The air hung about their shoulders, held aloft by fumes
whispering from stale candle wicks and the thick muggy heat of New Orleans in
July. It caped the patrons of Suzie’s on Tchoupitoulas Street and held them
upright as they swayed back and forth to the slow staccato rolling from the
upright piano. As the piece’s crescendo peaked, the air parted and yielded to
their movements, suddenly frantic, as if they were galley slaves shedding their
chains on some unspoken cue.
It was through this swirling air that he saw her. Across the
room, tucked away in a darker part of an already dim room. Her features so
faint in the last vestiges of a dying candlelight, he was not certain she was
even there. Perhaps she was a sprite, her elements conjured from some
combination of thick air, sour mash whiskey, and a better part of the day spent
cooped in a bar. Something inside him begot a move closer to where she had
cached herself. As he approached, he discerned the realness of her being and
along with that, a certain realness welled up in his soul from somewhere deep
and calloused, a place not oft handled with tender husbandry.
Jostling past bodies consumed with gyration, he dared not
avert his gaze lest she vanish into the mass of humanity, forever an
aberration. An aberration lost in the moment, but also somehow lost in the
shuffle and scatter of his life, and in the lives of everyone who had ever
crossed the threshold from the street which stank of Mississippi mud in the
summer into this den of truth-stretching and grandiose recounting; a tragedy
both small and ample. A tragedy of both the present and of the last three hundred
years of toil under hot suns and shade of Spanish moss, beset by spring floods
and fall ‘canes, and all manner of crooked-toothed swamp beasts. This compelled
him to act, at the least to confirm his eyes did not betray him – that her beauty was so, and at the most to
disavow himself of shame and accountability given the gravity of such unending
tragedy.
Her figure revealed itself slowly. Long locks of auburn
curls splayed loosely about a slender face adorned with high fleshy cheek bones
and a jutting, yet evenly sloped nose. Her long and slender limbs perched upon
the short stool, gave the effect of some sort of large languid bird, a heron,
he thought. As he drew close across the tepid expanse, he paused. It did not
stem from a lack of will or courage. No, it hissed from a failed joint in the stand
pipe of his gut, escaping a pinhole patched so many times, it had become
threadbare to the point of collapse. How this affliction was bestowed on a man
of such character and principle to this degree and why the repairs never took,
escaped him. In the same vein, a man of such principles could not spit in the
face of fate and tempt Satan’s will to inflict the tragedy of lost possibility.
And so, he hewed another misshapen lot of tin into a dressing of sorts and
swallowed the lump in this throat, consuming the bitter elixir of inspired
trust he quaffed a thousand times before. He knew the world tended to roll-up and
thrash about the meek in eddies of white foam; it was better to be vigorously
swimming in any direction, even upstream.
A rowdy bump from a backpedaling dancer snapped his
attention to the present. Her features were more defined now and he realized
that she was closer to his own age than first perceived. Lightly furrowed
crow’s feet were present ‘bout her eyes, but everything was framed upon
flawless sunny caramel skin, floating beneath a thin strapped, abstract patterned
dress hemmed well-above her knees. In the capsule of time that enshrouded him
at that particular place, in that particular trice, something spurned him to
action.
He took several large sudden strides without forbearance and
collided with a waitress carrying a tray full of cocktails. Lowballs,
highballs, and martini glasses blended to a cacophony, flattening into a soupy
mess of cragged glass peaks on the floor. Soaked about his mid-section and
shamed all over, he did his best to offer stymied condolences to the poor soul,
before hastily beating a retreat to the bar. As he fled, he tendered one last
glance at the woman. She, within earshot of the incident, surveyed the scene,
his bemused expression and smiled. A smile of sympathy and mischievousness. It
did little to assuage his embarrassment, but did ease the sting of the
moment.
Planted at the bar, he cursed the clumsy act. His belief had
always been that fate offered one a set amount of chances in life at events
that mattered. Chances at mundane or uneventful occurrences were limitless and
their outcomes mattered little in the montage of life. But a small set of
chances could, depending on their outcomes, alter one’s course through a
replenishment or dearth of consonant future chances. That belief perched upon
his shoulders, pinching the muscles around the base of his neck into a wrinkled
mass, as he nursed a Sazerac, the black licorice and Peychaud’s nursing him
equally back.
An alight on his arm brought him round in his chair. She
stood donning the same smile, her head level with his seated shoulder. Fate had
made a second pass in a single night. Pleasantries were exchanged and conversation
came easy. They stayed until the dancing died and what candles left burning
were extinguished. They talked of life, love, of philosophy, and how they both forgot
what it felt like to be cold. Throughout the narrative, he found it easy to be
in her presence and sensed she felt the same. He felt a stirring in his gut –
the elixir had found its way to the pinhole, bonded, and begun to cure.
As Suzie’s ushered them out on to the now silent street, he
learned of her checkered past with the city and love. Not a native like himself,
she moved from the northeast to chase a man and dreams of forming a musicians’
cooperative. Both pursuits soured and she found herself battling a bout of
chemical addiction and depression. But, like so many others who pilgrimed to
the lascivious muddy bosom of the Mississippi, she fell under the spell of the
city and did not flee. She lent her heartache and regret to its long narrative,
to later be told by a heavenly bard perched atop the tomes of eternity. And
lent her hands and northern spirit to set about rebuilding her life and the
city after each flood, the two labors becoming as routine as taking afternoon
tea on the balcony of her Rampart Street apartment.
He empathized with her story, as one himself who seldom took
the straight and narrow approach. The walk flowed with the easy of familiarity.
He gestured to various buildings and indulged in their history, so intimate his
knowledge of his birthplace, he felt compelled to share it with whomever lent
their ear. His was a dying wisdom, replaced by a digital fabric he did not trust.
Between emphatic gestures, he embraced her ‘round her hips and they rocked slow
to a croon from a far-off horn.
They sojourned at her small apartment on the north side of
the Marigny. He found it to be simple, yet altogether tidy and neat, with just
enough creature comforts and rustic art to put him at ease. And later, when the
wine ran low and conversation faded to hushed tones, they withdrew to her
bedroom loft. There their bodies moved in supple harmony for having just met;
even their unplanned syncopations compensated for with pleasurable adjustments
and well-timed utterances. And after, when they lay at opposite sides of the
bed with a sweat-soaked mass of sheets and pillows discarded on the floor, they
careened headlong into deep boozy dreams absent a word between them.
The heat of the loft awoke him. Of all the stifling
apartments in the city, he had ended up in perhaps the most oppressive. It
didn’t help that no matter the season or pursuit, his lithe body ceaselessly
radiated heat. After what seemed a short eternity lying awake, he climbed over
his companion’s curled body, gathered his clothes and climbed down the loft
ladder. He dressed and retired to the balcony in hopes the humid night air
would offer a sliver of respite. Some unease began to build within his soul and
his heart, the specific origin unknown to him. But the feeling was familiar. It
had played out on noisy street corners, in the middle of decadent meals with well-suited
company, and now, leaning forward over a railing overlooking a quiet stretch of
grey asphalt lit by white street lamps and the yellow of an immature harvest
moon.
It did not reassure him of the essential tenants of life and
nature. That all would find its place, the course of his life and of all lives,
cutting a swathe through bedrock and finding the path of least resistance in
the end. No, it burst through his makeshift tin patch and flooded him with
panic and unrest. Where could this tryst go, save for downhill, bogged and
mired in jealously, mistrust, and acrid words that stung long after they were
uttered, he thought. It was not that he was a skeptic of love or its endurance
when fertilized and cultivated with care, but that far too often neglect creeped
into crevices of once impenetrable bonds, frozen and split, leaving behind
shaky ground upon which one tread with trepidation and cowardice. This drove
him from her balcony. Out of her building and onto the street which he had gazed
down upon at moments before. This street he knew. This ground was solid. And he
knew the way home.
