Just Me
Thirsty Work — Chapter 22: leave taking
Two young women from California travel to New Orleans in search of redemption after the death of their mother. Carolee thinks she will show her little sister the world, but what they find in the barrooms of the French Quarter at Mardi Gras is more than she knows how to handle, or could have imagined back home. This is the twenty-second chapter of the novel Thirsty Work.
It wasn’t as hard as I’d imagined, going back into the apartment after I kicked the car. Everyone pretended they hadn’t seen me behaving badly on the sidewalk, or maybe they really didn’t see me, or were so wrapped up in their packing that they didn’t care. But as intent as they were on getting ready, it seemed to take forever for anyone to actually go.
First we had to pose for pictures. Terri came down from upstairs and took a few of the whole gang with various cameras. Then she posed with the group for a few more, her blonde head towering over the rest of us in her spike heels, her big breasts and deep cleavage stealing every scene.
Peter and Stan were the first to leave, giving everyone a big hug and a little piece of paper with their addresses and phone numbers on it before climbing into either side of their VW van. As they drove off down the street I felt a small weight lift off my chest, and a little worry bloom in my gut; I was two people closer to being left alone.
Cathy and Carl were the next to go. The 18-wheel truck he was driving barely fit between the parked cars on either side of our little street. The double tires came up way past my waist. When Carl maneuvered his behemoth outside the apartment and blew the horn to impress us, he looked completely at home in the driver’s seat. His tattooed bicep showed out the window, a cigarette dangled from the side of his mouth. But the more impressive picture was Cathy. She sat up high in the cab, her white-blonde hair spilling out of the window, and waved happily down to me and the other tiny people on the street. She seemed like a fairy princess departing on an epic journey — the big Mack truck her mighty chrome and rubber steed. Was this magical woman really my little sister?
“Bye Lee,” she called out joyfully, using a pet name she hadn’t uttered since she was a little girl.
“Bye Cathy,” I tried to mirror her enthusiasm. “Have a great time! Don’t forget to phone!” I was glad when they drove off abruptly. I didn’t want her to see the tears.
Howard hurried to leave next, so he wouldn’t be left alone with me. With his beret tipped over one half of his forehead and his one small backpack slung over his shoulder, he looked the best suited for the road. “Good-bye Carolee,” he said as he left me behind, using his best voice — deep and sonorous, with undercurrents of sex and love.
It was a voice meant to stir me. A sweet, purring voice, pitched to make me regret its loss. A voice he probably used every time he left his real girlfriend.
“Good-bye.” I gurgled like a sick cat.
“Look, I’ve written my parents’ address down for you. You can always reach me there.” He reached for my hand, but when he found it unresponsive, put the folded piece of paper in my pocket. I stood still as a stature as his fingers brushed the fabric over my hip, his gentle touch hurting me there. “If you change your mind and decide you want me to come visit you in California, just write me,” he said in an upbeat tone.
How can you say that? I wanted to yell. How can you pretend you didn’t mean it when you kissed me? Pretend that wasn’t love? But before my dead mouth responded to my fogged brain’s instructions, Howard had turned and gone.
I didn’t cry.
That left Doug and the girls. He had decided to go to Pennsylvania with them, of course. I figured it was for the best. I didn’t really want to see him continue whatever it was he had started with Aunt Viv. So I hugged them good-bye. We exchanged addresses. I collected keys.
“Carolee,” Doug started. “About last night at Viv’s…”
“Don’t worry about it. It was nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Let’s talk about it back in Stockton, okay?”
He was relieved to accept the postponement. “Okay,” he nodded, rubbing my back paternally before sauntering off with a woman on each arm.
And then it was just me. I stood in the street by myself for a minute before going back into the apartment alone. I must have looked pathetic because soon enough Terri had come back downstairs to stand beside me and drape her arm over my shoulder.
“Did everybody leave you here all by yourself?” she asked sympathetically.
“Yep.”
“What about your sister?”
“She’ll be back in two weeks. That’s how long the flat is paid up for. Then we’ll head out for home.”
“California?”
“Yeah. Stockton.”
“That’s sounds good,” Terri nodded, but she still looked concerned. “Well, if you get lonely, just holler upstairs. I’ll bring a bottle down.”
“I’ll do that. Thanks.”
When Terri left I went back into the flat, but without the cacophony of the crew, it felt menacing. There were no bodies, no voices, no sound of laughter. There was very little light.
But there was movement. There, in the corner, a shadow shifted. Light from the window skittered across the floor. I thought I heard a mouse scurry in the kitchen. The tiny stick legs of cockroaches. And then, all around me, the shadows began gathering into a shape — a black shape I recognized from the hospital in Stockton, leaning over Mom’s chrome and steel bed.
I fumbled with the dead bolt, pinching my finger, and ran back outside, slamming shut the door. Now what? I shoved the keys deep into my pocket walked towards Sally’s bar. I tried to stay calm and walk slowly, but my pace soon quickened — visions pursued me.
Mom’s dead face on the tiny white, satin pillow. Aunt Viv’s black bra strap across her naked back. Cathy’s face high up in the cab of the 18-wheeler — unreachable, receding. Dad’s flat expression as he waved good-bye when we left on this trip. Cathy’s skinny white legs on the dark floor of the back bathroom the day of the funeral, as she leaned over the toilet. The sound of her puke dropping into the bowl. The shape of Howard’s lips. Petulant. Petaled. Rounding to push out his real girlfriend’s name. Grandpa reaching for his daughter’s nightgown
“Mama!” I heard myself whisper as I broke into a trot. And, “God help me!” when I saw the swinging doors to the saloon.
I pushed through them as through the finish line of a race. The room inside was dark and cool. Sally was behind the bar. I drew myself up short. “Hey Carolee, you all right?” Sally asked. I nodded. “The way you burst in here — you must REALLY be thirsty!”
I laughed a little, grateful for the balm of her humor. “I AM thirsty,” I nodded. “I could use something.”
“Here ya go, Lee,” Sally put a draft beer on the bar in front of me, using the same pet name Cathy had an hour before.
“Where’s that crowd you hang out with?”
“They all left.”
“You on your own now?”
I took a big drink and nodded my head. The beer was cold and yeasty — like bread. I felt it begin to work immediately, spreading a delicious numbness down my arms. The dark bar was comforting, too. And Sally. Pretty Sally.
“Well pull up a stool and make yourself comfortable.”
I scanned at the other patrons before planting my butt on top of a heavy barstool. There was one old drunk at the end of the bar, his head already drooping, and two big burly bikers playing pool in the back. The door to the adjacent grocery store was open, and Della was behind the counter there, a baby hanging on to her legs, another in her arms, her belly already swelling with a third. A few long, blonde tendrils trailed from the pile of hair on her head. No menacing shadows.
“This beer tastes really good. Could you pour me a shot of whiskey to go with that?”
“Sure thing, honey,” Sally turned to the row of glass bottles behind her, lining up neatly beneath the mirror, each topped with a chrome spout like a shiny bird’s beak. She pulled out one from the rest and tipped it over a shot glass. “Here you go,” she put the small, heavy glass on the counter in front of me. “You drink that down and you’ll feel better,” she nodded broadly, pouting her lips and playing the fool for me. “Guaranteed.”
You were supposed to knock the whole drink back in one gulp. That was the way the professionals drank whiskey. But I couldn’t stomach that. I took a sip and relished the burn as it ate a path down my throat to my chest. Then I took a sip of beer and savored that too as it chased after the fiery whiskey with a cooling antidote.
“So, you gonna stay at the flat? Or you gonna take me up on my offer to stay wit me at my place?”
“I think I wanna stay with you, Sally, if that’s OK. The flat’s kinda creepy now that everyone’s gone.”
“No problem.” Sally smiled again as she reached into her back pocket. Her jeans were so tight it was an effort to slip her slim fingers in. But she managed to extract a single, silver key.
“Here’s the key. I had one made just for you — special.”
“Thank you,” I whispered, taking the key in my hand. I didn’t know if she was joking about making the key special for me. But I felt so foolishly grateful it was an effort not to cry.
“You know how to get to my place, right?”
I nodded.
“You can come and go any time you please. There’s a couch in the living room that’s just about your size. Where’s your stuff? You want to bring it over now?”
“I do. I will. Just as soon as I finish this whiskey.”
“Well, okay. Just make sure you don’t forget,” she pursed her lips and looked pointedly down at my shot glass. I laughed.
I spent the next couple of hours watching Sally work. She was 10 times better than a TV show. As the bar filled with people, she greeted each one who came in. She talked to every customer like an old friend. Maybe they were all old friends, for all I knew. But none of them were staying at her place, like I was. None of them had their own special key.
I had three drinks before I left to retrieve my stuff. It was enough alcohol to calm my nerves, numb my pains, and make the walk pleasant. The sun was out, and it mingled with the warmth in my veins to make me voluptuously lethargic. I thought it would take courage to go back to the flat, but if there’d been a death shadow before, it didn’t scare me anymore. Besides, I didn’t have to go back inside. My stuff was all packed in the car.
I pulled out my sleeping bag and slung my cloth bag over my shoulder, then locked the car back up and walked back to Sally’s place. The walk back was less pleasant. I was swaying a bit, woozy, getting drunker with each step. But I felt no shame. I didn’t worry that anyone would see me. I was 2,000 miles from home. Besides, drunkenness was an approved state in the Quarter. No one clucked their tongue or shook their head when a drunk floated by, a bit above the pavement. Sometimes, they nodded and smiled.
Sally lived at the end of a one-person cobblestone alley, in what she called a converted slave quarters. When I got her door open, I threw my stuff on the couch and sat down to rest a moment, thinking I was going to head back to the bar. But then the cushions rose up to encircle me. When I woke up some time later, it was deep, dark night. My heart beat fast and my throat closed, even after I remembered where I was.
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