My Juliet (23 page)

“Sonny, why are you always so serious, baby. Can't you ever relax?”

“I can't let go of anything, can I?”

“No. Now do your girlfriend a favor and grab her a towel, please.”

Juliet gets out of the tub and he lowers the toilet lid and instructs her to sit there. Clearly he's trying to redeem himself. He dries between her toes, dries each finger, dries her armpits, behind her knees, between her legs. His face is filled with stubborn intensity; he could be outside washing a car. Sonny grows aroused by the intimacy and he leans forward so that his cock, still streaked in places with blood, bumps and bobs against her. “Endlessly fascinating, I'm sure,” she tells him.

“How's that?”

“Your penis. It's endlessly fascinating. It's also quite large.”

He shakes his head but doesn't say anything.

“You don't think you're big, Sonny?”

“I think I'm average.”

“Oh, if only that were so, sweetheart. If this is average there'd be many more happy ladies in the world. You men would give us nothing to complain about.”

Juliet puts on his father's robe and although it's one o'clock in the morning and she could sleep food is the greater priority. She can't recall the last time she ate. A day ago? Two days ago? She and Sonny move to the kitchen and scavenge the cupboards. They find only noodles in a Tupperware container dating back to when Mrs. LaMott was alive. Hidden behind a forest of aerosol cans, the noodles are no less than five years old, but Juliet has Sonny cook them anyway. After they've finished boiling he splashes olive oil and sprinkles salt and crushed black pepper on them then adds half a stick of butter.

“This is the best pasta I've ever eaten in my whole, entire life,” Juliet says, although in actual fact she's able to get little down.

Sonny says, “This is the same table where we sat that night you came for supper.”

“Yes. I liked my yellow plate then and I like it now.”

“I'm sorry there isn't more to eat. I need to make groceries soon.”

“Only in New Orleans do people make groceries. Everywhere else they buy them. When I first got to LA I told this neighbor in my apartment complex that I needed to go make groceries and she thought I was asking for directions to the bathroom.”

“Julie, do you think we'll ever get married?”

“I don't just think we will, baby, I know we will.”

“I'd like children.”

“Mmm . . .” As if the noodles are really that wonderful.

After the meal they clean the kitchen and retire to the bedroom and huddle against the headboard watching an old black-and-white movie on TV. The movie features Ronald Colman as an artist who loses his sight and is unable to paint anymore. Ronald Colman with his skinny mustache, dapper clothing and fine, gentrified manner looks and acts nothing like any artist Sonny ever knew, and Sonny determines to change his approach if ever he returns to the fence. This is what he says to Juliet, in any case.

Maybe with a different style he'll have more success selling his work. Maybe if he sounds less like the Ninth Ward and more Uptown. Maybe maybe maybe.

The movie ends and Juliet looks at him, eyes draining tears, a trickle at her nose. “Sonny, don't ever go blind.”

“Not me, Julie.”

They stay up until almost 3:00
A
.
M
. The rain slacks off then stops altogether and a dense, eerie quiet settles in. Sonny opens a bedroom window and the cool, wet breeze cuts the fecund odor of fucking. “Don't ever go blind,” Juliet says a second time, somehow loving and hating him both.

But by now Sonny is asleep, too far gone to answer.

Five hours later, at a little after eight o'clock, a hard knocking at the front door awakens Sonny to an empty bed, sheets wrapped around his legs.

Sonny comes to with a fat headache that only gets fatter when he realizes Juliet isn't there.

He throws on a robe and pulls the door open. Standing on the landing at the top of the stairs are two men in black plastic raincoats, both of them dripping water.

Sonny knows they're cops before they identify themselves.

The older and more physically substantial of the two gives his name as Lieutenant Peroux. “Me and Sergeant Lentini here are NOPD, Criminal Investigation Division.”

Peroux looks to Sonny like one of those black Creoles Juliet lectured her mother about, his small, sharp features and fair complexion betraying more French than African blood. His hair, too, is straight and fine with comb lines sweeping from left to right. He's so wet from the rain that even his mustache shines with glass beads.

Lentini, in contrast, is small and fat and sports just enough stubble to look stylish. He wears horn-rimmed glasses and a weatherproof golf hat. Sonny can't decide whether he looks more like a fifties beatnik or an electronics technician on call for cable TV.

Neither he nor Peroux bothers to show credentials.

“Is Juliet Beauvais here?” Peroux begins. He has a Yat accent (as in the local colloquialism
“Where y'at?”
) and one almost as hard and flat as Sonny's.

Talking carefully, tightening the sash on his robe: “Ah, no. I'm sorry, Lieutenant. Juliet's already left.”

“Did she say where she was going?”

“No. No, she didn't.”

Sonny's head is pounding and he can barely speak for the dense, cottony weight on his tongue. “Would you like to come in?” He opens the door wider but Peroux stays outside, fingering a page in a reporter's notebook.

Lentini, on the other hand, brushes past Sonny without a word, glaring from behind too-thick lenses.

“Any idea where she might of run off to?” Peroux asks.

Sonny needs a moment to answer. “She had a room at a hotel downtown.”

“What hotel was that?”

“The Lé Dale on Saint Charles. Just down the street from the Hummingbird.” Once again Sonny tries to swallow but can't get anything down. “Lieutenant, can you tell me what's the problem?”

Peroux lowers his gaze and quickly brings it back up, his muddy brown eyes exploring Sonny's face as if for an answer to a question he isn't prepared to ask.

Then from inside Lentini speaks with a tone so low and unaffected he might be describing the room's thrift-store furnishings. “Somebody got in her mama's house last night.” He waits until Sonny looks at him. “They killed her.”

Sonny leaves the doorway and crosses the room and sits on the sofa by the window. Nearly a minute goes by before he starts to cry, then it comes with an intensity that racks his body. The cops watch him without saying anything. Finally when Sonny seems to finish, Peroux knocks on the door as if they just got there. “Hate to interrupt, but can we have a look around?”

It is hard for Sonny to answer, hard for him to say anything at all.

“In the room back there . . . mind if we look? You don't want us to look, just say don't look.”

“You can look.”

But Peroux stays where he is. And it's Lentini who looks. Sonny hears him opening closet doors, pulling back the shower curtain, rifling drawers.

“Are you sure it was Juliet's mother?”

“Positive, Sonny.” The detective smiles and points a finger. “You are Sonny, right, podna?”

Lentini returns and flashes a pair of open palms.

Peroux takes a business card from his wallet and hands it to Sonny.
SAMUEL PEROUX
,
JR
., it says, and includes the phone number and South Broad Street address for police headquarters.

“We'll be needing to talk again,” he says. “So don't be going nowheres.”

Sonny keeps his eyes on the card.

“You see Miss Beauvais you have her call that number, you hear?” Sonny doesn't answer and Peroux says, “Hey, podna, I'm talking to you.”

“I'll tell her.”

As soon as they've gone, Sonny puts the police chain on the door. In the bathroom he forces a finger down his throat but nothing comes up. He kneels on the floor next to the tub and runs the water and tries a second time. Still nothing.

He can't stop shaking and can't seem to get warm and he lies on the rubber bathmat and holds his legs with his arms. He stays on the floor for nearly an hour then he remembers something and he gets dressed and walks downstairs to the street.

In the truck he starts with the passenger's side. Finding nothing, he moves down to the driver's side and feels under the seat. A Coke can. Paper candy wrappers and empty corn chip bags. Digging deeper, he finds the gloves and ski mask wadded together against the seat frame. He finds a tire jack and an empty can of oil. But the club is gone.

Sonny is careful not to slam the door.

He looks back at the house to make sure Florence and Curly Bonaventure aren't watching.

It's no big thing to find a ride, even at this time of night. The old Pontiac rattles to a stop and the passenger door squeaks open. Juliet, standing in a wash of red from the brake lights, flicks her cigarette in the weeds and steps forward trailing smoke. She doesn't think she can stand being kidnapped and raped just now, but her feet hurt. She bends in the door and spies a brother and his woman, their faces green in the glow from the dash. “Need a ride?”

“Did you see my thumb?” Juliet says to the man, then gives a loud, dishonest laugh. “Last I checked your thumb needs to do something.”

“I don't play by them rules,” he says. “If you're coming, get in. Otherwise, good night.”

The woman shoves over and Juliet sits on the torn rubber seat. The window is down and she sticks her elbow out. “I'm going up the street here 'bout half a mile.”

“On our way, then,” says the woman, as the car thumps over train tracks. “You starting the day or you ending it?”

Juliet likes the woman's face, her smile. Also, she smells nice. Sweet, like cane syrup warmed with butter. “My days don't start or end, sweetie. They just go on and on and on.”

“I hear you,” says the man, cackling with laughter.

Juliet wants to ask about their day, but here they are in Faubourg Marigny already. She gets out and bumps the car with a fist as it drives away. The brake lights flash in recognition, then the blinkers, both sides. It is always nice to make new friends, even at three-thirty in the morning when it is a brother and his woman and she wouldn't be caught dead talking to them in the sensible light of day.

Her vagina's sore, but nevertheless Juliet feels deep affection for all mankind.

She walks a block and arrives at Leonard's club. Except for the handful of kids hanging out in front the place seems to have packed it in for the night. Inside a couple of boys are stacking chairs and folding tables. At the bar a woman is counting money. And over on the bandstand Leonard is coiling electrical cords.

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.”