You can tell who she’s looking at then. Well, I won’t live forever, and after I’m gone, if they want to get together, that’s fine by me. I’ll have had my happiness. And I know Irma will take good care of Jim. She’s a wonderful kid. That’s why I talked her into coming into business with me. Say now, it’s great to see you again, Jockey. Stop by later. We’ve got a lot to catch up on. But I’ve got to get my old bones rattling now.
SIX … SIX … SIX …: the voice of the hour-bell tarries in the greening air, shivering as it subsides into the sleep of history.
Some cities, like wrapped boxes under Christmas trees, conceal unexpected gifts, secret delights. Some cities will always remain wrapped boxes, containers of riddles never to be solved, nor even to be seen by vacationing visitors, or, for that matter, the most inquisitive, persistent travelers. To know such cities, to unwrap them, as it were, one has to have been born there. Venice is like that.
After October, when Adriatic winds sweep away the last American, even the last German, carry them off and send their luggage flying after them, another Venice develops: a clique of Venetian élégants, fragile dukes sporting embroidered waistcoats, spindly contessas supporting themselves on the arms of pale, elongated nephews; Jamesian creations, D’Annunzio romantics who would never consider emerging from the mauve shadows of their palazzos on a summer’s day when the foreigners are abroad, emerge to feed the pigeons and stroll under the Piazza San Marco’s arcades, sally forth to take tea in the lobby of the Danieli (the Gritti having closed until spring), and most amusing, to swill martinis and chew grilled-cheese sandwiches within the cozy confines of Harry’s American Bar, so lately and exclusively the watering hole of loud-mouthed hordes from across the Alps and the seas.
Fez is another enigmatic city leading a double life, and Boston still another—we all understand that intriguing tribal rites are acted out beyond the groomed exteriors and purple-tinged bow windows of Louisburg Square, but except for what some literary, chosen-few Bostonians have divulged, we don’t know what these coded rituals are, and never will. However, of all secret cities, New Orleans, so it seems to me, is the most secretive, the most unlike, in reality, what an outsider is permitted to observe.
The prevalence of steep walls, of obscuring foliage, of tall thick locked iron gates, of shuttered windows, of dark tunnels leading to overgrown gardens where mimosa and camellias contrast colors, and lazing lizards, flicking their forked tongues, race along palm fronds—all this is not accidental décor, but architecture deliberately concocted to camouflage, to mask, as at a Mardi Gras Ball, the lives of those born to live among these protective edifices: two cousins, who between them have a hundred other cousins spread throughout the city’s entangling, intertangling familial relationships, whispering together as they sit under a fig tree beside the softly spilling fountain that cools their hidden garden.
A piano is playing. I can’t decide where it’s coming from: strong fingers playing a striding, riding-it-on-out piano: “I want, I want …” That’s a black man singing; he’s good—“I want, I want a mama, a big fat mama, I want a big fat mama with the meat shakin’ on her, yeah!”
Footfalls. High-heeled feminine footsteps that approach and stop in front of me. It is the thin, almost pretty, high-yeller who earlier in the afternoon I’d overheard having a fuss with her “manager.” She smiles, then winks at me, just one eye, then the other, and her voice is no longer angry. She sounds the way bananas taste.
HER: How you doin’?
TC: Just taking it easy.
HER: How you doin’ for time?
TC: Let’s see. I think it’s six, a little after.
HER (laughs): I mean how you doin’ for time? I got a place just around the corner here.
TC: I don’t think so. Not today.
HER: You’re cute.
TC: Everybody’s entitled to their opinion.
HER: I’m not playing you. I mean it. You’re cute.
TC: Well, thanks.
HER: But you don’t look like you’re having any fun. Come on. I’ll show you a good time. We’ll have fun.
TC: I don’t think so.
HER: What’s the matter? You don’t like me?
TC: No. I like you.
HER: Then what’s wrong? Give me a reason.
TC: There’s a lot of reasons.
HER: Okay. Give me one, just one.
TC: Oh, honey, don’t let me commence.
The End
