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Page 7 of 11
The truth of the matter was that I could not go to bed. It had been three days and two nights and cocaine and booze. Waking up from the one real stretch of sleep I'd had was a nightmare. I was on Bobby's couch. The air was hot and stale. My face was wedged into the corner between the cushions. With one eye I looked around the room. Clyde was asleep in a chair. Bobby was out. Clara was in his bed. I realized very clear and sudden that these people did not care about me and that I didn't either. The feeling was physical, a cold drip in the back of my throat, tightness in my shoulders like talons digging in, and weakness in the stomach and legs. There was a bottle of bourbon on the coffee table. The sound on the television was off, but a rock documentary was playing and the hysterical movements of the players on stage looked ridiculous. I took a long drink that burned my throat and turned my stomach over. A moment later I felt better. The picture on the television brightened, turned kodachrome and the players looked happy. I drank more until the others woke up.
I did not want to fall asleep because I knew I would never be able to get up and get to the fairgrounds. I had to stay up. Something had to happen to me. I could not lie down and let it happen in nightmares. I could not feel that cold in my throat ever again.
Bobby and I paid up. I told Melissa I would see her at the stage by the sperm flag. I can remember the look she gave me. It was like the look the Chief had given me. It went through me and it asked a question I was not willing to answer. Are you for real? I smiled at her, winked like Bobby would, and left. The night was pregnant with the electricity of a coming storm. The air was thick and smelled like the ocean. We walked the blocks up to Bon Temps quietly. I watched the streetlights and the shadows they cast on the twisted arms of the live oaks. In New Orleans good and evil stand out right on the surface, crackle against each other in the air and scratch the skin. It was that way during the walk. Every face I passed was an absurd mask. There was a Creole woman on the corner outside of Bon Temps talking to a tall white guy with grey hair.
"That's how you do it, Baby," she said. "Fuck em raw dawg and hard."
Her eyes flashed when she said it and she tilted her head back and laughed. I saw Clara's face in hers and I realized that everyone in the town was just the same as the people I was with. There was only Chief, Bobby, Clyde, Clara, Melissa, and Me. Everyone was one of us. The doorman was a giant with a shaved head a tattoo of a hummingbird on his neck. He was Clyde.
"Step on up and don't be cheap," he said. "This guy with you Bobby?"
I floated by and told Bobby I'd meet him in back. I wanted to be alone for a minute, drink some and watch the pool players in the front room. I ordered a tequila for the lift and a beer for the liquid and bubbles. I had two more before I thought of going to find the others. I was drunk in the way where there is no turning back. I had to keep going. Before I could get up, Clara appeared at my side. She looked so white in the low light and her face was very close to me.
"Let's get out of here," she said.
"Where to?"
"Back to Tips."
"What's up with Bobby and Clyde?"
"They're meeting us."
"I'm happy here."
"You are not. Sides you'll be happier with me."
She grabbed my wrist and pulled me up out of the stool I was sitting in. She pulled me behind her out the front door. It was theater to her. The doorman gave me a wink on the way out. Attaboy. Raw dawg and hard. Clara let go of me and sped on.
"It's cool," she said to herself. "Bobby gave me a bag."
She had a plan. Her face was serious. I slowed down. It seemed very funny to me to stroll along drunk and to stare at the trees and to have her charging ahead of me. It was like being an animal on a lead rope. I knew where we were going but I was in no hurry. She stomped along and then stomped back and told me to hurry up and I slowed down.
"Would you just walk?" she said.
I laughed. She stuck her face in mine and it looked mean for a second and then she started laughing too, about something else or about the same thing. I don't know.
"Just walk with me, would you?" she said sweetly.
She put her arm through mine and we strolled the rest of the way like that, like an old Southern couple out for an evening constitutional, not talking to one another sharing a set of eyes and casting them around gently out of boredom. As we got to the block where Tips was, I felt a reluctance in me, like a mule's reluctance to step in a puddle. I did not want to go in there with her and see Melissa. It would ruin something. There should not be anything between the look Melissa gave me and the look she would give me when I showed up at the sperm flag on the Fairgrounds in the sunlight.
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