New Orleans Noir

When Mother couldn’t find a babysitter, she’d haul me here when it was Ruby Red’s—”
    “I used to come here then, too. Who was your mom?”
    “Lily.”
    “Lily Lamont?” She was the fancy-pants Uptown debutante who used to cause scenes whenever I was here with Janice. In those days the port was right across the train tracks from the Quarter, and Lily Lamont was usually being held upright between a couple of Greek or Latino sailors. Once I swung open the door to the can to find her on her knees giving one of them a blow job while a rat looked on from the urinal. That’s when I stopped bringing Janice to this dump.
    “Did you know Mother?” Pogo squirmed in his seat.
    “Only by sight.” So this was the stunted offspring of one of those Ruby Red nights. If Janice were still here, we’d have children his age.
    “Your mother still alive?” I asked. “If you care to call it that. She’s secluded inside her Xanadu on Pirate’s Alley.”
    I softened to the little creep. He told me that as a kid, his mother would often show up at their apartment on Dumaine with a strange man and they’d lock themselves inside her room for three days with a case of bourbon. Now Pogo lived on a trust fund from the Lamonts, which paid the rent on the apartment. He was finishing a book of poems dedicated to his mother titled The Monster Cave.
    “Where did Eva strip?”
    “At Les Girls on Iberville. She gave it up soon after she moved in with me. You see, I paid for everything. Because Eva was my teacher and muse.”
    “She ever bring any guys home from there?”
    “Not guys. Other strippers sometimes.”
    “So she swung both ways?”
    “Oooh, Lieutenant Girlfriend.” Pogo nudged my leg with his foot. “Do you?”
    I heard some ranting and raving from inside the bar, and edged my way in to listen. The place was packed, with a permanent cloud of cigarette smoke hovering in the spotlight. First up was Millicent Tripplet, an obese woman with ruby lipstick, who recited a poem about how oppressed she felt when she was being fucked by a certain guy, and how depressed she felt when she wasn’t. That got a howl of appreciation. Then a rapper named Pawnshop took the stage, coked out of his gourd, to blow the trumpet and rap about how all the bitches and ho’s weren’t down with his skinny black ass in the baggy jumpsuit. His rhymes were catchy but the rhythm was a snooze. Then came a comic from the racetrack who sounded like my Uncle Dominic; next up was some nerd in a plaid sports coat who read a sonnet about peat moss and death; and then some anorexic lady dressed all in lilac who choked up in the middle and had to sit down. I couldn’t figure out what her poem was about. I think her pooch died.
    One thing I clocked: The better the poet, the shorter the spiel. The worst ones droned on forever. I gave Mrs. Pierce an empty shrug, as if to say, No clues here, lady . Then she took the stage, hands folded, looking like a Methodist Sunday school teacher. She held up the flier and announced that she would read the last poem her daughter ever wrote:
    I’ve always known you
    though we haven’t met.
    I know how your name tastes
    though I’ve never said it.
    You linger on the last step
    of stairs I never descend.
    I stand with my address book
    on a landing to which you never
    climb, and every day we stop
    just short of each other.
    I invoke you to appear,
    to kiss childhood back
    into my skeptical mouth,
    rain into this parched air.
    I invoke you at the sudden angle
    of smoke, secrets, and zippers,
    at the hour when earlobes,
    skin along inner thighs,
    a smooth chest is tenderest,
    love unfolding like a hammock
    to fit whatever is nearest.
    I invoke your breath’s fur
    on my neck, your curve of lips,
    the blue seaweed of your hair where
    we’ll weave a nest of lost mornings.
    The words sent a chill down my spine. It was as if Eva had been waiting for her murderer. Had a date with death. All I could see was Janice, her face bent over a glowing red candle holder, her straight blond hair swaying as she read poems to me. I had to rush out onto the balcony where I could sit alone and be twenty again, if only for a moment, and remember what a love so fragile felt like.
    Finally it was raining, coming down in torrents, the oak branches and curlicues of iron lace dripping fat, dirty tears. Drip drop, drip drop . What was that Irma Thomas song we were always listening to in those days? “It’s raining so hard, it brings back