Babylon Rolling Read online

  10

  A banner slouches from the barnacle’s front roof gutter. It advertises a hurricane party. Philomenia knew to count on predictable behavior.

  Through the ginger leaves, she watches the bartender, Thurman, carry boxes printed with the distinguishable bat wings of a hard liquor company from his car. Why he has decided to give himself an alias, Philomenia has no idea. Who decides to call oneself Pedro? It is a name best suited for a plumber, or possibly an immigrant roofer, not for a young man studying medicine. He sets the boxes on the stoop. Philomenia can see that they contain food. White bread bun packages sprout from one. Baguettes, no doubt the worst the city has to offer, shoot from another.

  Philomenia knew Thurman’s father, Thurman Junior. He and she were both much younger and decidedly more impulsive when they interacted. This offspring Thurman, unfortunately, lacks his father’s magnetism and has the exaggerated features that so many of the younger generation seem to sport. Such large lips and eyes. Many Tulane students resemble dolls, and far too many of the young men seem purposefully effeminate as opposed to dapper and self-possessed.

  The barnacle opens its dark and ugly door at noon.

  Prancie paces and smiles, now in front of her bedroom bay window. She has prepared to make an appearance at two PM, and she has prepared herself to truly become another person. She will need to be warmly personable and possibly be touched by near strangers. Normally, her scalp would prickle at the thought, but Prancie has come to realize that sacrifice is part of a mission.

  She might, too, find herself in the position of needing to drink alcohol. This she can justify only by knowing she will come ever closer to her objective. She must don sheep’s clothing, and if it comes stitched in the form of a fuzzy navel or a kir royale, she will don what she must.

  “I thought I would share some of the baking across the street,” Philomenia twitters, her head inserted only slightly into Joe’s door.

  He sleeps.

  “For your party,” Prancie says, as light and lively as she is able.

  Thurman III looks at her five-pie carrier, full of treats. It takes her a bit of effort to raise it onto the bar. The young man looks back to Prancie’s face. “Hi,” he says.

  “Hello,” she says, ready for just such a reaction. “A peace offering.” Still, Prancie’s hand goes to her throat in an instinctive gesture she had not anticipated.

  A modicum of Thurman Junior glints behind the eyes of this rogue. “Really?” His groomed eyebrows rise.

  Well, of course. She would not choose to joke in such an unpredictable situation. “Yes,” she says. “Yeah.” The word feels so false from between her teeth she wants to inhale it back inside her lungs.

  Be Prancie, she breathes into her head. It is a hurricane party. “Please,” she tells him. “Really. We are—we’re—all invested in the neighborhood.”

  “You going to pull barbeque duty out front later, too? Flip some burgers for me?”

  Fair enough. The young man has reason to believe her intentions might be less than selflessly generous. She would prefer nothing more than to see Tokyo Rose obliterated, but she must remain a stealthy warrior on her mission. “Didn’t you partake in—” Proper grammar and diction are harder to lose than she believed they would be. One only needs to listen to the hotel heiress who so shamelessly promotes herself to understand the lack of language skills the younger generation possesses.

  Try again, Philomenia.

  “I am sorry for being a thorn. But these,” she says, attempting false modesty, “might pass muster. And I can tend, man, a grill with the best of ’um.”

  “Let the lady feed us, for fuck’s sake,” the blond, bearded man Philomenia recognizes as one of the regulars says. He sits on a barstool in a shirt that should be buttoned but is not. She sees the light hair that grows on his tan stomach. He must like to pretend that he lives on the beach in Florida rather than inland Louisiana. She knows his walk before and after his visits to the barnacle as well as she knows her own shorthand. He has been coming to the place since it opened. Still, Philomenia does not know the man’s name.

  She steps away from her creations and extends her hand. “Prancie,” she says and smiles as wide as she is able.

  “Shane Geautreaux. A pleasure.” He raises Prancie’s hand to his lips.

  She carries antibacterial gel in her handbag. To touch the bathroom door would likely be worse than sitting on a barstool. She could remove the gel under the cover of the dark bar without too many people seeing. “Are you hungry?” Prancie asks Shane.

  “Well,” he says, giving Prancie an eyeing, “I haven’t filled up this hollow leg yet.”

  Prancie shows her teeth again. “Be adequately warned. It’s dangerous food.” And then Prancie feels her face spread out into a smile she cannot help. She tells the truth! And she stands inside the enemy’s lair, undetected.

  “What’d you bring, pretty lady?” Shane asks Philomenia’s bosom.

  Oh, my. “I have sweets and salties,” she says. “Peach cobbler. Some, well, you might call it party mix. Pretzels mixed with whatnots.”

  Thurman III laughs. “I think I’m allergic to whatnots.”

  “Well, of course,” Prancie counters. “You’re not old enough to have acquired a taste.”

  Shane laughs.

  Two very young women bend together like flower heads at the other end of the bar. They grip beer bottles as though they pull on goat teats. This newest generation of girls represents all that is wrong with Uptown New Orleans. Why would they choose not to leave the city? They have entire lives to live, and they decide instead to come to the party of some reprehensible bar a few blocks away from their university while their classes are canceled and their parents undoubtedly worry for their welfare. These young women, oh, Philomenia could so easily tell them where they need to go.

  So Prancie will begin with them. She hoists her five-pie carrier off the bar top and walks it towards the girls. Assuming they are not regulars, a singular visit to her treat trays will not hurt them all that much. Besides, both pad themselves with plenty of flesh. A few pieces of cobbler will only make them believe the barnacle is unclean, that the glassware has been improperly washed. With luck, they will decide their digestive woes constitute reason enough to choose another venue in which to imbibe.

  “Hey,” Shane says, “where you going with that?”

  Prancie turns with all the charm she can emote and says, “I’m coming back. Ladies first.”

  Shane Geautreaux holds his glass aloft. “Too true,” he says. “I heard ya.”

  Prancie approaches the milkmaids. “Some hurricane treats to go with your beverages, ladies?”

  “Ooh, yeah,” the smaller of the two says.

  “There are napkins on the—yes, there.” Prancie places the carrier on the bar in front of the young women. “Take some. Those are mini quiches. Savory quiches.”

  “I love quiche,” the larger says. “Wow, these look great! Thanks so much.”

  They pile several of Philomenia’s hand-stenciled paper napkins with treats.

  They must be hungry.

  “What about us poor sops down here?” Shane calls out.

  It is very nice to feel wanted, Prancie thinks. “Coming,” she says and smiles again. Who knew this would prove perfectly delightful? To maneuver inside the walls of her nemesis should not feel so enjoyable. Or, possibly, it should.

  She’ll make certain Shane takes seconds.

  The process will be a lengthy one, Prancie believes, a matter of months, but the end result will be ever so satisfying.

  Shane grabs a handful of her party mix and stuffs it into his maw. Some of the patrons, Prancie determines, will be easier than others.

  “Mother, Keyshawn is prepared to go to work tonight. He’s willing to stay in town during a hurricane to care for you in your own home. What more could you possibly want from a PSW?”

  How ’bout the fact that Cerise could possibly want to not have a personal support wo
rker at all? She doesn’t answer her daughter.

  “I don’t know,” Marie continues, barely stopping to take a breath, “I mean, they say you can leave if you insist—which is exactly what I think you should do, insist, that is—and I just think it’d be better to be in your own home with your family than by yourself in a hospital. Your and Daddy’s place made it through Betsy and Camille, so you know it’ll be safe. And Lil Thomas, Thomas, and me will all be there, so you’d have lots of company and we can help with anything else that’s needed.”

  “What about my treatments?”

  “Well, see, now, that’s exactly what Keyshawn is for.”

  “You said he wasn’t a doctor, Marie. Now he is?”

  “No.” Marie puts her fists on her hips. She’s got three different looks that say frustrated. She wears one of them now. “He has a specially equipped van for all sorts of people, and it’d be part of his job to take you back and forth to the hospital for your treatments.”

  Such a hassle. Why can’t Cerise just stay here so everybody doesn’t have to know each and every time she needs to use the facilities? “I think I could sit in a normal car. The rest of my body’s still fine, Marie.”

  “I’m just saying … ” Marie stops and huffs. “You’re not going to try to tell me that you’d really rather lie up here in this nasty old hospital room during a hurricane than be surrounded by loved ones at home. You’re really not going to tell me that, right?”

  “So you’re the boss of me now, are you?”

  “I just meant that Keyshawn is a real professional. He has the van because he wants to be the best at what he does. And he will be. But you do what you want. You always have. And you always will. Go ahead and be alone. I don’t care.” Marie picks up her handbag off the floor then walks to the big bouquet from the neighbors. The nurses have kept it looking pretty, plucking out the droopy flowers. One of them said it was good feng shui to only keep flowers that are completely alive. Cerise wonders if she has bad feng shui since she’s not all completely alive. She has a crumpling leaf for a hand.

  “It’s getting smaller,” Marie says about the bouquet, frowning. “Are people stealing your flowers? See, this is exactly the sort of reason why you should get out of Charity Hospital.”

  “Nobody’s stealing my flowers! It’s feng shui.”

  “What is? That makes no sense, Mother. Making bouquets smaller is feng shui? Somebody told you that to get you to let them take your flowers.”

  Good Lord, her child has no sense at all. How did this person come from her own body? It seems such an impossibility at the moment that Cerise smiles.

  “What’s funny?”

  “Nothing,” Cerise says.

  “Well, I’m going. The boys are waiting on an afternoon snack. You decide what you want and we’ll do whatever. Keyshawn needs to know, though, by three. Otherwise, he’s evacuating.”

  “The boys? As in more than one?”

  “You know what I mean. Daddy, Thomas, Lil Thomas.”

  Marie will put Roy back in the hospital with her cooking. Her boys. Cerise has had just about enough of that. Cerise is the person to care for Roy. “Go get whoever we need in here. I’ll tell ’em I wanna go.”

  “Really? Oh, it’s going to be so much better.” Marie bends over

  Cerise and hugs her, clonking her in the arm with her hard handbag. “It might even be fun, you know? All of us playing games by candlelight with the rain on the roof.”

  And what’s Cerise going to hold her playing cards with? Her toes? “Ask the nurse at the station what forms need to get signed. You’ll have to do it for me. I’ll give them my permission.”

  “Aren’t you even a little excited?”

  I can hardly wait, Cerise thinks. She can just start asking who’s ever nearest to follow her to the facilities and help hold up her robe. But, then, that would mean the air-conditioning is still working for her to be wearing a proper robe. That the electricity’s still on during a hurricane. Exactly. Why wouldn’t she be excited?

  “Hi, Sharon,” Ariel says into her cell as she drives back to Orchid Street, the driving itself, as opposed to riding the streetcar, feeling like a luxury. She passes workers nailing plywood over the windows of a restaurant, but otherwise, the streets feel nearly deserted. “Am I bothering you at work?”

  “Hell no,” Sharon says. “I’m glad for the excuse. Rolanda, I gotta take this. What’s up, Miss Minnesota?”

  Ariel can hear Sharon moving through noise. “You know, I don’t even know what you do at Touro. I’m sorry.”

  “Ain’t no thang. I’m the blood collector. I’ll poke you sometime. Nobody ever even feels my needles.”

  “You’re an RN?”

  “Naw. Not yet. Still over at Delgado Westbank inchin’ along. How you doin’?”

  “Good. Lots of people at the hotel have done this before, so I have help.”

  “Oh yeah, we all done this before.”

  Ariel clicks on her right turn signal. She refuses to adhere to the local custom of not using it at all. “Well, I was really hoping you might tell me what to do to get the house ready.”

  “By your slim lil’ self?”

  “It’s just me now.”

  Sharon laughs big, and then Ariel hears street noise. Sharon must have gone outside. The click of a cigarette lighter sounds, then an exhale. “Your house have real working shutters on it?”

  Ariel should know this. “How do you mean ‘working’?”

  “They actually open and close up an’ they the right size for your windows.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, that’s the first thing. They not just for decoration. If yours close, close ’em. An’ pick up the yard. Anything that can fly, you know, lawn furniture and plants in pots and shit. Fill your bathtub up with water, case that goes. You have a gas stove?”

  Potted plants can fly? Ed always cooks. What do they have? “Yeah. Gas. Is that bad?”

  “No,” Sharon says, “that’s what you want. It’s gone still work when the power goes out.”

  “You know it’s going out?”

  “Girlfriend, it always do.”

  “The power’s going to go out?”

  “My accent that hard for you?”

  Ariel has no idea how to take this. She doesn’t know Sharon well enough. “No. Not at all. I understand you.”

  “They all like you up in Minnesota, lady?” Sharon laughs again, and Ariel knows the woman’s just joking now. She wasn’t sure.

  “Uh,” Ariel says, “maybe? No. Hell no.” She pulls up in front of their house. She looks at it objectively for a second, wondering if it will still be there in twenty-four hours. It’s a pretty house. She looks across the street at Sharon’s house and feels stupidly guilty for something. What, she’s not exactly sure.

  Sharon exhales again, probably making her cell phone smell like cigarettes. “The power always go out, but it’s possible just for an hour or whatever. You free to leave the hotel if you need to?”

  “I don’t know,” Ariel has to say again and steps out into the heat of the afternoon. “If I had to go, I guess I’d just go.”

  “Well, if the power go out much more than a day, you best deal with your fridge. They can grow things. It’s too late to board up your windows if the shutters don’t work, but you need to take your breakables you care about off the sills. If it’s just you, likely your food supply’s okay, right? I don’t think you’ll be trimmin’ any tree branches by yourself either, so take a look around your yard. You see a big branch hangin’ over your dining room, an’ you have nice things in the dining room, you might want to pull the old table or china or whatever into another room. I’ll be keeping an eye out, but make sure you lock all your locks and get it secure. Bike locks on the shed and whatever.”

  Ariel had no idea. Maybe she just didn’t want to have any idea. Really, if Ed’s going to leave her here alone, what, actually, could she do by herself? “Wow. And here I was just going to pack a suitcas
e.”

  “You can most certainly just do that too, Miss Ariel.”

  “So, you and Nate are staying with the kids?”

  “Well, whichever ones decide they gonna be by home for the night. But, yeah, we’re stayin’.”

  “The news shows it’s a Category Four right now.” Ariel walks up her porch steps and looks around at what might fly: potted plants, a skateboard, their porch swing.

  “You scared yet?”

  “Yes,” Ariel admits.

  “Good. You need to be. Don’t get so drunk you can’t think on your feet.”

  Ariel hadn’t even been thinking about getting drunk, but she can see the logical progression. She actually feels like having a drink now. “When do you get off?”

  “Not till seven, hon’.”

  “Oh. I did feel like having a drink. It’s weird.”

  “No. It’s serious tradition.”

  Ariel walks to the shutters that hang on the outside of the living room windows. She pulls on one. “It’s stuck on,” she tells Sharon.

  “What’s that?”

  “The shutter’s stuck onto the house.”

  “Make sure they’s no hook-n-eyes on the back before you give up.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Run your hand up behind the shutter, see that they’s no clip thing to hold it open.”

  Ariel does as she’s told. She feels something. “I think there’s something.”

  “Good. See if you can spring it.”

  Ariel fiddles and the shutter pops free. “Oh, hey. It’s off the wall.”

  “It still on its hinges?”

  Ariel swings the shutter. “Yeah, it works.”

  “Well, then, you have working shutters. That’s good. They can save windows.”

  “Thank you so much, Sharon. Will you take a rain check on the beer?”

  “Whatever you do, don’t leave beers on my porch for a present. Kids’ll pretend they never saw ’em.”

  Ariel can imagine. “When this is all over, maybe we can go have a drink at Tokyo Rose or something.”

  “That’d be nice,” Sharon says, but she says it like suddenly she doesn’t believe what she says at all, words just leaving her mouth like so much smoke.