3:AM Magazine

By Clark Theriot.

He lowered himself down from the park’s green edge onto the grey rocks that spilled into the river. The river was lower during summer.

He was farthest away from any other person in the city when he climbed down to the edge of land meeting water. He found a large rock to sit on as the muddy water flowed.

From his backpack he took out a pint of bourbon, cracked it open, and poured a swig of the warm liquid down his throat. He discovered a small breeze leading in from the nearby gulf. Ships of all sizes floated and propelled commerce from different reaches of the world. The air always carried a putrid smell.

His cell phone lit up playing “Moon River”.

“Hello?”

“Eight years I’ve been working under florescent lighting, inside a tiny cubicle, alongside corporate imbeciles,” Brooke said. “All the while developing a BRAIN TUMOR. My insurance paid them twenty-eight hundred dollars for my CT scan.”

“You called because…?”

He held the cell phone further from his ear.

Brooke had moved back to San Francisco five years ago.

“I date Bill now. We live together,” she continued.

“Your boss?”

“At least I don’t live in the ghetto, reading, smoking pot and drinking bourbon day and night, like you and your new friends.”

James wondered how a woman so far removed from his life remained so relevant to it.

This was a dream from his past, but still recurring. He had fallen asleep by the river–his backpack under his head for a makeshift pillow and a pint next to his feet–again. He stood up on the large, flat, rock he was sleeping on, picked up the empty bottle, and stuffed it in the backpack and made his climb back to the city.

Brooke? What the hell. Damn it.

This all came to happen when he didn’t have a job. He had been unemployed for a long time. There had to be some job–doing something–where he could mind his own business and work a few days a week. He liked to work. But he hadn’t enjoyed working with others. He needed more than a one-day job; not like the odd-end jobs he’d taken when they came the previous twelve months. But odd jobs that continued through the week. He searched for a continuity of small jobs that would keep the money flowing in.

James had been evicted from his apartment, unable to pay the expenses. Drinking until his money ran out had gotten him here. For two weeks he lived on a friend’s couch. He solved the need for a place to live during the first week of August.

The fifth day of August he was out of money. He could house-sit a friend’s apartment. This friend’s place had no electricity or gas; it had large bills three months past due from each. James would do without. And his friend, Michael, would send money directly to the landlord from his military check to keep up with the rent on the apartment until he came back “with a fresh look about things;” but other than that he would not be in touch until the end of October. He told James where the keys were. James moved in.

James awoke on a damp mattress and stumbled to the back room, the kitchen. He pulled up a chair from the kitchen table that was next to a side window and sat with a warm glass of water, the night before bourbon and coke, cigarettes and a book. He pushed his glasses up his nose sliding the rim against beads of perspiration. He sipped the water, then the bourbon and began reading from light that poured in. This wasn’t so bad. He figured things could be worse. Even now, after living in New Orleans most of the past fourteen years–besides the two in California–he still expected a breeze, but there was none. He sat and read with both elbows on the table. A voice carried through the thin dividing wall: his neighbour, Vanessa.

“YOU piece of SHIT, get the fuck out…so I’an pay mah bills.” She went on, “I can’t make a fuckin’ nickel witya ass here! This ain’t no drunk scene honey let me tell you dat.” A moment later, she started up again, yelling in the same drunken lisp. “I don’t even like fuckin’ you! I think you like the boys more than you let on. WHEN I call the cops, they’ll send your ass back to prison,” she yelled, presumably to her younger, common-law man. “You are gonna wish all you had to do was anger management classes. Call your MAMA to come get yo-ass before the next hour or I’m gonna call the po-lice. Get a job, you piece of shit.” Her lancing cries subsided leaving nothing but thick, silent air.

James wondered if the neighbours argued often like this at five in the afternoon. No telling. He had only half of the book’s three hundred pages left to read.

“You better call your mama. Honey don’ worry about me. I can make it on my own.”  She paused. “BITCH!”

James thought he heard glass shatter against the wall.

He imagined a green, thick-glass ashtray, the kind in seventies films… smoky rooms, empty liquor bottles lying around. He picked up the glass next to his notebook, and drank the rest of last night’s bourbon. “This heat is already getting to me,” he said out loud. Loud enough for the neighbours to know someone could hear them also. He stood up and faced the bathroom door. Before James turned on the water, he scribbled across the inside of a notebook.

During late summer days…

New Orleans temperatures rose so that outdoor pools felt like just-used bathwater

Underground water pipes dispensed warm showers

James quietly moved away from the table, walked to the dresser in the adjoining makeshift bedroom, turned and looked around. Across the narrow room there was a dusty blind closed and the depressing sight of an unused air conditioner that sat in the window. Off. And next was the adjoining wall from the kitchen, which had a stack of boxes in the corner and then a tall bookcase, stuffed with books. Old books: green, amber, black and a few brighter smooth-covered modern ones, all with an appearance of having been reread numerous times.

The room was shadowed. Three separate photos of Michael’s eight-year-old son hung on the wall. Each wall had an eight by ten inch picture, except the one with the air conditioner in the window. The boy with his dad seemed happy and excited in each of the pictures.

There were boxes full of Michael’s personal things piled in one corner, the closet full of his winter wardrobe. There was little sign of Michael ever coming back. Michael’s friends had understood he needed a break. He needed a break from his everyday, all day, life-frenzy of intoxicants.

Before he left the apartment, Michael had said, “Idunno ift the glass is full when I go to sleep or if it’s empty. Or if I wake up and drink all of it. But don’t refill the glass before I fall back to sleep. Or did I wake up in the middle of the night and refill after I drank and then I wake up and it’s full? It’s the same picture day afta day, I just hafta leave, get.” But he had quickly added, “I’ll be back; New Orleans is my home.”

James walked back to the kitchen, then into the bathroom.

The bathroom was a small add-on to the back of the house consisting of an enclosed shower with tub, toilet and sink. It was a small square of a room. Along one wall were three white shelves that James had spray-painted the day before. Something to brighten up the place, he’d thought.

Once he entered the shower he felt released. It was simple; he didn’t need to make a decision on which knob to turn for the correct temperature. There was only one temperature with the gas disconnected and that was warm. The outside sun heated the underground pipes like lights do in a heated-pool. He turned the knobs until it was enough. If he would make one last decision, it would be this one, to stay in the shower until they came to shut off the water along with the already turned off power and gas.

An opened window continued narrowly toward the ceiling. James could see outside through the screen, lavender and violet colored flowers that crawled from hung pots, yellow flowerbeds–one on each side of a slender walkway–across from two front doors of another apartment double, a trimmed blue and white-shingled building. He smelled fresh air and relaxed. In apartment C were two men said to be in their early twenties (but looked older James thought) and next in D, the landlord Claiborne who lived with a younger man. He wondered again if the neighbours argued often at five in the afternoon. He let his thoughts drift as he stood under the steady stream. The pulsating water had cooled his shadowed extremities as a ray of sunlight flowed down, reaching his midsection. The light ended suddenly a bit past his navel, reflecting on a line of tiny curled hairs the water trailed. Water splashed off the nape of his neck as he gradually rotated his shoulder muscles while he stood behind the clear shower curtain.

During this month of August he looked forward to the shower with a window through which the moisture easily floated.

James didn’t involve himself with the neighbours. But one of the guys in apartment C explained he and his partner would let James run a cord from their apartment to his. This seemed neighbourly he thought at that time. The power cord he used to turn on the floor lamp next to the kitchen table and also plug in a circulating floor fan that blew mild air while he slept at night.

He turned off the water, stepped out of the tub, and walked back into the kitchen.

This room had a counter along one dark side. Two feet from the bathroom door, a round, black, Formica-topped table with sloping silver legs. He liked the table. He had room for the novel, a notebook and an ashtray next to his black ballpoint pen, his glass of liquor and his glass of water with space left over.  A tall shadeless floor lamp stood in the corner next to the back outside door where the power cord entered; it left a crack in the door.

James sat on a chair at the table with a towel wrapped around his waist and dripped water. He stared at the wall in front of him and then, turned his head slightly to see out the window on his left. He could see the sun shining or the rain falling. He had the tall window open, but there was no breeze. Then a surge in the still, damp air pushed into the kitchen. He had begun to read the novel when an oily haired, blotched-skin man–the landlord–barked through the window.

Claiborne asked, “Why you run-around the apartment with no shirt all the time?”

Instead of answering, James nodded his head, creased his mouth upward, took a sip of bourbon, and lowered his head to his book until his eyes met only the rhythm of the sentence. It seemed less rude. James thought this situation was odd. Not the being trapped for a few minutes with your landlord standing near your window trying to engage you while you are mostly dripping naked.

No, it was the longer and recurring entrapment following disillusionments. It was escapism, one kind or another. In his life it was alcohol, but in the end, it was anything that helped one ignore normalcy. Acting or being oblivious to reality while living for only short term moments.

James lived alone after failed relationships. The woman he had dated last and had felt he loved once, asked him one late morning during one of their many drunken conversations, “Why doesn’t anyone make intellectual porn? There’s definitely a market for it.” He remembered how beautiful she still looked at five a.m. that Christmas Eve, wearing a black silk cocktail dress with matching short-heel sandals. They had stopped at one more bar on their way home. She always had to have one last drink. Her large brown eyes watered, but were still, wide open, and stared blankly. Life for James had changed. R. would never date him now, he’d thought. Instead of a young man bursting with potential when they both awoke with glazed eyes, he was nearing middle age, and now, only a successful drunk.

He wanted to be just left alone to have a drink, read and maybe continue to write fragments describing how hot he was in the New Orleans summer heat. Now he only welcomed old friends into his life; most of the time he liked it alone.

After Claiborne walked on, James pulled on a pair of brown cotton cargo pants. He poured a glass full of drink and read until later that night when the neighbour Miss Vanessa knocked at his front screen door, which was only three feet from her own. He heard her voice as it drifted from the front all the way back to his kitchen.

As he walked to the front to meet her, she gestured with drink in hand and cheerfully announced, “Hey James, let me tell you sometin’, don’ worry about Philip, ain’t here, he went to his mama’s or somewhere, I can givashit.” She gestured with the drink in her hand that she lifted toward him.

“Would you like a cocktail? I have vodka and fruit punch or I’an make you a Bloody Mary. It don’ matter honey I got plenty of both. I fix you something, with your poor thing living in that house with no power; you are going to burn up boy-you-r-crazy! Anytime you need food or sumpin you let Vennessa here know, I’ll help you out baby, I can see you are good people and Michael wouldn let just anybody stay in his house. Which would you purr fur? Tomato or punch with ya’ vodka…”

She had air conditioned rooms right next to his sweltering walls. He had to take the unwise chance of being sociable and also the chance that her live in, the quiet but boiling Philip, wouldn’t be home soon.

“The fruit punch…sounds good, ma’am.”

In the front room he sat in a red-covered chair as she made his drink. She talked unintelligibly from the kitchen. He stared at the TV with the volume turned down, then looked about the room. Pictures and bric-a-brac covered every inch where there wasn’t furniture.  He slightly stretched a leg but kept the other near the bottom of the chair. After careful scrutiny, he’d decided it must have been one of the larger ornaments that was slammed against the wall the previous night. She handed him a clean, cobalt blue ashtray and walked back to get the cocktails.

He watched her spent figure walk again towards him. He noticed the silky movement of her hips as her aged face smiled happily. She carried two over-filled drinks that had different shades of red condensation on the glass. Ice made the frosted vodka cooler. As Vanessa talked, he could easily see her in the stories she told. A time long ago when she was the age of twenty-something, she was the favorite mistress of one of the wealthiest men in town. She had claimed to be a lady of the night the best years of her life.

“I had everything paid for, including an apartment with a balcony in the French Quarter. His name was Gerald, he gave me so much allowance, I had plenty left over let me tell ya, I saved some but it didn’t matter, he had bought me shares in Exxon and I sold dem after my shares split four times and before that Valdez fuck up they had done, I live off the interest alone, honey I tell you what, he bought me a piano because I wanted to learn piano, but I didn’t stick with it, because I wanted to go to the state school, but before that happened, he put me in rehab, for the eight time.”

“There aren’t prostitutes of the world or maybe we all are,” he stumbled his words as he tried to explain to Vanessa but more to himself. “In some way everyone does something for the betterment of their lives and makes a decision to not acknowledge the parts that are unattractive. Everyone does something and if that is prostitution, then we all are,” he finished.

She’d walked next to his chair and looked at James until she caught his eyes.

“Honey, I’ll give you some work. Hell I’ll give you a hundred dollars if you let me and you get acquainted better.” She chuckled with a wicked smile as she moved her dark-brown eyes and many-lined chin slowly down then half-circling slowly back up.

“You are a flatterer, Vanessa, I tell you what.” He pulled back his extended leg to the chair then he leaned back and shifted his seat position slightly. She moved back to the arch of the doorway, leaned there, and stared at James as he sipped from his cocktail. He couldn’t believe he was even entertaining the idea–thinking he could use the money. He finished his drink and then stood up in haste.

“Gotta go, Vanessa,” he said as he walked out of her house and then into his own.

James felt it stood in accordance with her life, her now, being the provider, turning the tables in the last years of her prime. Vanessa had invested well in the years past. He walked through his house as he went over in his head what she had implied.

He didn’t want a sexual part of anyone but still wondered if he should’ve; he still had needs to be taken care of. Still had desires. It was late, so he went to bed.

He kept a gallon of bottled water next to his mattress on the floor, to stay hydrated. He woke up through the night to take large gulps from the plastic bottle and a river of water flowed from his skin. He slept on top of three light cotton sheets and rotated the sheets by day, to keep the mattress from mildewing.

After he’d awakened, he gathered the sheet and draped it over the otherwise useless air conditioner to dry. If he didn’t, it would smell like sour bourbon later that evening when he’d returned from his job hunt. He’d decided not to have a drink this day, but instead to find employment.

This thought suddenly left his mind as he poured only a splash of bourbon in his empty glass. He set it down in front of him on the table for a minute then picked it back up and after gulping a mouthful, set the empty clear glass down. James filled the glass with the clearish, brown liquid. His fingers stopped trembling and both his hands became calmer.

It was past hot inside and certainly worse in the direct sunlight. He decided to shower and maybe masturbate. It could only cool things after. Maybe he was storing pent up heat. He sat on the lid-closed john, took off each sock then slid off his briefs and piled them on the floor.

He lifted one leg over the tub, then the other and turned the knobs until he had the shower’s water pressure balanced just so. Out the window he saw the sky had turned grey with dark almost black clouds gathered near. This room felt the most private. The only other time besides at the river that he hadn’t felt smothered by people or the summer. He let the water cascade over all his thoughts as the steady stream cooled his mind.

The day was already spent. It was now late afternoon, and he must have poured more than one drink. James read and had drinks until he couldn’t read anymore then passed out on the mattress next to the fan.

He awoke to stale humid air; he looked over at the clock on the dresser. It was past seven in the evening. His first thought being about taking a shower. That the shower made the house feel cooler was his excuse. It became darker in the house, so he turned on the lamp in the kitchen and opened the bathroom window blind higher.

James saw the back neighbours’ porch light come on and used the light to locate his glasses. He put on the thick bifocals. The man in apartment C, who had lent him the extension of power, stared at him and wouldn’t look away.  He turned off the water, stepped from the tub and then dried himself with a smallish red towel.

He went into the kitchen to put on his linen shorts then went to the bathroom and closed the blind all the way shut.

“The nerve of these people,” he muttered to the still quiet-thick air. This wasn’t a peep show.

He began to read the half-finished book. It wasn’t what he had expected when he first picked it out. There had been hundreds of books with other titles but he felt a kinship to this one. It was a story about a family’s life through three generations and each character’s struggles during this long span of time.

But James felt he didn’t have any struggles, besides with other people. When he first picked up the novel he did it to help him become easily entertained a few days, but instead he was still carrying this one around. He slowed his reading and would read over again a beautiful sentence. He filled his glass with the brown liquid and a splash of water, took a large gulp, then turned off the lamp, made his way to the double mattress on the bedroom floor, and passed out next to the fan and plastic jug of water.

The next morning he awoke by noon. The fan wasn’t blowing. His mattress, sheet and underwear were drenched in perspiration. He put on his pants and went out his front door. He walked to the back.

He knocked on the door. The guys that lived in apartment C did not answer. Later he knocked again, but no answer. He would smother for sure. The heat grew intolerable and James’ brain schemed nonsense about breakfast cereal. No milk for his cheerios gave him more excuses to drink bourbon. Life wasn’t so bad. Damn those guys in apartment C, they were home but didn’t answer their door. The heat had now worked on his thinking and he’d only three liters of bourbon left, which would only last him two more days. He guessed the men in apartment C had decided they didn’t care to live up to their agreement.

He went to the bathroom and turned on the shower, opened the window blind three-quarters of the way.  He stood in front of the window as he pulled his blue cotton shorts off the hipbone, and slid them past his knees as he lifted one foot off the bathroom floor, letting the shorts fall away. A stretch, for good measure, then with flaccid penis bobbling around, he entered the shower. The sun shined in through the window. He told himself no one watched as he carefully applied soap over his entire body. Small bumps covered his wet skin, as if there was a slight chill in the air. He questioned everything while his mind fluttered with confusion. After a long shower, he turned off the water.

James walked into the kitchen at the same time the fan came on. He felt he was now stripping for the trade of an electrical cord. He picked up the towel from the chair and wrapped it around his waist as he sat down and completed reading the novel’s final chapter. In the Hope Of Rising Again was the title of the book. He’d been drawn to the title.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Clark Theriot lives in the Saint Claude Arts District of New Orleans. He studied zoology at LSU and has lived in Texas, Florida, California and Oregon.

First published in 3:AM Magazine: Monday, May 16th, 2011.