Chapter 2


Charlie was short for Charlene, or at least that’s what she told Ira. At work she went by Rose because of the tattoo stretched across the inner part of her pasty thigh. She was from Gulfport, Mississippi, a senior in high school, just past eighteen, or so she said. Charlie spent her weekends in New Orleans, stripping at one of those dive clubs on Iberville between Chartres and Decatur.
They had met on the streetcar one day. She was sleeping with her legs tucked beneath her stretched out t-shirt, her head resting against the cold hard window. When she had opened her eyes, she caught Ira staring in her general direction. At his stop, the blonde-haired girl followed him from about twenty yards away until he had ducked beneath the entryway to his home. A few seconds later, an incessant knock battered the front door. Peering through a crack, Charlie offered Ira a blowjob for a place to sleep. Without waiting for an answer, she had brushed past Ira and plopped herself onto the sofa in the front room. His heart pulsed and his cheeks flushed from the home intrusion and the prospect of possible oral sex, so he hurried to the kitchen to catch his breath and fix a pot of coffee.
She was asleep, lying face down with one hand resting against the pine floor when he returned. Her acrid odor of sweat and cigarettes mixed with faint remnants of vanilla perfume reminded Ira of the inside of a teenager’s gym locker. It was just past noon when Charlie had come into his life, and it wasn’t until early the next morning when she had begun to stir awake. As the sun rose and the shadows crept up the cracked walls, Charlie moaned and cursed before noticing Ira in the rocking chair.
“Why you not wake me?” she asked.
“You looked tired,” he said.
“But I missed work,” she said. “They ain’t gone let me work tonight.”
“You can stay here, if you’d like.”
“You gone pay me?”
“For what?” Ira asked.
“My time.”
“I don’t have any money.”
Charlie looked around at the ornate crown molding on the high arched ceiling. The lush velvet curtain covering the massive window was torn at the top. The floral couch she was sitting on had stained cushions, the rug beneath her feet frayed edges and discoloration marks. The room was shroud in darkness interrupted only by a natural light shining through an oval stained glass window perched above the dark wooden staircase.
“You got anything to eat?” she asked.
“I have French bread.”
“That it?”
“And jam.”
Ira had hurried into the kitchen and exhaled for the first time since Charlie opened her piercing blue eyes. He grabbed the French bread off the Formica countertop and flexed his fingers, crushing the top of the bread a bit, testing it for freshness. He had picked it up the day before at the Leidenheimer factory on Simon Bolivar, where he went twice a week to schmooze the bakers into giving him the old bread before they discarded it in the trash. He usually froze one and ate the other with little packets of jam he got from the Best Western.
When he had returned to the living room, Charlie was looking at herself in the mirror, trying to mat down her crazy spiked hair. She turned and asked, “Got any eggs? I’m starving.”
“I do not.”
“Coffee?”
“A pot is brewing,” he said.
“Yes,” she said, still watching him through the reflection in the mirror, “I smell it.”
“Would you like to take a shower?” he asked.
“With you?”
Ira’s cheeks had turned the color of the Chinese flag and he spun his head around to avoid eye contact. “That’s not what I meant.”
“I could use a hot shower,” she said.
“There’s no hot water.”

Charlie had showered, drank three cups of coffee, and left that day, but she returned shortly after dawn the next morning, pounding her fists against the heavy wooden door. She was drunk, her eyes red and glossed over, her cheek showing signs of a light bruise. She had brushed past him with that same fetid odor, went straight to the couch and fell to sleep the instant her head hit the cushion. Ira wrapped a knit blanket over her body, and removed her damp thongs from her feet—beautiful, porcelain feet with hard dirty yellow calluses on her soles.

That was pretty much their routine over the past three months. Ira never knew exactly when the knock would come, but he found himself strangely aroused by the thought of this young girl tramping through the door and making herself at home in his huge empty house on St. Charles Avenue. She hadn’t stolen anything, hadn’t brought anyone back with her, and sometimes she had even contributed a few bars of soap or miniature shampoos culled from a stranger’s hotel room. Ira sat in his recliner and watched her breathing heavily through her tiny pug nose while he read his books. Sometimes they would head down to the New Orleans Hamburger and Seafood Company and grab a free ice cream cone from the soft serve station by the front door, but more often than not she was like an outdoor cat that returned home to sleep whenever it felt like it.
They never talked about her life, about what she did all night in the French Quarter. She never mentioned her family or her friends or whom she lived with. One time she alluded to a boyfriend in Gulfport, some guy that worked in an auto body shop. She hadn’t talked about school or the prom or anything a normal high school senior would talk about. The conversations were more banal. They talked about the streetcar, about the ever-present construction or about the way some flowers would only bloom in the morning and others would only open at dusk. They were perfectly lonely companions on the opposite side of life’s trajectory contemplating how to survive in a material world without seeing a future past tomorrow.

Last Friday, Charlie had announced that she was on Spring Break and would therefore be spending the entire week in New Orleans. Apparently, Mardi Gras was a boon for the local stripping industry and Charlie had made just over two thousand dollars since the week began. When she came home that morning, she hadn’t even noticed Ira de-beading the bushes. She just wobbled up the short staircase, knocked on the door and twisted the doorknob at the same time, pushing her way into the foyer. Before he could say anything, she slammed the door shut, as he continued his work in the garden.
Ira had planned to sit in the rocker, read the rest of the paper and listen to her snoring on the sofa, but when he opened the door, Charlie wasn’t there. The kitchen was empty, as was the bathroom and office. He called her name a few times, listening to the slight echo bounce off the hardwood floor. A small pile of her dirty clothes lied next to the mahogany wooden end table.
Traversing the dark staircase, Ira called her name again. As far as he knew, Charlie had never been upstairs, but he began to pick up her scent as he opened his bedroom door. The room was undisturbed, the door to the bathroom closed. Ira walked unsteadily down the hallway checking the kid’s bedrooms, but only a layer of dust greeted him as he opened each door.
As he was about to concede and head down the stairs, he picked up that now-familiar scent. It was definitely coming from his bedroom so he opened the door, called out her name, slowly walked toward the bathroom and tapped lightly. No answer. Opening the door a crack, Ira saw Charlie submerged in the bathtub with just her nose peeking above the waterline. The first thought that crossed his mind was that Charlie had killed herself in his house and he would be blamed and spend the rest of his life in Folsom prison. That thought made Ira smash the door against the tile wall and stumble into the bathroom. Charlie jumped up so fast that the water cascaded over the edge of the tub and splashed to the ground. She vainly yelled his name as he stepped back and slammed the door, apologizing like a little boy who had walked in on his parents having sex.
“You’re not supposed to be up here,” Ira said loudly through the door.
“Sorry,” she yelled. “I thought you was gone for the day.”
“I guess it’s alright,” he said. “Sorry I walked in on you.”
“Give me a minute to get dressed, Ira. I want to take you to lunch.”
“You want to take me to lunch?”
“I’m hungry, Ira. And I’m tired of your jelly sandwiches.”
“You don’t have to do that,” he said.
“I had a good night.”
“Save your money, honey.”
“No, really. I want to take you out. Where should we go?”
Still standing behind the door, Ira said, “You pick. It’s your money.”
“I don’t know. I ain’t never been to no place fancy. Maybe we should go to Ignatius. I hear they gots good gumbo.”
“I like gumbo.”
“You ain’t got to order just gumbo. You can order anything on the menu,” she said.
“I’ll change my shirt.”
Ira heard Charlie stand up in the bath and turn on the shower. She was whistling “Carnival Time” as everyone tended to do after hearing it so often during those past few weeks. He changed into a crinkled white dress shirt and headed downstairs to wait for her to change.