trying to lose weight in a city where the streets run with clarified butter, red spices, and sweet, sweet oysters. I wanted to use my crafter’s skills to assist other men as they reshaped themselves. To that end I had learned new things about old needs and desires.
A hand made garment can be the most perfect thing, as one thoughtful stitch follows another, accumulating into an aria. And opera is an apt metaphor here because that’s how it felt as I ascended into grace, pulling hand dyed thread through layers of brocade coutil. So similar to yet more lovely than writing fucking code all day. But that was my old life, dead and buried. Back in Northern Virginia I was the info tech director for a major defense contractor, now defunct and disgraced. These days, I lived with and worked for my son. Not that I minded, but it was strange being the grown-up and not having that matter one tiny bit.
I did like seeing Pebbles in our kitchen, even as I fought off the implications. She looked very fresh in a lemon yellow tank top and plaid men’s Bermuda shorts, leaning into our chrome and red Formica dining table that looked more like a 1950s Buick than a piece of kitchen furniture. Our kitchen was large with uneven floors, bright and sticky in the heart of our shabby Creole town home in the Marigny. We could never get that burnt grease and syrup smell to go away. Very different from the pretentious country kitchen of our old home in the suburbs.
I too was wearing shorts—sleeping shorts, and I looked a wreck. I yanked down my giant gray T-shirt and checked my fly. Nothing flopping, good. “Morning,” I announced with confidence.
“Mmm, hey,” she said brightly. I tried not to notice the glimmer of fruit pulp on her lower lip. The air was fragrant with chicory coffee, fresh brewed. A full pot, what a treat. One of the infrequent benefits of Val’s Romeo lifestyle was that some of the ladies he brought home were ambitious. They made coffee, sometimes breakfast. One child was caught organizing our silverware drawer; we never saw her again.
But making coffee was perfectly acceptable. “Val not up yet?” I asked. I poured a cup and slid into the seat across from her. She flipped through the catalog, her modest pink nails making a mockery of every image she encountered.
“You think we slept together,” she said. “We didn’t.”
“It’s none of my business.”
“He let me sleep on the couch last night. I was all weepy.” She looked up at me. Eyes bright and blue. No carnal residue. I took her at her word.
“The coffee is excellent.” I slurped to prove it.
She seemed to think this was an odd remark. “Can I come on your walk with you?”
“No.” My morning constitutionals were sacred. Then I thought about it. Boom, boom, boom. “Yes,” I said.
It was a romantic stroll in a very nineteenth century sense except that instead of picnicking amongst the tomb stones of poets (always an option around these parts) we took a tour of where certain cats once lived and prowled—the orange tom, the tuxedo twins, the half-pint-ever-pregnant tortie—and at one point the girl placed her hand atop my forearm.
It was sad and exciting at the same time. So terribly gothic. The gates surrounding St. Louis Cathedral were locked, protecting perfectly trimmed grass and red stone paths that wound around wild islands of flowers and trees. Normally the gardens would be crawling with cats. And later in the day after the gates were opened, this would be a place where people lay down for a bit of peace and shade—bums, tourists, students, artists, and cats, all shagged out like happy drunks. The sad tremor in Pebbles eyes suggested that she had read some part of my thoughts.
We wandered over to Woldenberg Park, half beckoned by the moan of a Russian barge and the morning-sweet scent of the river. Do other cities have so many oases? Each marvelous sculpture presided over its own wide territory so your heart could rest up before you happened upon the next. Robert Schoen’s “Old Man River” being the most arresting of these—seventeen tons of Carrara marble shaped into an eighteen foot male nude rising up out of the shrubs somewhat unexpectedly. The figure is soulful and stylized, not realistic, but the rough square representing his genitalia produces a sense of virility unmatched by known anatomy. This morning his bits were covered though. An enormous drape of white fabric was hitched around the statue’s waist, hanging down to where the figure’s massive thighs disappeared into its marble pedestal. A middle aged woman in walking shorts, sun visor, and New Balance sneakers stood at the statue’s base, tugging at the edge of the cloth, a bit shy about it, clearly wary that the authorities might swoop down at any moment. The drape slid down some, settling on the hips of the statue, making “Old Man River” look rather rakish and randy, as if he’d just popped out of the shower.
“Should we help her?” Pebbles asked.
“Whatever for?”
“Well she’s obviously striking a blow against censorship.”
“Do you really think so? My impression was that she was trying to sneak a peek.”
“There’s not that big a difference,” said Pebbles.
I smiled inside. Her careless banter would be fighting words out of a less pretty mouth. “You know what I thought?” I said. “I thought the Old Man was done up as a waiter to promote a food festival or something.”
Pebbles laughed. “So that’s where your head is at. You need some breakfast.”
We made our way to the Café Du Monde where Pebbles ordered hot, greasy beignets and a pint of whole milk. I ordered more coffee. The powdered sugar fell down her chin and onto her bosom, as is customary, and my heart started to click-click-click; lust and hunger are dangerous companions. Pigeons strutted everywhere, apocalyptic in number. One walked right over my shoe top, a thing that had never happened before. “Away, little bugger,” and I sort of soft-booted him into clumsy flight. Pebbles thought that was cute of me. I began to feel unreasonably handsome.
“So,” said Pebbles, tugging about fifty little napkins out of the dispenser on our table, “Corsets, huh?” She began scrubbing her fingers free of all traces of sugar. She was done eating, but there was one beignet untouched on her plate. Unbelievable.
I braced for an emasculating interrogation.
She sucked her teeth. “Isn’t that really complicated? I mean compared to making capes?”
“And what would be the transitional garment, in your view?”
She shrugged. Cream colored shoulders with freckles. Strawberries and cream. Damn. “Dunno. Belts? Hats? Oh wait—hoods,” she said, convinced.
It was early for it, but a “character” waded through a sea of pigeons clogging passage from the Café patio to the steps that lead up to the Moon Walk. Moon Walk was what they called the boardwalk along the river, named for good old Moon Landrieu, the politician credited with revitalizing the city in the seventies. This morning, one of the beneficiaries of that revitalization was already inebriated, all bright and pink in a bass (the fish) covered shirt and wearing an odd round straw hat with a shallow crown. Someone must have told him before he came down south, get yourself a wide brimmed hat, and stopping short of buying a sombrero that’s just what this fellow did. As I said, he waded through pigeons, making a general nuisance of himself. He shouted to no one in particular, “Satan hates Faggots!”
The disembodied reply was, of course, “So he must hate you!” Not clever, but there you have it.
“Fuck you wearing?” some other voice inquired.
The man insisted, “God loves me!”
“He must!” And this drew some chuckles.
I murmured to Pebbles, “The gentleman’s attitude is unexpected.”
She agreed. “From a distance, he looks more like the flexible type.”
We would normally ignore the behavior of impaired louts, but that round hat distracted me. I could barely keep from staring. And then Pebbles put her finger right on it. “You get those at the craft store,” she said. “You know, for