1 Dead in Attic (16 page)

As you might imagine, his line was pretty tied up Tuesday morning.

“King!” I holler when I finally reach him. “What in blazes are you thinking? You're writing speeches for Wonka, and the best you can come up with is ‘Chocolate City'? Meet me at CC's Coffee House, bruh. Pronto. We gotta talk.”

“I'm tired,” he complains. “I had a big day yesterday.”

“We all had a big day yesterday, King,” I tell him. “Eleven o'clock. Be there.”

Then I call God.

Of course, my call is answered on the first ring, but it's some lackey working out of a phone bank in Singapore. We tangle a bit; she's giving me the runaround about him being busy and can she help me, and I'm wondering: What's with authority figures these days?

“Just who does he think he is, he can't take my call?” I say. “What, he's Dan Packer now?
Put him on!
”

I finally get him, and I calm down a bit because he's got that comforting voice, kind of like Barry White, but I'm still all dandered up and I tell him, “Eleven o'clock, CC's. We gotta talk.”

He starts to make excuses, tells me he's got lunch at Ruth's Chris with Pat Robertson, but I'm all over him like white on rice.

Unless it's brown rice, of course.

I suppose it could be brown.

Anyway, I wear him down and he finally admits that he thinks Robertson is a lunatic blowhard who's always asking God to take out some foreign leader or burn down a place like Oklahoma because there are sodomites reportedly living there, so he says to me, “All right. Chill, amigo. I'll be there.”

So me, King, and God all meet up and I'm ready to tear into these guys about the advice they're giving Mayor Wonka, who's gone all Shirley MacLaine on us and has had almost five months to compose himself since his multiple meltdown and the best thing he could come up with was this?

We're standing in line to order, and I let loose: “All right, you knuckleheads, which one of you wrote the ‘Chocolate City' thing?”

They are aghast at my strong language, “knucklehead” being the harshest term our mayor can come up with to describe the dirtbag, scumbag, dope fiend gang-bangers who have run roughshod over this town for the past decade, making us the Killing Fields of America.

Knuckleheads. Yeah, that's great, like they're the Three Stooges now. “Hey, I'm gonna cap yo ass with my nine. Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk.”

Anyway, King waves me off. “Can we order before we get into this?” he asks.

The barista, one of those bright and perky
Uptown
people—and I think you know what kind I mean—says, “Hey, guys, what can I getcha?” and sure, she acts all Ladies' Auxiliary toward us, but we all know—me, King, and God—that all this white girl really wants is to grab up as much property as possible in the Lower 9th and build a couples resort and day spa.

Me, King, and God—we're not stupid.

King orders first. “Coffee,” he says. “Black.”

Well, do I need to tell you: the whole shop is paralyzed into the most uncomfortable silence you ever heard.

“Jesus!” I mutter under my breath, and God pokes me in the eye. “Watch it, knucklehead,” he says.

The barista, she goes, “Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk,” and I'm beginning to think I shouldn't have gotten out of bed; I should have just stuck to my original plan to meet Kafka for racquetball at noon.

Coffee. Black. This King guy, he just doesn't get it. Then it turns out he's just joshing around. Suddenly he breaks the uncomfortable silence and screams,
“I'll have a cream!”

And he starts wagging his finger all around like he's back at the Lincoln Memorial, and he starts yelling, “And my children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their coffee, but by the content of their character.”

God, he cracks up at this. He starts nudging his elbow into my side, and he's practically got tears in his eyes.

“What are you, Chris Rock?” he says. “That's hilarious, King. You are one loco dude!”

They do that knuckle-knock thing, and God orders. Café au lait—who would have guessed?

So we sit and I ask them, “Guys, what's the deal? Wonka says he consulted with both of you before that blasted speech yesterday. Tell me you're not behind this Chocolate City thing. It's tearing us apart!”

King falls silent; he's eyeballing all the Uptowners like they're going to steal his hubcaps.

God pipes up, “Listen, hombre. Me and King, we had nothing to do with that speech. We told Wonka to go with a unity theme, black and white together as one. We did have this thing about Oreos in it, but we scratched that long before the final draft.

“Your boy Wonka, that was all off the cuff, man. Extemporizing, you dig? He was off the script on that one. Completely off the reservation.”

This gets King's attention. There's another uncomfortable pause as the whole place goes mute again.

“Sorry, cats,” God says. “Poor choice of words. My bad. But listen: You people have got your race thing so screwed up down here that even I'm having trouble concentrating. You've got to get your house in order, folks. Your boy Wonka is walking around tossing matches on kindling. If you don't watch out, the whole place is gonna blow.

“And that will put us all out of work,” he says, and he pushes his chair back and stands up.

“Gotta vamoose, bruh!” he says. “Been real, but there's mucho work to be done in the Chocolate City.
Hasta la vista.
”

Silence again.

“All right, I'll take the bait,” I tell him. “What's with all the gringo lingo?”

He looks at me like I'm crazy. He reaches into his wallet, grabs a card, and hands me one before he rolls out the door.

The card, it says, “God & Sons Roofing. Reasonable Rates. Fully Insured. Habla Español.”

I look at King. I stutter, “Did you know . . . ?” But he's just shaking his head at me.

“Go figure,” he says. “But it makes sense, when you think about it. His son's name is Jesus. The stepfather was a carpenter. All of them living in a Kenner hotel without electricity and running water like it's no big deal. It just goes to show, you never can tell. I guess you really need to be careful about what kind of assumptions you make about people.”

We both take a sip and pause for a moment, and he adds, “And God, for that matter.”

I nod at him over my tall glass of milk. “Now you're talking, King,” I tell him. “Now you're talking.”

When the mayor broke onto the political scene with a Starburst four years ago, he was our Mr. Goodbar, the Sugar Daddy we needed to lead us out of our intractable cycle of political Trix and Twizzlers.

Well, some folks suggest his Lucky Charms wore off this week with that Milk Dud of a speech, in which he handled Dr. King's legacy with Butterfingers and sent a fudge ripple over America's airwaves and Snickers through the halls of Congress.

He looked a little Zagnuts on TV, telling all those Whoppers and getting himself in Mounds of Dubble Bubble trouble. Sociable Crackers around here got Good & Plenty mad about that, wondering how we let this Cadbury the collective goodwill of the citizenry.

Oh, Henry!

Forthwith, his detractors would have you believe his Very Berry ill-timed comments threaten the city's Rocky Road to recovery and may even leave him wondering where the next Payday might come from after the elections.

To be Frankenberry with you, I disagree. With his admitted lack of political Skittles and his Neapolitan savvy, the chocolate chip on his shoulder, and that Jujube in his swagger—to say nothing of his knack for the perfectly timed Quisp—I find him a breath of fresh air.

A real Altoid of a guy. Therefore, I don't think we should pecan him anymore.

After all, rather then curry favor with political Jawbreakers, corporate Cocoa Puffs, and sycophantic Goobers like our former city leaders, our mayor made City Hall a haven for Smarties and Nerds, bringing the city's standards and technology up to the twenty-first century.

Okay, maybe his advisory team is not so Cracker Jack, a little top-heavy with dilettantes and Raisinets. And you have to wonder: What got into the guy? Was he dipping in the Laffy Taffy again? What made him Krackle up like that and go all Chips Ahoy on us?

It seems like he might have hit the Frosted Flakes a little too hard on his recent vacation in Jamoca; you'd swear he was eating Sno-Caps, all in a Häagen-Dazs like that old dude from the Grateful Dead.

Whatchamacallit?

Cherry Garcia. Yeah, that's the guy.

And now what a Chunky Monkey this city has on its back. We need our Big Shot mayor, Count Chocula his bad self, to lead us out of the Sierra Mist to Fruitopia, where levees are fifty feet tall and not made of Mallomar—and where we all worship at the same Oreo altar. Otherwise, you can just Kiss all our MoonPies good-bye.

So just say your Breyer's and hope everything turns out for the best, and let's have a little faith in our mayor, our leader.

Our Nutty Buddy.

Did you know there was a plan? A secret plan?

There was talk, of course, in the months before the mayoral election that white folks were intent on taking over this place and remaking it in our own image and we pooh-poohed that notion, of course, because it was politically expedient to do so, but it was, in fact, true.

There was a grand design for the New Vanilla City.

The first thing we were going to do was default on our contract with the Hornets and bring in NASCAR. Nothing gets white folks excited like really fast cars making a left turn for three hundred miles.

That, sports fans, is entertainment.

Second, we were going to get rid of this city's bizarre infatuation with chicory coffee. Man, that stuff is as bitter as birch bark. The new official drink of New Orleans: double chai latte. With skim milk.

Yes indeed, we were going to put some soul into this city at last.

Sunday afternoon second lines were to be replaced by line dancing. Instead of strange incense, oils, and rasta caps, the sidewalk vendors on Canal Street would sell exotic Dutch cheeses and bootleg Jimmy Buffett CDs.

We were going to put some culture into this place. Finally.

What a funky city it could have been, had the voting gone the other way—a city where gospel brunches were replaced by Gregorian chant breakfasts and the big clarinet on the side of the downtown Holiday Inn would be replaced with a really big banjo.

The menus at Dookie Chase's and Willie Mae's in the Treme would be reworked to add a little excitement to the dull palettes around here. No more of that turkey-neck whatever and all that okra stuff.

Instead, bagels and lox on every plate! And potato soup. Finally, a little flavor around here. A little excitement! Imagine a city restaurant critics would flock to for new and daring ideas.

New management at WWOZ would dispense with all that crazy jazz and R&B and would instead offer twenty-four-hour programming of
A Prairie Home Companion
with occasional weekend specials featuring all ABBA, all the time.

God, I love ABBA.

Oh, to think of the possibilities that slipped away in the voting booth last Saturday! What were you people thinking?

Imagine a JazzFest where the Polka Tent replaces that unfathomably dull Gospel Tent and instead of Congo Square we get—are you ready for this?—Scandinavian Square!

Something in a tasteful woodwind quartet, I'm thinking. Some barbershop quartet. Some college chorales. Something—anything!—to bring a little life to that same ol', same ol' JazzFest dullsville lineup.

One thing we would have kept is Lionel Richie as the closing act on the Second Sunday. I thought that worked out pretty good.

Yeah, we were gonna keep Lionel. Have you ever listened—and I mean
really
listened?—to the lyrics of “Sail On”?

Unbelievable. And tell me the truth: Does anyone even know what “Hey Pocky Way” means? The Neville Brothers are so yesterday.

This town, people—this town was gonna change. We were finally going to have something special here, something that people from around the world would want to come see and experience.

In the Quarter, we were going to get rid of all those noisy street-corner brass bands and break-dancers and the tap-dancing kids and replace them with: more mimes. Mimes, man. They crack me up.

How do they stand still for so long?

Shoeshine hustlers would change their con. No more crazy vernacular. The pitch would now be “Would you care to make a wager on the location of the procurement of your footwear?”

Other phrases around here would be reworked for clarity and precision. “May I inquire as to the health of your mother and her extended family?”

And no more “Yeah, you right.” Instead: “That is correct, sir!”

And “Who is that to intimate they are going to defeat our football team? Who is that? Who is that?”

We've got streets here named after African-American icons like Martin Luther King, Oretha Castle Haley, and Rosa Parks, but nothing for the truly great Caucasians this city has produced.

I mean, how come there's no Richard Simmons Street? Kitty Carlisle Avenue? I'm telling you, it's simply not fair.

Did you know that the Backstreet Cultural Museum doesn't even have an exhibit on lacrosse? What's up with that?

There was a new world order in store. Polo!
Will & Grace
film festivals! Brooks & Dunn! Zulu outfitted by Perlis! Oh, glory lost!

We could have been the most interesting city in America.

But no. Not now. The dream is dashed. Crazy voters.

I am despondent. I need a mojito.

Tennis, anyone?