Yes Yes More More Page 11

  Then beneath her were building and cars, people even, on the roads. The reveries became the beginnings of New Orleans. The seatbelt signs pipped on and the plane dipped gently down, until it touched the ground and the brakes rumbled and she felt like she’d landed from one dream into another.

  It was some time before the passengers could get off the plane. The aircraft taxied about; it had arrived and it hadn’t. The women from the airport were out of their seats and taking their bags from the lockers, finishing mini cans of coke. The older woman had black make-up all around her eyes and it was a bit depressing, really, to see her addled by the vodka they’d been drinking with the coke. She was all dehydrated and with sandpaper eyelids, no doubt, and a woolly tongue, and a savoury smell under her perfume. With her cigarettes and lighter in her hand already, she leaned back against one of the seats and eyed a man in his fifties with close-cropped hair and a solid bulk inside his white T-shirt. She licked her lips as she watched him, which made Annie smile. The feeling returned, the idea that the world was moving into a soft and foggy place, tilting. Then the doors opened and the passengers filed out, and the stewards said “thank you” and “goodbye” and “have a great time”, which she planned to.

  The sunshine air made her giggle and her eyes tingled as if she might cry. Inside the airport even the toilets felt like fun, too big and plasticky like part of a giant playhouse, and the queue for passport control was quick, and the luggage carousel seemed like it might play a song or deliver presents. When Annie’s bag emerged she pulled it past the women, who were still waiting, a few sitting on bags that had arrived. The older woman held onto the back of a trolley, blinking softly at the rubber-fringed little hatch where the cases came out. She noticed when Annie passed by and leaned back, turned her head a little.

  “Goodbye, honey,” she said, in some grope at a Southern accent. “Enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself, see you around.” And she smiled, almost a laugh, a little shudder of the chest. Then she kept talking, but not really to Annie anymore, saying, “Have fun, have some fun, take it easy in the Easy.”

  Annie felt a relief to be round the corner and out of her sight. A line of taxis waited, white and blue, to carry her into town. She headed straight to the front, there was no one else waiting, and the huge handsome driver got out to help with her bags.

  “Welcome to New Orleans,” he said, and his drawl was delicious.

  Annie got into the back seat, which was lower down than she was expecting, and slippery. It was warm in the car and it smelled like cleaning product. The driver slid in, the back of his neck all damp, didn’t look back at her and glided them straight out into the traffic.

  “Louisa Street,” said Annie. “Just between Burgundy and North Rampart.” She said Bur-GUN-dy, felt self-conscious but liked it.

  “Sure.”

  “Thanks.”

  Annie settled back, didn’t put a seatbelt on, stretched one arm over her handbag. A soft silence drowned her. Cosied by the weather and the smoothness of the car, she let her head fall back against the seat and felt the lazy powerlessness ahead of her. I suppose I’ll be there in ten minutes, she thought, and then, I wish we could drive for hours. I wish I could glide along, on my way, forever.

  She heard other traffic, voices, even the meow of a cat, but she didn’t move her head to look outside. The tops of buildings went by. They were in a more residential part of town now, moving more slowly.

  Then there seemed to be no noise at all. Annie listened hard and heard the engine, quiet, and the creak of a pedal under the driver’s foot. She sniffed, softly, just to check that it made a noise too. And then another sound, the driver singing to himself, as if there was no one else there, as if he was shaving or polishing his shoes. A song that she didn’t recognise was tiptoeing out from his throat. She turned her head to the right, noticed they were on another busy, wide road, going faster again, gathering speed.

  “Are we not in town yet?” she said, leaning forward. The driver’s singing stopped, but he didn’t talk.

  “Aren’t we in town yet?” she asked again, moving forward on the seat, raising her voice a bit and looking through the windscreen to the heavy sky. The driver smelled of salt and maybe beer. He wore a blue T-shirt tucked into faded jeans, with old grey trainers that were so battered and squidgy they were basically slippers. His cheekbones and his pointy little nose did not match the heft of him – he was big, American, tall. He slouched back in his seat, one hand loosely on the bottom of the steering wheel and the other in his lap. He was too tall to spend his days in this small car.

  “This is the way,” he said, and his eyes didn’t even flick up to the rearview mirror.

  “Sure,” she said, and sounded like an Englishwoman using an American word.

  “The I-10’s a mess today.”

  He was talking as if she knew the city’s roads, and she liked it. Perhaps he was lying though.

  “A mess?”

  “Construction work by the park.”

  She said nothing, moved back. She was so clearly a tourist, and he was so clearly in charge. Why worry?

  The car turned into a smaller street, then onto another main road. Annie felt they were going back north, which would be the wrong way. The quiet singing had started again, and she still couldn’t hear the song but she enjoyed it anyway. It was slow and deep and pleasing. The backseat felt even slippier, she slid down a little further and across, left or right whenever the car moved to the right or the left. The idea that she was being abducted by a violent criminal flooded quietly into her brain, and she sank into it. The worst-case scenario really was that he was taking her a longer route in order to charge a higher fare. She shook her head a little and asked, “How much will it cost, the trip?”

  “You’re okay,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Forty dollars, forty-five.”

  Well that’s okay, she thought, seems fair. And a tip, of course, and I’m enjoying this ride through the city, smelling the warm wet air, even if you kill me and throw me in the Mississippi.

  But nothing like that happened. They even had company, for a while: the taxi stopped at a junction while a procession of tiny dogs all linked together made their way across, led by a little girl, and a trumpet player stood on the pavement, music exploding from him while his friend, sitting on the ground, clapped along now and again and laughed. She tried to give them the two dollars change she had in her wallet, but the taxi pulled away as she was getting it so she just gave the trumpet man a smile. He didn’t see her.

  And then they were at the guesthouse, a big clapboard place set back off the main road with wooden steps leading up to a porch. She recognised the owners, Fred and Elaine, from the smiley picture they had on their website. They were sitting out with glasses of beer.

  “Annie?” said Fred.

  “Hi!”

  “Welcome,” said Elaine, coming down the steps with arms spread. Annie stepped over to the back of the car, rather than into Elaine’s open arms, to get her bags. The driver was still in his seat but he’d unlocked the boot so Annie took her things and carried them towards the front steps, all the while smiling at Elaine and saying “that’s fine” and “no thank you, don’t worry at all,” but then Fred was there too, hands out, and so Annie gave up and handed him her things. She went to pay the driver. His window was open and she wanted to lean in, her arms on the frame, cock her head to one side, chat to him. But she handed him the notes instead, three twenties, and was glad not to have to wait for change.

  “That’s yours,” she told him. “Thank you.”

  She walked with Elaine up the steps, past the table with two beers and an ashtray. Fred was already at the door, just inside, and he waved Annie towards a second open door, just inside the hallway and to the right.

  “Here’s your room,” he said, proudly. “One of our favourites.”

  There was curvy mahogany furniture, stinking lilies on the side table, a view over the street through long muslin curtains
. There was a chaise longue, no less, scrolls on the bedposts, a marble mantelpiece, a ceiling fan and a heavy door leading to a white-tiled bathroom. Fred and Elaine offered her coffee or a beer – “no, thank you” – and left her alone.

  Annie stood at the window and looked out at the street, which was almost empty, because it was mid-afternoon and baking out there. At the small grassy patch just across the street, oak trees gave shade to a tiny old man and his slow, barrel-bellied dog. She let her attention glide around outside her window, content to be close to the centre of things, and then slowly turned back into the room, took a shower, brushed her teeth, put on a fresh dress and stepped out into the city.

  She walked right down Burgundy and then zigged back up and around towards the top of Frenchmen Street. A little way down was a corner restaurant, decorated in black and white, with smart young men in suits waiting tables. Annie took a chair by the window, a few feet in from the open door, and smiled a hello to the staff.

  She held the menu in front of her, but her gaze was up and into the street. It was a wide view, north and east, three or four blocks each way. The sunlight had gotten pearly; it made all the different faces and voices – pretty and squealing children, sweating and gruff men, chubby and fragrant ladies – part of the same soft scene. There was no music in the restaurant, so she could hear the syrupy bounce of the voices inside and outside, a conversation between two people strolling along the pavement, a shout (“Hey sweetie!”) across the street, the man who owned the bookshop on the next corner (“Four dollars each. Six for the both”).

  She ordered, feeling very English – a cup of tea and a cheese toastie. Close by she heard low, lazy voices; the sound of young, lazy men. A group of boys sat at the table across the room, past the door and in front of the other window; they looked about twenty-five, although one was maybe a year or two younger.

  He was especially beautiful. His face was soft and calm, ringed with curls. He had dark eyes and a big mouth. He watched his friends with an open, serene expression. Annie saw how different he was to his three companions. They sat forward, knees apart, feet flat, and they wore identical T-shirts, jeans, trainers. Their short hair framed vacant, doughy faces. The boy glowed next to them. His hair was not cropped: it curled right over his ears and at the top of his neck. His seersucker jacket – pale blue and white, unbuttoned over a pink shirt – made him look old-fashioned and a bit silly. He sat half-facing Annie, with his legs tucked under the chair, sandals on his tanned feet, and one arm across the back of a friend’s chair. He reclined, watching the other three, an observer like her. He had that look of someone who gets ill a lot. Sickly. Or was he just delicate, precarious? Beauty is alive, thought Annie, a dizzying concert of flukes and nearly-nots, and it is always about to leave.

  She watched them as she ate, occasionally looking at something else but always finding her attention back on the beautiful boy. Then one of the other boys said something Annie didn’t quite hear, and the four of them began to rustle and reach for phones and jackets, money for their bill. They had an appointment, a plan for the evening, but they were languid too and not quite ready to go anywhere. Annie leaned back, watching them, watching the boy.

  Then one of them stood, and another, and they were on their way out of the door. The beautiful boy pushed his chair back and waited while the others went ahead of him. He looked sleepy and noble. As he reached the door he slowed and looked round the cafe. He scanned across to her and she realised that she was looking straight back, her mouth a little bit open, her eyes wide open, as if he was a picture on a screen and could not see her. He did see her though.

  There was nothing exceptional about any of this. The young men had eaten, talked, paid and left. The most beautiful of them had moved a little slower, that was all. But it had all seemed so deliberate, with such concern for space and shape and colours, with the light falling just right on his face and hair and clothes. Annie waited for a few minutes, paid her bill, and walked out through that same door into the sweet damp evening.

  She got a drink – a margarita, like a tourist – in a small, busy bar down the street, and settled in to watch the crowd. Three women were at the next table, talking about a film they’d seen.

  “Nothing happened, really, and still it was so good,” the tallest, thinnest one was saying. They were all elegant, a bit younger than Annie maybe, drinking long drinks.

  Then the tall one turned to Annie. “Cute dress,” she said.

  Annie smiled in thanks.

  “Cute pumps!” said her mate, with curly red hair.

  “Get me,” laughed Annie. “Aren’t I cute?”

  “Oh my gawd!” the tall woman said. “Cute ACC-ent!”

  Annie was in their gang after that, just for the next couple of hours. They discussed school (“We’re postgrads”), assessed men walking past (“Fuck, he’s hot”), and got one, two, three rounds of drinks in. Annie was included in the rounds straight away, which seemed oddly British to her, and she got a shimmer of homesickness.

  It turned out the three friends were staying in an apartment a couple of streets west of Annie’s guesthouse. Before they called it a night, though, they went to a second bar a few blocks over in Marigny, taking go-cups with them. (“What kind of a city has go-cups?” said Annie, delighted, then answered herself. “My kind of city!”)

  Waiting to get served there, leaning on the bar, Annie sang along to the jukebox.

  “Heaven must have sent you-ou, into my aa-aa-arms.”

  And the man standing next to her, with a big moustache like Captain Pugwash, sang along, “Oooh-ooh-ooh.”

  Annie grinned, because he was tall and handsome and singing oooh-ooh-ooh to her, looking at her with his big moony eyes.

  “Shall we dance?” he said, and held out his hand. They danced right there, to the rest of the song, and it was clumsy and nice. Every so often she did a little spin while he held her hand up in the air. And when the song ended he gave her a kiss right on the mouth, almost chivalrous but not quite. She stood on tiptoes and leaned into him, like a chaste-ish maiden, then put one hand against the small of his back and pulled him against her for more kissing. Right in the middle of the bar, drunk.

  Then she looked over to the three friends, who were watching and grinning. They cheered when she saw them, then the tall woman said, “Where in the hell are our drinks?”, with her arms outstretched like she was singing a showtune.

  Annie rested her fingertips on the moustache man’s chest for a couple of seconds, looked at the buttons on his blue shirt, then turned back to the bar for those drinks.

  “Ah, baby,” he said, softly, and went to get his drink too. When she and the others headed to their beds an hour or so later, she nodded and smiled to wish him goodnight on her way out the door.

  *

  It was muggy the next morning, the air slow and grey under a slow grey sky. Annie slid open the window and damp air fell into her lungs.

  She headed out for a walk – to buy a dress, maybe, or a coffee, or just to explore the streets and the parks and the river, have a sugary beignet, buy a souvenir. There was some life in the Marigny and the French Quarter and along the river, a few strolling people with things to do but not in a hurry. Annie looked down at her feet, one two, one two, and her hands, and she wiggled her fingers. Under her skin there seemed to be a thin layer of lead. She was not sure if she was inhaling properly, whether air was actually going into her, and supposed that she’d find out soon enough.

  And then, instead of walking to a shop or a park, she just went back towards the guesthouse. The air seemed foul, poisonous. Everything was covered in grease and dust. She felt bullied by the other people in the streets. Her palms were sweaty and she felt a distant rage. She lay quietly on the bed and thought about leaving the city. She realised – and it was more an observation than a decision – that she would have to go. Why stay? There were other places she could visit in the US. She had friends in New York, and San Francisco.

  She didn
’t say goodbye to Fred and Elaine. She had cash to leave for them, and she wrote a quick note – apologies-goodbye-thank-you – then packed her bag and walked out the door. She hadn’t booked a flight; she would just get the next one available. She walked down the street, hot, lugging her bag, then stopped on the corner and waited. A taxi came so she hailed it, got in, half expected her burly, surly driver again. Instead it was a short, fat woman with quick movements and a constant smile.

  Five minutes later they were on the I-10 when Annie said, “Sorry, sorry, I’m sorry.”

  The driver’s smile fell just slightly.

  “I changed my mind,” said Annie, and it was happening at the same time that she was saying it. “Can we head back into town? I don’t know where to yet.”

  The driver’s smile was reignited. And why would the driver care anyway, even if that was odd behaviour? Annie had wanted to leave and then she did not. She had changed her mind again. Which was, in fact, like never having changed her mind at all. She would go on wanting what she’d wanted that morning – the dress, the coffee, exploring the new city. It could easily have been ridiculous and embarrassing, to decide to leave and then to whizz right back so soon, and wasting money on a taxi too. But there was no one to tell.

  It began to rain, heavily. Warm drops hit the car windows like crackling electricity, water streamed down the road. Annie wondered if Fred and Elaine had already seen her note, and decided to just go to another hotel. There was an old-fashioned place she’d seen near the French Quarter with dark wood panels and hanging plants, tiled floors, brass lights. Annie headed there. She’d be able to get grits for breakfast and stay up late drinking hard liquor at the bar.

  Her room was on the second floor, overlooking the dampening street. She sat by the window, with a long glass of iced water, watching. It got dark and she watched. That night she slept a deep and happy sleep, hours of bright dreams and slow wriggling on clean sheets.