When Sleep Comes Hard
By John Messina
I followed Armand out of the French Quarter for about a mile to an old riverfront neighborhood known as Bywater. Originally plantation land, it had been transformed during the nineteenth century into a working class district of narrow streets and small houses crowded on even narrower lots. Fifty feet ahead, Amand's beefy arm hung out from his truck's window, and a light fog was beginning to drift in from the river. We were almost to the Industrial Canal when I noticed a number of cars parked along the shoulder of the road. There was music coming from a house that was so screened by heavy growth that it was practically invisible. This was the party that Armand had taken upon himself to invite me. We parked and walked back toward the source of the music. Couples were leaning against or sitting on the fenders of some of the parked cars, a few said hello. We passed through a cast iron gate that was centered on an old, unpainted raised cottage. A worn brick walk led directly to a set of wooden steps, which in turn ascended to a wide front gallery. On both sides of the walk were vestiges of what once was a well-developed garden. Now it was overrun with elderberry and castor bean. A lone sabal palm stood off to one side with a vine climbing its trunk. On the gallery two black upright speakers, each the size of a child's coffin, flanked four or five musicians. In front of them a young woman, wearing a tropical sarong and an extra short t-shirt that exposed a young, flat stomach, was dancing by herself. Standing around or sitting on the railing were about two-dozen people. Most of them were younger than I, and almost everyone was holding Jax long necks that were dripping with condensation. A few faces looked familiar but there was no one I really knew, at least by name. Armand snatched two beers from an ice filled laundry tub and handed one to me. "Have fun he said," as he went over to a sexy looking woman who was by herself leaning against the railing.
The music was especially good. Playing a guitar was a gaunt man in his late forties. He had long, stringy hair and a weathered face, and he sang with a coarse, gravely voice that made one think of a truck driving over oyster shells. But his voice worked with the music he played - a kind of swamp blues. By now more people were dancing, so in order to make room I went over to a vacant spot against the porch railing. From inside the house came the aroma of heated herbs and spices. I was about to decide between checking out the kitchen or trying to make small talk with some women standing near me, when I saw Valerie coming out through the front door of the house. She was wearing a long indigo colored cotton skirt that hugged her hips and then dropped sort of lazy-like to the porch deck. A purple, tight fitting top accented her full breasts. She spotted me just as I pushed off from the railing, and I was pleased to see a smile develop on her face. We greeted with hugs followed by cheek kisses.
Her raven black hair had been shoulder length the last time I had seen her. Now it was cut in a kind of straight page boy except that it was much shorter in the back and tapered lower toward the front where it turned inward toward her chin framing an oval shaped face that glistened with a light film of moisture in the glow of the porch lights. She had gained a little weight and even had a bit of a tummy that I liked since I now had one too. She still looked great.
"Tommy, when did you get back in town?" she asked with a slight laugh as if my presence in some way amused her.
Closer now I could see that her eyes were just as I remembered - beautiful circles, black and reflective as wet olives.
"Just last night," I answered. "How are you doing?"
"I'm doing fine. How about you? Shit! Tommy, how long has it been?"
"A couple of years, at least. What about you?"
"I've been back for two months now. Didn't your sister tell you? I went by her shop."
"She told me." I lied. Renée hadn't mentioned a thing.
"And you didn't call me. I left a number with her."
"I was planning to call. This is really my first day in town and it's been kind of hectic. I didn't even know that I was coming until the last minute. Are you here alone?"
"I'm with a friend. What about you?"
"I'm alone," I said while attempting to conceal my disappointment. A loud laugh caught my attention and I turned to see that Armand now had his big arm around the sexy girl's hips.
My thoughts went back in time; back more than twenty years, when I first laid eyes on Valerie Comeaux. It had been a warm November night at a Latin bar on Decatur Street, called Casa de los Marinos, where she was dancing and showing off with an artist of local reputation. They both knew that they were an impressive sight, she in a low cut, tight fitting black knit dress and he with his trimmed beard and white linen suit. They looked as though they might have stepped right out of a Toulouse-Lautrec sketch. My attention didn't escape her notice, and at one point during the night, while the jukebox was being fed and her partner was off somewhere, she walked up to the bar next to where I was sitting, tossed her head back causing perspiration to sprinkle my face and said, "Darlin', buy me a beer."
"Let's get something to eat," Valerie said and led me through the front door of the house and into a wide central hall. We passed other doorways that opened to rooms on either side where couples were making out or smoking grass. We turned into the kitchen and saw that some women were preparing red beans and rice on an old cast iron stove. One attractive redhead, who was chopping green onions with a knife the size of a machete, told us that the rice wasn't quite ready, so we went back out into the hall.
We then came out onto a rear porch where a few people were standing around talking and drinking. The music from the front could be heard but it seemed to be from somewhere else, quite far away. Valerie started down another set of steps, held out her arm and I followed. The rear yard had clusters of banana trees and there were stacks of lumber and bricks scattered around. Once we had walked about fifty feet from the house she stopped, turned and looked at me. "I've missed you, Tommy," she said. "I don't know why we can't seem to ever stay together."
"You don't?" I answered. "It seems like whenever we start getting thick you split for some other town."
"It's bad luck, baby. That's all."
Nothing much happened that night more than twenty years ago when we first met other than she drank three or four beers on my tab. At the time, Valerie was a Loyola student and the next time that I saw her was a week later in Audubon Park. I'm not even certain if she remembered me but I was able to start up a conversation and instigate a stroll. After circling the lagoon several times and a visit to the seals, we went to a neighborhood restaurant for a meal of gumbo, fried oysters and chilled white wine. I wanted to take her home, but she insisted on boarding the streetcar alone. I can still clearly remember her waving to me from the bend at Carrollton.
Her mother, the daughter of an Irish-Sicilian union, was from New Orleans but had met her husband and Valerie's father over at the university in Lafayette. By the time Valerie and I first met, her father, a boisterous Cajun who was running a Mac truck dealership up in Avoyelles Parish, had lost most of his assets by speculating in South Louisiana oil and gas fields and West Baton Rouge gambling joints. Valerie would later attribute her penchant for incurring excessive debts to her father's genes.
I did obtain her phone number and after that we saw a lot of each other, but it was never really as steady as I would have liked. Finally one steamy July night at a bar on Napoleon Avenue she told me that she was moving to New York. Three days later I dropped her at the Delta gate. C'est la vie!
Over the following years Valerie would be in and out of town, usually out for longer periods than in. But when she was around, we usually found each other. When I moved out to Arizona last spring, I had not seen her for some time. But I often thought about Valerie . She was the kind of old girlfriend that one never quite forgets, the kind that creeps into your consciousness just before dawn on those restless nights when sleep comes hard.
“Is that your friend?" I asked her while nodding up toward the back gallery. I had noticed a man, somewhat younger than I, watching us. He looked very hip. Even from this distance I could see his trendy haircut and an earring sparkling in the porch light.
"Yes," she said when she glanced in that direction. She could see that I was irritated. "He's just someone I know, that's all. A friend, as I said."
"What's his thing?" I asked.
"He works with his brother. Import-export, I think."
"Drugs?"
"Don't be a prude." She put an arm around my waist.
"Want to meet him?"
"Not really! Can we get together later?" I asked.
"I'll try," she said. "If not, I'll call you tomorrow. Come on up there with me. I don't want to be rude."
"Of course not," I said. "He seems the sensitive type."
She took my arm in her hand and practically marched me up the steps and over to where this guy was standing. He was a smallish but tight looking man somewhere in his early forties. His costume was right out of fashion spreads in current men's magazines - expensive linen suit with wide shoulders and worn with a T-shirt under the jacket. He had extremely close cropped, thinning hair, and not one but three gold earrings piercing one earlobe.
Valerie introduced him as Avery. We shook hands but I don't think that Avery was any more pleased meeting me than I was meeting him.
"Come on, baby," he told Valerie while placing a loose linen sleeve around her waist. "There's someone I want you to meet. Nice meeting you," he said to me purposely neglecting my name.
Valerie leaned over and gave me a kiss on the cheek and squeezed my hand. "It was good seeing you, Tommy, I'll give you a call." That, at least made me feel a little better as I watched them walked off.
I went back down to the yard, sat on a stack of lumber and finished the rest of my beer. From somewhere around the side of the house, I heard a woman's laugh. Then I noticed that the music had stopped and the hum of cicadas all around me in the grass became apparent.
If I were a smoker this would be the perfect time for a cigarette, I thought. But I wasn't so I picked up the empty beer bottle and headed back up to the house. When I reached the top of the steps, I could hear the musicians starting up again. After taking another Jax out of the tub on the front porch, I took my old place at the railing and tried speaking with a few unattached women. But nothing seemed to connect, so around ten, I told Armand that I was leaving. It was never clear who was the owner of the house or host of the party.
I drove the same street we came on earlier heading back to the Quarter. Some heavy clouds were building up, caused by a predicted front over the Gulf of Mexico to the south and the small amount of moonlight left was fast becoming obscured. The neighborhood I was passing through, like so many in this city, had few if any streetlights, and my headlights were struggling to cut through the darkness and river fog. Back in the Quarter I noticed a middle aged couple looking into the show window of Renée's bookshop. Just as I started to put my key in the lock I noticed something jammed between the door and the frame. It was a matchbook and written on the inside of the cover was a note from Valerie asking me to meet her at a bar down the street. I started to tell myself to forget it, I'm going to bed, but the woman by the shop window blurted out, "You just missed her. She seemed real disappointed no one was home." Her husband gave me a sly wink.
Harry's was a popular watering hole with the locals in the Quarter, but for no particular reason I seldom went there. The entrance door was closed in a vain attempt to contain the air conditioning, and the instant I pulled it open the hum of people talking and music from the juke box came spilling out like the roar of a high compression engine. It was unbelievable but I spotted Valerie almost immediately in the dense crowd. She was sitting at a table with some other people but it was impossible to tell if she was with them or had just taken an empty chair. She saw me before I reached the table and stood up. "Hi love," she said in my ear."
"It's impossible to talk in here," I shouted. "Let's take a walk." She grabbed her handbag and followed me out to the sidewalk. I didn't bother to ask about her friend, the important thing was that we were together. Then like two carefree tourists we strolled arm in arm past locked shops and loud bars. At first nothing much was said. It was as if Valerie was waiting for some indication from me, but all I could do was lead her up and down dark and moody French Quarter streets. Finally, in the Lower Quarter near Esplanade, we came upon a small bar with pairs of French doors opening to the sidewalk. Music from a jukebox and a lavender haze drifted out through the openings. A sign hung out over the entrance and indicated that this was the Sans Souci Lounge. It must have been a relatively new place, as I hadn't noticed it before. Two women in cutoffs and tank tops, tattoos on their shoulders, were shooting pool under a rose colored light, and a muted television set on a raised shelf was casting a blue glow in one corner. Several other women, their hands all over each other, were drinking at a copper and mahogany bar. I realized then why I had never been here. Like moths to a flame we were somehow drawn to this place, so we entered and sat down at a small candle lit table. The waitress, a very thin and pallid young woman, with a silver chain running from her exposed navel to inside the waist band of her jeans, came over and took our order for Abitas without saying a single word.
What came from the jukebox was a surprise. Old stuff, fifties and early sixties music, that brought back good memories
The same woman brought the beers to the table and mumbled something neither of us could discern. We looked at each other, probably with the same incredulous thought. Nevertheless the liquid tasted good in my throat, and I was enjoying sitting there looking at Valerie 's beautiful eyes reflecting the flame from the candle, while in the background Nat King Cole was singing "As Time Goes By."
Just then one of the tattooed pool players shouted, "bitch!" as she missed a shot, and the other player walked over and fed the jukebox. After a few moments the voice of Roy Hamilton singing "Unchained Melody" filled the room. As if on cue, the two of them stepped over to a clear area, embraced and began to slow dance.
Just then I felt a presence and turned to see one of the women from the bar standing at our table. She ignored me and spoke to Valerie, asking her if she wanted to dance. Valerie smiled and shook her head. The woman said to her, "Go fuck him then," and walked back to the bar.
"Not a bad idea," I said.
"What's not a bad idea?" Valerie asked.
"A dance," I answered with a smile. We both stood up and I took her hand as we walked over to where the two women were dancing against the garish glow of the jukebox.
I placed my arms around the small of her back, and she pushed her body hard against me. Above us a slow moving ceiling fan forced down moist and heavy air, and the music coming from the juke box floated like a dream inside my head.
The women at the bar were staring at us as we danced through one slow song and then another and another until we were coated with moisture and our clothes stuck to our bodies like bandages. Valerie's nipples were as hard against my chest as my erection was against her stomach. I licked some salty moisture from her cheek and, in a whisper, proposed that we go to my place.
I left a ten on the table and we stepped back out into the even more humid night. We walked the eight or nine blocks, arms around each other's waists, without speaking a word. Once inside my third floor apartment, we stepped out of clothes that were as damp and musty as swamp air. We showered together. Then with soft streetlight filtering in through louvered shutters, we pulled back sheets and laid down on my bed, making wild and crazy love before drifting off into a deep and heavy sleep.
Something caused me to awaken just as the chimes from the Cathedral up the street sounded the Angelus. Valerie was asleep on her back next to me, her naked breasts rising with each breath. Looking at her caused me to become hard, and I very much wanted to make love again. But she seemed so peaceful I didn't want to awaken her. There would be time in the morning, I told myself. Then I climbed out of bed and stepped into a pair of shorts. In the darkness I walked out through the French doors and onto the balcony where I sat on an old rattan lounge chair. The lights illuminating the Cathedral were still on but the downtown buildings were now dark. Below, a street person was lumbering along carrying a bulky sack over his shoulder. The headlights from a taxi caused his long shadow to appear on the street as though he was a hunchback giant. The sky was so dense with clouds that not one star shone through, and lightning was flashing to the north out over Lake Pontchartrain.
I heard the shutter open and saw Valerie coming through the doorway. She was completely naked, and the harsh white lights that bleached the Cathedral up the street backlighted her causing the hair between her thighs to glow as if lit from within. Without saying a word, she lay down and pushed her rear end against my groin. It wasn't long before I was inside her and after we again fell into a deep asleep.
I was awakened by raindrops on my face, and saw that a bleak and gray dawn was about to usher in thunder and showers from the Gulf. Valerie was not with me but a sheet had been placed over my lower half. I sat up, not finding my shorts, gathered the sheet around my naked body and went inside just as the downpour came. The apartment was empty; Valerie had left without a word or note.