“You want another one?”
“Yeah, with three olives. Then I’ll switch.”
“Man, I could never do that.”
“There free-lance embalmers that come around, trade men, they get about a hundred a job. What do you think? Make thirty to forty grand a year.”
“Not me,” Mario said, moving off.
Saturday afternoon the plain, high-ceilinged café was nearly empty, too far up Canal Street for tourists. Mullen & Sons was only a block away. After a funeral Jack and Leo would come in still wearing their dark suits and pearl-gray neckties, sit at a table, and gradually begin talking, polite to each other until, oh, man, the relief that would come with that first ice-cold vodka martini going down. Jack’s with anchovy olives, Leo’s a twist of lemon. Leo’s eyes glistening as he’d look up at the black waiter with the beard who had been in that movie Pretty Baby and called them the funeral dudes. Leo would say, “Henry, why don’t you do it again, the same way. Would that please you?” Leo settling in. “It would sure as hell please us, Henry.” Then later on have the artichoke soup and the oyster loaf.
Mario came along the bar with the martini, placed it on the cocktail napkin in front of Jack.
“What I don’t understand, how you can do that every day of your life. Fool with dead people.”
Jack picked up the martini, about to say that for one thing the dead never complain or give you a hard time. But he stopped and thought a moment and said, “I don’t know. I really don’t.” He sipped the martini, put an olive in his mouth, chewed it a few times and took another sip. Jesus, was that good.
“I heard you don’t put any panties on the women, when they’re in the casket.”
“Where’d you hear that?”
“I don’t know, I just heard it one time.”
“We dress ’em right down to their socks. Shoes are optional, but everything else.”
Mario picked up Jack’s glass to place it on a fresh cocktail napkin. “You ever get like a real good-looking girl, I mean with a great body, you know, and you have to do all that stuff to her?”
“Now, it doesn’t sound so bad, uh?”
“I still wouldn’t do it.”
“You know what the worst is? You look at a body that came in, all of a sudden you realize, Jesus Christ, the guy was a friend of yours.”
“Brings it home, uh? Somebody you know.”
“Even if you haven’t seen the person in a while. Like this guy today. I see him lying there, I don’t believe it. Not only is the guy dead, he’s eight years older than the last time I saw him. You know what I’m saying? He’s a different person. I look at him, guy named Buddy Jeannette, I know him but I don’t know him. I don’t know where he’s been, what he’s been doing.”
“What’d he die of?”
“See, the thing is, this guy wasn’t just an old friend. This’s a guy when I met him, the first time I ever talked to him, it changed my whole fucking life from then on.”
“Guy was what, like a priest?”
“He was a hotel burglar.”
“No shit.”
“You know I did time.”
“You mentioned it once, yeah. Three years.”
“Well, before that, when I met the guy . . . Wait, I have to tell you something else first. Right after I got out of school I worked at Maison Blanche, in the men’s department, and they’d use me in ads. They said I was a perfect size forty and I had good teeth and they said they liked my hair. But I quit ’cause it was a bunch a shit doing that, all that standing around in the lights. Now, this time I’m talking about . . .”
“When you met the guy?”
“Yeah, eight years ago. Now I’m thirty-two years old working for the Rivé brothers, barely making two hundred a week.”
“They come in here. Emile and Brother.”
“I know they do. They’re my uncles. . . . Anyway, this particular night I come out of Felix’s, there on Iberville, had my oysters, couple of beers, and this woman stops me on the street. She wants to know if I’ve ever done any modeling. I go, ‘Yeah, you know Maison Blanche?’ I can tell she’s from out of town, the way she talks. She says they’re here from New York doing catalog layouts for Hollandia sportswear—that’s the one with the little tulip on the shirt—and she’ll give me a thousand bucks for four days. Just like that. The thousand guaranteed plus overtime. But the way she’s looking at me, touching my hair, I get the feeling she wants to do more than take my picture.”
“Yeah, was she nice?”
“Attractive, very stylish, wore dark-tinted glasses all the time, and had the whitest skin I ever saw. She was maybe forty-two or three.”
“That’s not too bad.”
“Her name was Betty Barr, she was the advertising manager. Only the other models and the photographer and his helpers all called her Bettybarr, like it was one name. I don’t know why but I had trouble with that, so I didn’t call her anything. We’d start in the morning and shoot all day, outside, at different locations. Jackson Square, naturally, Audubon Park, the lighthouse on the New Basin Canal, the docks down at Lafitte, Jesus, with the Cajun shrimpers standing there watching. Here we are posing, this group of us, like we’re happier’n shit to have these outfits on, warm-ups, rugby shirts. . . . This other guy, Michael, who never said one fucking word to me, it didn’t seem to bother him at all he looked like an asshole. You see the shrimpers making remarks. Or the girls, it didn’t bother them, they were kids, sixteen, seventeen. . . .” Jack touched his glass. “Why don’t you hit this again. Just vodka.”
Mario stepped down the bar to get the bottle and Jack remembered the girls. The girls had no trouble becoming an instant part of it, slouching into poses with deadpan expressions or smiling or looking surprised. They fascinated him, their studied moves, girls being models, nothing else, able to lose themselves in their poses. He said to the girls, an aside, “You imagine a guy wearing this?” And the girls said, “Really.” He liked them when they were posing and they liked him when he wasn’t.
Mario returned and poured and Jack said, “We’re out by Tulane, I have these real bright green fucking pants on with a pink shirt, the little tulip on it, and right there on Saint Charles Avenue these South Central Bell hardhats are digging up the street. Naturally they start making remarks, yelling different things. My regular job then, hauling around those goddamn organ pipes, I worked as hard as those guys any day. But I can’t walk over and tell ’em that. See, that’s bad enough, but then Bettybarr gets an idea, comes over and cocks this straw hat on the side of my head. I go, ‘Excuse me, but you know anybody who wears a hat this way?’ She goes, ‘You do.’ Sunday, the last day, we’re shooting on the top deck of the Algiers ferry, riding it back and forth. Everybody on the boat was up there watching us. I see these two clowns drinking Dixie beer out of longneck bottles and I know right away I’m gonna have trouble. They come around to my side, I’m standing there grinning at the camera in this all-white outfit, and they start making these kissing-sucking noises, you know, and ask me if I’m dick trawling or what. Just then Bettybarr comes up to me with a yachting cap and I think, Oh, shit, here we go. She’s about to cock the hat on my head and I say to her, ‘Excuse me.’ I turn to the two morons with the Dixie longnecks and tell ’em, ‘I hear one more fucking word somebody’s going over the side.’ Bettybarr looks grim, like she’s frozen, with no expression at all. She says, ‘That’s it for today. Pack it up,’ and gets us all down below.”
“What’d the guys do?”
“Nothing. The ferry docked and we left. But then we’re in the bar that night at the Roosevelt, she asks me, ‘Was that for my benefit?’ Like was I showing off in front of her? I said, ‘No, that was between those guys and me, something I had to do.’ She goes, ‘I see.’ She finishes her drink, looks at me and says, ‘Would you like to go upstairs?’ ”
“No shit.”
“We go up to her suite.”
“Yeah.”
“She undresses me.”
&
nbsp; “No shit.”
“She goes, ‘You have a gorgeous body.’ ”
“Yeah?”
“I never had anybody tell me that before. I don’t know what to say about hers. It’s bigger, you know, looser, without any clothes on. And her skin was so white she looked more naked-looking than girls that have that real smooth skin and tan lines. Then when we did it it was weird to see this grown-up woman that smelled of bath powder moaning and carrying on.”
“Yeah, but it was okay, uh?”
“It was fine. Then after, we’re lying there, I bring it up again.”
Mario grinned.
“I mean about the two morons, why I had to say something to them. She tells me to turn out the light. I go, ‘You don’t understand how I felt, do you?’ She goes, ‘Jack, I don’t really care how you felt. If you don’t want to be looked at, don’t stand in front of a camera.’ I try to tell her, look, when guys like that start mouthing off I’m gonna do something about it. And you know what she said?”
“What?”
“She said, ‘Not on my time, you’re not. Now please turn off the goddamn light.’ ”
“Man, touchy broad.”
“You’re right, this’s a tough lady. And she was right. If I don’t like standing around there feeling like an asshole, I shouldn’t be a model. Even with the money they were paying. And I knew I could’ve got more work from her. I was living in half a shotgun double on Magazine with hardly any furniture, a job I hated, and I was thinking on and off of getting married. You remember Leo’s Uncle Al? No, he was before you came here. It was Al’s daughter I almost married. Maureen.” Jack picked up his drink, took a slow, lingering sip. “I was gonna say I wouldn’t be here if I had. But this’s exactly where I’d be, in the fucking funeral business. I’d be over there right now with the rubber gloves on. Anyway . . .”
“You’re in bed with the broad.”
“Bettybarr. She’s snoring by this time and I’m lying there wide awake trying to figure out what’s more important, money or what you consider self-respect. See, I was leaving myself an opening. Maybe it wasn’t a matter of self-respect. Maybe it was just a matter of being self-conscious I didn’t like. I’m thinking maybe if I did ads for trucks or motor oil, you know, or chewing tobacco, something like that . . . when I hear a sound from over by the dresser. I raise my head up and, Christ, there’s a guy in the room.” Jack paused, touched his glass. “Why don’t you hit it one more time.”
Mario gave him a quick refill. “You want more ice?”
“No, this’s fine.” Jack took a sip. “I can’t believe it, a guy standing right there by the dresser. Now I see him go past the window and out into the living room. I wait, I don’t hear anything, so I get out of bed, put on my pants, and tiptoe over to the door. The guy has the desk lamp on and he’s taking stuff out of the lady’s briefcase and putting it in this flight bag he has with him. So, I start to sneak up behind him.”
“No shit.”
“He was about your size. What’re you, five six?”
“Five seven and a quarter.”
“He wasn’t too big. Maybe a hundred and thirty pounds.”
“I go one sixty-two,” Mario said.
“So I don’t see a problem unless he’s got a gun.”
“Yeah, did he?”
“Just then he turns around and we’re looking right at each other. The guy says, very calmly, ‘I bet I have the wrong room. This isn’t 1515, is it?’ I said, ‘You aren’t even close.’ Then what does he do, he sits down in a chair, takes out a cigarette, and says, ‘You mind if I smoke?’ I said, ‘Why, you nervous?’ He says, ‘This never happened to me before.’ He lights up. I ask him if he’s ever been busted. He says, ‘Yeah, but no convictions. How about you?’ I tell him, picked up once for scalping tickets at the Superdome and fined two hundred bucks. He says, ‘I don’t want to sound like a whiner, I hate whiners, but this was gonna be my last job. I’m supposed to go in the car-leasing business with my brother-in-law.’ The way he said it you could tell he didn’t want to. See, the thing was my brother-in-law, I’m talking about Leo, was trying to get me to be a mortician even back then. It was like we had something in common.”
“You and the guy.”
“Yeah, Buddy and I. See, that’s who it was, Buddy Jeannette, the guy I just saw dead.”
“But if he wasn’t too big, why didn’t you belt him?”
“For what?”
“And call the cops.”
Jack paused, took a sip of his drink. “It was like—didn’t you ever meet someone, right away you like the person, you feel a rapport, you feel you have something in common?”
“Yeah, but the guy broke in.”
“And he starts talking like we’re sitting in the lobby. This is something new; play it, see where it goes. At that point, why not?”
“Did he take any of your stuff?”
“I didn’t have anything worth taking. He tells me he’s been scouting Bettybarr ’cause she wore expensive clothes and had some gold that was nice. Then he tells me he was in this room once before, during the day. I ask him, ‘What’d you come back for?’ He goes, ‘There’s nothing in the room when the people are away. That’s how you do it, man, get a reading of the layout. See, then I come back when she’s here, she’s sleeping, her wallet and jewelry are on the dresser, and I don’t go around bumping into things.’ He even knew I wasn’t with the group, when they came from New York. I asked him, I said, ‘What do you do, size people up?’ He goes, ‘I appraise them. Downstairs in the bar, different places. You can generally tell who’s got it. This one’s borderline, but it would still be worth the trip. She’s got over a grand in cash.’ I asked him how he got in the room, he says with a key. Then he turns it around. He says, ‘What happens if the lady comes out of the bedroom?’ I said, ‘I guess you’d be fucked.’ He says, ‘What happens if she doesn’t come out?’ I said, ‘That’s different. But tell me about this magic key you have.’ ”
“He got one at the desk,” Mario said.
“No, what he does, he checks in, gets a room. Then late at night he pulls the lock out of the door, takes it all apart and figures out how to make a fire key.”
“What’s a fire key?”
“What it sounds like. It’ll open any door in the hotel, in case of fire or some emergency they have to check every room. The guy use to be a locksmith. So I ask him, ‘And how many fire keys do you have?’ He says, ‘You understand a fire key would be worth upwards of five grand or more to certain people.’ I said, ‘Yeah, or you might want to give it to somebody who’s in a position to do you a favor.’ He says, ‘I thought you had something else in mind. You put the cash in your pocket, I leave with everything else, and she thinks that wad in your jeans is ’cause you love her.’ ”
Jack smiled, shaking his head. “Guy was something. High-class professional burglar, wore a suit and tie—it was like meeting a movie star and you find out the guy talks and acts just like a regular person.”
“You took the guy’s key,” Mario said, “and let him go.”
Jack held up his hand. “I said to him, ‘First, you put everything back.’ He says, ‘You could still take the cash and I walk out with a few items.’ I said, ‘But then my name’s in a burglary report, huh? Stuck in a police file they might happen to look at some time in the future. No, I don’t think so.’ Buddy goes, ‘You might do okay, you’re not dumb. But have you got the balls to walk in a room where you know the people are sleeping?’ ”
Mario shook his head. “Not me, man.”
“Yeah, but what was funny, the guy’s talking about balls while I have his right in my pocket. Still, I never threatened him. Give me the keys or I turn you in. Never, not a word. Later on, the next time I saw him, he said he was impressed I never tried to act tough. It showed class.”
“Jesus,” Mario said.
“And now he’s dead.”
“You want another hit?”
“No, I’m gonna switch.”
/> Jack was at a table now, tired of standing. He looked up to see Leo coming away from the bar and noticed they’d turned the lights on. It was raining and looked greenish out on Canal Street, through the big plate-glass window, the sky pale green and everything else dark. Leo stopped and took a sip of the martini so he wouldn’t spill any of it. His thin hair was pasted to his head, his raincoat soaking wet, his expression, Jack saw, concerned, very serious.
“You okay?”
Jack thought of saying, Compared to what? But kept it simple and said, “I’m fine,” giving it just a hint of innocent surprise. He felt himself alert, his body floating comfortably while his mind buzzed with words and pictures, wide awake. He said, “How’s Buddy doing?”
“Buddy’s done,” Leo said, “ready to receive visitors.” He looked at Jack’s glass. “What’s that you’re drinking?”
“It’s a Sazerac.”
“When’d you start drinking Sazeracs?”
“I think about an hour ago. I don’t know—what time is it? It’s getting dark out.”
“Half past five,” Leo said. He placed his martini on the table, pulled out a chair and sat down. “I’m driving over to the Bay. I told Raejeanne I’d be there for supper.” With his serious expression. “You gonna be all right?”
“I know I’m safe here,” Jack said. “I go outside I’m liable to get run over by a car.”
“You’re going to Carville tomorrow. You won’t forget, will you?”
“I’m looking forward to it.”
“I’ll be back by seven. There’ll be a rosary for your friend Buddy. Some priest from Kenner, Our Lady of Perpetual Help.”
“Something he always wanted,” Jack said, “a rosary.”
Leo said, “Oh, I had a call from Sister Teresa Victor at Carville a while ago. There’s somebody wants to go with you to pick up the body. You don’t mind, do you? Have some company?”
Jack said, “Aw, shit, Leo. You know I can’t talk to relatives, they’re in that state. You’re asking me to drive a hundred and fifty miles up and back, my head aching trying to think of words of consolation, Jesus, never smiling. Going to the cemetery’s different, you don’t have to say anything. Sometimes they even seem happy. . . . Shit, Leo.”