My Juliet Read online

  “I see something.”

  “Grease stains on their shirts . . .”

  She doesn’t burn as much downstairs, although now that general area does seem to have its own private pulse. She wishes she were soaking in a tub of hot water, enjoying its powerful healing effects. She fiddles with the radio knobs and finds a jazz station, someone playing a mournful piano.

  “They’ve had Chinese delivered,” she continues. “Egg rolls, Kung Pao chicken, moo goo gai pan, fried wontons. They’re so tired they can’t think straight. Guy with rolled-up sleeves says, ‘Pass me the tampons.’ He’s so exhausted, you see, he’s got the names of the dishes mixed up. Everybody’s eyes pop open. ‘Yes!’ ”

  Sonny keeps driving. He’s smiling the whole time, shaking his head, rubbing his jaw. “Tampon,” he says again.

  She reaches down to the floor at her feet and comes up with Louis’s club. “What is this?”

  “That?”

  She grips the handle and acts as if she’s going to hit him. “It’s a club, isn’t it? What in heavens are you doing with this club in your truck, Sonny LaMott?”

  “I used it one day to whack an old man on the neutral ground.”

  “You did that?”

  “Actually I pretended to do it. I wasn’t really hitting him. I did it to satisfy a debt I owed a friend of mine who was watching nearby.”

  “What kind of debt?”

  “The old man killed my friend’s cat.”

  “Well, of course he did.”

  For blocks cars idle in a long, unmoving procession, and now in theirs—a 1963 GMC pickup truck with running boards and a collage of faded stickers on the back bumper—Juliet Beauvais scuttles over in the seat, unzips Sonny LaMott’s jeans and lowers her head to investigate.

  To their left stands the palatial Monteleone Hotel with crowds of visitors loitering near the gilded entrance, and to their right the Hurwitz Mintz furniture store, which today has drawn hordes of its own to its magnificent show windows.

  “You missed this, didn’t you?” she says.

  “I missed you.”

  “Tell me you missed this.”

  “I missed this.”

  “Say you missed having your girlfriend suck your big, beautiful dick.”

  “I missed having you do that.”

  “You didn’t say it right. Say it how I told you to say it.”

  “I missed having my girlfriend suck my big, beautiful dick.”

  “Again. Say it again. Say it until I tell you to stop saying it.”

  Sonny finishes as the bottleneck clears and traffic starts to move. A liquid sound comes from the back of his throat and he bucks forward in the seat and punches the horn with his chest. Soon other drivers are blowing horns, the whole area seeming to trumpet Juliet’s daring indiscretion.

  All done now, she sits up and examines her face in the rearview mirror. Her cheeks are dark and swimming with blood and her lips seem twice their normal size. She opens her mouth and studies the stalactites inside. It’s always amazed her to see how little actually comes out. No more than a teaspoon and men lose everything over this.

  She leans over to kiss him and when their mouths meet she passes it on, the oyster thick and warm in her mouth, now thick and warm in his.

  They sleep for a few hours and when he wakes the light is gone and a stormy darkness fills the room. Outside a breeze stirs the palms and banana trees and a shutter slaps against the house. Occasional rain flicks against the windowpanes. “What time is it?” he says.

  “Nine, ten. I’m not sure.”

  She is sitting by the window, looking out at the weather. What remains of the boy’s doob juts out from her mouth, its tip flaring when she takes a last sip before putting it out. “White girl thinks by keeping my check she’s keeping me. Bitch forgets I still have a key.”

  It isn’t immediately clear to Sonny what she’s talking about.

  “You’ll just have to go back and get it,” Juliet says. “That’s all there is to it.”

  He rolls over and hugs a pillow. The rain has begun to fall in hard gusts, in sheets that look white against the streetlights. Lightning splinters and reveals the sky, the endless banks of clouds meeting the black expanse of the river.

  “Wait right there while I go pee,” she says.

  In the dark of the bathroom she sits on the toilet without closing the door. Sonny can see her when the lightning flashes. She keeps her head down and her hair hangs between her knees. He wonders if they taught her that in California, too.

  She finishes and wipes herself and looks at the wad of paper. They know how to do it in California. Sonny has to give them that much. They know the tricks.

  He turns his head away so as not to think about it.

  “Bad weather—that ozone smell?—reminds me of when I was a little girl,” Juliet says from the bathroom. “Nights like this, when there’s thunder and lightning and rain, I can hear Daddy pacing the floor downstairs in the library in the dark. I used to think it was the most miserable sound in the whole, entire world. Mainly because he was so miserable.”

  “I remember,” Sonny says.

  “We talked about that?”

  “A long time ago we did, after the funeral. You told me everything.”

  “Yes,” she says. “I suppose I did tell you a lot.”

  Sonny sits back against the headboard, wondering what more there could be to know. He likes the rain but he isn’t sure what it reminds him of, not that the past even matters at this moment. Sonny keeps hearing the sound of Juliet’s water meeting the water in the bowl, keeps seeing her expression when she brought the wad of tissue up from between her legs.

  “Just let yourself in,” she says. “Just go upstairs and get her out of bed. She sees you up there she’ll know we’re not playing.”

  “I’m sorry, Julie, but I’m not going to do that.”

  She is laughing as she leaves the bathroom. “I’m going back to the Lé Dale then.”

  Sonny, his penis stiff, angling up past his navel, gets out of bed pulling the sheet around him and shuffles across the room. He wants to show her something, a postcard depicting the Beauvais Mansion that he’s kept on the dresser for years now. It’s stuck in the mirror between photos of his father sitting outside on the lawn with his eyes on the sky and one of his mother as a girl standing on Annunciation Street in the Irish Channel. “Remember this?” he says.

  Juliet moves to the bed and rolls over on her back, holding the card close to her face. “Oh, my gosh. Where’d you find it?”

  “Bookshop on Magazine.”

  “Bookshop?”

  “George Herget’s. The guy’s so nice, he offers you a can of Coke as soon as you walk in the door.”

  “You don’t even have to buy any books?”

  “Nope, but you want to, mainly on account of that Coke.”

  Juliet places a finger on the small block of text, the delicate print. “The Beauvais Mansion,” she reads out loud. “Built by Creoles in the years before the Civil War, this gracious example of French Colonial architecture has been in the same New Orleans family for more than a century.” She waits a moment before finishing. “An exotic, unexpected paradise.”

  Now she examines the other side, the photo in grainy sepia. “Look how little the trees were,” she says, laughing but in a sad way. “They were babies, all of them babies.”

  Tears pool in her eyes and slip down her face, and Sonny takes a corner of the bedsheet and wipes them away. “We should have had our own babies,” he says. “It makes me sick sometimes, Julie, I actually get sick. I can’t believe we did what we did. It was the biggest mistake of my life and I will go to my grave regretting it. Who did we think we were, Julie?”

  Juliet doesn’t answer for a long time. “The Beauvais Mansion,” she whispers, still studying the card. “It says so right here.”

  Juliet sits at the kitchen table and draws a diagram on the back of Sonny’s bank statement. Anna Huey occupies the first room to the
right at the top of the stairs, her mother’s room comes next, then after that is Juliet’s. Or what once was Juliet’s. All the rooms to the left of the hallway are either empty or used for storage.

  “Don’t let her trick you,” she says, scribbling with such purpose that the tip of her tongue pokes out of her mouth.

  “Julie, listen, I don’t think I can do this.”

  “Don’t let her go without signing the check or putting the date. A check is worthless without that and she might pull a fast one. She’s capable of anything.”

  “No, Julie.”

  “At a bank the thing they look for on a check is not the numerical amount in the little box on the right-hand side. It’s what’s written out on the long line under the line that names the payee. So you want to make sure that the numerical number in the box is the same as the amount she writes out. This is another way she might trick us.”

  “Julie?”

  “Yes, my baby?”

  She turns and faces him and it is a long moment before he speaks: “Does the Beauvais have an alarm system?”

  She shakes her head, careful not to push any harder. “While you’re inside,” she says, “will you do something for me?”

  She walks over to where he’s standing by the sink and offers him the envelope. He hesitates before taking it, and when he does she sidles up close to him, her breasts grazing his chest. “Go in my bedroom and get me some clothes, please.”

  “Will those old clothes still fit?”

  “They’ll fit.” She lightly touches him with her breasts again. “You know my body better than anybody. Do you think it’s changed any in the last fifteen years?”

  “No,” his breath beginning to shallow. “But don’t you think the style of clothes hanging in your closet might be a little dated?”

  “Sonny, you need to remember something, sweetie.” Now she presses up close, her chest flat against his. “When you look like I do everything you put on is in style.”

  The earliest painting, an imposing neoclassical oil on canvas signed by antebellum portraitist Jean Joseph Vaudechamp, hangs on the wall at the bottom of the stairs, ambient light from the foyer making it possible to observe its nattily dressed subject, a Creole gentleman wearing eyeglasses that rest low on his nose. Just to the right of the Vaudechamp is one by Jacques Guillaume Lucien Amans, and directly above that an Ellsworth Woodward, legendary founding instructor of the art department at the city’s Newcomb College. Even without reading the signatures Sonny is able to identify the paintings’ creators: they easily are among the most important to work in New Orleans in the last two centuries.

  Pausing at the first step, Sonny runs his fingers over the thinly painted surface of the Vaudechamp. He sniffs the Amans. When he passes the John Genin showing Etienne Beauvais (as the small plaque on the frame identifies the sitter), Sonny blows against the canvas and inhales the master’s celestial dust.

  As he ascends the carpeted stairway each step groans louder than the one before. Or so it seems to Sonny, now more than halfway up. He takes his time not only to admire the artwork but also to consider the best way to announce himself. Does he simply nudge Miss Marcelle awake and tell her what he’s come for? “Just dropped by for Julie’s check, ma’am. Will you get up and write it, please?” Or does he show good manners and begin with an apology? “I know this shows poor judgment on my part, madam, and I want to say at the outset that I’m as disappointed in myself as you are. But at the same time your daughter does need her money.”

  Higher up the modern era of portraiture as practiced in the southern United States is represented by the likes of Arnold E. Turtle and Henry Casselli, who painted the masterwork at the top of the stairs, depicting Johnny Beauvais. Here Juliet’s father is shown wearing the uniform of the prototypical southern gentleman: white silk suit, panama hat, polka-dot bow tie, wing tips with laces as thin as fishing line. Casselli somehow managed to get Johnny Beauvais just right, down to the downy texture of his yellow hair and the carefully trimmed fingernails coated with clear polish.

  Sonny leans back against the balustrade and trains his eyes on those of the vividly painted man, who seems to stare back as if curious to learn Sonny’s reason for being here tonight. “Couldn’t tell you myself,” Sonny whispers under his breath.

  Sonny dated Juliet for seven months before Johnny Beauvais’s death at Lake Pontchartrain, and though the man was generally cordial (he was always good for a hello, in any case), only once did he and Sonny have what might qualify as a conversation.

  “Excuse me, but is your truck the noisy one that woke me from my nap?”

  “Sir?”

  “I was sleeping.”

  “It might’ve been. Forgive me.”

  “I’d rather have my rest than your apology, young man. What is wrong with you?”

  “My lord, are we cross today?” Juliet said to her father.

  “Darling, have you seen Anthony?”

  “No, Daddy. Daddy, you were rude to Sonny.”

  “Was I? I didn’t mean to be. Sonny, was I rude?”

  “No, you weren’t, Mr. Beauvais.”

  “By the way, why do they call you Sonny? It’s a curse, isn’t it? Having to go through life as Sonny? It’s rather like being called Junior.”

  “I don’t mind it,” Sonny said.

  “My name is really Jean-Jacques. I’m named for my paternal great-grandfather. As a boy I couldn’t stand being called that, thus the name Johnny. Now I wish I could go back to the original. Sonny, what were you originally?”

  “Cecil, Mr. Beauvais.”

  “Wise choice, then, going with Sonny. Who would name their child Cecil? It’s cruel. Juliet, if you see Anthony send him up, please. I have a chore for the boy.”

  “Another one?”

  “Nice visiting with you, Sonny.”

  “Same here, Mr. Beauvais. And I promise to do something about that muffler.”

  Not until Sonny reaches the mansion’s second floor does he understand precisely where Juliet has taken him, and this knowledge stuns him to momentary paralysis, every part of him stilled. He looks around as if for a familiar landmark, something to spare him this reality and to safely place him elsewhere. What in God’s name has she made you do now?

  Sonny moves past an antique étagère and a marble pedestal holding a vase of freshly cut Louisiana irises, the purple at the head of the stalks glowing in the semidarkness. The hallway is wide enough to accommodate an entire army of intruders, and yet Sonny feels the walls pressing in. Checking the map, he passes two doors and approaches a third. Juliet’s room.

  As he swings the door open and steps inside he hears something altogether unexpected. There are voices and music, TV sounds, as well as the rumble of a window air conditioner. Sonny scans the room and finds Anna Huey lying in bed. Her crown of dreadlocks lies black against white bedding. A light summer throw covers her body.

  He exits as quietly as he entered, but this is little comfort.

  Why is Anna Huey sleeping in Juliet’s room?

  Sonny stands without moving, his back against the wall, his breath coming in stinging gasps, bowels beginning to feel fluid.

  From his pocket he removes the envelope with Juliet’s directions and studies the diagram by the glow of a night-light shining at his feet.

  “Lou,” she’s written in her peculiar scribble, the word trailing an arrow that points between the first and second doors. Who is Lou? Sonny wonders.

  Could Lou be loo, as in bathroom?

  He moves on to the next room and slowly opens the door. A flood of relief washes through him as he discovers it empty and steps inside. Images from another time crowd the walls. Hendrix playing guitar, Joplin flashing the peace sign. “Chicken Little Was Right,” says a poster showing an atomic bomb explosion. “The Sky IS Falling.”

  A corkboard holds a jumble of photographs depicting Juliet and friends celebrating at high school graduation parties, dancing at now-defunct French Quarter nightclubs, posing in cap-and
-gown. Sonny recognizes many of the faces: Adelaide Valentine, Terri Edelstein, Brook McCaffety, Dickie Boudreau. Dickie looks even drunker than he usually did, an arm draped over Juliet’s shoulder as she holds him with an adoring gaze.

  Then Sonny spots himself in one of the pictures, a thin, sad-faced boy with too much hair. “I remember you,” he mutters out loud.

  Next to the corkboard stands a white plastic book unit and it, too, contains items from Juliet’s days at Sacred Heart. There, for instance, is the small hourglass that Sonny gave her the night of her eighteenth birthday. No more than four inches tall, the brass timepiece includes a metal plate on its base with an inscription that reads Forever.

  Sonny traces a finger over the lettering, the word both too large and too small for him to comprehend at the moment.

  Juliet, he decides suddenly, will have to come for the clothes later. He can’t do this and furthermore he won’t do it; let her pout and treat him badly again. The two of them can always go to Canal Street in the morning, can’t they? Once there Sonny will buy her whatever she wants, just as long as it’s less than three hundred dollars, which is all he’s worth. A new pair of jeans and a shirt, a dress from the discount rack. Leave the hippie duds in the dark of the closet where they belong.

  Get out of the house. Forget the check. Go.

  Sonny starts back down the hallway, moving more quickly than before, pressed by a sudden urgency to be anywhere but here. The portraits are in sight, the face of the dead father who knew Sonny only as the insensitive boy who disrupted his nap. But as Sonny is passing the door nearest the stairway a voice, too loud to ignore, stops him in his tracks. “Juliet? Darling, is that you?”

  It is Miss Marcelle, and she seems to be waiting for an answer. Sonny must say something, but what? Against his will he reaches out and places a hand on the knob. Miss Marcelle is a friend. She’ll understand if he walks in and presents himself. “Oh, hi. Great to see you again!” Just that simple, and without any suggestion that his uninvited presence is at all out of the ordinary.