“Boys. That bother you?”
“Not especially. Chacun a son gout.”
“I help take care of kids now at day care centers, but we only take girls, this outfit I’m with, so it’s cool.”
“That’s good.”
“Yeah…. You got family, Lew?”
Sansom stuck his head in about then and said, “Good. You’re back.”
“Thanks to the lawyer you sent. How’d you know, anyway?”
“We know everything that happens around here, sometimes before it happens. But I have to tell you, our lawyer’s out of town on some business for us.”
“Then who …?”
“A friend of yours.”
“Walsh.”
“I didn’t say it. But it was obviously more … politic, to have the lawyer appear to be from us. Good night, guys.”
“You were asking about family,” I said after a while.
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” Jimmi said. “Never had much, I guess. Wonder what it’s like…. Got a sister.”
“Only the two of you?”
“Yeah.”
“Where’s she?”
“I don’t know exactly. About a month or so back, letters started getting returned. Tried calling her, the phone’s disconnected. I just hope somehow she’s okay.”
“You two close?”
“Only person I was ever able to love. Only one who never held anything against me,” Jimmi said.
We slept then, and in the morning he made no move to resume conversation. Carlos rose wordlessly from his bed, inhabited the bathroom for a quarter-hour, dressed and departed. I drank coffee in the common room and watched morning news on TV, trying to figure out what had gone down in recent months. How it all fit together, if indeed it did. If it could.
Those first weeks in hospital had been the worst, as I surfaced and sank, rolled back to the top and again subsided, skin barely able to contain me, insensible things at march just inside it. The only good thing about that time was remembering Vicky, how she helped me get through it all and that wonderful soft voice, and I wanted to thank her. At least that’s what I thought. I probably wanted a lot more, even then; we usually do, don’t we?
I could get nothing out of a suspicious personnel secretary at Hotel Dieu and finally went upstairs for more coffee at the cafeteria. I asked a few nurses there about her, but they were even more suspicious. Often being around other people is like coming face to face with a mirror: your blackness suddenly becomes indisputable fact.
I had a couple of cups of chicory, ordered some toast with the second, and sat watching all the faces. People losing loved ones or about to, watching them die by degrees; others trying to console with visits and small talk or scripture; some annoyed at the interruption to their lives of minor, but necessary, surgery or tests; those who took care of the interrupted and dying alike. And others who helped new lives, not so gently, into this very old, ungentle world.
By this time it was almost noon. I had paid at the counter and was just reaching to push my way out when I looked up and saw her through the glass door.
“Mister Griffin,” she said. “How are you?”
I said I was fine and asked if she’d mind my joining her.
“Not at all. I’m always alone for lunch.”
We settled into a corner booth. She ordered a salad and looked a lot younger than I remembered. I had more coffee. The waitress kept looking over her shoulder at us.
“I wanted to thank you,” I said. “I don’t think I’d have made it through all that without you.”
“Of course you would have done. Our best character shows up when we’re down, doesn’t it? And I’m paid well enough, here in the States, that I don’t need any thanks, really.” She lowered her head. “But I am glad you came to see me.”
Neither of us said more, until after a while, picking at her salad, she said, “I’ve been here fourteen months. I know a few of the people I work with, two people who live in the apartment complex close to me, and that’s all. Every month I think: I ought to go back home.”
“I’m glad you didn’t.”
“Maybe I am too, just now.”
We sat there finishing our coffee and salad and looking at one another. Finally she said, “I must get back onto the floor now, Mr. Griffin-”
“Lew.”
“Lew. But I hope that I’ll be seeing you again.”
“You will if you want to, Vicky.”
We were standing outside the cafeteria, in the mall, by this time. Currents of people broke around us.
“I want to. I’m thirty-five, Mr. Griffin. I’ve had affairs with a few men, been engaged twice. But I really want to get married, maybe even have kids. Perhaps that scares you.”
“Very little scares me after what I’ve been through.”
“Good, then.” She pulled a pad out of her pocket and scribbled quickly on it. “Here’s my phone number and address. Call me.”
“What’s best for you? What shifts and all.”
“Anytime. Mornings at seven-thirty are good; either I’ve slept the night through or am just coming in from work. Ten or so evenings, too. You’re almost sure to catch me then. Mostly I work nights.”
“Okay. Soon then, Vicky.”
“I do hope so. Au revoir.”
New Orleans natives tend to swallow or drop their r’s; that’s why, to outsiders, the prevailing white accent seems most unsouthernly, in fact distinctly Bronx-like. Vicky’s r was in marvelous contrast. She caressed each one as though she loved it, as though it were the last she might be privileged to utter.
After she was gone I looked down at the paper in my hand. It was from a notepad advertising a “mood elevator” put out by one of the pharmaceutical companies. That seemed wholly appropriate.
Chapter Three
Some light must shine behind our lives always, one of my college teachers said. He’d been a poet, apparently a good one, well thought of, promising. The light was draining out from behind his life the year I had him for freshman lit. Halfway through the second semester he didn’t show up for class two days in a row. They found him on the floor of his bathroom. He’d hanged himself from a hook in the ceiling above the tub, and though the hook had torn out of the rotting plaster, his throat was already crushed and he had died after a few moments’ thrashing about in fallen plaster, back broken across the edge of the tub in the fall.
Meeting Vicky, getting to know her, I felt the light start up again behind my own life. It hadn’t been there for a long time.
I started doing collections for a loan outfit over on Poydras. Walsh had vetted me, and I was still big enough and mean-looking enough to be effective pulling in payments for them. They started me out on a token salary, soon added a percentage, then doubled the salary as well.
Vicky and I were seeing one another pretty regularly: concerts, dinner, films at the Prytania, theater, museums, long afternoons over espresso or bottles of wine. I recalled the concept of monads-whole areas of knowledge, of understanding, which opened entire to the developing individual. And felt new worlds opening within me, worlds I’d always known were there but couldn’t find, couldn’t get to.
This whole period, like those early weeks in the hospital, but for quite different reasons, is something of a blur to me. I tracked people down all day, clocked out at six or so and headed for Vicky’s, and we either went out somewhere or stayed in talking and listening to music until she had to leave for work herself. My hours were flexible, and on days she was off I’d sometimes work at night to be with her during the day.