Charm and Glimmer and Shine

Me and you were walking around New Orleans. We only had about 15 dollars left between us, so we had a sit-down at Café du Monde; “a little touristy,” you said, just so I’d know that you knew. Your hair red-black in the sun was all hanging down and around your shoulders, and you ordered your beignets, and I asked for chicory, and we sat with smoke funneling out from our fingers. I scratched my face, unshaven two days now. New Orleans smelled like New Orleans: piss and incense, history and sweat. Under the green awning outside, a man with a trombone played, and you sang along, “All of me, why not take all of me?”

We spent 5 of our 15 there, and we walked across Jackson Square and over to Bourbon Street, and some kid in t-shirt sleeves was shuffling in tap shoes. You gave him a dollar. 9 left now. We kept walking, and I pointed out a guy drinking a long, cool drink from a big plastic cup made to look like the classic image of the alien: stark green, big black eyes. The straw was crinkly, you said, which was the only appeal for you.

Over to Rue Conti, and we wandered into the lobby of a wax museum. There were racks of brochures by the door, and an old woman behind the front counter who never looked up. We stood unmoving for a few moments, waiting for her to tell us what to do, but it didn’t happen. In front of us was a pair of wooden double doors with brass handles, swathed in red velvet, in tassels. We went through it.

We were in a dark hallway. We rounded the corner, and in orange light and lush wax relief, we were given a quick history of that city’s formation. The finer points of voodoo. Frankenstein and Dracula. There was no one else there, and so you stepped over the partition separating us from the stark, glistening reconstructions of our imaginations. Dr. Frankenstein stood retiring in one corner, hand on his forehead, wondering what he’d done. His monster sat chained in a chair, eyes wide, teeth bared like a skeleton’s, and you walked over and kissed him. You called for me to take a picture, and I called for you to come down, frightened you’d be caught. From the platform, you called down derision on my prudence, mocked my caution with bright laughter. You, with your hair blue-black in the half-light, all hanging down around your shoulders. You came down and kissed me the same as Frankenstein’s monster: light on the cheekbone.

I heard footsteps and turned. Into the velvet light of the hallway came the old woman from the lobby, wondering who we were. Did we pay at the front desk, she wanted to know? You and I looked at each other. Only 9 dollars now between us.

In real life, that lady ushered us out, scolding all the way. In my dreams though, like the one I’m having now, you talk our way out of it; you use the magic bred in your very bones, so fitting for that city, and charm and glimmer and shine us right through that hall of wax and back out the door, with your hair red-black in the sun. All hanging down around your shoulders.