Now it was hung with turkeys, Indians, cranberry bunches, Pilgrim hats.
I stood for a moment wondering (as I had wondered a hundred times before) about the people who lived in that house, what they were like, why they did this, how it all got started. This is a city that dearly loves traditions, and if there’s not one handy, then it’ll just make up a new one.
I crossed St. Charles and walked riverward toward LaVerne’s place.
No mail in the box, of course, no paper on the porch or in the yard: Verne was almost as invisible as I was.
I let myself in, poured half a tumblerful of bourbon in the kitchen, and took it into the front room.
At the time, Verne had a taste for what they called the contemporary look. You’d walk into her second-floor apartment in this old Victorian house and there, sitting on hardwood floors alongside real plaster walls and solid-wood baseboards under cameo-and-wreath ceiling medallions, was all this stark, angular, mostly white furniture. It remained kind of a shock.
Not too long after, Verne switched to (and stayed with) old wooden tables, breakfronts, wardrobes and chairs picked up for next to nothing at used-furniture shops on Magazine and hauled upstairs over the balcony on ropes. One day she arrived breathless to tell me that all the stores had tripled their prices and put up new signs and now she had an apartment full of fine antiques.
Finishing my drink, I poked through books and magazines scattered about on the coffee table. Life, several Mentor Classics, something titled The Killer Inside Me , an Ace Double with a Philip K. Dick novel on the A side, Redbook, Family Circle, a paperback of Butterfield 8 with Elizabeth Taylor on the cover.
I opened Life to a spread on Hemingway that, along with half a dozen older photos, included one of him standing outside his home in Idaho just days before he shot himself with one of his beloved shotguns. Was there snow in the background? I remember snow.
I went to the kitchen for another drink. Wandered out onto the balcony, careful to stay back out of direct sight of the street.
A fire burned somewhere close by. I could smell it: loamy, full aroma of wood, acrid tang of synthetics and fabric, heat itself.
Second time I was ever at LaVerne’s, letting myself in with a key same as now, I walked out on this balcony with a cup of café au lait and within ten minutes cops were banging on the door below. When I answered it, they threw me up against the wall shouting What you doin’ here, boy? You belong here? Luckily Verne’s neighbor heard it all and told her when she got home in the morning. So four hours after I was hauled in, Verne showed up at police headquarters with her lawyer. Details run together from incident to incident, year to year, but I think I emerged from that particular instance of “cooperation” (no record of arrest, of course) with a fractured rib, broken finger, multiple abrasions. All preexisting, of course. You know how them darkies live.
It didn’t look as though Verne was coming home—not all that unusual. Maybe she’d sold an overnight, or she was staying with one of her regulars. So I had a couple more drinks, napped a bit in front of the TV, and some time after noon walked over to catch the streetcar down to Washington.
Hosie Straughter stood up from the stoop in front of my house as I came around the wall.
Chapter Twelve
“ L EWIS. Y OU LOOK LIKE ABSOLUTE unmitigated hell.”
“That’s the trouble with you journalists. Always leaping headfirst for the nearest cliché. You have any idea how many times I’ve already heard that?”
“Women and little children scream and run when they see you, I guess.”
“Women, anyway.”
“Know how that is. You okay?”
“I will be. I think. Some time around January, maybe. Late January.”
“Barring further complications.”
“There is that.”
“But from what I know, seems to me the complications so far didn’t come find you, you went looking for them.
I stood for a moment wondering (as I had wondered a hundred times before) about the people who lived in that house, what they were like, why they did this, how it all got started. This is a city that dearly loves traditions, and if there’s not one handy, then it’ll just make up a new one.
I crossed St. Charles and walked riverward toward LaVerne’s place.
No mail in the box, of course, no paper on the porch or in the yard: Verne was almost as invisible as I was.
I let myself in, poured half a tumblerful of bourbon in the kitchen, and took it into the front room.
At the time, Verne had a taste for what they called the contemporary look. You’d walk into her second-floor apartment in this old Victorian house and there, sitting on hardwood floors alongside real plaster walls and solid-wood baseboards under cameo-and-wreath ceiling medallions, was all this stark, angular, mostly white furniture. It remained kind of a shock.
Not too long after, Verne switched to (and stayed with) old wooden tables, breakfronts, wardrobes and chairs picked up for next to nothing at used-furniture shops on Magazine and hauled upstairs over the balcony on ropes. One day she arrived breathless to tell me that all the stores had tripled their prices and put up new signs and now she had an apartment full of fine antiques.
Finishing my drink, I poked through books and magazines scattered about on the coffee table. Life, several Mentor Classics, something titled The Killer Inside Me , an Ace Double with a Philip K. Dick novel on the A side, Redbook, Family Circle, a paperback of Butterfield 8 with Elizabeth Taylor on the cover.
I opened Life to a spread on Hemingway that, along with half a dozen older photos, included one of him standing outside his home in Idaho just days before he shot himself with one of his beloved shotguns. Was there snow in the background? I remember snow.
I went to the kitchen for another drink. Wandered out onto the balcony, careful to stay back out of direct sight of the street.
A fire burned somewhere close by. I could smell it: loamy, full aroma of wood, acrid tang of synthetics and fabric, heat itself.
Second time I was ever at LaVerne’s, letting myself in with a key same as now, I walked out on this balcony with a cup of café au lait and within ten minutes cops were banging on the door below. When I answered it, they threw me up against the wall shouting What you doin’ here, boy? You belong here? Luckily Verne’s neighbor heard it all and told her when she got home in the morning. So four hours after I was hauled in, Verne showed up at police headquarters with her lawyer. Details run together from incident to incident, year to year, but I think I emerged from that particular instance of “cooperation” (no record of arrest, of course) with a fractured rib, broken finger, multiple abrasions. All preexisting, of course. You know how them darkies live.
It didn’t look as though Verne was coming home—not all that unusual. Maybe she’d sold an overnight, or she was staying with one of her regulars. So I had a couple more drinks, napped a bit in front of the TV, and some time after noon walked over to catch the streetcar down to Washington.
Hosie Straughter stood up from the stoop in front of my house as I came around the wall.
Chapter Twelve
“ L EWIS. Y OU LOOK LIKE ABSOLUTE unmitigated hell.”
“That’s the trouble with you journalists. Always leaping headfirst for the nearest cliché. You have any idea how many times I’ve already heard that?”
“Women and little children scream and run when they see you, I guess.”
“Women, anyway.”
“Know how that is. You okay?”
“I will be. I think. Some time around January, maybe. Late January.”
“Barring further complications.”
“There is that.”
“But from what I know, seems to me the complications so far didn’t come find you, you went looking for them.
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