Something Rising (Light and Swift) (29 page)

“You were looking for me?”

“I was,” Cassie said, tasting the cold gimlet.

“Do I know you?”

“We know some of the same people.”

“Is that right.” Jack hadn't yet turned in her direction. “That's my table behind us.”

Cassie carried her drink over to the shelf next to the house cues, CueTecs, fairly new. She took her time choosing, then
chalked, tied her sweater around her waist, waiting for Jack to rise, to move at all. Waves of hostility surrounded him; he had the posture of a mean drunk. When he finally struggled off his stool, she saw that he was at least six feet four and weighed well over three hundred pounds, most of which he carried around his middle. He was wearing creamy linen trousers, tailored. Cassie could not abide a wide-assed man, and she decided to beat him regardless of the greater cost. His face, when he finally looked at her,was another shock: underneath the weight he could have been a Barrymore, so finely were his bones composed. And his gray hair, still streaked with black, was wavy and combed away from his face, like a screen idol from his youth. Laura had written of his villain's smile, and there it was, and his gold fraternity ring, the crucifix he wore on a thin gold chain.

“Hundred a game.”

Cassie agreed, then lost the lag on purpose. She would know how to proceed from his break. After racking for 9-ball, he took his place, breaking with his new cue; that was one story. She also saw that he was very strong, very drunk. The cue ball broke the rack violently, harder than was necessary for this game, sending the balls flying all over the table. Everything was wide open. The 5 fell; the 1 rolled downtable and the 2 up, with the cue well placed for both shots. Cassie plotted how she would shoot all the way to the 9, given the chance. Jack swayed slightly, pulled a cigarette from his breast pocket and lit it, then let it hang from his lower lip as he bent and sank the 1 without sending the cue up far enough for an easy shot on the 2. He took no practice strokes, and he barely leaned toward the table. Many fat men played as he did, high above the shot. He had a long way to go for the 2 and would have to make it on a thin slice, but soon enough the 2 was gone,
he made the 3 on a combination, he sank the 4 even though he'd stroked too hard. The 5 was already gone, and the 9 was in front of a side pocket, flanked by the 6. He made the 9. Cassie glanced at her watch. He'd won the game in seven minutes.

She took her stake out of her pocket and peeled off a bill.

“Thank you, darlin',” he said, walking toward the bar. A cocktail waitress, a young black woman with a stoic expression, met him halfway there. “Where you been?” Cassie heard him ask the woman, in a tone that bore the contemptuous edge of intimacy. Cassie gathered the balls and racked again as he ordered himself a whiskey and a second gin gimlet for her; she had barely touched the first and wouldn't finish it. When he handed her the cocktail, she thanked him, turned to put it on the shelf.

“You a Jew, by any chance?” he asked. “Excuse me, Jew-
ish?”

Hard, he was going to make this as hard as possible.

“Not so far as I know.”

“A shame,” he said, mustering a sad smile. “I've always wanted to, you know.”

He took the second game without Cassie attempting a shot. She paid him, and he turned and ordered more drinks.

“You know I'm a doctor? Anything ail you?”

“I'm fine, thanks.”

“You say we have mutual friends?”
Myoo-chal
.

“One or two.”

In the third game he broke without making a shot, and Cassie approached the table carefully, holding her cue at the joint and stalking possible shots. She could see her way clear through the first three balls, then took a safety on the 4. Jack was perplexed by the problem—the 4 downtable, tight against the rail with the 6 slightly in front of it—and passed as well, but his shots were getting
wilder, and he set her up for a difficult but possible bank. He had begun to leave his cigarette burning on the edge of the table, then was unable to pick it up after he'd attempted his shot; the cigarette was too small and too far away. She won the third game.

By midnight she was up six hundred dollars, and the band packed up and went home. The bartender put on a Tommy Dorsey record; none of the players was ready to leave.

“My family practically owns this town, one brother in the bank, one in the pharmacy, one on the bench. Been running this place a long time.”

“So you said.”

“We know the same people? Somebody sent you here?”

By one in the morning she thought he would fall, but he continued standing. She had seen him drink twelve whiskeys and go through a whole pack of cigarettes. She'd won twelve hundred dollars.

“I live here when the wife kicks me out. These days that's most …” He squinted. “What was I saying?”

“You live here most of the time.”

“Right. Are you a Jewish?”

By two-thirty, the other players had gathered casually at the bar and were watching Cassie and Jack. She was up twenty-five hundred
dollars. Jack strolled over to the bartender, said a word to him, then walked back. He was having difficulty finding the table. “Double or nothing,” he said, trying to leer but unable to make eye contact.

“Give me a minute?” she asked.

“Sure, sweetheart. Take all the time you need.” He turned back to his cronies, the men he lived with in this hidden place, who sat silent, drinking. They were impossible to read.

Cassie glanced at the waitress, then headed for the women's room, which had been added as an afterthought and was little more than a closet with two toilets and a pedestal sink. She washed her hands, splashed her face with water. Her chest was beginning to ache. The waitress walked in and headed for the sink; she didn't look at Cassie.

“I'd appreciate it if you'd call this number for me, please,” Cassie said, handing the waitress the slip of paper from her pocket and a hundred-dollar bill. The waitress took it and tucked it in her apron.

Maybe she'd call him and maybe she wouldn't.

“The king of
Rex
. Everybody important, either me or my mama or my daddy.” Jack reached up to rub his eyes like a little boy, and his sweater and shirt, already untucked, lifted, too. Cassie caught a glance of his stomach: purple and mottled with stretch marks. She hoped he'd live ten more minutes. “Say again who shent you here?” The bartender walked up quietly and handed Jack his money. He pretended to count it, then handed it to a man at the bar.

Cassie placed the cue ball just behind the headstring, close to the right rail, then hit the 1 just right, sinking a wing ball in a corner pocket. A part of her considered giving up a shot, letting Jack humiliate himself, but ultimately she wasn't that sort of player. All these years—her whole life, really—he'd been her shadow father, the man her mother almost married. Cassie was the child they almost had. She had been able to imagine the possibilities in great detail, the wealth, the extended family, the promise; all children are gifted at picturing such things. But in the end she played it safe and all the way through, and tapped the 9 in, just kissed it.

She raised the cue and slipped it into the house rack. Without it, she had nothing in her hands. The man who held the money at the bar gave her a slight smile, then handed her the five thousand. She gave a nod to everyone there, then turned and headed toward the double doors. Jack continued to stand where she'd left him, next to the shelf where twelve untouched gin gimlets had gone warm. Cassie didn't walk quickly; she led with her hips, as Laura would have done, and made her stride as long as possible. You don't know how to walk, forget it, the world wants nothing to do with you; your genes get lost, and there go all your bright-eyed babies.

“Sorry I forgot to introduce myself,” she called back over her shoulder. “I'm Cassie Claiborne, Jimmy Claiborne's daughter.” She opened one of the double doors and walked out into the dim hallway. Ten steps, she thought, to the parlor, fifteen steps to the door; she made it into the lobby, where the bald man continued to stand guard, before the hall door slammed behind her. She didn't
turn around, she counted the steps, sped up maybe a little bit, he was shouting at her to turn her ass around. Jack shouted things about Jimmy that she'd thought plenty of times herself, but they sounded unseemly coming from him. She considered saying so. The brass door handle was cool in her hand, she'd opened the door, she'd stepped out into the night, and Jack snagged her sweater, pulled it hard enough that it came untied and let go; she had taken another step, and he grabbed her around her left bicep. His big hand closed around her upper arm, I'll be bruised there tomorrow, she thought, and that was the last thing she thought, because it isn't right to grab a woman
anywhere
, for
any reason
, and before she'd really planned it, she was spinning on her left foot, her right leg tucked close to her chest, there was no time, but what can you do. The thick heel of her boot slammed into his chin so hard she heard his teeth crash together like dropped dinner plates. His head snapped backward, and the muscle in Cassie's inner thigh twanged like a rubber band.

“Ow! Dammit!” she said, as Jack bent slowly at the knees, went down. His knees hit the pavement, but his eyes were open, so Cassie brought her knee up and nailed him in the nose, not hard enough to break it, but he would certainly feel regret. “Ow, ow,
ow
.” She limped toward the waiting cab, thinking how sorry she was to be leaving the windpipe, solar plexus, groin, and instep part of the program unfulfilled. He was
tall
.

“You forgot your sweater,” Eddie said.

“Ow, ow, ow,” she said, limping back to the fallen man and gently pulling her sweater out of his hands. “Ow, ow, ow.” Her entire right leg was on fire. She wondered briefly if perhaps it had come unattached.

Eddie pulled away from the curb, then turned up WWOZ, where Beausoleil was playing “Blue a Bebe.” Laura loved that band. Cassie gave him the address of the guest house on Rampart, then let her head fall back against the seat. After a few minutes he said, “You enjoying New Orleans?”

“It's great,” Cassie said. “It's the best.”

He lit a cigarette, smiled at her in the rearview mirror. “That's my girl. That's what we like to hear.”

The next morning Cassie called the airline and moved her reservation up. She had only one thing left to do, and it wouldn't take long; she could fly out early that afternoon.

In the dining room Marcelle and Martine were enjoying coffee and corn muffins, reading the
Times-Picayune
. “Good mornin',” they said.

“Morning.” Cassie limped to the table and sat down.

“What's wrong, why are you limping?” Marcelle, the more matronly of the two, leaned toward Cassie.

“Marcelle,” Martine said, lowering her part of the paper. “Don't ask a person that.”

“It's okay,” Cassie said. “I just pulled a muscle, I think.”

The sisters were in their sixties and had matching gray pageboys. Cassie thought they might be twins and could tell them apart only because Marcelle wore lipstick.

“Can I ask if she had a good day yesterday?”

“I don't care what you do.”

“Would that be all right, if I just asked that?”

“Go on, ask.”

“Did you have a good day yesterday, Cassie?” Marcelle poured her a cup of coffee and pushed a muffin her way.

“I had”—Cassie thought about it a moment—“a remarkable day.”

“Splendid,” Marcelle said, handing her a small knife and bowl of butter.

“Is there anything else you want to know?” Martine asked without lowering her paper.

“No!” Marcelle folded her hands primly on the table and looked out the dining room window, as if concerned with nothing. “Someone slept poorly last night, I think.”

They sat in silence. Martine turned to the sports section.

“Not you, though, Cassie, you slept well enough? You got in quite late.”

“She's a grown woman, Marcelle.”

“I'm perfectly aware.”

“She can come and go freely.”

“Of course she can.”

“I sort of lost track of time,” Cassie said. “I was playing pool.”

“Pool! I didn't know people still did that.”

Martine sighed.

“They do.” Cassie took a drink of her coffee.

“Would you like part of the paper?” Martine asked.

“Now, did you make friends, or, or,” Marcelle picked at the corner of her linen napkin, “were they strangers?”

“Marcelle, isn't there something you should be doing? Do you actually still work here?”

“It is Easter Sunday,
Easter Sunday
, Martine.”

“I was playing against a man named Jackson LaFollette.”

Martine lowered her paper. Marcelle laid her hand flat against her chest; her pink bathrobe seemed to get pinker.

“I hope you won,” Martine said, going back to reading.

“I did.”

Marcelle cleared her throat, took a sip of her coffee. “Well. Well, that's something.”

Cassie peeled the wrapper off her muffin, cut it in half.

“I haven't heard his name in a while is why it's something.”

Cassie buttered one side, took a bite; it was sweet.

“He kilt his first wife.”

Cassie put the muffin down.

Martine grumbled, shook the paper. “He kilt his second wife, too. Not many people commit suicide by shooting theirselves in the head
twice.”

Marcelle pursed her lips. “And you just know he kilt his dear mother. He was the only person in the house with her the night she died! She was fine, perfectly fine, and then Jack came home for a visit, and the next thing you know.”

Cassie sat back in her chair, smiled at Marcelle.

“I think his third wife ought to watch herself, if you know what I mean.”