Authors: Brandon Shire
“You expect it soon?” I asked him.
He looked down at the carpet. “Yes,” he answered quietly, “I do.”
My anger evaporated in an instant. “Henry…”
“I’m old, Charles. I don’t know how much longer I can hold out. If it hadn’t been for you, I would have let it all go some time back. I’m hanging on by a thread.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
He smiled slightly and nodded. “Free yourself from Charlotte. If nothing else, do that.”
I watched him get up and make his way back to his bedroom. I said nothing because there was nothing I could say. My hate would not evaporate with his mere wishes; even his death wish wasn’t strong enough to curb it. Charlotte viewed me as something akin to syphilis; creeping its way into the brain and bringing with it blindness, disability, and ultimately death. I could not forgive her for it, and I could not promise Henry I would.
Two months later disease had sculpted Henry’s cheeks flat and hollow and had given him the bitter coppery odor of fading marigolds. He lay in his bed almost inert; a slight breathy voice, moving eyes and the hesitating movement of his hand his only communication.
He had refused the ambulance, the doctor, and the hospital and banished his nurse to the living room. He wanted dignity and privacy, and he wanted me there with him when he went. I was terrified.
“How old are you now, Charles? Twenty four, twenty five?”
“Twenty five, next month.”
“You can still have a life Charles. You’re still young.” His voice was nothing more than a whisper.
“I can’t even get passed the damned porch, Henry.”
He smiled. “But you will.”
I nodded hesitantly. I could do it. I’d been to Snow’s funeral only last year and had no problems. I could do it again. If I had to.
“Don’t let yourself be like me, Charles. Don’t sit around regretting the past and reducing yourself to living on what could have been. That’s not living; it’s avoidance. If you need to, go someplace that has no connection; somewhere where there’s no potential for attachment and betrayal. That’s what you’re really afraid of Charles. Isn’t it?”
I nodded, and he nodded with me.
“You let your fears rule your life and you’ll end up like me. Constantly if, if, if…”
“Even with Charlotte there’s an if?” I asked him.
“That’s the biggest if of all, Charles.”
“New Orleans?” I asked him.
He nodded again. “If…” He frowned at the thought and winced at some internal pain.
I took his hand and leaned forward in my chair as his breath grew shallow. Please, I thought, don’t leave me now. Not now.
Did I think it, or say it. His eyes opened and came to my face, begging for me to let him go.
*****
Caufield was the only other person at the funeral. Like me he looked on in quiet contemplation at the death of a man he hardly knew.
“Now what?” Caufield asked after it was done and we stood over the gravediggers as they tamped the earth over Henry’s casket.
I looked at the trees, the blue sky, and the stones that surrounded us and shrugged. The coldness of my own detached emotions frightened me.
“New Orleans,” I told Caufield. The question Henry would not answer still burned inside of me like a cantankerous tooth of curiosity that I had to have answered. “Something happened there that made him leave Charlotte when they got back to Connecticut. I need to know what.”
Caufield shook his head, saddened by my response. “Let me tell you something Charles. Henry Rathborne had no purpose left in his life until I made the call that got you out of the Birch Building. The last task he gave himself was your psychological freedom from Charlotte.”
He turned toward the road and stood watching the traffic go by, his back to me. “I’m sorry to see that he failed, because that means I failed too,” he said and walked off.
It took several months to get Henry’s estate settled, and several more to build up enough confidence to go anywhere except the supermarket and the lawyer’s office. Necessity brought me to government buildings and other public locations, and finally forced me into a guise that almost passed for composure.
It wasn’t, but I survived anyway. And, in truth, Caufield helped me much more than I would like to admit. Though there was no end to his strenuous objections when I reaffirmed my intent on sniffing out Charlotte’s secrets in New Orleans.
“Goddamn it, Charles, let it go!” he yelled as he pounded on the desk in the office of his house.
I drew in a deep breath of salty sea air. The ocean was close but could only be seen in the upper most rooms of the house. “I can’t.” I told him.
“No!” he raged. “I won’t allow it.”
I looked up at him. “You’re going to stop me?”
He put his head in his hands and put his elbows on the desk, cupping his chin as he looked at me. “I can’t and you know it.” He stared at me a moment and reclined back in his chair as he looked up at the ceiling. “I learned a long time ago that I can’t save everyone.” He chuckled slightly. “It was one of those hard rude lessons they told us about in college but which you never quite believe until you lose your first client.”
“Regretting that you got me out?” I asked him.
His head snapped back in my direction. “Never. You weren’t meant for that Charles. If it wasn’t me, someone else would have come along.”
“Eventually,” I replied.
I saw sadness suddenly descend on him like a veil; a soft fluid tension that crept in around his eyes. “Go seek your answers then, Charles. If that’s what it takes.”
I stood. He looked up at me but didn’t move. “You’re not going to wish me luck?” I asked.
He studied me for a moment. “Good luck, Charles.”
I nodded and turned toward the door.
“Make me one promise, Charles.”
I paused without turning back to him.
“Come see me when you get back. Before you go get your revenge on her, come see me.”
It was not a promise I could make, so I left; hearing a sigh escape him as I closed the door.
*****
Sunlight tumbled through a thick mass of purple grey clouds when I finally arrived in the Vieux Carre. It was hot, the damp sticky heat of the subtropical climes pushing me to attempt some Creole in one of the many air conditioned cafes that dotted the old cityscape.
I wondered what Carnival must be like; all the noise, the waft of ripening garbage, the sweat of people trying to meet or exceed the demands of the crowd around them. I looked around me as I walked but couldn’t envision it. I shook my head. What I needed was food and an escape from this heat.
Just as a rain that would not end until I left New Orleans began, I spotted my destination. I took the matchbook out of my pocket and compared it to the sign out front. It was the same. I had found it amongst the belongings Henry had left behind, the only clue in his entire estate as to what Charlotte’s secret might have been.
Nana’s was quiet, a few people scattered here and there amongst the aroma of exotic herbs and fresh crayfish. A scarred unfinished floor, hardscrabble chairs and old world Impressionist art gave the place an unyielding feeling of age and romance, which was fine, until a young Spanish girl came over and stunned me silent with her beauty. As the spice of her female scent scattered my senses I pointed at the jambalaya instead of the red beans and rice I had wanted.
She smiled at me without a word and turned away, giving me the distinct impression that I had not been the first so affected by her. I shook her from my nostrils, dragged my hands across my face and stared out at the rain. Idiot! I thought to myself; somewhat shocked at my own reaction.
She came back with a small tic of a smile, a hushed voice and a massive steaming plate that seemed entirely too large for her delicate fine boned hands. She smiled fully and put it before me, her eyes wandering to the rain I’d been studying. I turned, expecting something in the window and felt her breath on my neck, the honeysuckle of her voice seducing my eardrum.
“Liquid sunshine,” she said.
I glanced back at her quickly, but she was still standing; a silent inquisitive look of expectancy crossing her face. “Anything else?”
“No thanks.” I mumbled as she smiled and wandered off to her other tables.
Had I imagined that? Between the heat, the rain and my rumbling stomach I wasn’t quite sure. I shook it off and dug in, the spicy concoction of rice and sausage grounding me firmly in my temporary environment.
The plate cleared, my appetite more than sated, I asked for coffee and sat back to watch the rain again. Maybe in another dimension my alter ego was living the life I had missed in this city. A descendant of the du Clerque’s brought up on gumbo, wild turkey and alligator meat; the distinct differences between Spanish colonial and French colonial architecture immediately apparent, even when it was buried beneath Spanish moss and the scent of magnolias.
I sighed; my coffee had a hard nutty roast to it after the spice of the jambalaya. The waitress surprised me again; producing a second cup of coffee and placing it, and herself, across from me. I stared at her, my cup half way to my mouth; unsure of how I should react.
“I’m done,” she said. “Do you mind?”
I put my cup down. “Uh, no. but you should know that I’m gay.”
She laughed. “I promise I won’t contaminate you.”
I flushed instantly. I had questions I had wanted to ask but they all went out of my head instantly.
She put her hand over mine, a light touch that melted away as soon as she caught my eye again.
“I’m sorry. You looked like you needed company and I usually wait here for my brother.” She nodded toward the rain outside the window.
“Let‘s start this again. I’m Charles.”
“Julia,” she answered.
We shook, nodded and sipped our coffee as her golden brown eyes drifted to the rain. I watched her and could not help but comment on her beauty. Her eyelashes flashed once in shy response and we both turned back to the hot rain. It seemed without my noticing that we had become the only two people in the café.
“Where is everyone?”
“Siesta,” she replied. “Or making love.”
A smile caught the edges of my mouth. “In this heat?”
She winked. “The best time. La pluie de l’amour. The rain of love.”
We sat in silence for a few moments. Was she trying to convert me? Her eyes twisted away and watched a figure dash through the rain toward the café door. “Ah, my brother.” She stood and looked down at me. “Would you care to come home and explain why you’re so lonely in the city that care forgot?”
Because I am its child, I thought instantly. But the café door opened and her brother stepped in, her masculine twin. My eyes flew to her face; a small tight smile and an arched eyebrow questioning my appraisal of him.
“You’re just his type,” she assured me quietly, her hand upon my shoulder, urging me upward with a gentle pressure.
He had a lovely Spanish curl of dark hair and the voice of a clandestine lover; husky and moist, like the heavy downpour outside. “You’re ready?” he asked her.
Julia held up a finger, grabbed our cups and disappeared into the kitchen while her brother and I studied each other with open interest.
“Manuel, Charles. Charles, Manuel,” Julia said when she returned. “Shall we go?”
“But what about the café?” I asked.
“There’s a buzzer in the kitchen if the doors open,” she answered vaguely.
I looked at them and could not think of a single viable excuse not to go. We stepped out into the rain and I noted the difference immediately. This was not the stagnant iron dripping of my childhood. This rain smelled of life, growth; a musty dampness of corrosion and creation all in one. It was a vibrant electricity, or was that my pulse reminding me that this was liquid sunshine, la pluie de l’amour?