Vieux Carre (4 page)

NIGHTINGALE
: Screaming old faggots at that antique dealer's. Well, they're rich and they buy boys, but that's a scene that you haven't learned yet. So. What happened downstairs?

WRITER
: He took me into a bedroom; he told me I looked pale and wouldn't I like a sunlamp treatment. I thought he meant my face so
I—
agreed—

NIGHTINGALE
: Jesus, you've got to be joking.

WRITER
: I was shaking violently like I was a victim
of—
St. Vitus's Dance, you know, when he said, “Undress”!

NIGHTINGALE
: But you did.

WRITER
: Yes. He helped me. And I stretched out on the bed under the sunlamp and suddenly
he—

NIGHTINGALE
: . . . turned it off and did you?

WRITER
: Yes, that's what happened. I think that he was shocked by my reaction.

NIGHTINGALE
: You did
him
or—
?

WRITER
: . . . I told him that I . . . loved . . . him. I'd been drinking.

NIGHTINGALE
: Love can happen like that. For one night only.

WRITER
: He said, he laughed and said, “Forget it. I'm flying out tomorrow for training base.”

NIGHTINGALE
: He said to you, “Forget it,” but you didn't forget it.

WRITER
: No . . . I don't even have his address and I've forgotten his name . . .

NIGHTINGALE
: Still, I think you loved him.

WRITER
: . . . Yes. I . . . I'd like to see some of your serious paintings sometime.

NIGHTINGALE
: Yeah. You will. Soon. When I get them canvases shipped down from Baton Rouge next week. But meanwhile . . . [
His hand is sliding down the sheet
.] How about this?

WRITER
[
with gathering panic
]: . . . I think I'd better get some sleep now. I didn't mean to tell you all that. Goodnight, I'm going to sleep.

NIGHTINGALE
[
urgently
]: This would help you.

WRITER
: I need to sleep
nights—
to work.

NIGHTINGALE
: You are alone in the world, and I am, too. Listen. Rain!

Look. I'll give you two things for sleep. First, this. [
He draws back the sheet. The light dims
.] And then one of these pills I call my sandman special.

WRITER
: I don't . . .

NIGHTINGALE
: Shh, walls have ears! Lie back and imagine the paratrooper.

WRITER
: When I was alone in the room, the visitor having retreated beyond the plywood partition between his cubicle and mine, which was chalk white that turned ash-gray at night, not just he but everything visible was gone except for the lighter gray of the alcove with its window over Toulouse Street. An apparition came to me with the hypnotic effect of the painter's sandman special. It was in the form of an elderly female saint, of course. She materialized soundlessly. Her eyes fixed on me with a gentle questioning look which I came to remember as having belonged to my grandmother during her sieges of illness, when I used to go to her room and sit by her bed and want, so much, to say something or to put my hand over hers, but could do neither, knowing that if I did, I'd betray my feelings with tears that would trouble her more than her illness . . . Now it was she who stood next to my bed for a while. And as I drifted toward sleep, I wondered if she'd witnessed the encounter between the painter and me and what her attitude was toward
such—
perversions? Of longing?

Nothing about her gave me any sign. The weightless hands clasping each other so loosely, the cool and believing gray eyes in the faint pearly face were as immobile as statuary. I felt that she neither blamed nor approved the encounter. No. Wait. She . . . seemed to lift one hand very, very slightly before my eyes closed with sleep. An almost invisible gesture of . . . forgiveness? . . . through understanding? . . . before she dissolved into sleep. . .

JANE
[
brightly
]: Good morning.

WRITER
[
shyly
]: Oh, good morning.

JANE
: Such a difficult operation, opening a purse with one hand.

WRITER
: Let me hold the sacks for you.

JANE
: Oh, thanks; now then, come in, put the sacks on one of those chairs. Over the weekend we run out of everything. Ice isn't delivered on Sundays, milk spoils. Everything of a perishable kind has got to be replaced. Oh, don't go out. Have you had a coffee?

WRITER
[
looking at Tye
]: I was about to but . . .

JANE
: Stay and have some with me. Sorry it's instant, can you stand instant coffee?

WRITER
: I beg your pardon?

JANE
: Don't mind him, when his eyes are half open it doesn't mean he is conscious.

TYE
: Bullshit, you picked up a kid on the street?

JANE
[
suppressing anger
]: This is the young man from across the
hall—
I'm Jane Sparks, my friend is Tye McCool, and you
are—

WRITER
[
pretending to observe a chess board to cover his embarrassment
]: What a beautiful chess board!

JANE
: Oh, that, yes!

WRITER
: Ivory and ebony? Figures?

JANE
: The white squares are mother-of-pearl. Do you play chess?

WRITER
: Used to. You play together, you and Mr.—McCool?

TYE
: Aw, yeh, we play together but not chess. [
He rubs his crotch. Jane and the writer nervously study the chess board
.]

JANE
: I play alone, a solitary game, to keep in practice in case I meet a partner.

WRITER
: Look. Black is in check.

JANE
: My imaginary opponent. I choose sides you see, although I play for both.

WRITER
: I'd be happy
to—
I mean sometimes when
you—

TYE
[
touching the saucepan on the burner
]: OW!

JANE
: I set it to boil before I went to the store.

TYE
: Hey, kid, why don't you take your cup across the hall to your own room?

JANE
: Because I've just
now—
you heard
me—
invited him to have it here in this room with me.

TYE
: I didn't invite him in, and I want you to git something straight: I live here. And if I live in a place I got equal rights in this place, and it just so happens I don't entertain no stranger to look at me undressed.

WRITER
[
gulping down his coffee
]: Please. Uh, please, I think I'd rather go in my room because I, I've got some work to do there. I always work immediately after my coffee.

JANE
: I will not have this young grifter who has established squatter's rights here telling me that I can't enjoy a little society in a place
where—
frankly I am frantic with loneliness!

TYE
: Have a seat kid, you like one lump or two? Where's the cat? Can I invite the goddam cat to breakfast?

JANE
: Tye, you said you were pleased with the robe I gave you for your birthday, but you never wear it.

TYE
: I don't dress for breakfast.

JANE
: Putting on a silk robe isn't dressing.

TYE
: Mmm. Good. Feels good.

JANE
[
shyly disengaging herself from his embrace
]: It ought to. Shantung silk.

TYE
: I didn't mean the robe, babe.

JANE
: Tye, behave yourself. [
She turns to the writer
.] I've cherished the hope that by introducing Tye to certain little improvements in wearing apparel and language, I may gradually, despite his
resistance—

TYE
: Ain't that lovely? That classy langwidge she uses?

JANE
: Inspire him
to—
seek out some higher level of employment. [
Ignoring Tye, she speaks
.] I heard that you are a writer?

WRITER
: I,
uh—
write,
but—

JANE
: What form of writing? I mean fiction or poetry or . . .

TYE
: Faggots, they all do something artistic, all of 'em.

JANE
[
quickly
]: Do you know, I find myself drinking twice as much coffee here as I did in New York. For me the climate here is debilitating. Perhaps because of the dampness and the, and
the—
very low altitude, really there's no altitude at all, it's slightly under sea level. Have another cup with me?

Of course, Manhattan hasn't much altitude either. But I grew up in the Adirondacks really. We lived on high ground, good elevation.

TYE
: I met one of 'em once by accident on the street. You see, I was out of a job, and he came up to me on a corner in the Quarter an' invited me to his place for supper with him. I seen right off what he was an' what he wanted, but I didn't have the price of a poor boy sandwich so I accepted, I went. The place was all Japanese-like, everything very artistic. He said to me,
“Cross over that little bridge that crosses my little lake which I made myself and sit on the bench under my willow tree while I make supper for us and bathe an' change my clo'se. I won't be long.” So I crossed over the bridge over the lake, and I stretched out under the weepin' willow tree: fell right asleep. I was woke up by what looked like a female but was him in drag. “Supper ready,”
he—
she—said. Then this freak, put her hand on
my—
I said, “It's gonna cost you more than supper . . .”

JANE
: Tye.

TYE
: Huh, baby?

JANE
: You will
not
continue that story.

TYE
: It's a damn good story. What's your objection to it? I ain't got to the part that's really funny. [
He speaks to the writer, who is crossing out of the light
.] Don't you like the story?

JANE
: Why did you do that?

TYE
: Do what?

JANE
: You know what, and the boy knew what you meant by it. Why did you want to hurt him with the implication that he was in a class with a common, a predatory transvestite?

TYE
: Look Jane . . . You say you was brought up on high ground, good elevation, but you come in here, you bring in here and expose me to a little queer, and . . .

JANE
: Does everyone with civilized behavior, good manners, seem to be a queer to you?

TYE
: . . . Was it good manners the way he looked at me, Babe?

JANE
[
voice rising
]: Was it good manners for you to stand in front of him rubbing
your—
groin the way you did?

TYE
: I wanted you to notice his reaction.

JANE
: He was just embarrassed.

TYE
: You got a lot to learn about life in the Quarter.

JANE
: I think that he's a serious person that I can talk to, and I need some one to talk to!

TYE
: You can't talk to
me
huh?

JANE
: With you working all night at a Bourbon Street strip-joint, and sleeping nearly all day? Involving yourself with all the underworld elements of this corrupt city . . .

TYE
: 'Sthat all I do? Just that? I never pleasure you, Babe?

JANE
: Yes,
you—
pleasure me, Tye.

TYE
: I try to do my best to, Babe. Sometimes I wonder why a
girl—

JANE
: Not a girl, Tye. A woman.

TYE
: —How
did—
why
did—
you get yourself mixed up with me?

JANE
: A sudden change of circumstances removed me
from—
how shall I put it so you'd understand?

TYE
:
Just—
say.

JANE
: What I'd thought was myself. So I quit my former connections, I came down here
to—
[
She stops short
.] Well, to make an adjustment
to—
[
Pause
.] We met by chance on Royal Street when a deluge of rain backed me into a doorway. Didn't know you were behind me until you put your hand on my hip and I turned to say, “Stop that!” but didn't because you were something I'd never encountered
before—
faintly
innocent—
boy's eyes. Smiling. Said to myself, “Why not, with nothing to lose!” Of course you pleasure me, Tye!—I'd been alone so long . . .

Silk on silk
is—
lovely . . . regardless of the danger.