He patted the young girl’s right hand that gripped him tight, her body prone on his, and she slowly slid off of him. Wordless. Her eyes accusing me for taking him away. She tucked her hair back into her bandanna and stripped off a long shirt to reveal a complicated array of belts, garters, lace, and buckles.

She was fourteen and then she was an adult.

ALIAS checked himself in the mirror, grabbed a Saints ball cap that was perched on the edge of the chair, and nodded at me. “Let’s roll.”

15

ALIAS WAS HUNGRY and I was fresh out of ideas. But I’d made a ton of calls and hoped Curtis’s countryfied lyin’ ass would come through for once. I checked the cell phone, willing it to ring, but it didn’t while we sat at the counter of the Camellia Grill waiting on ALIAS’s hamburger. I’d ordered an omelette and a cup of coffee. It was about ten o’clock and I was tired. I washed my face in the bathroom with cold water and returned to the seat where ALIAS was already eating. I thought about Maggie’s porch and these great old green chairs she had where we kicked back and talked all night.

The Camellia Grill was a little diner in a small white house at the end of the streetcar tracks near the turnaround in Carrollton. After being in the humidity all day, the air-conditioning felt nice, and for a long time, ALIAS and I didn’t talk.

“You trust Malcolm?” I asked.

He nodded and took another bite.

“What about Teddy?”

“Sure.”

“Malcolm ever ask you for money?”

He shook his head, looking confused. I passed him some ketchup and asked the waiter for some Crystal sauce. Just right on an omelette.

“Is Teddy gonna die?” ALIAS asked.

“No.”

“How you know?”

“’Cause Teddy can talk his way out of anything.”

“What you mean?”

“I mean Teddy knows how to survive.”

“So why you workin’ so hard?”

“Just in case.”

“Cash is evil.”

“How do you know?”

“Me and him know each other. He offered me money to get on his label.”

“You gonna leave Teddy?”

“Don’t know.”

“What do you want to be when you’re grown up?” I asked.

“I am grown up.”

“You’re fifteen.”

“I’m a man,” he said.

“You like women?”

“They a’ight.”

“Just all right.”

“Yeah, I like them.”

He looked away from me and dabbled a fry into the ketchup.

“I have a woman in Mississippi that’s pretty pissed at me.”

“You fuck someone else?”

“No.”

“Get drunk?”

“No.”

“Then what she bitchin’ ’bout?”

“It’s my birthday tomorrow and she had something planned.”

He finished off the burger and carefully poured more ketchup in a neat little pile. He liked to keep everything separate. There was no mixing of ketchup and fries till he was ready.

“Who was that girl at the club?”

“Tamika.”

“Who is she?”

“A friend.”

“She’s a kid.”

“Maybe,” he said. “She use her sister’s driver’s license so she can dance. She ain’t bad. She can shake her ass and shit.”

The streetcar passed underneath the oaks outside. A priest and a woman with a bruise under her eye walked in and found a seat by the bathroom. I finished the omelette and drank some more coffee.

“Where we gonna head next?”

“I don’t know.”

I excused myself and walked outside, trying Curtis again. The phone rang about six times before he answered. He sounded out of breath.

“Stella got me doin’ this exercise tape, got that black dude that’s some kind of big star in Hong Kong. You know he got that funny head that look like a turtle? Man, that shit kickin’ my ass.”

“What you got?” I watched my truck across the street and a couple of kids skateboarding around it. Crime lights scattered on my hood and I heard some bottleneck guitar playing at a biker bar in the crook of St. Charles.

“Pinky’s Bar.”

“Where?”

“It’s in the Marigny but ain’t no fag place or anything,” Curtis said. I heard Stella yelling at him. “Ask for Fred. You’ll get what you need.”

16

PINKY’S SPECIALIZED in kick-ass punk music, explosive drinks, and a Tuesday-night bondage show, or so I heard from Curtis. I’d left my leather mask back home and I never owned a whip in my life but decided I’d be safe. I told ALIAS he could wait in the truck, but he said he wanted to see this place. He said freaks were interesting and wanted to know if it was like that shit in Pulp Fiction. I’d parked off Elysian Fields and Chartres by a methadone clinic and a vegetarian restaurant that offered discounts to same-sex couples. A few years back, I wouldn’t have even driven through this neighborhood; the gunshots and violence were constant. But a few years ago, the homosexual community had taken over the Marigny, cleaning it up and making it their own. But now the historic district right by the Quarter was going through another change. Gentrification. Now it was hipper than Uptown and way too cool for the Quarter.

And Pinky’s, I think, was supposed to be too cool for anyone.