Louisiana Lament

just gettin’ in ya car and drivin’? Going out for a pack of cigarettes and not comin’ back?”
    “What do you mean? That’s what I just did.”
    Eddie said, “Put ’er there, bro. That’s how I got to this town. This very moment? I’m a missing person in Jersey.” To the kid, he knew it would sound like this: “Dis very moment? I’m a missing poison in Joisey.” He didn’t even have to lay it on. That was just his native Ninth Ward accent. The stranger said, “Get out of here!”
    Eddie said, “Ten years ago. Couldn’t handle it, had to go. Outta there. Never looked back. Know what I mean?”
    “Let me buy you a drink, brother. I been needin’ to talk about the Emerald City.” The kid pointedly excluded the other man, who now scanned the room and headed finally toward a forty-ish brunette with too-black hair. “You really do what you said you did?”
    Eddie nodded. “Picked Louisiana ’cause I liked the music. You really do it too?”
    He looked surprised. “Do what?”
    “Thought you said you went out for cigarettes yourself.”
    Trey’s face twisted into a bitter grin. “Naaah. Just had a fight with the wife. I don’t guess I’ll ever really have the guts.”
    “Ya still got ya wife, what could be so bad?”
    The kid looked uncomfortable, like he had a rock in his shoe. “Hey, bartender. What’s the hold up? Goddammit, I need that drink.” He turned back to Eddie. “I’ve blown just about everything there is to blow and the whole town knows about it. And that’s just for openers.”
    The drinks came. He drained off about half of his. Eddie sighed with satisfaction. He said, “So what’s the down side?”
    Trey put an arm around him and laughed. “I like you, my man. I don’t meet many people like you.”
    “Hey, trust me, you wouldn’t want to—name’s Eddie, by the way.”
    The kid stuck out his hand. “Trey.”
    “Trey?” Eddie was deliberately needling him.
    “Oh, hell, why not just call me Little King. Everybody else does. Behind my back.”
    Eddie lifted his glass. “You got it, Little K. Here’s to ya.” He drank and then said, “You a boxer or something?”
    Trey laughed, and the sound was a sharp crack that disturbed the landscape, like a twig breaking. “Or somethin’,” he said. “You got that right, Eddie. I’m somethin’, all right.”
    “No, seriously. What’s with the Little King routine?”
    Trey turned toward the bar and stared into the depths of his glass. “Nothing. Not a damn thing. Except my dad’s the king, see?”
    “You’re losin’ me there, son.”
    “Yeah, you know, he is.” Trey had now lit a cigarette and was starting to gesture with it like a teacher using a ruler—something Eddie had noticed people do when they’re getting good and drunk. “I never thought of it like that before. It’s like my dad’s king of the whole damn town, and ya know what that makes me? Little King. Hell of a note, huh? How would ya like to be ‘Little King.’ ”
    “We gotta upgrade ya, son—could ya handle ‘Crown Prince’?”
    That caught the kid in mid-swallow, and he thought it was so funny he almost spit on the bar—did, a little bit. “Funny! Hey, Eddie, you’re a funny one, man. Crown Prince! Oh, yeah!” His voice turned bitter again. “Prince of nothing, man. Prince of nothing.”
    “Hey, it can’t be that bad.”
    “You don’t know the half of it.”
    “I don’t know the eighth of it.”
    The kid turned toward the bar, laughing uncontrollably, in the manner of drunks, and Eddie hyena-ed right along with him. “Well, lemme tell you about eight things. My dad’s king of the place, right? And me, I drink too much, cheat on my wife—who hates me, by the way.” He stopped and nodded, as if Eddie had tried to contradict him. “Yeah, she does. She really hates me. And I pretty much hate her too—ain’t that a hell of a note?”
    Eddie sipped his beer and squeezed out a niggardly half smile. “Hell of a note.”
    “And I hate practicing law too. Long as we’re having true confessions. Therefore I don’t do it to the best of my ability. In other words, I’m lousy at it.”
    “Man, I never saw anybody needed to go get a pack of cigarettes so bad.”
    “Huh? Wha?” And then he got the reference. He stuck an elbow in Eddie’s ribcage. “Hey, you’re all right, man.”
    “I mean it. That’s some bad shit. Excuse my French.”
    “Well, it still ain’t the half of it.” He leaned confidentially close and