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Lee |
Slip back into Johnny's, Part Eight or into Part One or into Part Four or back to Rousseau or to Johnny's, Part Six
This picture is eleven years old, you should know. I was 32. Doc took it that April when we drove down to New Orleans. Royal Street is behind me. I remember spending lots of time in The Napoleon House that day. When he took this photo, I was walking up to kiss him.
I eased into Johnny's about 8:00. The red neon in the window says LOUNGE, and that's accurate. There's a small lamp on every table, and in each booth, centered on the wall, is a square, yellow, cased-glass fixture, glowing and streaked with black. In the back are three private-looking booths-for-two.
And the volume on is perfectly adjusted -- you can hear the music fully, but you can also talk.
I was beginning to adjust to the light and the layers of blue smoke when this sassy-looking woman walked up from the 1940's and nodded for me to follow her.
"Booth, table, or bar?" she asked. I told her I'd take a table, that small one in the back.
"Nice stockings," I said. "Wherever do you get them?"
No response. Then, "Are you making a pass? Do you want to see the wine list?"
I wasn't in the mood to engage her, but I was in the mood for something stronger than Bordeaux, so I told her I wanted a Cosmo, up. She wasn't looking at me.
"So is there really a Johnny?" I asked. Then, she showed me her eyes; it was like I had flicked a switch. For a second those eyes were truly scary, but then she relaxed, as abruptly as she had turned on.
"Yes there's really a Johnny. He'll be down later tonight. What's Johnny to you?"
"Nothing, really," I told her. "I've never met him. To tell the truth, I'm looking for someone else -- Doc Rousseau. You know him?"
"Maybe. Maybe not. I'll get your drink."
I stopped her before she got away. "I do have a question for Johnny, though. It's about the jukebox."
"You'll have to wait for him," she said. And then she was gone. Etta James was singing "I'd Rather Go Blind," and I opened my magazine.
The music is wonderful, but I must say that I prefer a different kind of place. I can see why Doc likes it, though. He loves a place like this.
Doc's life is like . . . or used to be. I can't say what it's like now. It's been awhile.
To Doc I'll be something out of the past, and it could stay that way for maybe fifteen minutes. Max.
Sometimes I think about him and call it up. I can make myself so hot and crazy that I get lost in it. It's been that way for all these years, and they're in double digits now.
I wouldn't even call him by his name back then. Instead, I tried to keep him behind a screen by using nicknames: Doctor, Doc, D.R., and my favorite, reserved for those times when we were truly alone, the one I'd forgotten until this moment -- Docmandu.
We hardly ever made any real eye contact when we were both married to other people. We were afraid of what would happen. But then there would be those moments when we'd catch each other looking. That's the way it was for three years.
Thirteen years ago my husband was his partner, my husband who died saving his life. They were cocky boys and they took chances. Frank was shot in the chest and Doc killed the man with his bare hands. He gave the killer multiple skull fractures. That's how it ended.
I leaned on Doc at the funeral. He held me up. And he's the only person alive I'd let do that.
For the next year it was a brother-sister thing . . . until the brother and sister began to rub against each other like cats, and kiss in the car, and then get in bed with each other and do it. It was one of those things.
And then we had seven months together. In that house we rented in Brooklyn. There was a huge bank of lavender in the back yard, and in June it was heavy with bumblebees. We would crush lavender together, between our fingers, to release its fragrance. And then I would say to him: "Crush me and release my fragrance," and he would do it.
And we laughed a lot, too.
But we were young and both of us were freshly scarred by Frank's death. After seven months, Doc left. It took him three minutes to say it, and then he went back to his wife, my once-best friend.
I've been married twice since then.
They say I have the bone structure and the skin and the metabolism to age well, and so far I'm doing fine. I have this feeling that Doc will agree.
I'm wondering if it was a sense of duty that sent him back to his wife. What was he thinking? Why hasn't he called? They were divorced four years ago.
Here's what I know: We are the loves of each other's lives. You can't touch it. I don't care who he's known in the last four years or who he's with now. I don't care. If it all hasn't been nothing to him, then I'm wrong and I'll leave the moment I find out. Listen, on some important, central thing about us, he's wrong. That's the only way to explain the four years and no call.
The hand delivering my fresh drink is large, masculine, manicured, and tanned. No rings. A sterling silver watch is partly revealed behind a heavily starched cuff. A head-to-toe scan shows that this guy spent a lot more time getting dressed than I did, and I don't like this in a man.
"I heard you got a complaint about the jukebox," he says.
His eyes are on the small side, efficient instruments for gathering information . . . no windows into this Johnny's soul.
"No complaint." I say. "Actually, I'm becoming fond of this lounge. I'd like it even more if I could bum a Camel."
He looks at me, right through my eyes, and slowly, ritually, gives me a cigarette. He lights it with this amazing silver tube; it's a lighter to remember. And he says nothing, just stands there looking at me with the lighter in his hand, sizing me up.
Finally he says, "I also hear you're looking for somebody."
"That's right," I say. "I'm looking for Doc Rousseau. Does he ever come in here?"
He lights a cigarette for himself and says through the smoke, "Maybe. Maybe not." He pauses for a few seconds, sizing me up again. "If he were to come in here, what should I say to him?"
"You tell him," I say, "that the love of his life is here."
Johnny smiles. It begins slowly and then takes over most of his face. "Maybe I can help you," he says. Then he adds, "And I don't want to know your name."
He's gone.
Doc and I drove a lot during those seven months: We'd take long weekends up the Hudson, or cruise up to Quebec just so we could hear French all around us, or down to Charlottesville for some Thomas Jefferson.
When we left New Orleans that spring, it was east to Georgia and then up the coast to the Chesapeake Bay and the Delmarva Peninsula for blue crabmeat in sunny marinas and the wild ponies on Assateague Island. And there was always music.
So I've been in here maybe 45 minutes when this girl with long, thick, black hair walks in. She seems to know most of the people at the bar, but she only lingers there for a few moments. Lil Green is singing "Why Don't You Do Right" and this girl says to someone, "I want more of this" as she strolls over to the jukebox.
She dances and sways around while she looks over the selections. Then she turns around, walks halfway back to the bar, and asks for a five. Two men hold up five-dollar bills, both smiling, both eager to help, both eager to be generous.
