For Natalie Paige Lyman, Miriam Tyndall,
and Cortney Layne Rudder
Creole: "comment ca va?"
How are you doing?
Cajun: "Tout ko mwen cho."
My whole body is hot...
see you in the glorious quagmire
Casanova is reputed to have invented the lottery among other things. He may have also invented sex.
"I have always love the truth so passionately that I have often resorted to lying as way of introducing it into the minds which were ignorant of its charms"
"As for myself, I always willingly acknowledge my own self as the principal cause of every good and of every evil which may befall me; therefore I have always found myself capable of being my own pupil, and ready to love my teacher"
- Giacomo Casanova
"New Orleans is a dying whore. Naked she sleeps on my floor."
"Vultures circle up ahead. This is the home of the beautifully depressed."
"Smoke 'em. Do what you must do. Wake up my baby now. Higher than moutains....look around, feast around the fields" -
Philip H. Anselmo
Down 11
People are still recuperating and rebuilding after hurricane Katrina (2005).
The bars weren't letting out at midnight in New Orleans even though they did - or rather booted- a bevy of bumptious and impish wags out onto the side walk just shy of the gutter. They were slightly contused and ruffled from an altercation with security, big, ferocious, and capable negros with an attitude you couldn't knock down with a hammer.
The boys coughed and harrumphed, helping each other back up to vertical advantages. They'd gotten a little too rough this night. The pool table was full and one occupant, a petulant self important busy body, wasn't being a good sport. Abetting eachother against a bad sport who couldn't pay his agreement wasn't paying off. So many moves on the table and they got into a skirmish which escalated into a squabble. The C. Club preferred an air of superiority though it didn't sustain their stay at the bar. The bartender saw, summoned trusty security, and thus the dismissal near the gutter of a cobblestone sidewalk on Toulouse St. out of some potential mark. Beautiful bodies deemed gutternsipes and cast out like the awkward Lautrec. It was humid and blood was slightly aboil in the glorious quagmire.
The boys dusted off eachother's pinstripes, straightened suspenders, corrected half windsors, scraped hard soles, and used a little spit shine for gibed hair product. There was Julian Giacomo -or Jack Jewels - the tallest and most earnest of the bunch, the leader. There was Pierre Rousseau, commonly known as Ruby to men and Jean Jacques to women, Jack's foreman. The rest were made up of staunch followers who did well in keeping up with the dress code. There was Danny Demarco, Don Juan, Alfi, and Oscar, or Ovid as he was proned to regurgitate philosophy in a situation trying to him alone and relatively simple to his cohorts. Four men total, an organized bunch, but they had expansive connections throughout the French Quarter and in-the-know locales throughout the city. In New Orleans there was a different kind of business underneath the swamps, a beguiling surreptitious creature, slithering like unto the Devil around the tree, offering forbidden fruit to any Adam and Eve, or to just rob Adam and swive Eve. There was a different kind of enterprise when the rest go to their jobs, Le Club Casanova.
The swains finished dusting themselves off by the frowsy gutter, sighing unanimously with inward, tacit compromise. Unlike the loser at the pool table, they salvaged a stout portion of resolve. They stood in a moment of silence, abreast of eachother postering like the fairest silverbacks ready to pound their magnificent chests, the city lights reflecting blue and silver off their glistening hair, the fog moistening their lapels. Julian Giacomo lit a cigarette and rubbed at his temple with two fingers.
"Jack," said the foreman, Rousseau, smiling like a tike trying to hide a fuming diaper.
"Wait a minute," he puffed heartily, exhaled, put out the cigarette, and then lit two a la Bogart for Rousseau and Demarco. Alfi and Ovid didn't smoke.
Julian Giacomo gave the two cigarettes graciously to his colleagues and resumed rubbing at his temple.
"Jack," Rousseau was becoming insistent.
"Don't annoy me. I'm trying to enjoy the moment." Rousseau sighed and tapped idly at his cigarette like salt and pepper.
"Damn fine job, " Demarco added. Jack remained retrospective in his own little bubble. Rousseau looked at the Demarco with a wry pratical countenance. The others leaned in attentively. "Sure, we didn't win the game" - Ovid interjected his usual quotative light,
""Either don't attempt at all, or go through with it.""
"Ovid again," Rousseau rolled his eyes. The others leaned in like credulous church ladies to a weak sermon. Oscar continued, "
""W must"" -
"Oscar, shut up," Julian wasn't having it. "Boys I love you all, but what did we win? Reach in those pockets, boys." They pulled out wallets which didn't belong to them. However, these men were steadfastly complicit and possession is nine tenths of the law. The wallets were fattened with crisp, jaunty bills and identification not their own. "Our compensation demands nothing short of Benjamin Franklin's. We can have our way with credit cards, but those are a last resort. " They flipped through the turgid billfolds, nodding their heads at Julian. "We're good, Boss," Rousseau's confirmation was well enough for all - even Oscar's Ovid - for which they secretly loved him. They made off with the booty. The victims exited in the bar with their arms folded and murder in their eyes. The loser, the bartender, and the two bouncers were utterly had by Julian Giacomo and his henchman.
______
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