Story Time

So... we've been working on this little piece that doesn't really have a home, but we're fond of it. It actually uses characters from The Long Black Veil, but somehow it didn't make it into the book. Anyway, it's long, and no one will probably read it, but here it is.

Jamie Delacroix - 1943

They kept the car windows down, hearing the heavy kudzu vines rustle in the humid, mid-October breeze as the Lincoln rolled along the black top. Jamie slouched in the passenger seat, idly drumming his fingers against the leather seats in time to the music on the radio. His father had called from the office to tell him to take a bath and put on his second-best suit, but Big Jim wouldn’t say where they were going, and Hélène had said she didn’t know either. Jamie only asked once; after all, he had just turned fifteen, too old to pester his father or show much interest in anything his parents wanted him to do. The question remained on the tip of his tongue, though, so he kept quiet as they sped toward the outskirts of New Orleans.

The music program ended, replaced by an announcer’s voice smoothly testifying to the wonders of Ipana toothpaste. “It’s a good night,” Big Jim said, turning down the radio. He glanced away from the road, a smile wreathing his face.

“A good night for what?”

“You’ll see.” His father reached over and ruffled Jamie’s hair, something he hated now that he stood within an inch or two of his daddy’s height. He hoped someday to fill out to match the bulk that had earned his father a spot as a linebacker for the Greenbacks at Tulane, but so far Jamie had seen little progress in that direction. “You’re going to favor your mama more’n me,” Big Jim warned. “You’ve got her finer bones.” Jamie knew his father thought that was a compliment, but he found little consolation in the prospect.

They turned onto a dirt road, an overgrowth of willows and tall grass crowding on either side of the car, and Jamie sat up a little, throwing a questioning look at the older man. Big Jim’s attention was on the rutted path, his dark eyes narrowed in an effort to see ahead of them through the gloom. Jamie peered through the windshield, too, but he couldn’t make out anything but more trees. “You sure you know where we’re headed?”

“Son, I could get where we’re going with a blindfold on.”

“Aw, just tell me.”

“Now, Trey, you know I have never been one to spoil a surprise.” That started Big Jim reminiscing about pranks he’d pulled in his own boyhood, but Jamie only half-listened. A nervous excitement had caught hold of him based on a hunch and a half-remembered scrap of conversation during his birthday party the week before. He shifted in his seat to watch his father’s face in the glow of the dashboard lights, searching for a hint that he’d guessed right.

He didn’t have to wait long to find out. The foliage drew even closer to the bumpy trail, and just when Jamie thought they’d have to turn back, the track veered sharply to the left into a clearing he hadn't noticed from the main path. Like something out of a fairytale, soft, welcoming light washed them, beckoning from the windows of an ancient brick house covered in ivy and late-blooming roses. As his eyes adjusted to the unexpected scene, he noticed a number of cars parked discreetly off to one side, almost out of the range of the light. Big Jim guided the Lincoln to this makeshift parking lot, pulling up alongside a Pierce Arrow and killing the engine. “Well, here we are.”

“Where’s here?”

“Son… Welcome to Bella’s.”

Jamie felt his mouth fall open and quickly closed it again. From the time he’d begun to notice the differences between boys and girls, he’d heard tell of Bella’s. Not directly, of course: a sporting house was not a fitting topic of conversation around children. But when his parents hosted one of their frequent parties, Jamie would wait till the liquor had been flowing for a couple of hours, then slip into his father’s crowded study and tuck himself away in a shadowed corner while the men swapped jokes and stories. Bella’s Cathouse was often featured in these bull sessions, and Jamie had gleaned that part of its fame came from ushering several generations of New Orleans’ finest families into manhood.

The implications rushed over him, leaving him light-headed. “Daddy, I — ”

Big Jim patted his arm. “When I was your age, my daddy brought me here, and his daddy had done the same for him. It’s not just about the girls, Trey. Y’all keep that in mind.”

He followed his father up a neat walkway of crushed shells, hanging back a little like a nervous child. At the door, however, he straightened his tie and stepped up next to Big Jim. By the time a tiny little thing wearing nothing but a fancy slip and a smile welcomed them inside, Jamie made up his mind that excitement outweighed any fear or embarrassment.

What he’d expected, he couldn’t have said: maybe a dark, smoke-filled room with girls standing in a line like wallflowers at a school dance, waiting for furtive-eyed men to pick them out and take them upstairs. What he got looked remarkably like his mama’s front parlor, the lighted chandeliers and gilt-edged chaises aping the elegant style of Louis XIV. The thought of what his mama might say if he told her she shared her cultured taste with a whorehouse made him grin, and his anxiety dissipated enough to take in the reality around him.

Music played from a large console in the corner, not the Big Band sound saturating the radio airwaves, but the raw jazzy blues he’d caught snatches of crossing Bourbon Street before one or both of his parents hurried him on his way. The heavy bass captured the lush beat of sex, or so Jamie imagined, and he thought too that every man and girl in the room moved to its rocking cadence. There was nothing at all clandestine about the interaction between the sexes: a number of couples danced in the center of the room, but more stood or sat on the sidelines, drinking and talking and touching. He could almost have mistaken the gathering for one of his parents’ parties except here the ladies wore less and seemed to be having a better time.

“Come to the bar with me, Trey.”

Big Jim took his reluctant elbow and steered him around the dancers into a long room. A black-lacquered bar hugged one wall, and a tall brunette stationed behind it broke into a wide smile when she spotted them. “Seven-and-seven, Jimmy?” she asked, setting up a highball with ice. His father accepted the drink and leaned across the counter to buss the brunette’s cheek. “Holly, I’d like you to meet my boy. Trey, this is a good friend of mine.”

Holly made delighted noises, coming around the bar to plant an open-mouthed kiss on Jamie. “Your daddy showed me your picture, but it didn’t do you justice,” she cooed. “It’s so nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you, too,” Jamie answered, letting a testing hand rest for just a second on her backside before taking a seat next to his father.

Holly didn’t seem to mind. “What can I get you, honey?”

“Try him on rum and coke,” Big Jim answered. Jamie raised his eyebrows, but the older man sipped his drink complacently. “Ever had alcohol, Trey?”

“Well — ”

“I don’t mean beer, son.” Jamie shook his head. “Rum’s easy to start with, and it’s never too early to learn to hold your liquor. Only,” and here Big Jim leaned in to speak in Jamie’s ear, “don’t tell your mama. And don’t let me catch you drinking anywhere else. Understand?”

Jamie nodded and took an experimental swallow. The sweet liquid tasted mostly of Coca-Cola, but it had enough kick to make heat bloom in his belly and spread, tingling, to his extremities. “’S good,” he answered to his father’s questioning expression, and Big Jim laughed.

“He’s on a two-drink limit,” the older man cautioned Holly, then motioned for Jamie to follow him. “Let’s go say hello to the boys.”

They moved further into the long room to join a table of his father’s friends. Most of them Jamie had known since he could toddle, men he called “Uncle” and thought of as extended family. They welcomed him heartily amid much laughter and teasing. Uncle Ted, who’d been his father’s college roommate and was now a partner in the same law firm, rose and was well into a ribald toast that turned even Big Jim’s cheeks red before the others shouted him down. Jamie felt like slinking off to a corner, but his father kept a staying hand on his shoulder. When the conversation finally moved on to local politics, Big Jim leaned close to his ear again.

“Unless I miss my guess, Teddy’s on his fifth scotch by now. Only way he can work up to talking to any of the girls.”

Jamie cut his eyes toward his father, but the older man appeared to listen intently to Uncle Paul Lameroux start in about the war. “Why the hell Roosevelt had to get us in this fix’s beyond me. It’s ruining my business! Let them Nazis and Frogs sort it out themselves.”

A New Deal Democrat to the core, Uncle Ted bristled. “And if he did, we’d all be speaking German in a year or two. Then where would your business be?”
The table burst into talk, taking sides for and against as they argued with the courage of conviction supported by the flow of alcohol. Meaning to heed his father’s cryptic message that being here wasn’t all about the girls, Jamie tried to pay attention, but he kept hearing the thumping beat of the music from the other room along with the merry tinkling of feminine laughter. He finished his drink and set the glass on the table, stabbing at the melting ice cubes with his straw as he fought to keep his feet still.

“Why don’t you go see if any of those girls feel like dancing.”

He looked up to find his father smiling at him with a mixture of amusement and affection. Jamie dropped his head again, heat rising in his face. “Uh, no, sir, I’m fine here.”

“Politics is an old man’s game, son. You go on. Go on.” Big Jim waved him to his feet, and there was nothing to do but follow orders. Shuffling around the maze of table and chair legs, he tried not to make a spectacle of himself, refusing to turn around as the table erupted again in good-natured cheers.

He got as far as the bar before Big Jim called him back. “Here.”

“Thanks.” Without looking at the denomination or his father, Jamie accepted the folded bill. He could feel the older man’s expectant gaze on him, though, and finally, unwillingly, he raised his head. Big Jim reached over and ruffled his hair. “Y’all — you just have yourself a good time, now. I’ll be around, but if you need something and can’t find me, Holly’ll look after you. Won’t you, honey?”

“You bet.” Holly’s bold wink made Jamie blush again, and before anyone else could say something stupid or mortifying, he stumbled off thinking it was no good, he’d lost his nerve under the weight of all that expectation.

But his father was right, more or less: a much younger crowd held court in the living room, the chandeliers dimmed now to accommodate wandering hands and slow, deep kisses. The songs played were slower too, the couples seemingly locked together at the hips. No one paid attention to Jamie, and he was glad for the respite while he sipped a glass of champagne hooked from a passing waitress and scouted the dancers. One pair was hardly moving at all, a fact he chalked up to the difficulty of maneuvering with the man’s hand down the front of the girl’s gown. He got a shocked but perfect view of one small breast before a bouncer moved in, discreetly escorting the twosome to a more private venue.

Aching desire came flooding back, and he found the guts to turn away from the dance floor in favor of the girls waiting on the sidelines. In the half-light, they looked like sweet confections in their satin and lace and chiffon, each one more enticing than the last. Need weighed against his wish to go on cataloguing the range of possibilities, however, and he settled on a girl who seemed both close to his ideal and closest to hand. “Dance?” he muttered, unable to manage more around the sudden dryness at the back of his throat. She smiled her answer and drifted into his arms.

His feet knew what to do even if his tongue was tied, and he guided her firmly onto the floor as Ruth Etting sang about loving or leaving her. Jamie planned to do both to the pliant blonde, and the worry of what it all meant to her flitted across his mind, but his body had control. A little shorter than he, the blond pressed the over-filled front of her satin nightie against him, and though he was sure she could feel how much he wanted her, she never pulled away or embarrassed him with it. When he chanced to meet her eyes, she cupped the back of his neck, urging him to bend and meet her lips.

It was not his first kiss, not by a long shot; that belonged to a girl named Belinda Sue from way back in fifth grade, and there’d been a dozen others since. But it was the first that he knew meant to follow through on the promise made, so he reveled in it, aware of the sugary rum on his breath and a minty taste from her mouth, sharp and pleasant. He broke off first, afraid of losing control. “Maybe,” he mumbled against her hair and had to clear his throat and think about the French Revolution essay he was supposed to write before he could go on. “Maybe we should go upstairs.”

How simple it was with a girl like her; he did not have to plead or play any games. She took his hand and led him across the dance floor and up the central staircase, where a man waiting at the top took his money and gave the girl a room key. “Two hours,” the man told him as if he might argue, and Jamie nodded dazedly. Two hours seemed like a lifetime; he’d count himself lucky to last five minutes. The girl made some light remark of reassurance, but Jamie couldn’t hear over the buzzing in his ears. He let her lead him down a hallway, and then behind a closed door that she shut and locked while he stood frozen in the center of the room.

A king-sized bed made up with red monogrammed sheets dominated the small space, accompanied by a few tasteful furnishings: a nightstand and lamp, a vanity, a clothes rack and wingchair. A door to the right of the bed stood partially ajar, revealing a small bathroom decorated in the same red, black and gold pattern as the bedroom. Again, he couldn’t have said what he’d expected — flocked velvet wallpaper and silk hangings came to mind — but while the colors were all wrong, he associated the pulled-together feel of the room with his mama’s flair for style. It wasn’t the time or place to be thinking of his mother, though, and Jamie shuddered a little when he felt a light hand brush across his back. “Let me help you with your jacket, hon.”

As adroitly as a valet, the girl parted him from his suit coat to settle it on the clothes rack. The lamp gave him plenty of light in which to observe her careful ministrations, and to admire her dancer’s legs, and milky skin, and confident strut. He guessed her no more than five years older than he, with no hint of even the faintest lines in the pretty face she turned to him. No hardness lived there either, not yet, and he wondered how long she’d been at her career, and what led her there. Then she glided across the room to him on kitten heels, the smooth muscles of her thighs working in a way he’d never noticed on any other woman. Any questions he had went forgotten as she began to undo his tie.

“You can call me Melanie,” she told him in a soft, breathy voice. She looked him in the eye while her hands kept busy unbuttoning his shirt.

“I’m Jamie.”

“Mmm, that’s a nice name.” Melanie helped him remove his shirt and once more made a leggy circuit to set the garment neatly aside. “Is this your first time, hon?”

He nodded, dropping his eyes, abruptly feeling like a stupid kid again. Melanie cupped his chin. “Hey, it’s okay. Everyone has to have a first time.” She leaned against him, rising up on her tiptoes in those ridiculous heels so he felt compelled to put his arms around her to support her. The kiss she gave him was tender. “Let me make it special for you.”

Later, he would feel such a deep ambiguity about that night that when the time came, he would flatly refuse to take his own sons to Bella’s despite his father’s pressured insistence, and yet when Big Jim offered to stand in his place, Jamie couldn’t bring himself to forbid it. The loss of his virginity certainly didn’t bother him; for more than a year, he’d been angling and scheming to get that initial experience out of the way. And Melanie made it as special as a professional possibly could, both encouraging and teaching him in such a clever manner, he would walk away confidant in his sexual prowess. That confidence built a self-fulfilling prophecy that ensured he’d become a skillful lover.

But he resented the machinations of family tradition and expectation that put him in bed with a stranger. Not during their assignation, naturally: all he thought about for those two hours was Melanie’s lush body and her completely uninhibited use of it to pleasure him. Afterwards, though, he couldn’t change the hard reality that he was neither her first nor last lay of the night. With their time winding down, Melanie got up and pulled on a short robe as if to signal his show was over, and Jamie found himself ashamed to have caught a glimpse of dark pubic hair while she covered herself. With her robe cinched tight, she sat down on the edge of the bed where he still stretched out, the sheet tossed discreetly across his midsection. She ran her manicured nails lightly across his chest. “Can you find your way downstairs okay, honey?”

“Sure.”

“It’s just, I’d like to take a quick shower before…” She shrugged a little and dredged up a sparkling smile, but he noticed she looked tired.

“Sure, I said. I don’t mind.”

“You’re a doll.” Her kiss was impulsive and quick, but at least it was genuine. Jamie picked up her hand as she got up from the bed.

“Melanie?”

“What, hon?” Now her smile was distracted, and he saw that she was already imagining herself under the water’s spray, washing away the last customer to get ready for the next. “You sure you don’t mind?”

He let go of her hand. “Not at all. Just wanted to say, you know, thanks.”

“Oh! You’re welcome, honey. You come back and see me anytime, you hear?”

“Sure.”

Groomed as carefully as he’d been when he climbed into his daddy’s Lincoln earlier, Jamie returned to the black lacquer bar where Holly was busy flirting with two sailors. He hung back at the edge of the counter till she spotted him and rapidly produced another rum and coke. “This one’s a little stronger, sweetie, so drink it slow,” she cautioned, then suggested he hang out for a while. “Jimmy said he’d be back in just a little bit.”

She returned her attention to the sailors, so he headed toward his Uncle Ted’s table and fell into a chair beside him. Ted was talking to a man Jamie didn’t know, and from the haze of fumes and the platoon of glasses on the table, Jamie guessed his uncle still hadn’t worked up the courage to do some sporting of his own. The older man confirmed this by breaking off his conversation and throwing an expansive arm around Jamie’s shoulder.

“There he is, there’s the young fella I was telling you about!” Ted boomed to the other man, who grinned at Jamie with glassy eyes. “My godson, you know. Lost his cherry tonight.”

Jamie choked and had to let Ted whack him on the back until he could breathe again. “So, how was it?” the stranger asked when Jamie stopped coughing.

“Uh — ”

“Lemme guess,” Ted said, winking broadly. “She made it real ‘special’ for you.”

The two men burst into guffaws, and slowly Jamie pieced together that what he’d thought was sweet encouragement from Melanie was actually Bella’s unofficial motto. He ducked his head and finished his drink in a few swallows, hoping the men would go back to their own conversation, but he’d failed to quench their interest. To get him to talk, Ted insisted on getting him another drink, and then another, and though his head started to throb and a sour taste rose in the back of his throat, Jamie drank them to give himself some respite from the probing questions. But by the time his father materialized, he had thoroughly embellished the event for the two voyeurs and had moved past pleasantly high to room-wavering drunk.

“Trey? You all right?”

Jamie found he was propping his head up with one elbow, slumped so far on the table that his tie floated in a glass of melted ice. “He’s fine,” Ted maintained, but Big Jim murmured something Jamie didn’t catch, and his uncle subsided. He felt his father’s hand grip his shoulder. “Come on.”

“Daddy, I — ”

“Right now, Trey.”

He staggered to his feet feeling like every eye in the place watched him with contemptuous amusement as he used the chair backs to keep his balance across the room. Big Jim didn’t wait for him, and even in his altered state, Jamie reckoned he was in for it once they were alone. But when he got outside, his father only put a supportive arm around his waist. Since everything within his tunnel vision seemed to rock as if they were crossing the deck of a ship during hurricane season, Jamie was more than grateful for the help.

They had almost reached the car when he realized he wasn’t going to make it. “Oh, Jesus,” he whispered, and then it seemed everything he’d ever consumed that night or any other came rocketing up. The force of his misery almost knocked him down, but Big Jim leaned him against the Pierce Arrow’s fender and held his head without a word till the worst of the nausea passed. When he was through the snuffling and spitting stage enough to realize he was almost sober again, the whole evening came rushing back at him. For no one reason he could think of, Jamie felt like crying. “I’m sorry, sir.”

“You’re not the first one to leave a return deposit in Bella’s parking lot. Here.”

He accepted the handkerchief his father handed him, not daring to look up. “No, sir. I mean I’m sorry for disappointing you.”

“Aw, quit calling me sir. You’re not in trouble.” Big Jim settled against the fender next to Jamie. “What’d Teddy say to you?”

“Nothing much. He just asked me… well, you know. How it was.”

His father’s sigh was sharp, and when he spoke, Jamie heard an unusual bitterness. “Teddy thinks getting drunk and taking a girl to bed proves you’re a man, especially if you brag about it afterward to anyone who’ll listen.”

“I’m sorry,” Jamie repeated, but Big Jim put an arm around his shoulders, and just as he had when he was a small boy, Jamie let his head rest against his father’s.

“Don’t ever be sorry for another man’s weakness. But don’t let them make their weaknesses your own.”

“Is that what you meant when you said that coming here wasn’t just about the girls?”

Big Jim was quiet, a familiar distance in his expression suggesting he wasn’t going to answer. Then he pressed his lips against Jamie’s temple for a long moment before straightening up. “What do you think, Trey?”

On the ride back, they left the windows down once more. For the first few miles, Jamie had all he could do to hold his gorge and his throbbing head upright, but he soon found his father’s belief in the curative powers of the late-night air had some merit. He started to say so, but caught himself, uneasy about breaking the stillness. Though Big Jim glanced at him from time to time with concern, Jamie sensed that brooding quality was still there in the silence, and he was afraid to probe at what lay beneath it.

Shame welled in him again, but a wave of resentment rose hard on its heels. Going drinking and whoring hadn’t been his idea, and if Big Jim didn’t like how he’d handled it, then he shouldn’t have turned Jamie loose with so little instruction or advice. But that was his father all over: Big Jim said he believed in letting his children handle whatever life served up without burdening them with his experiences first. Jamie supposed his daddy hoped the lessons learned would stick better, but too often he felt like he was taking a test he’d never prepared for and failing miserably. And what galled him most was, if he broke down and asked his father for help, he was apt to get a lawyer’s answer: “What do you think, Trey?”

In the years to come, he would obtain a broader sense of the issues swirling around that night; he would realize that some of Big Jim’s silence on the road home had more to do with his own indiscretions than with Jamie’s fumblings. Several weeks would pass before it dawned on him what his daddy was up to while Jamie waited in the bar, and as his personal experience grew, Jamie would come to understand both his father’s embarrassment and anger at himself for not controlling — or at least timing — his appetites better. That night, though, Jamie only felt a growing certainty that he was not going to live his life under the shadow of his family, under the confusing weight of his father’s hopelessly mixed pride and disappointment. He didn’t know how he was going to do it, but someday he was going to escape them all.

“Trey? Trey, we’re home.”