time!”
At her insistence, I allow myself to be pulled away. But now the evening has irrevocably changed. My last glance over my shoulder shows the crowd of worshippers beginning to sway. The chanting grows louder. In the center of their circle, you can almost see ectoplasmic forms dancing in the air.
“You go for that mumbo-jumbo crap,” Julie opines when we turn the corner.
No point answering.
“But just forget it for tonight, okay? I don’t want to deal with anything like that! Tonight we’re supposed to have fun.”
Our night on the town, hot to trot, looking for trouble. Set foot in the Quarter, and you are surrounded by this heady essence, this sense of pleasure that is supposed to cut you loose from the regular rules. Forget diet. Forget exercise. Forget any notion you might treasure of “the healthy life.”
“These heels are killing me!”
Remember that in every city in the world, people in perfect health are being stabbed by strangers hiding in the alleyways.
We turn onto Bourbon.
“Whew!” A fine sweat breaks out on my forehead, under my arms, and between my legs. You get swept by want but not for anything in particular.
Here is the world of dancing boys in the streets, tapping their toes for nickels in a hat. And bars with naked women, and naked men pretending to be naked women. Don’t you want to find out what goes on behind those swinging doors, the depth of the sleaze, what happens upstairs in the old, leaky rooms, body smell so strong that you’re high by osmosis?
“I’m cold,” Julie says. “Let’s try the Napolean House.”
We walk up a couple blocks from Bourbon—was this where the voodoo shop once was, these endless stores full of Mardi Gras masks and porcelain clowns and T-shirts that say I CHOKED LINDA LOVELACE? Hard for me to say. Everything seems exactly as it was, except that the whole world is different.
Now my body feels through the senses, the muscles, and what is out there becomes strangely literal.
“Ever stayed there?” Julie points to the Royal Orleans as we pass.
“When I was a child.” The old hotel is all agleam with its white marble stairs and its grand piano, the well-dressed patrons listening as they sip their mint juleps. This world at least is inviolate and unimpressed by the passage of time.
By way of contrast in mood, the Napolean bar is dark and artfully sinister, sawdust on the floor, walls so old that they perpetually ooze. It was either an auction block for slaves or a hangout for pirates. Or both.
Several heads turn as we enter. Couples in various stages of seduction nestle at remote tables. The jukebox is playing Bobby Bland.
We insert ourselves at a model spot: far enough toward the back to scan the clientele, close enough to the light so we can be seen.
“You want a drink?” Julie looks happy. “I’m going up to the bar.”
“A vodka gimlet.”
“Whoa! Actual hard liquor!” She sashays off with excess wiggling of hips—not that she has any hips to wiggle. In case any of the inscrutable hairy men around us should happen to notice.
Covertly, I check out my neighbors, but the sight is not terribly promising. Level gray eyes and a fluffy dahlia of crimson hair are a tough act to follow.
My heart pangs a little—by now we would have finished lifting and then what would have happened?
Well, if anything would have happened, it can wait until tomorrow.
“To sex!” Julie toasts a little loudly, returning with the drinks.
“What do you have?”
“A rum and Tab.”
“Oh.”
“Dynamite pair of chicks,” observes a chubby man, straddling a chair at our table. He sports a neo-punk haircut and a cut-off LOOSE AS A MOOSE T-shirt.
“Suck dick and choke on it,” says Julie.
The creep makes tracks.
“Subtle but effective.” The first taste of gimlet is my madeleine, reminding me of last night.
“I’ve lost the knack. And they’ve lost their looks.”
Right on cue, two pencil-necked geeks from across the room walk over and offer cigarettes.
Julie uses her third finger to press her nose upward into a pig snout.
When Julie rebuffs our third visitor, a charmer in navy double-knit, my patience grows thin. “Look. Is your heart really in this?”
Julie shifts in her seat and drains her drink. Tufts of corn-colored hair stand at attention over that madcap face. “Why are they all so disgusting?”
“You think attractive, interesting, and sincere guys are going to hang around the Quarter trying to pick up women? Didn’t you say you just wanted to get laid?”
“Let’s try a different bar.”
“Whatever.” The whole episode is becoming wearisome to me. The more I see of other men, the clearer it is that Barnett is special. It was foolish of me to stand him up.
Several bars and many rude remarks from Julie later, we stand in front of Jackson Square, tired and disappointed.
“Let’s just get some coffee and beignets and call it a night,” is my argument.
“How can we give up now?” is Julie’s rebuttal.
“Maybe there are some cute guys at Café du Monde. Or strolling the levee.”
“Pet, do you realize how many calories there are in a beignet? I figure two hundred. Plus, you gotta eat two or three or why bother?”
She’s got a point. “Then what do you suggest?”
She snaps her fingers. “Wait a minute! I can’t believe I forgot this—there’s the neatest little bar way up on Decatur. I only went there once, it’s real far out, but I bet we can find it again.”
“What’s so great about this bar?”
“The clientele.”
Something about the idea of going up Decatur begins to nag at me, particularly as we fend our way upstream through the crowds. As the jolly tourists snacking down pralines and quaffing tropical drinks begin to thin out, and the real bars, full of sordid types and horny seamen, begin to assert themselves, I remember, as if it were possible to forget, Alonso.
Our night winding around the labyrinth of these narrow alleyways, which seem not to have changed at all in the intervening years.
“Let’s turn back.” But I don’t really want to.
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Julie grabs my arm. “Nothing can happen as long as we stick together. Besides, it can’t be too much farther.”
Where are all the streetlights? You can’t exactly see, even under the barely waning full moon, who is sitting on the stoops. Or what.
A burst of laughter erupts like spontaneous combustion.