Sailor & Lula (9 page)

“I give you what you need, is all. A talkin'-to.”

“What I need is Lula safe at home.”

“Safe? Safe? Ain't that a stitch! Ain't nobody nowhere never been safe a second of their life.”

Dalceda drained the last drop of vermouth from her glass.

“You got any more of this red vinegar in the house?” she asked.

Marietta rose and went into the pantry and came out carrying a sealed bottle. She unscrewed the cap and poured Dalceda a drink and freshened her own before sitting back down.

“And what about you?” said Dalceda.

“What about me?”

“When's the last time you been out with a man? Let alone been to bed with one.”

Marietta clucked her tongue twice before answering.

“I plain ain't interested,” she said, and took a long sip from her glass. Dalceda laughed. “What was it you used to tell me about how Clyde carried on when you and him made love? About his gruntin' that come from way down inside sounded so ancient? Old noise, you called it. Told me you felt like you was bein' devoured by a unstoppable beast, and it was the most thrillin' thing ever happened to you.”

“Dal, I swear I hate talkin' to you. You remember too much.”

“Hate hearin' the truth is what it is. You're just shit scared Lula feels the same way about Sailor as you did with Clyde.”

“Oh, Dal, how could she? I mean, do you think she does? This Sailor ain't nothin' like Clyde.”

“How do you know, Marietta? You ever tried the boy on for size?” Dalceda laughed. Marietta drank.

“And Mr. Dogface Farragut comes mopin' and sniffin' around you regular,” said Dalceda. “You could start with him. Or how about that old gangster, Marcello ‘Crazy Eyes' Santos, used to proposition you when you was married to Clyde?”

Marietta snorted. “He stopped askin' after Clyde died. My bein' too available musta thrown him off the scent.”

“That's most certainly the case with Louis Delahoussaye the Third,” said Dalceda. “I don't think he's asked for it more'n twice in six months for a grand total of a not so grand eight and one-half minutes.”

“Dal? You think I oughta keep dyein' my hair or let it go white?”

“Marietta, what I think is we both need another drink.”

“I wouldn't mind a little night life,” said Lula. “How about you?”

Sailor cruised the Bonneville slowly along Napoleon Avenue, casing the neighborhood. It was nine o'clock at night and they were in the town of Nuñez, on the Louisiana side of the Louisiana-Texas border.

“Hard to tell what's shakin' in a place like this, honey,” said Sailor. “You don't want to be walkin' in the wrong door.”

“Maybe there's a place we could hear some music. I feel like dancin'. We could ask somewhere,” Lula said.

Sailor turned left into Lafitte Road and spotted a Red Devil gas station that still had its lights on.

“Someone up here might know somethin',” he said, and pulled the car over.

A skinny, pimply-faced guy of about eighteen, wearing dirty yellow coveralls and a crumpled black baseball cap with a red felt
N
on it, walked over to them.

“Gas?” he said.

“Got enough, thanks,” said Sailor. “We're lookin' for a place has some music, where we can maybe get somethin' to eat, too. Anything like that around here?”

“Cornbread's,” said the attendant. “They got western. No food, though, 'cept bar nibbles.”

Lula slid over in the front seat and leaned across Sailor.

“How about rock 'n' roll?” she asked.

“There's a boogie joint just about a mile straight out Lafitte here. But that's a black place mostly.”

“What's the name of it?” asked Sailor.

“Club Zanzibar.”

“You say it's straight ahead a mile?”

“About. Where Lafitte crosses over Galvez Highway. State Road 86.”

“Thanks,” said Sailor.

The Club Zanzibar was in a white wood building on the left-hand side of the road. A string of multicolored lights was hung over the
front. Sailor parked the Bonneville across from the club and cut the engine.

“You ready for this?” he asked.

“We'll find out in a hurry,” said Lula.

When they walked in, a band was playing a slow blues and three or four couples were swaying on the dance floor. There were a dozen tables and a long bar in the room. Eight of the tables were occupied and six or seven men sat or stood at the bar. Everyone in the place was black except for one white woman, who was sitting alone at a table smoking a cigarette and drinking Pearl straight from the bottle.

“Come on,” said Lula, taking Sailor by the hand and leading him onto the dance floor.

The tune was John Lee Hooker's “Sugar Mama,” and Lula insinuated her body into Sailor's and left it there. After that the band picked up the beat. Sailor and Lula danced for twenty minutes before Sailor begged off and dragged Lula over to the bar and ordered two Lone Star beers. The bartender, a tall, heavyset man in his early fifties, served the beers, took Sailor's money and gave him his change with a big smile.

“This is a friendly place, son,” said the bartender. “You folks just relax and have a nice time.”

“No problem,” said Lula. “You got a real fine band here.”

The bartender smiled again and moved on down the bar.

“You notice that woman when we come in?” Lula said to Sailor. “The white woman sittin' by herself?”

“Uh huh,” said Sailor.

“Well, she ain't talked to nobody and ain't nobody spoke to her that I could tell. What you make of that?”

“Honey, we bein' strangers here and all, this is the kinda place we don't want to make nothin' of nothin'.”

“You think she's pretty?”

Sailor looked at the woman. She lit a new cigarette off a butt, then squashed the butt in an ashtray. She was thirty years old, maybe more. Shoulder-length bleached blond hair, black at the roots. Clear skin, green eyes. Long, straight nose with a small bump on it. She was wearing a low-cut lavender dress that would have emphasized her breasts had she not been so flat chested. Slender.

“I tend to like 'em with a little more meat on the bones,” said Sailor. “Face ain't bad, though.”

Lula got quiet and sucked on her beer bottle.

“What's wrong, sweetheart? Somethin' botherin' you?”

“Aw, it's just Mama. I been thinkin' about her. She's prob'ly worried to death by now.”

“More than likely.”

“I want to call her and tell her I'm okay. That
we're
okay.”

“I ain't so sure it's a great idea, but that's up to you. Just don't tell her where we are.”

“Pardon me?” Lula said to the bartender. “Y'all got a phone here I can use?”

“Straight back by the gents'.”

“Back in a bit,” she said to Sailor, and kissed him on the nose.

Marietta answered the telephone on the second ring.

“I have a collect call from Lula Fortune,” said the operator. “Will you accept?”

“Of course!” said Marietta. “Lula? Where
are
you? You all right?”

“I'm fine, Mama. I just wanted to tell you not to worry.”

“Why, how
could
I not worry? Not knowin' what's happenin' to you or where you are? Are you with that boy?”

“If you mean Sailor, Mama, yes I am.”

“Are you comin' home soon, Lula? I need you here.”

“Need me for what, Mama? I'm perfectly fine, and safe, too.”

“You in a dance hall or somethin'? I can hear music behind you.”

“Just a place.”

“Really, Lula, this ain't right!”

“Right?! Mama, was it right for you to sic Johnnie Farragut on us? How could you
do
that?”

“Did you run into Johnnie in New Orleans? Lula, are you in New Orleans?”

“No, Mama, I'm in Mexico, and we're about to get on a airplane to Argentina!”

“Argentina! Lula, you're outa your mind. Now you just tell me where you are and I'll come for you. I won't say nothin' to the police about Sailor, I promise. He can do what he wants, I don't care.”

“Mama, I'm hangin' up this phone now.”

“No, baby, don't! Can I send you somethin'? You runnin' low on money? I'll wire you some money if you tell me where you are.”

“I ain't that dumb, Mama. Sailor and I been on a crime spree? Knockin' off convenience stores all across the South? Ain't you read about it?”

Marietta was crying. “Lula? I love you, baby. I just want you to be all right.”

“I am all right, Mama. That's why I called, to let you know. I gotta go.”

“Call me again soon? I'll be waitin' by the phone.”

“Don't be crazy, Mama. Take care of yourself.”

Lula hung up.

Sailor and the bleached blond in the lavender dress were together on the dance floor. Lula saw them, went over to the bar, picked up a beer bottle and threw it at Sailor. The bottle bounced off his back and clanged to the floor, bouncing but not breaking. He turned around and looked at Lula. Nobody else in the place gave any sign that they'd seen what had happened. Lula ran out.

Sailor found her sitting on the ground, leaning against the passenger side of the Bonneville. Lula's eyes were red and wet but she wasn't crying. Sailor knelt down next to her.

“I was just wastin' time, peanut, till you come back.”

“It's me who's wastin' time, Sailor, bein' with you.”

“Honey, I'm sorry. It wasn't nothin'. Come on and get up and we'll take off.”

“Leave me be for a minute? Mama gets all insane and then I see you dancin' with some oil town tramp. How you figure I'm gonna feel?”

“Told you not to call her.”

Sailor stood and leaned against the hood of the car until Lula got up and climbed inside. He got in and started it up. Lula took Sailor's blue canvas jacket from the back seat and put it on. She kissed Sailor on the cheek, put her head down sideways on his lap and went to sleep. Sailor drove.

“Johnnie! At last! I thought you was never gonna call.”

“I got some news, Marietta. Lula and Sailor been here. They checked out of the Hotel Brazil on Frenchmen Street two days ago.”

“Listen, Johnnie, Lula called me last night. She knew you were in N.O., so they left the city.”

“Did she tell you where she was callin' from?”

“No, but my guess is they're headed west, so prob'ly Texas. Could be Houston. Their money must be runnin' low. I don't think Sailor had much to begin with, if any, and Lula took the six hundred she had saved in the Cherokee Thrift.”

“How'd she sound? Was she doin' okay?”

“How could she be doin' okay, Johnnie? She's tryin' to prove somethin' to me, that's all. Lula ain't doin' no more'n showin' off, defyin' me.”

“Marietta, she's tryin' to grow up, is all. It don't have everything to do with you. I don't mean to insult you or nothin', but Lula got to get shut of you somehow, and this is how she's chose to do it. I understand how painful it is for you.”

“How
could
you understand? She's the only flesh and blood I got left I care anything about. Lula's my
daughter
, Johnnie. I'm comin' to New Orleans.”

“Hold on, Marietta. There ain't no good you can do here until I get a line on which way they went. Could be they're halfway to Chicago.”

“They're headed west, Johnnie, I know it. Prob'ly to California. Lula always has wanted to go there. I'll be in on the Piedmont flight at seven tomorrow night. Meet me at the airport and we can get goin' right away.”

“I'll meet you, Marietta, if that's what you want, but I'm against it.”

“Seven tomorrow evenin'. We can eat at Galatoire's. Fix it.”

Marietta hung up.

Johnnie hung up the hotel phone and walked out onto the balcony overhanging Barracks Street. It was one in the morning and the air was warm but misty. He could hear a recording of Babs Gonzales singing “Ornithology” in his froggy voice coming from a radio or stereo. “All the
cats are standin' on the corner,” Babs Gonzales sang, “waitin' for the chicks to finish their slave.” Johnnie lit up a Hoyo de Monterrey cigar and tossed the match into the street.

In 1950, Elia Kazan had filmed
Panic in the Streets
here, staging a shooting on the Barracks Street Wharf. Johnnie had read somewhere that it was the actor Jack Palance's first movie. Palance, with his face resculpted following a car wreck into a wicked Mongol mask, portrayed Blackie, the perfect, unrepentant killer. Palance could convey cruelty more convincingly than anyone in those days, Johnnie thought. It takes a certain amount of desperation to do that. “I'm not a desperate person,” Johnnie said aloud. He blew smoke from his cigar into the night mist. If a man is no good at convincing himself of something, he thought, then there isn't much chance he'll do a very good job of convincing anyone else.

“Ornithology” segued into King Pleasure and Betty Carter's “Little Red Top.” “You really got me spinning,” they sang. Johnnie stayed on the balcony until the song ended before he went back inside. He had an idea for a story about a man with a terrible disease that robs him of his ability to remember anything unless he mutilates himself.