Butterflies in Heat (31 page)

The commodore broke into a smile. As he fingered his chilled glass, he was remembering another day and a fine southern lady—all dressed in white and real high class—who introduced him to this drink, as well as a few other pleasures of life. "It's Roffignac, one of the best drinks of New Orleans. That's where I come from." He said New Orleans with such love and feeling it seemed as
if
God's anointed came from that city.

"Never heard of it," Numie said.

The commodore slammed down his drink.

Suddenly, Numie was aware of the misunderstanding. "Of course, I've heard of New Orleans. I mean I've never heard of Roffignac ."

The commodore broke into giggles again. "I know, Mr. Stud Hustler, you've heard of New Orleans. You've been there, all right, I remember distinctly giving you a blow job one night at Mardi Gras"

Lola was stunned. Fury came over her. The commodore had already met her discovery. Violently she drank from her rum toddy.

Numie sat back. The commodore was lying. He knew that, and Numie knew that. He was waiting for Numie to challenge him, and Numie was determined not to give him that confrontation.

When the commodore realized he'd get no response, he went on, "I didn't expect you to hear of Roffignac. Now that's made with whiskey and Hembarig syrup. Hembarig syrup is a sweetnin' that ain't on the market no more, but I got some. And where I got it, I ain't telling." He shoved his tall cooler in front of Numie. "Taste it," he ordered.

Numie sampled it. "Not bad," he said, "sort of raspberry syrup flavor."

"Phil," Sunshine yelled from the back. "It's your goddamn sister Amelia on the phone.
Collect
from New Orleans."

For one brief moment, the commodore sank silently into himself. Breathing in, he puffed himself up like a balloon.

"Phil," Sunshine screamed again.

Slowly lighting his cigarette in its ivory holder, the commodore rose to his wobbly feet.

Lola handed him a silver-tipped cane.

Eyes clenched, he gazed toward the pay phone in the rear. He seemed on the verge of suffocation. "Would you kind people excuse me while I take care of this untimely intrusion from one's personal relations?" His ebony cane leading the way, the commodore shuffled along the beer-stained floor to the rear. His voice drifted back. He seemed to have summoned all his energy and strength to create a booming sound of robust health. "Sister Amelia, don't tell me that's you on the phone, my precious little darling. A woman of your advanced years should surely have gone to meet her heavenly reward. You ain't calling from heaven, are you?"

Amelia's tired, exasperated voice was still the same. "There you go again, making fun of me. Well, I just called your doctor, and he tells me you're not exactly in the best of health either."

The commodore burned at her words. "Since when have you acquired an interest in medicine? I always thought you were a practicing Christian Scientist?"

"You are my only brother," Amelia said, "and it seems fitting and proper that I take a sisterly interest in you. I know that all of life is predicated on us old folks moving on to make room for the new additions."

The commodore gave out with a deprecatory chuckle. "The way I see it," he said, "you figure I'm gonna be giving up my ground space before you, except what is allotted me in the cemetery." There was a long silence at the other end of the wire. He used the time to look at the badly chipped paint on the mustard-colored walls. He probably should have had this bar painted years ago, but now didn't plan to do anything about it.
It
was too late! He moved slightly out of the way. A ceiling fan was turned right on him. He couldn't run the risk of catching pneumonia.

"Now, that is an accusation that is simply not supported by the facts," Amelia finally said.

"Then what is the purpose of this telephone call?" the commodore asked.
"If
I recollect correctly, until I hit it big in real estate I never received one letter from that big old house in Vieux Carre."

"You know as well as I do that I was laboring day and day and night with sister Blanche Mae. A tubercular in the household is hard on the living. There was no money coming in, no money at all. And that awful Cajun gal—knocking on the door day and night—daiming falsely you were her legitimate husband."

"I was!" the commodore said defiantly.

"Philip, there are things in this world better left unmentioned. "

"Then why did you bring her up?" he asked.

"I
 
know that sometimes a dying ..
J
mean a man not altogether well."

The huge expanse of his chest caved in. The air just went out of him, and he seemed too weak to breathe any back in. Slowly his lungs started to fill up again. He clasped his hand over the receiver so that Amelia couldn't hear his heavy breathing. A gold chain with little trinkets hanging from it crisscrossed his chest. When the trinkets started moving, he knew he was all right. "You might as well come out with it, Sister Amelia. To you, I'm already six feet under."

"Well, we can pray to the good Lord you'll live to be a hundred, but then we must face the realities of life."

"I think my family could smell a gold coin if it was forty miles ahead on the dirt road."

"Now that's a ghastly lie. Greed is a sin, and I've never sinned the way you have, Philip."

"Are you referring to what was commonly known as my kinky nocturnal habits?"

"Please, all these years I've turned a deaf ear to the vicious rumors spread about you. I've always tried to hold my head high in this town."

"I will ask you again. What is the purpose of this telephone conversation which is costing me my hard-earned money?"

"I want you to invite me to Tortuga to look after you."

The mountain that was the commodore suddenly blew up in volcanic flame. "That would be like putting the most hungry, red-eyed, fang-toothed, saliva-dripping wolf to guard the most succulent of spring lambs."

"I resent that!"

His heart was accelerating, and his forehead was beaded with perspiration. He whipped the white handkerchief out of his pocket to wipe the sweat. But when its blood smear appeared, he quickly concealed it from himself.

Amelia seemed to be mustering her courage. "I know that when a man is in
ill
health—and I have it on the best of authority you're not altogether yourself right now—he's liable to do something downright crazy. Some hussy's liable to come along and make a grab for everything you have. Things that properly belong to the Le Blanc family, not some foreign invader wanting to fill her head with gold teeth."

"Sister Amelia," the commodore said with strained courtesy, "if you had been to the dentist within the last forty years, you'd know that nobody orders gold teeth no more."

"It
was just a matter of expression. I know how susceptible you are to designing females."

"You mean the Cajun gal, my former wife?"

"That matrimonial status I've never accepted. I never saw any marriage license, and I think it was all a terrible joke to humiliate me and our poor dead tubercular sister and the pure memory of our departed parents, God bless their eternal souls."

He looked at his gold watch and stuffed it back in his waistcoat pocket. "This conversation has gone far enough. I do not own stock in Southern Bell. Something tells me you've heard more than just my medical report."

"As a matter of fact, I have. The word is, you're in Tortuga ,keeping company with a cabaret entertainer of
ill
repute."

Puffing, his face reddening by the minute, the commodore said, "You've been correctly informed, my dear, correctly informed." The room was going slightly black. "I might be planning to take the next express to the pearly gates, but I'm gonna do you one last favor, Sister Amelia."

"Now for the first time this evening during this seemingly interminable conversation, you are making some sense."

A wry smile crossed the commodore's lips. "I know that if I have to pack up and ship out tomorrow, you'll be all alone in this world. We're the last of the line in the Le Blanc family. You never knew a man, Sister Amelia, and I knew too many."

"What do you mean by that?"

"A private reference—forget it. I am indeed planning to take upon myself a wedded wife." He chuckled almost to himself, the idea blossoming. "At least, with me out of the picture, you'll be left with a sister-in-law."

"Philip!" The shrill pitch of her voice came all the way from New Orleans.
It
was almost as
if
she didn't need the telephone wires.

Gently he placed the receiver back on its hook. A faded photograph of him on the wall stared back. He'd caught a big one that day, topping every man he took out on his yacht. The old commodore was quite a man, he mused to himself.

Then he said out loud, "Still is, goddamn it!"

Sunshine was back, placing an array of appetizers on the table.

Settling in once again, the commodore surveyed the offerings. "Eating's an art with me," he told Numie.

The whole idea of food didn't set well on Numie's stomach.

Nervously, Lola was casting glances at the commodore. Telephone calls from Sister Amelia always filled her with anxiety.

The commodore continued to ignore her, even though he knew she was dying to learn the particulars of his recent conversation. "In the past long years, the pleasures of the table have been denied me by my doctors." Then, chuckling almost to himself, he said, "Also, the pleasures of the bed. Tonight I've decided to change all that."

A lump rose in Numie's throat. Surely the commodore didn't have him in mind.

"Hell, I'm gonna die anyway," the commodore said. "As all men will. Why not die getting some enjoyment out of life?"

Lola pretended great concern. "You're not going to die," she said in baby-talk. "I'd kill myself if something ever happened to you, daddy." She sat back, sipping her drink. That statement was a little far-fetched, she reasoned. Better tone it down a bit next time around.

He didn't pay her any attention, his eyes riveted to the dishes placed before him. "Just look at these goodies," he said, almost to himself. "Shrimp whets with Trappey's Torrido sauce, hot oysters Diablo with Tabasco, Bayou bouchees with crawfish, and St. Louis souse." He breathed in heavily. "Ain't seen food like this in so many years I forget what it looks like, much less how it feels swimming around in my gut." He rubbed his stomach, then looked over at Numie. "Dig in, boy."

"I don't know what anything is," Numie said, not wanting any of it. "But it sure looks good." Gingerly he started helping himself.

"My grandmother's iron skillet produced some of the best vittles I've ever eaten," the commodore said, his voice increasingly boisterous. "Sunshine, he's from her side of the family, can cook almost as good." He downed the rest of his drink. "Sunshine," he yelled again. "You forgot what I told you. Got that Piper-Heidsieck chilled?" We're gonna have Piper-Heidsieck with every course. Ever had champagne, boy?"

"Yeah, once or twice," Numie said, sensing a troubled look in the commodore's eyes. "I almost got some my first night at this bar. But I was asked to leave before the bottle was served."

This amused the commodore immensely, enough so that it brought on another coughing spasm. "Must have been Leonora—she's the only one who orders champagne in this place other than myself." He handed his much-used handkerchief to Lola. "Fetch me another one," he ordered.

He made her want to throw up! She quickly left the booth, but was back in just a few minutes with a freshly laundered one.

Sunshine appeared with the glasses and bottle.

No one said anything for a long while. When the commodore ate, he was like a hungry man away from food too long. He smiled to himself, knowing he was taking poison into his system. But it was mighty good poison. "Used to put away bigger meals than this," he said to Numie.

"You will again," Lola cooed.

He turned and kissed her on the nose. "Yeah, along with the good food; this black hussy here is just what I've always wanted."

Lola beamed.

"Of course, the commodore added, "I had to have the poor thing's teeth fixed. They were just plain rotten, shaped like a dog's teeth when I first met up with her."

Lola was crestfallen. She couldn't stand calling attention to any imperfection. "Now don't you go telling family secrets," she admonished, examining a red fingernail and pretending she wasn't crushed.

Numie wasn't paying much attention. He kept noticing the
awful lighting in this bar.
It
made both the commodore and Lola look like dead things.

Sunshine was back with a pot of soup.

The commodore smelled it, then accepted it. Once when he was a boy, this soup had been the only thing he could swallow after a bout with diphtheria. "My mama always kept a pot simmering on back of the stove,' he said, ladling out a bowl for each of them. "Always putting her stock and herbs in it, a
soupe-en-famille
."