Vieux Carre (10 page)

TYE
: Now, Babe.

JANE
: If you approach this
bed—

TYE
: Just want to comfort you, honey. Can't we just rest together? Can't we? Rest and comfort each other?

MRS. WIRE
: Cut out that obscene talking up there, I'm on the phone. Emergency call is from here at 722 Toulouse. Christ Almighty, you drive me to profane language. You mean to admit you don't know the location of the most historical street in the Vieux Carré? You're not talking to no . . . no nobody, but a personage. Responsible. Reputable. Known to the authorities on the list of attractions. God damn it, you twist my tongue up with your . . . Nursie! Nursie! Will you talk to this incompetent . . . Nursie! Nursie!

Got some idiot on the phone at the hospital. Will you inform this idiot who I am in the Quarter. Phone. Talk.

NURSIE
: Stairs . . . took my breath . . .

MRS. WIRE
[
snatching back the phone
]: Now I want you to know, this here Nightingale case . . . I don't lack sympathy for the dying or the hopelessly inflicted . . . [
She kicks at Nursie beside her
.] Git! But I've got responsibilities to my tenants. Valuable paying tenants, distinguished society ladies, will quit my premises this day, I swear they will, if this Nightingale remains. Why, the State Board of Health will clap a suit on me unless . . . at once . . . ambulance. When? At what time? Don't say approximate to me. Emergency means immediate. Not when you drag your arse around to it. And just you remember I'm a taxpayer . . . No, no, you not me. I pay, you collect. Now get the ambulance here immediately, 722 Toulouse, with a stretcher with straps, the Nightingale is violent with fever. [
She slams down the phone
.] Shit!

NURSIE
: My guess is they're going to remove you, too.

WRITER
: That Sunday I served my last meal for a quarter in the Quarter, then I returned to the attic. From Nightingale's cage there was silence so complete I thought, “He's dead.” Then he cried out
softly—

NIGHTINGALE
: Christ, how long do I have to go on like this?

WRITER
: Then, for the first time, I returned his visits. [
He makes the gesture of knocking at Nightingale's door
.]—Mr. Rossignol . . .

—You shouldn't try to dress.

NIGHTINGALE
: Got to-escape! She wants to commit me to a charnal house on false charges . . .

WRITER
: It's raining out.

NIGHTINGALE
: A Rossignol will not be hauled away to a charity hospital.

WRITER
: Let me call a private doctor. He wouldn't allow them to move you in
your—
condition . . .

NIGHTINGALE
: My faith's in
Christ—
not doctors . . .

WRITER
: Lie down.

NIGHTINGALE
: Can't breathe
lying—
down . . .

WRITER
: I've brought you this pillow. I'll put it back of your head. [
He places the pillow gently in back of Nightingale
.] Two plilows help you breathe.

NIGHTINGALE
[
leaning weakly back
]:
Ah—
thanks—
better . . . Sit down.

WRITER
: Theren' nowhere to sit.

NIGHTINGALE
: You mean nowhere not contaminated? [
The writer sits
.] —
God's got to give me time for serious work!
Even God has moral obligations, don't He? —Well,
don't
He?

WRITER
: I think that morals are a human invention that He ignores as successfully as we do.

NIGHTINGALE
: Christ, that's evil, that is infidel talk. [
He crosses himself
.] I'm a Cath'lic believer. A priest would say that you have fallen from Grace, boy.

WRITER
: What's that you're holding?

NIGHTINGALE
: Articles left me by my sainted mother. Her tortoise-shell comb with a mother-of-pearl handle and her silver framed mirror.

Precious heirlooms, been in the Rossignol family three generations. I look pale from confinement with asthma. Bottom of box
is—
toiletries,
cosmetics—
please!

WRITER
: You're planning to make a public appearance, intending to go on the streets with
this—
advanced case of asthma?.

NIGHTINGALE
: Would you kindly hand me my Max Factor, my makeup kit?!

WRITER
: I have a friend who wears cosmetics at
night—
they dissolve in the rain.

NIGHTINGALE
: If necessary, I'll go into
Sanctuary!

Joke, is it, is it a joke?! Foxes have holes, but the Son of Man hath nowhere to hide His head!

WRITER
: Don't you know you're delirious with fever?

NIGHTINGALE
: You used to be
kind—
gentle. In less than four months you've turned your back on that side of your nature, turned rock-hard as the world.

WRITER
: I had to survive in the world. Now where's your pills for sleep, you need to rest.

NIGHTINGALE
: On the chair by the bed.

WRITER
[
softly
]: Maybe this time you ought to take more than one.

NIGHTINGALE
: Why, you're suggesting suicide to me which is a cardinal sin, would put me in unhallowed ground
in—
potter's
field. I believe in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost . . . you've turned into a killer?

WRITER
[
compulsively, with difficulty
]: Stop calling it asthma—the flu, a bad cold. Face the facts, deal with them. [
He opens the pillbox
.] Press tab to open, push down, unscrew the top. Here it is where you can reach it.

NIGHTINGALE
: —Boy with soft skin and stone heart . . .

WRITER
: Hear the rain, let the rain talk to you, I can't.

NIGHTINGALE
: Light the candle.

WRITER
: The candle's not necessary. You've got an alcove, too, with a window and bench. Keep your eyes on it, she might come in here before you fall asleep.

Do you see her in the alcove?

NIGHTINGALE
: Who?

WRITER
: Do you feel a comforting presence?

NIGHTINGALE
: None.

WRITER
: Remember my mother's mother? Grand?

NIGHTINGALE
: I don't receive apparitions. They're only seen by the mad.

WRITER
: In my own cubicle, I wasn't sure if Grand had entered with me or not. I couldn't distinguish her from
a—
diffusion of light through the low running clouds. I thought I saw her, but her image was much fainter than it had ever been before, and I suspected that it would fade more and more as the storm of my father's blood obliterated the tenderness of Grand's. I began to pack my belongings. I was about to make a panicky departure to nowhere I could imagine . . . The West Coast? With Sky?

NURSIE
: Mizz Wire knows you're packin' to leave an' she tole me to bring you up this hot coffee and cold biscuits.

WRITER
: Thank her. Thank you both.

NURSIE
: She says don't make no mistakes.

WRITER
[
harshly
]: None, never?

NURSIE
: None if you can help, and I agree with her about that. She's phoned your folks about you. They're coming down here tomorrow.

WRITER
: If she's not bluffing . . .

NURSIE
: She ain't bluffin', I heard her on the phone myself. Mizz Wire is gettin' you confused with her son Timmy. Her mind is slippin' again. Been through that before. Can't do it again.

WRITER
: We all have our confusions . . . [
He gulps down the coffee as Nursie crosses out of the light
.]

NURSIE
[
singing softly
]: “My home is on Jordan.”

WRITER
: Then I started to write. I worked the longest I'd ever worked in my life, nearly all that Sunday. I wrote about Jane and Tye, I could hear them across the narrow
hall.—
Writers are shameless spies. . .

TYE
: Want a hit, Babe? [
She ignores the question
.] How long have I been asleep? Christ, what are you crying about. Didn't I just give you one helluva Sunday afternoon ball, and you're cryin' about it like your mother died.

JANE
: You forced me, you little pig, you did, you forced me.

TYE
: You wanted it.

JANE
: I didn't.

TYE
: Sure you did. [
Jane is dressing again
.] Honey, you got shadows under your eyes.

JANE
: Blackbirds kissed me last night. Isn't that what they say about shadows under the eyes, that blackbirds kissed her last night. The Brazilian must have been blind drunk when he took a fancy to me in the Blue Lantern, mistook me for a hundred-dollar girl. —Tye, I'm not a whore! I'm the Northern equivalent of a lady, fallen, yes, but a lady, not a whore.

TYE
: Whores get paid for it, Babe. I never had to.

JANE
: You
little—
prick! Now I'm talkin' your jive, how do you like it? Does she talk like that when she's smearing you with lipstick, when you ball her, which I know you do, repeatedly, between shows.

TYE
: —Who're you talkin' about?

JANE
: That headliner at the strip show, the Champagne Girl.

TYE
[
gravely
]: She'
s—
not with the show no more.

JANE
: The headliner's quit the show?

TYE
: Yeah, honey, the Champagne Girl is dead an' so she's not in the show.

JANE
: You
mean—
not such a hot attraction any more?

TYE
: Don't be funry about it, it ain't funny.

JANE
: You mean she's
actually—

TYE
: Yes. Ackshally. Dead. Real dead, about as dead as dead, which is totally
dead—
So now you know why I needed a needle to get me through last night.

JANE
: —Well, of course that'
s—

TYE
: You was jealous of her . . . [
Jane looks away
.] I never touched the Champagne Girl. She was strictly the property of the Man. Nobody else dared t' touch her.

JANE
: The
Man—
what man?

TYE
: The
Man—
no other name known by. —
Well—
he wasted her.

JANE
: —Killed her? —Why?

TYE
: 'Cause she quit deeping with him. She was offered a deal on the West Coast, Babe. The Man said, “No.” The Champagne
Girl said, “Yes.” So the Man . . . you don't say no to the
Man—
so if she's going to the West Coast it'll be packed in
ice—

TOURIST 1
: My slippers are wet through.

TOURIST 2
: What's next on the tour, or is it nearly finished?

TYE
: When the Man is annoyed by something, he piles his lupos in the back seat of his bulletproof limo and he let's 'em loose on the source of his annoyance.

JANE
: —Lupos?

TYE
: Lupos are those big black dawgs that're used for attack. The Man has three of 'em, and when he patrols his territory at night, they sit in the back seat of his Lincoln, set up there, mouths wide open on their dagger teeth and their black eyes rollin' like dice in a nigger crapshooter's hands. And night before last, Jesus! he let 'em into the Champagne Girl's apartment, and
they—
well, they ate her. Gnawed her tits off her ribs, gnawed her sweet little ass off. Of course the story is that the Champagne Girl entertained a pervert who killed her and ate her like that, but it's pretty well known it was them lupos that devoured that girl, under those ceiling mirrors and crystal chandeliers in her all white satin bedroom. —
Yep—
gone—the
headliner—
Y'know what you say when the Man wastes somebody? You got to say that he or she has “Gone to Spain.” So they tole me last night, when people ask you where's the Champagne Girl, answer 'em that the Champagne Girl's gone to Spain. —Sweet kid from Pascagoula.

JANE
: Please don'
t—
continue—the story.

TYE
: All champagne colored without face or body makeup on her, light gold like pale champagne and not a line, not a pore to be seen on her body! Was she meant for dawg food? I said, was she meant for dawg food? Those lupos ate that kid like she was
their—
last—supper . . .

JANE
[
who has now managed to get round the table
]: Tye, Tye, open the shutters!

TYE
: Why? You goin' out naked?

JANE
: I'm going to vomit and
die—
in clean air . . . [
She has moved slowly upstage to the gallery with its closed shutters, moving from one piece of furniture to another for support. Now she opens the shutter doors and staggers out onto the gallery, and the tourist ladies' voices are raised in thrilled shock and dismay
.]

TOURIST 1
: Look at that!

TOURIST 2
: What at?

TOURIST 1
: There's a whore at the gallery window! Practically naked!

JANE
[
wildly
]: Out, out, out, out, out!

NURSIE
: Miss, Miss Sparks! These are Festival ladies who've paid admission.

JANE
: Can't endure any more! Please, please. I'm sick!

TYE
: Fawgit it, Babe, come back in.

JANE
: It isn't real, it couldn't
be—

But it
was—
it is . . . like a dream . . .

TYE
: What did you say, Babe?

JANE
: Close the gallery
door—
please?

TYE
: Sure, Babe. [
He shuts the door on the voices below
.]

JANE
:
And—
the hall
door—
bolt it. Why do you bring home nightmare stories to me?!

TYE
[
gently
]: Babe, you brought up the subject, you asked me about the Champagne Girl, I wasn't planning to tell you. Chair?

JANE
: Bed.

TYE
: Weed?

JANE
: —Coffee.

TYE
: Cold.

JANE
: —
Cold—
coffee.

JANE
: . . . Why do you want to stay on here?

TYE
: Here's where you are, Babe.

JANE
[
shaking her head
]: No more. I . . . have to dress . . . [
She dresses awkwardly, frantically. He watches in silence
.] You have to get dressed, too, I told you I was expecting a very important visitor. Tye, the situation's turned impossible on us, face it.

TYE
: You're not walkin' out on me.

JANE
: Who have I got to appeal to except God, whose phone's disconnected, or this . . . providential . . . protector.

TYE
: From the banana republic, a greaseball. And you'd quit me for that?

JANE
: You've got to be mature and understanding. At least for once, now dress. The Brazilian is past due . . . I realized your defects, but you touched me like nobody else in my life had ever before or ever could again. But, Tye, I counted on you to grow up, and you refused to. I took you for someone gentle caught in violence and degradation that he'd escape from . . .

TYE
: Whatever you took me for, I took you for honest, for decent, for . . .

JANE
: Don't be so . . . “Decent”? You ridiculous little . . . sorry, no. Let's not go into . . . abuse . . . Tye? When we went into this it wasn't with any long-term thing in mind. That's him on the steps. Go in the bathroom quiet!

TYE
: You go in the bathroom quiet. I'll explain without words.

. . . Well?

Sounds like the footsteps of a responsible man.

WRITER
: It's
just—
they're removing the painter.

JANE
:
—Just!

TYE
: No Brazilian, no buyer?

JANE
: No. No sale . . .

WRITER
[
standing in the open doorway, as narrator
]: It was getting dim in the room.

TYE
: It's almost getting dark.

WRITER
: They didn't talk. He smoked his reefer. He looked at her steady in the room getting dark and said . . .

TYE
: I see you clear.

WRITER
: She turned her face away. He walked around that way and looked at her from that side. She turned her face the other way. She was crying without a sound, and a black man
was playing piano at the Four Deuces round the corner, an oldie, right for the atmosphere . . . something like . . .

JANE
: Don't.

DON'T

TYE
: Jane. You've gotten sort
of—
skinny. How much weight you lost?

JANE
: I . . . don't know . . .

TYE
: Sometimes you walk a block and can't go no further.

JANE
: I guess I'm a yellow-cab girl. With limousine aspirations.

TYE
: Cut the smart talk, Babe. Let's level.

Want a dreg? Well?

Huh?

JANE
: Well, after all, why not, if you're interested in it. It hasn't been just lately I've lost weight and energy but for more than a year in New York.
Some—
blood
thing—
progressing rather fast at my age . . . I think I had a remission when I met you.

A definite remission . . . here . . . like the world stopped and turned backward, or like it entered another
universe—
months
[
She moves convulsively; Tye grips her shoulders
.] . . . Then . . . it . . . I . . .

TYE
: Us?

JANE
: No, no, that unnatural tiredness started in again. I went to Ochsners. Don't you remember when the doctor's letter was delivered? No, I guess you don't, being half conscious all the time. It was from Ochsners. It informed me that my blood count had changed for the worse. It was close to . . . collapse . . . [
Pause
.] . . . Those are the clinical details. Are you satisfied with them? Have you any more questions to ask?

JANE
: That's Beret, let her in. Isn't it nice how cats go away and come back
and—
you don't have to worry about them. So unlike human beings.

TYE
[
gently
]: Jane, it's getting dark and
I—
I better get dressed now.

JANE
[
with a touch of harshness
]: Yes,
dress—
dress . . . [
But he is lost in reflection, lighting a joint. She snatches it from his lips
.]

And leave me alone as always in a room that smells, that reeks of marijuana!