seat clapped, sang to the music, and in general acted silly.
“What do you say, Una?” Nick asked.
“I think not,” she answered, giving the crowded car a look of extreme disapproval.
“No ‘I have to do my nails, hair, whatever’? No ‘I have to get up early tomorrow’? Just ‘I think not’?”
“I think not!” She stalked off toward her own car, with his bundle of pilfered papers under a sweater she’d needed inside, but not out here in the humid warmth. He was relieved to see she was taking his insistence on stealth to heart.
Nick watched her for a moment. Go with her you idiot. That’s what you need: a good woman, loyal to a fault; a settled life; intellectual companionship for a change–hey, marriage, even. She probably has a simple but scrumptious midnight repast and some excellent wine waiting for the two of you, hoping to take up where you both left off years ago. It will be on your head, Jonathan Nicholas Herald, if she turns into a Miss Havisham…
Nah!
He piled into the back seat of the red Volvo.
“Don’t worry,” Zola said, indicating the young guy at the wheel, “Donny’s Muslim. Can’t drink alcohol. He’s always our designated driver.”
Donny, however, inhaled deeply from a large joint as they zipped down quiet, narrow Uptown streets lined with parked cars and petrified yellow-eyed cats.
Nick’s couch felt like heaven. It didn’t hurt, either, that Zola was next to him. They were mechanically kissing and pawing each other, both dead tired but too stubborn to admit it. They reeked of bar vapors from the Gumbo Club–where Keith Richards, or his double, had indeed jammed with the band–and the four or five other dives they had crawled through. A cassette tape he must have bought from the band was in his shirt pocket.
He vaguely remembered the last place, a blue-collar bar, all the latest rage among students and the hip crowd. The regulars, old men with grizzled faces, union caps, and unfiltered cigarettes, whose fathers and grandfathers had imbibed there, had huddled at one end of the bar under the television and watched them with bewildered and resentful eyes. The itinerant rakehells were thrown out when Zola and several others, including Nick, started dancing on the pool table.
During their hours together, he and Zola had discovered much to talk about, much to laugh about. They found that they shared a fondness for things out of the ordinary, as well as the typical New Orleanian’s obsession with food and drink. Nick had genuinely enjoyed the evening, and he believed she had, too.
Zola drew back and looked around Nick’s cramped apartment. “I shouldn’t be here. We’re not twenty years old anymore. We adults are supposed to know better than to get involved on the first date.”
“It wasn’t even a date.” He kissed her. “And we’re not as involved as I’d like, yet.”
“Well, I just want you to know that I don’t always do this. I mean, go to a man’s apartment. But I feel I know you. After what Angus told me, and what Mother has said. Your life has been so, I don’t know, so colorful, exciting, unpredictable. A lot different from mine. I’ve always been sure where I came from, where I am, where I’m going. I see in you an antidote to that, that predictability. Do you know I even called up the newspaper articles on your dismissal from Freret?…Oh, I’m babbling like a teenager with a crush. How embarrassing.”
“A tired teenager. I’ll get you a cab in a few minutes. But I want to tell you a secret of my own, now: I felt something click, too, that day at the Plutarch. I’ve been thinking about you a lot since then.”
“You could call me sometime. We could…go out for dinner.”
“I’d like that.” He kissed her again and stood up. “Now, that cab.”
“Water!” Zola croaked in an exaggeratedly raspy voice as Nick weaved toward the kitchen to call a cab. “Cold water, I beg of you, kind sir.”
When he returned five minutes later, she was passed out on the couch. He corrected her twisted posture so she would be able to walk later in the day, and went back to the kitchen to cancel the cab. Then he began to trudge toward his bedroom.
He glanced blearily at his desk, surrounded by cliff walls of books and folders threatening an avalanche. He noticed that the mail for the last few days had been stacked neatly, the junk catalogs and sweepstakes offers off to one side