“Pardon me, sir,” he said. “But the lady has asked you to move along, I think.”
“That’s right.”
“It really would be in both our interests if you would do so, sir.”
“Probably so, otherwise you might have occasion to get your hair mussed. But not in the lady’s, n’est-ce-pas?”
I looked up at him, half a mile at least, remembering Bible School stories of David and Goliath.
“I know you’re a big, powerful man, sweetheart, and you’re probably used to people trembling and maybe a few of them wetting their pants when you speak. The name’s Lew Griffin. Maybe you should step out into the street and ask around before you do anything … precipitate?”
If he didn’t buy the tough-guy act, maybe he’d think I was too smart to beat up.
“My employers will be most unhappy,” he said after a moment.
“I certainly hope so.”
“The girl’s going with you, then?”
“Woman. If she wants to, yes.”
We both looked at Cherie. She finally nodded.
“Perhaps we’ll meet again,” California said.
“Could be. I’ll buy you a drink if we do.”
“I don’t drink. Destroys brain cells.”
“Vous avez raison. Quand vous avez si peu….”
“What’s that?”
“Just agreeing with you is all.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, sure. Well, take care, Lew Griffin.”
“Always have.”
He turned and walked through the now glassless door, ducking low. I saw him climb into a cab outside and wait until the driver looked up from the crap game and noticed he had a fare. The cab swerved out into traffic, sending a Cadillac into the next lane and into the path of a battered VW bus. Five minutes later, traffic was backed up half a mile or more.
We walked a couple of blocks over to the car and drove home. If she wondered where I was taking her, she didn’t ask. Maybe she’d got used to letting other people make her decisions for her these past weeks. It was almost five as we turned onto St. Charles, and New Orleans was starting to show the first signs of day, like in horror movies when the corpse’s hand begins to open and close there at the edge of the screen but no one notices.
Vicky was working a day shift. I showed Cherie the bathroom and spare bedroom and settled into the kitchen. Presently I heard the two of them talking. They came in together just as I slid the omelette out of the pan. Fruit was already sliced and arranged on another platter. I stacked toast on a saucer, poured coffee for us all, and brought warm milk to the table with me in its small copper pot.
We ate slowly, Vicky and Cherie talking for the most part, mostly about Vicky’s work.
“I’d really like that, different all the time, meeting new people, really doing something,” Cherie said.
“Well there’s always a need for volunteers and nurses’ aides, if you’d fancy that. You might be able to work your way into a regular job then.”
“I’ll have to just take whatever I can get, for now. I don’t even know where I’m going to stay.”
Vicky and I looked at one another.
“You’re welcome to the spare bedroom here for as long as you need it,” I said.
“Oh, I couldn’t do that, Mr. Griffin.”
“Lew.”
“That’s up to you, then,” Vicky said. “But the room’s here if you want it. It’s never used.”
“I know what it’s like not to have anywhere or anyone to go to, Cherie; I’ve been there. Vicky knows too. She was raised in a French orphanage.”
Cherie picked a grape out of the cluster at the center of the fruit plate.
“When we were growing up, our parents had this tiny little arbor in the backyard, just four whitewashed poles, some chicken wire and stakes, a few wild vines. There was a swing on the tree nearby, really a door Dad had hung with steel cable, and Jimmi and I’d sit at opposite ends of that swing eating grapes and spitting the seeds at each other. I haven’t thought of that in a long time.”
“I really must scoot on out of here,” Vicky said. “Cherie, please feel free to help yourself to anything of mine that you might need. Are you going in to work today, Lew?”
“I’ll catch some sleep first, I think, then see.”
“Then I won’t ring you. Au revoir.”
She leaned down and touched my cheek with her own. I wondered what it would be like without her, what I would be like without her. It was a little like trying to imagine the world without trees or clouds.
“I’ll clean up, Mr. Griffin.”
“Lew. But I’ll do it.”
“I’d really rather have something to do, if you don’t mind. You go on and get yourself some sleep.”
“You’re sure?”
She nodded.
“Then you’ve got it. Listen: for as long as you’re here, this apartment is your own. Use what you need, come and go as you please, if you can’t find something, ask. Do you need money?”
“I have … an advance, from the people I was going to work for.”
“Okay, then. Goodnight, Cherie.”
“Goodnight, Lew. Bon soir-is that right?”
“As rain.”
I showered and lay listening to the distant clatter of pans and dishes, the irregular rush of water. My childhood rose up around me: myself tucked away in bed while, as on a far-off planet, family life continued.
Soon dishes and kitchen were done and I heard the TV come on. Some vague news about an arms talk, I think; premonitions of continued cold weather; a human interest story about twins in Poland and Gary, Indiana. An old movie with zombies, diplomats, displaced Russian aristocrats, rutting teenaged Americans.
I fell asleep and at some later point woke to the sound of sobbing. Walked into the living room and found a talk show and Cherie asleep on the couch, half-nude, dreaming. Felt the gulf between us, and felt my own loneliness in a way I’d not done for some time.
She was sobbing somewhere deep inside the dream. I think for a moment I felt as parents feel, wanting to protect her at any cost, to lie or tell her whatever might calm her sleep, ease her waking. But parents, most parents, learn that can’t be done. They learn that, whoever we are, all we can really share is the common humanity that bonds us: the knowledge that we all hurt, that every choice is difficult and, in its own way, final.
I fetched some blankets from the closet and covered her, turned the TV off, returned to bed.
Either it’s only in the relationships we manage that we live at all, or we must think that in order to manage them in the first place. We go on trying not just to survive, but to find reasons, such as love, that allow us to betray ourselves into choosing survival.
In my dreams Martin Luther King was reading Black No More. Tears streamed down his face: rain on a window behind which there is laughter.
At some point Vicky was there, muttering something about croissants; then, later, we were making love, and later still (I think) there was somehow coffee beside the bed. Gradually I was awake and it was dark. I thought how recent days were like older ones, going by in a blur, undistinguished, largely unlived, so many twilights retreating into bleary dawns.
Finally a knock at the door, repeated twice.
“There’s dinner, when you want it.” Footsteps leaving.
We showered together and went to see.
A stew of chicken and vegetables, spinach tossed with egg and vinaigrette, pasta salad, fried bananas. Freshly ground coffee after.