One Last Stop, page 26
He was the guy you called if you needed to move a couch or someone to tell the guy across the hall that if he ever says that word to you again, he’ll get his ass beat. He made people laugh. He had a pair of red shorts that he loved especially well, and she has this stark memory of him wearing them, smoking a cigarette on the porch, perched on the top step, hands spread wide across the floorboards as the first drops of a summer storm started falling.
They talked about their dreams a lot, Jane says. They wanted to travel and would pass a bottle of Muscadine wine back and forth and talk about Paris, Hong Kong, Milan, New York. She told him about her hometown, San Francisco, and the sprawling woods and winding roads to the north, and he told her he’d always, always wanted to drive the Panoramic Highway, ever since he read about it in a library book. He loved books, brought home stacks and stacks from thrift stores and secondhand shops.
The day it happened was the last day of Pride. The beer was free that night, but it was the best night of the summer for tips. For the first time, he mentioned his little sister to Jane as he was shrugging on his jacket on his way out for his shift. He was going to buy her an encyclopedia set for her birthday, he said. He was worried their parents weren’t letting her read enough. The night’s tips would be just enough for it.
And then, that night at the UpStairs, gasoline and smoke. And then, the ceiling falling in. And then, fire, and bars on windows, and a door that wouldn’t open. Arson. Thirty-two men gone.
Augie didn’t come home.
There are a couple of unmarked graves, Jane explains in a low, hoarse voice. It wasn’t uncommon for there to be people like her or Augie, queer people who ran away and didn’t want to be found, who didn’t have families who could or would claim them, people who kept secrets so well nobody would even have known they were there.
And that was bad enough. The empty bedroom, the rolls of socks, the milk left in the fridge, the aftershave in the bathroom, it was all bad enough. But then there were the months that came after.
The city barely tried to investigate. The news mentioned the fire but left out that it was a gay bar. The radio hosts made jokes. Not a single politician said a goddamn word. Church after church refused to hold the funerals. The one priest who did gather a handful of people for prayers was nearly excommunicated by his congregation.
It hurt, and it hurt again, this horrible thing that had happened, this ripping, unfathomable, terrible thing, and it only hurt more, spreading like the bruises on Jane’s ribs when the cops would decide to make an example out of her.
New Orleans, Jane tells her, was the first place that convinced her to stay. It was the first place she was herself. She’d spent a year on the road before she ended up there, but she fell in love with the city and its Southern girls, and she began to think she might put down roots.
After the fire, she made it six months before she packed up her records and left. She moved out in January of ’74, nothing of her left in New Orleans but a name scratched into a couple bar tops and a kiss on a stone with no name. She lost touch with everyone. She wanted to become a ghost, like Augie.
And then she found New York. And it finished the job.
12
Photo from the archives of The Tulane Hullabaloo, Tulane University’s weekly student-run newspaper, dated June 23, 1973
[Photo depicts a group of young women marching down Iberville Street, carrying signs and banners as part of the third annual New Orleans Gay Pride. In the foreground, a dark-haired woman in jeans and a button-down shirt holds a poster that reads DYKES FIGHT BACK. The following day, the New Orleans gay community would be struck by the UpStairs Lounge arson attack.]
At the entrance to the Parkside Ave. Station, August’s finger hovers over the call button for the tenth time in as many hours.
There was a time when Uncle Augie loomed like Clark Kent in her childhood, this mysterious hero to be chased through squares of public record forms like comic book panels. Her mother told her stories—he was twelve years older, the heir-gone-wrong to an old New Orleans family, the little sister born in his rocky adolescence an attempt at a do-over. He had hair like August’s, like her mother’s, wild and thick and unkempt. He intimidated schoolyard bullies, snuck dessert when their mother said little girls shouldn’t eat so much, hid whiskey and a box of photographs beneath a floorboard in his room.
She told August about the big fight she overheard one night, how Augie kissed her forehead fiercely and left with a suitcase, how he wrote her every week and sometimes arranged late-night calls until the letters and calls stopped coming. She told August about a streetcar ride to the police station, an officer saying they couldn’t waste time on runaways, her parents inviting the chief for dinner when he drove her home and then taking her books away as punishment.
It makes sense now that Augie left and never came back, more than it did when it was only petty family arguments. August understands why he never told his sister he was still in the city, why her grandparents preferred to act as if he’d never existed. He was like Jane, just geographically closer.
She doesn’t know how to tell her mom. She doesn’t even know how to speak to her mom right now.
It’s too much to think about, too much to put into a text or a phone call, so she pushes her phone into her pocket and decides she’ll figure out as much as she can before she tells anyone else.
It’s not until the Q pulls up and she sees Jane that it occurs to her this might have finally been too much for Jane too.
Jane’s sitting there, staring straight ahead. There’s a rip in her shirt collar and a fresh cut on her lip. She’s flexing her right hand over and over in her lap.
“What happened?” August says, rushing onto the car and dropping her bag to kneel in front of her. She takes Jane’s face in her hands. “Hey, talk to me.”
Jane shrugs, impassive.
“Some guy called me some shit I’d rather not repeat,” she finally says. “That old racist-homophobic combo. Always a winner.”
“Oh my God, did he hit you? I’ll kill him.”
She laughs darkly, eyes flat. “No, I hit him. The lip is from when someone else pulled me off him.”
August tries to brush her thumb by Jane’s mouth, but she jerks away.
“Jesus,” August hisses. “Did they call the cops?”
“Nah. Me and some guy shoved him off at the next stop, and I doubt his ego could handle calling the cops on a skinny Chinese girl.”
“I meant for you. You’re hurt.”
Jane knocks August’s hands off of her, finally making eye contact. August flinches at the razor’s edge there.
“I don’t fuck with pigs. You know I don’t fuck with pigs.”
August sits back on her heels. There’s something off about Jane, in the air around her. Usually, it’s like August can feel the frequency she vibrates at, like she’s a space heater or a live wire, but it’s still. Eerily still.
“No, of course, that was stupid,” August says slowly. “Hey, are you … okay?”
“What do you fucking think, August?” she snaps.
“I know—it’s, it’s fucked up,” August tells her. She’s thinking about the fire, the things that drove Jane from city to city. “But I promise, most people aren’t like that anymore. If you could go out, you’d see.”
Jane grabs a pole and heaves herself to her feet. Her eyes are slate, flint, stone. The train takes a curve. She doesn’t falter.
“That’s not what it’s about.”
“Then what, Jane?”
“God, you don’t—you don’t get it. You can’t.”
For a second, August feels like she did that night after the séance, when she put her hand on Jane’s wrist and felt the pulse buzzing impossibly fast under her fingers, when she talked to Jane like she was on a ledge. Jane might as well be hanging out the emergency exit.
“Try me.”
“Okay, fine, it’s like—I woke up one day and half the people I ever loved were dead, and the other half had lived a whole life without me, and I never got a chance to see it,” Jane says. “I never got a chance to be at their weddings or their art shows. I never got to see my sisters grow up. I never got to tell my parents why I left. I never got to make it right. I mean, fuck, my friend Frankie had just gotten a new boyfriend who was so annoying, and I was gonna tell him to dump him, and I never even got to do that. Do you see what I mean? Have you ever thought about what this is like for me?”
“Of course I—”
“It’s like I died,” she cuts in. Her voice cracks in the middle. “I died, except I have to feel it. And on top of that, I have to feel everything else I’ve ever felt all over again. I have to get the bad news again every day, I have to deal with the choices I made, and I can’t fix it. I can’t even run from it. It’s miserable, August.”
Okay. This is it. Jane’s been shockingly casual about her entire existential predicament. August wondered when something like this was coming.
“I know,” August says. The seat creaks faintly as she pushes herself to her feet, and Jane watches her sway closer with wide eyes, like she could bolt at any second. August moves until she’s close enough to touch her. She doesn’t. But she could. “I’m sorry. But it’s—it’s not too late to fix some of it. We’re gonna figure it out, and we’ll get you back to where you’re supposed to be, and—”
“I swear to fucking God, August, can you for once not act like you know everything?”
“Okay,” August says, feeling something defensive prick up her spine. Jane’s not the only one who’s spent the last day in a fighting mood. “Jesus.”
Jane’s teeth work her split lip for a second, like she’s thinking. She backs up another three steps, out of reach.
“God, it’s—you’re so sure there’s an answer, but there’s no reason to believe there is one. None of this makes any fucking sense.”
“Is that why you’ve been acting like you don’t care about the case? Because you don’t think I can solve it?”
“I’m not a fucking case to be solved, August.”
“I know that—”
“What if I’m on the line forever, huh?” Jane asks her. “It’s all interesting and exciting right now, but one day you’re gonna be thirty, and I’ll be twenty-four and here, and you’re gonna get bored, and I’m just gonna stay. Alone.”
“I’m not gonna leave you,” August says.
August sees the riot girl in the way Jane rolls her eyes and says, “You should. I would.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not you,” August snaps.
That stops them both. August didn’t mean to say it.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. Forget it.” August twists her hands into fists in her pockets. “Look, I’m not the one you’re mad at. I didn’t get you stuck here.”
“No, you didn’t,” Jane agrees. She turns her face away, hair falling in her eyes. “But you made me realize it. You made me remember. And maybe that’s worse.”
August swallows. “You don’t mean that.”
“You don’t know what I mean,” she says hoarsely. “August, I’m tired. I want to sleep in a bed. I want my life back, I want—I want you and I want to go back and I can’t want those things at the same time, and everything’s too much, and I—I don’t want to feel like this anymore.”
“I’m trying,” August says helplessly.
“What if you didn’t?” Jane says. “What if you stopped?”
In the silence that follows, August remembers how it feels to hit an ice patch on a frigid morning, those few seconds of terrible suspension before you scrape all the skin off your knees, when your stomach drops out and the only thought is, This is about to kick my ass.
“Stopped what?”
“Stopped trying,” Jane says. “Just—just let it go. Get a new train. Don’t see me anymore.”
“No. No. I can’t—I can’t leave, Jane—if I leave, you’re gone. That’s the whole reason September matters. It’s me, it’s us, it’s whatever the hell is happening between us, that’s what’s keeping you here.” She staggers closer, grasping at Jane’s jacket. “Come on, I know you feel it. The first time you saw me, you recognized me—my name, my face, the way I smelled, it made you remember.” Her hand moves gracelessly to Jane’s chest, over her heart. “This is what’s keeping you here. It’s not just fucking dumplings and Patti Smith songs, Jane, it’s us.”
“I know,” Jane says quietly, like it hurts to say it. “I always knew it was you. That’s why I didn’t—it’s why I shouldn’t have ever kissed you. I look at you, and it feels like I’m realer than I’ve ever been, from right here.” She covers August’s hand with hers. “So big it burns. God, August, it’s beautiful, but it hurts so bad.” And, damningly, “You’re the reason I feel like this.”
It connects like a punch.
She’s right. August knows she’s right. She’s been digging Jane’s life back up, but Jane is the one who has to sit on the train alone and live it all over again.
Something in her recoils violently, and her fingers dig into the fabric of Jane’s jacket, bunching it up in her fist.
“Just because you can’t run doesn’t mean you can make me do it for you.”
A muscle clenches in Jane’s jaw, and August wants to kiss it. She wants to kiss her and fight her and hold her down and set this storm loose on the world, but the doors open at the next stop, and for just a second, Jane glances through them. Her foot twitches toward the platform, like she’d have a chance if she tried, and that’s what makes August’s throat go tight.
“You want me to stay,” Jane says. It’s a quiet accusation, a push she doesn’t have the strength to do physically. “That’s what this is, isn’t it? Myla said there’s a chance I could stay. That’s why you’re doing this.”
August still has a fistful of Jane’s jacket. “You wouldn’t be so angry if part of you didn’t want that too.”
“I don’t—” Jane says. She squeezes her eyes shut. “I can’t want that. I can’t.”
“We’ve done all this work,” August says.
“No, you’ve done all this work,” Jane points out. Her eyes open, and August can’t tell if she’s imagining the wetness there. “I never asked you to.”
“Then what?” The part of her that’s all blade is squaring up. “What do you want me to do?”
“I already told you,” Jane says. Her eyes are flashing. A fluorescent above their heads goes out with a loud pop.
If August were different, this is the part where she’d stay and fight. Instead, she thinks viciously that Jane’s idea won’t work. It can’t possibly be that easy to split this apart, not in just a few days. She’ll be back before it’s too late. She’ll leave just to prove it.
They’re pulling into the next stop soon, a big Manhattan one that will bring a rush of people with it.
“Fine. But this?” August hears her voice come out caustic and harsh, and she hates it. “All this? I did it for you, not me.”
The doors slide open, and the last thing August sees of Jane is the stiff set of her jaw. Her split lip. The furious determination not to cry. And then people push on, and August is lost in the current of bodies, dumped out onto the platform.
The doors shut. The train pulls away.
August reaches into her heart for the sour thing that lives there and squeezes.
* * *
August slams her bag down on the bar within five seconds of stepping into Billy’s for her dinner shift.
“Hey, hey, hey, watch it!” Winfield warns, snatching a pie out of range. “This is blackberry. She’s a special lady.”
“Sorry,” she grumbles, plopping down onto a stool. “Rough week.”
“Yeah, well,” Winfield says, “my super has been saying he’s gonna fix my toilet since last Thursday. We’re all having a time.”
“You’re right, you’re right.” August sighs. “Lucie working this shift?”
“Nope,” he says. “She’s taking the day to yell at city officials about permits.”
“Yeah, about that,” August says. “Myla and I are starting to think we’re gonna need a bigger venue.”
Winfield turns and raises his eyebrows at her. “The capacity of Delilah’s is eight hundred. You think we’re getting more than that?”
“I think we’re gonna get, like, double that,” August tells him. “We’ve already sold eight hundred-something tickets, and it’s not for another month.”
“Holy shit,” he says. “How the hell did y’all manage that?”
August shrugs. “People love Billy’s. And it turns out Bomb Bumboclaat and Annie Depressant are big sellers.”
He grins wide, preening in the grimy glow of the kitchen window heat lamps. “Well, I coulda told you that.”
August smiles half-heartedly back at him. She wishes she could match his excitement, but the fact is, she’s been throwing herself into the fundraiser to stop thinking about how she hasn’t heard from Jane in two days. She wanted to be left alone, so August is leaving her alone. She hasn’t set foot on the Q since Jane told her to forget about her.
“Who’s on the schedule today?”
“You’re looking at it, baby,” Winfield says. “It feels like Satan’s taint outside. Nobody’s coming to get afternoon pancakes today. It’s just us and Jerry.”
