Big Easy Bonanza

and then begged him to let her take his picture with her girlfriend holding the bridle. Tubby began feeling a little dumb just being there. People kept bumping into him. There wasn’t anyplace to sit.
    Maybe he could find a cab across the street from Antoine’s, he thought. Carefully looking around, he stepped back into the tourist flow. There was a row of cabs on St. Louis, down the block from the famous restaurant. Their drivers were sitting under a tall magnolia, drinking from plastic cups and playing dominoes. Tubby moved into the light with them, under a street lamp swarming with moths and lovebugs.
    “Uptown?” he asked, addressing the lounging drivers in general.
    “Taxi, here, sir.” A big fellow slid off the wall. “Finish for me, Ice Man,” he said to a skinny guy seated cross-legged on the grass, who took his place at the game. The driver opened the door of an old Cadillac painted white. Tubby got into the backseat quickly.
    “I’m going, too.” The man with the scar pushed in behind Tubby. Tubby kept on going, pulling the far door latch and popping out the other side of the cab.
    “Shit. Hey, what?” the cabdriver cried.
    Tubby was running again, but on dark streets now, nearing Jackson Square. He rounded a corner into an alleyway beside the dark cathedral, looking wildly for a weapon or someplace to hide. Some loose bricks were piled against the granite wall of the church, which a wino had probably used for a seat. Tubby picked one up and pressed himself against the wall. When the scarred man ran around the corner, Tubby hit him with it full in the face. He felt something squash, and blood sprayed out like beer foam. The man went down on his back, and Tubby kicked him in the groin. The man tried to curl up, but he was passing out. Tubby kicked him again, then stomped again and again on his head. Finally he got control of himself. The man’s face looked like a spit-out wad of chewing tobacco. He no longer had a scar, and he wasn’t moving. A hundred feet away, at the far end of the dark alleyway, silhouetted against the lights of Jackson Square, a well-dressed couple were frozen in place, trying to understand what they were looking at. The pigeons in the church eaves above fluttered and cooed. Tubby began to run again, away from the Square. “Get off the street, get where it’s air-conditioned, get a drink.” In that order, Tubby commanded himself.
    He stumbled into the back entrance of the Royal Orleans and leaned against the mirrored wall to catch his breath. Nobody was around. He studied his own face and tried to compose it into something he recognized. Thanking God for his Visa Gold Card, he limped upstairs to the front desk.
    He was shown to a room near the top. Room service brought him a pitcher of martinis. From his window he had a sweeping view of the lights of the Quarter and the black void that was Lake Pontchartrain beyond that. He left the curtain wide open because he needed the feel of space. He was not afraid so high up. After a while the alcohol began to take effect. Such an experience makes drinking respectable, he was sure. This was a lot deeper than he had planned to go. Life was a very nice thing to have, and money could not replace it. He had bought his little trinkets and taken care of a few pressing domestic details. Time to get off this train. Tubby fell asleep in his chair, his feet on the bed. He jerked and his glass fell to the rug, ice and whiskey melting into the carpet. An olive rolled under the window curtain, where it waited to surprise the next guest.
    He dreamed that his friends were with him. Jason Boaz, the inventor, was there. So was E. J. Chaisson. So was Reggie Turntide. They were playing soldier in the rice fields around Bunkie, but it wasn’t a game after all because the guns were real. They were on their stomachs, taking cover behind a low dirt levee pushed up by a grader to hold water in the fields. The water was rising, and already it was covering the green shoots of the young plants and soaking into their boots. His partner, Reggie, was crawling through the mud, his arms wrapped around the gym bag. They were receiving mortar fire but could not tell where it came from. Enemies were crawling through the rice like alligators. The ground was exploding and dirt was showering down, covering them. Jason rigged up an irrigation pump to a fat fire hose. E.J. opened a bottle of wine and poured it, red and thick, into a cracked glass. He handed it around