Read Online My Juliet by John Ed Bradley - Free Book Online

Queer and pervert and ninny and reprobate—think of the ugliest things imaginable and she says them. She called one of his friends on the telephone and shouted at him and told him to leave Daddy alone.”
    â€œHis friend?”
    â€œYes. And this is a married man from one of the finest old families in town.”
    Sonny started the engine and pulled into the street. As they were crossing the intersection at North Rampart Juliet said, “What she doesn’t tell him, Sonny. What she doesn’t say.”
    They drove on in silence. By the time they reached their place by the river Juliet had settled down and become quiet. She reached for his hand and brought it to her mouth. “Sometimes I think I’d go crazy if you weren’t here to help me.”
    â€œI’ll always be here, Julie. Always.”
    â€œI know,” she said, tears bright in her eyes.
    Hours later when they returned to Esplanade Sonny sat parked at the curb watching as she moved under the trees along the path to the house. It was both the loveliest and the loneliest image he’d ever seen and he felt an overwhelming desire to paint it so that others might see what he saw, the beauty and the sadness. He would place her there in the moonlit garden beneath the Van Gogh stars. Upstairs lace curtains fled her open window and flapped one next to the other like flags of surrender, and he would show this and the viewer would feel the wind and find it repeated in the chimes and the leaves and her summer dress. From the avenue came horns bleating and the calliope of a passing ice cream truck and Sonny felt an ache of regret that seemed to intensify the moment she turned and sent him off with a wave.
    Sonny finishes the painting and signs his name in the lower left corner. He uses a black Othello pencil and includes looping flourishes to show his satisfaction. Lastly he adds the date to inform future generations exactly when the work came into being. He sprays the picture with a fixative and fits it in a gilded, prefab frame and hangs it on the fence with all the others.
    Sonny sits in his chair and watches his compatriots at the fence, each absorbed in his work. Half an hour goes by and he wonders at his weakness and his inability to forget what obviously meant nothing to her. “You shouldn’t have put the girl in the picture,” he says out loud.
    Certain now that no one is looking, he takes an oil stick and blots out both his name and the date, leaving in their place a black rectangle the size of a postcard.

    She doesn’t recognize the waiter who shows her to a table by the window. He’s gimp-legged and she doesn’t know any gimps. He hands her a menu and stands waiting to take her order. The place is empty and she can’t figure why he’d want to rush her.
    â€œI’m not hungry,” she says. “How about a beer?”
    â€œYou still like ponies, Juliet? Those little baby Pearls used to be so popular?”
    She drops back in her chair and examines him more closely, and his name flashes in her head at the same moment it comes to her lips: “Louis.”
    He smiles in his old familiar way. And she feels a flood of dread wash through her. “All right. Make it a pony, then.”
    â€œI would but if they still make them, we don’t stock them.”
    She really isn’t hungry, but she gives some time to the menu, tracing a finger down the list of sandwiches, then up to one of the house specialties. “I’m sorry to see you lost your limb there,” she says, her eyes on the soups and salads now.
    Louis’s loud snort of laughter lets her know she never should’ve come here, picture or no picture.
    â€œI didn’t actually lose it, to tell you the truth. After that little Dodge hit me on Tchoupitoulas the doctors just took it without permission. It was more stolen than lost.”
    â€œCould you be a waiter for a minute and go get me my