My Juliet Read online

  Juliet walks up to the foot of the stage. “I’ve got an envie for crawfish étouffée,” she declares in a happy voice.

  “Huh?”

  “You ever get like that? Like your body craves a certain type of food.”

  He nods and returns to his work. “Me, it’s barbecue.”

  “When I get my inheritance I’m going to open a restaurant on the first floor.”

  “I hope you sell barbecue.”

  “You don’t like étouffée?”

  “Too rich,” Leonard replies, dropping the cables long enough to pat his belly. “Pardon my French, but it gives me the runs.”

  Juliet shrugs. “I’ll sacrifice the runs if it’s étouffée.”

  The little young one has already left, as have the vocalist and the two others in the band. Leonard allows as to how he’s hanging around here only until they get paid for the night, which is always an iffy proposition with the club’s current management. “They didn’t appreciate my man Bird when he was alive, either,” Leonard says.

  “That that white guy plays for the Celtics?”

  “No, that’s that black dude played the sax. Charlie ‘Bird’ Parker. He used to do gigs and they wouldn’t want to pay him, neither. That’s what you get for being an artist these days.”

  Juliet’s about had it up to her eyeballs with artists, and she’d say as much if she didn’t need Leonard’s help. She wants him to drive her to the Beauvais then later to the Lé Dale.

  They tramp out of the club ten minutes later, Leonard counting his money. It doesn’t seem to occur to him to ask why she’s shown up at such an hour, and this is a trait of his that she both admires and despises: Leonard Barbier might be as thick in the head as they come, but he doesn’t meddle. He doesn’t even ask about her encounter with the drummer, not that she holds the subject as sacred. They are strolling under the streetlights when Juliet says, “Ever see one purple like that?”

  “Not on a white person I haven’t.”

  “It looks like it got dipped in an inkwell, don’t it?”

  “You call that color eggplant. People nowadays are using it for home decorating. It’s all the rage.”

  They move on a few paces before she thinks of something else to ask about. “What was my daddy like?” Trying to sound as casual as possible.

  “What do you mean, what was he like?”

  “Did it have a color?”

  “Everything has a color. Even water has a color.”

  “You think he was a bona fide homosexual or do you think he liked it with girls, too?”

  “I don’t know, I never got around to asking him. But I’d assume he was content to go either way, considering he had a daughter to his credit. You don’t grow fruit without planting seed, as they say.”

  “When you’re young you don’t understand about human sexuality, do you?”

  “No, you don’t—human or any other kind.”

  “When you’re in high school and you hear your friends saying things about the man you love and admire most in the world, when that happens you can get really confused.”

  “Tell me about it. I got confused and the only thing my father ever wanted to have sex with was his money.”

  Leonard takes out a small glass vial with a rubber stopper. It holds cocaine and he dribs some out on the back of his hand and offers it to Juliet, who consumes it with a single inhalation. After he ingests a line of his own he puts the vial back in his pocket and starts a doob going. Leonard the medicine man. He drags for a long time before sharing with Juliet.

  “We were discussing my daddy?”

  “Right.”

  “I’m just trying to remember if my memory is correct.”

  “I know you are.”

  “Was he a good lover, Leonard?”

  “I’m a little uncomfortable with this line of questioning, Counselor,” Leonard replies. But after a few seconds he says, “Yeah, I suppose he was, if you really have to know.”

  “Did he feel guilty afterwards? I always feel guilty.”

  “I’d say he suffered like we all suffer, Juliet, except in his case he got on the phone and called room service. Your father was a bon vivant, I’ll give him that.”

  “Did he ever mention me?”

  “Not when we were doing it, if that’s what you mean.”

  “I mean in general. Did he talk about me?”

  “All the time. The man loved you, Juliet.”

  They reach his car finally. It’s parked on Esplanade Avenue, not far from the Beauvais. She tells him to drive her there, and he’s too busy smoking his dope to protest.

  He parks by the curb and they sit awhile looking at the house past the windblown shroud of crape myrtles. She watches the window where the Yankee allegedly hanged himself but tonight it’s as dark as all the other windows.

  She wonders if they’d pay her another thousand if she broke another lamp.

  “I always liked the Beauvais,” says Leonard.

  “Then let’s go see it. I have a key.” She shoulders the car door open.

  Leonard holds up the joint. “Can I bring my little friend here?”

  “Only if you promise to blow a lot of smoke.”

  The trees drip rainwater as she and Leonard walk up the path. At the front door she tells him to take his shoes off, and when she removes her own she remembers “The Proof” and pulls it out from under the insole and sticks it in a pocket.

  They place their shoes side by side on the welcome mat, as if they belong there. When she slips the key in the knob the door swings open, sounding a rusty lament. Sonny must’ve forgotten to lock it after he left. Juliet and Leonard stalk in. She wishes she could talk out loud and give him a real tour. “Now as we enter the foyer you’ll note the crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling overhead . . .”

  They move through the parlor. It was her mother who started calling it a parlor, but Juliet prefers to think of it as the Grand Ballroom. It was the Grand Ballroom to previous generations of Beauvais, back in the days when people liked to capitalize the names of their rooms.

  When she gets it back it’ll be the Grand Ballroom again—at least until she converts it to a restaurant.

  “Oh, look, that’s the couch where Daddy got caught one night,” Juliet says to Leonard. “It used to be in a bedroom upstairs. They must’ve moved it.”

  Leonard smiles. “Got caught doing what?”

  She pretends not to have heard. But in her head now another voice: “Juliet? Juliet, wake up, baby. Wake up. Put some clothes on, Juliet. We’re leaving, baby. We’re leaving this house . . .”

  She turns away from the sofa. “Daddy ever bring you here?”

  Leonard shakes his head and mouths the word: “Hotels.”

  They troop past the TV. That’s the next thing gets broken, Juliet says to herself. She wishes she had some tape to tape “The Proof” to the screen. Give her mother something to think about when she sits down tomorrow to her Good Morning America.

  “I can make you a sandwich,” Juliet says as they tramp through the kitchen.

  “My mind’s stuck on barbecue,” Leonard replies.

  “What about some Neapolitan ice cream? Mama always did keep a half-gallon handy.”

  “No, ma’am. Ice cream, étouffée. Anything rich like that and I got to go.”

  She opens the freezer door and sure enough there’s the ice cream. Her mama and that cheap K&B drugstore brand comes in a paper cube. “You ever wonder why they call it Neapolitan?”

  “No. Not me personally I haven’t.”

  “It’s that ice cream with chocolate, strawberry and vanilla stripes? It’s good when you can’t decide on any one particular flavor.”

  “I don’t like to mix my foods,” Leonard says. “I got this phobia about it. I like my peas on one side, my rice on another, then my meats over here.”

  They prowl through every room on the first floor and end up in her father’s library, casually sitting on leather furniture. Although Leonard’s doo
b has stopped burning, he heroically sucks on it for vestiges of life, a last sweet spin across wherever. When it gives nothing he curls up on the couch and clutches a throw pillow to his chest. “You’re not gonna fall asleep on me, are you?” she says.

  He looks so peaceful, though, that she can’t bring herself to protest any more.

  Certain that he’s asleep, Juliet takes the coke vial from his pocket and empties it on an occasional table. “Is this my life?” she says to the enormous room, then snorts the powder without bothering to cut it into lines.

  She leans back in the wing chair and listens to the silence, her mind tumbling in the purest of space. She suddenly feels energized, and strong. Too bad Leonard’s not awake to arm wrestle. Too bad Anthony’s not around to race in the yard. Her father used to time Anthony when he sent him out on chores, ticking off the seconds. “Twenty-four . . . twenty-five . . . twenty-six . . .” If only her father were here, she would break Anthony’s records.

  “Juliet? Juliet, please, sweetie, get up.”

  “Where are we going, Mother?”

  She’s about to get up and rouse Leonard when her father, dressed in white and holding his favorite panama, appears on the other side of the room.

  “Darling,” he says in his beautiful way. “Darling, how splendid. You’ve come home.”

  Her throat is dry from the coke and it takes an effort to speak. “Daddy, this might sound funny but death has been good to you.”

  “Still look like Cary Grant, do I?”

  “Yes, Daddy. You look so young.”

  He’s facing outside, eyes trained on something in the distance. “Juliet, I heard what you said about the couch and me getting caught. I have to ask you: is that anybody’s business?”

  “I didn’t tell him who they caught you with.”

  “That’s private information.”

  “I know it is, that’s why I didn’t say it. Don’t be mad at me, Daddy.”

  “Then don’t give me a reason to be.” He turns away from the window and confronts her at last. Yes, it’s him, all right. His face is shiny and white, illumined by a source she can’t immediately locate. It is a while before she understands that her father looks exactly as he does in the Casselli portrait on the stairway. Same clothes, same hair, same everything. He might’ve stepped right out of the canvas.

  The light shining on him must come from the small lamp fixed to the frame.

  “Daddy, are you real?”

  “Of course I’m real, darling. Now go upstairs and kill your mother.”

  Juliet leaps to her feet, prepared to obey, but in that instant Johnny Beauvais disappears. He’s no longer at the window, anyway. Her father who until a minute ago was entombed in a crypt in a cemetery just up the street, its pale Italian marble now sugary with age, his name crawling with lichen. Her father who by now is a skeleton or, worse, dust.

  A crush of hopelessness drops Juliet back in the seat, and the sound of the chair legs meeting the yellow pine causes Leonard to stir. He props himself up and gives a yawn.

  “Damn, girl, you look like you saw a ghost.”

  Her heart feels as if someone with large hands is squeezing it and trying to make it stop.

  “Juliet?”

  “It was Daddy,” she says, her voice sounding jagged for the pain. “He told me something.”

  Through stop signs and traffic lights Sonny drives without braking, pushing the old truck harder than it seems willing to go. He stops only once: to deposit the gloves and ski mask in a Dumpster behind a Marigny soul food restaurant.

  In front of the Beauvais cars stand bumper to bumper by the curb, and a second line blocks the near lane. People crowd the fence peering past the iron bars and trees.

  Sonny parks about a hundred yards away on the opposite side of the boulevard and runs to the gate. It occurs to him that by running he’s likely to draw attention to himself so he slows to a walk and joins the onlookers at the gate. Past the fence men and women of an official capacity huddle under the trees while others dig around under shrubbery bordering the property. Crime scene tape hugs the columns in front of the house, running from one to another and forming a loose girdle. All together Sonny counts half a dozen patrol officers, one of whom stops him as he tries to squeeze inside. “You’re going to have to wait out here.”

  The cop grips Sonny’s elbow and leads him back to the sidewalk.

  Sonny lingers with the others at the fence until Anna Huey appears on the first-floor gallery, Peroux at her side. This time when Sonny tries to clear the gate the cop plugs the entrance with his body. He lifts a finger and starts to speak, it’s going to be a lecture, but Peroux calls out “Let him in,” and Sonny pushes inside.

  He and Anna Huey embrace on the lawn and she begins to weep and Peroux lumbers off and joins the others under the trees. “It isn’t true,” Sonny says.

  “It is, sugar. It is true. She’s dead. Madam’s dead.” Tears run down her face and her voice is tired and weak. “Five o’clock,” she says, holding up a hand spread open. “Five o’clock and I go to wake her up and I can feel it isn’t right. I pull the curtains open expecting to hear a good morning. Miss Marcelle always gave me a good morning.” Anna Huey shakes her head and squares her arms at her chest. “She wasn’t there. The bed’s been slept in, but empty. So I walk down the hallway and I see Juliet’s door open and madam inside lying real quiet on the floor.”

  “Jesus.”

  “They beat her, sugar. Beat her so hard whatever it was they did it with broke and rained pieces all over the room. Little white plastic pieces and sand and dirt maybe. Madam looked peaceful, though. Take the blood away and she looked fine. Like she was sleeping.”

  Sonny shoots a glance at Peroux and he’s dismayed to discover the detective fixed on him with a stare, his countenance dark and bothered, hair plastered close to his scalp. Like most of the cops on the scene, Peroux is wearing transparent booties over his shoes and latex gloves on his hands, the gloves barely extending past the heels of his palms.

  He lifts one of those hands and gives Sonny a wave.

  “That detective and another one came by my house looking for Juliet,” Sonny says.

  “I knew they were going to, I’m the one who told them she might be there. But the police . . . Lieutenant Peroux, anyway, he just told me they found her in a hotel downtown. She’s on her way now.”

  Sonny sees past the mansion’s open door where dieners from the coroner’s office are carrying a gurney with a black body bag down the stairs. As they near the bottom one of the men bumps the Vaudechamp, exposing a lighter shade of paint underneath than that which covers the rest of the wall. The men place the gurney on the ground floor, lift its bed and wheel the body to the back of the house where, just past another open door, an ambulance is waiting.

  Sonny is listening only halfway when Anna Huey says, “I blame myself. Why’d I have to call and tell that girl to come back home?” She pivots away from the house, unable to finish. “Sonny, what I told you yesterday . . . listen, sugar, I meant it, I meant every word. And I want you to know I told the detectives the same thing.”

  “Yeah?” He’s distracted, still watching the attendants with the body bag. Still wondering why the cop keeps watching him. “You told them what, Mrs. Huey?”

  “The truth.”

  She has his attention now. “And what is that?”

  “That she’s dangerous, to start. I also told them she’s not right in the head and hasn’t been for years. She’s even worse off now than Mr. Johnny was at the end.”

  “Mrs. Huey, with all due respect, it’s hardly your place to be talking to the police about Juliet like that.”

  “No? Well, with all due respect to you, Sonny, you’re ignorant. And I can tell them whatever I want. Somebody’s got to say it.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Sonny, a few months ago Miss Marcelle and I hired an agency to locate Juliet and file a report about her whereabouts and activities. This agency was able to get
Juliet’s medical papers, don’t ask me how. Would you like to know what we learned?”

  Sonny shakes his head. “No, ma’am, I don’t.”

  “Good. Because I’d have to go get my dictionary. Paranoia, narcissism, delusions, histrionics. They’re hard enough to say let alone to understand.”

  Sonny doesn’t speak and Anna Huey says, “Want to guess where I reached her to tell her that story about her mama being sick?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Now if this isn’t sad, now if this won’t break your heart. Juliet was at work, sugar. It was eleven o’clock in the morning, California time, and she had to come off the stage at a club called the Bend Over out by the airport.”

  “Doesn’t make her a killer,” Sonny says, his voice barely audible.

  “Oh, Sonny, I hate to hurt you, sugar, but your Juliet is gone forever.”

  Sonny needs a moment to think, to absorb it all. Too stunned to cry, he offers a quiet laugh to convey his disbelief.

  “Sonny, you need to get smart, baby. You’ve been in a trance, sugar. It’s like you’re hypnotized. It’s like some magician put you in a spell half your life ago and he never snapped his fingers to wake you back up.”

  “Mrs. Huey, Juliet was at home with me in the Bywater until early this morning. There’s no way she was involved in this.”

  She studies his face with a leery half-smile, and it’s clear she’d laugh if not for a lack of energy. “Sonny, sometimes, sugar, I think you’re more lost than she is.”

  “Mrs. Huey, Juliet was with me.”

  She doesn’t respond and Sonny can feel her pulling away.

  “She was with me,” he says again.

  But Anna Huey is walking toward the cops under the trees.

  Leonard parks around the corner and together they enter the Hummingbird and take the lone table by a window. She likes the view of the street with the train rails lying in parallel ribbons in the bricks and asphalt, and overhead the silver-black power line that fires the streetcars running the length of the avenue. The Hummingbird isn’t fancy enough for individual menus; a menu board, decorated with drawings of dancing steaks and pork chops, covers a wall in the room. “Crawfish étouffée,” Juliet says, without bothering to consult the board.