Vieux Carre Read online

  NURSIE: Mizz Wire, those tourists ladies, I can’t control them, they’re pickin’ the azaleas off the bushes, and—

  MRS. WIRE: That’s what I told you to stay in the courtyard to stop.

  NURSIE: Oh, I try, but one of ’em jus’ called me a impudent ole nigger, and I won’t take it. I come here to tell you I QUIT!

  MRS. WIRE: AGAIN! COME BACK OUT THERE WITH ME! [She turns to the writer.] We’ll continue this later. [She exits with Nursie.]

  WRITER [to Sky]: —Were you serious about the West Coast offer?

  SKY: You’re welcome to come along with me. I don’t like to travel a long distance like that by myself.

  WRITER: How do you travel?

  SKY: I’ve got a beat-up old ’32 Ford across the street with a little oil and about half a tank of gas in it. If you want to go, we could share the expense. Have you got any cash?

  WRITER: I guess I’ve accumulated a capital of about thirty-five dollars.

  SKY: We’ll siphon gas on the way.

  WRITER: Siphon?

  SKY: I travel with a little rubber tube, and at night I unscrew the top of somebody’s gas tank and suck the gas out through the tube and spit it into a bucket and empty it into my car. Is it a deal?

  WRITER [with suppressed excitement]: How would we live on the road?

  SKY [rolling a cigarette with obvious practice]: We’d have to exercise our wits. And our personal charm. And, well, if that don’t suffice, I have a blanket in the car, and there’s plenty of wide open spaces between here and the Coast. [He pauses for a beat.] Scared? Of the undertaking?

  WRITER [smiling slowly]: No—the Coast—starting when?

  SKY: Why not this evening? The landlady won’t admit me to the house again, but I’ll call you. Just keep your window open. I’ll blow my clarinet in the courtyard. Let’s say about six.

  [The conversation may continue in undertones as the area is dimmed out.]

  SCENE NINE

  The lights come up on Jane’s studio area. The shuttered doors to the windows overlooking the courtyard below are ajar. Jane is trying to rouse Tye from an unnaturally deep sleep. It is evident that she has been engaged in packing her effects and his.

  JANE: Tye, Tye, oh—Christ . . .

  [He drops a bare arm off the disordered bed and moans slightly. She bends over to examine a needle mark on his arm.]

  TYE: —Wh—?

  [Jane crosses to the sink and wets a towel, then returns to slap Tye’s face with it. He begins to wake slowly.]

  Some men would beat a chick up for less’n that, y’know.

  JANE: All right, get out of bed and beat me up, but get up.

  TYE [stroking a promontory beneath the bed sheet]: —Can’t you see I am up?

  JANE: I don’t mean that kind of up, and don’t bring stripshow lewdness in here this—Sunday afternoon.

  TYE: Babe, don’t mention the show to me t’day.

  JANE: I’d like to remind you that when we first stumbled into this—crazy—co-habitation, you promised me you’d quit the show in a week.

  TYE: For what? Tight as work is for a dude with five grades of school and no skill training from the Mississippi sticks?

  JANE: You could find something less—publicly embarrassing, like a—filling station attendant.

  TYE: Ha!

  JANE: But of course your choice of employment is no concern of mine now.

  TYE: Why not, Babe?

  JANE: I’m not “Babe” and not “Chick”!

  TYE: You say you’re not my chick?

  JANE: I say I’m nobody’s chick.

  TYE: Any chick who shacks with me’s my chick.

  JANE: This is my place. You just—moved in and stayed.

  TYE: I paid the rent this month.

  JANE: Half of it, for the first time, my savings being as close to exhaustion as me.

  [There is the sound of a funky piano and a voice on the Bourbon Street corner: “I’ve stayed around and played around this old town too long.” Jane’s mood softens under its influence.]

  Lord, I don’t know how I managed to haul you to bed.

  TYE: Hey, you put me to bed last night?

  JANE: It was much too much exertion for someone in my—condition.

  TYE [focusing on her more closely]: —Honey, are you pregnant?

  JANE: No, Lord, now who’d be fool enough to get pregnant by a Bourbon Street stripshow barker?

  TYE: When a chick talks about her condition, don’t it mean she’s pregnant?

  JANE: All female conditions are not pregnancy, Tye. [She staggers, then finishes her coffee.] Mine is that of a desperate young woman living with a young bum employed by gangsters and using her place as a depository for hot merchandise. Well, they’re all packed. You’re packed too.

  TYE: —Come to bed.

  JANE: No, thank you. Your face is smeared with lipstick; also other parts of you. I didn’t know lip rouge ever covered so much—territory.

  TYE: I honestly don’t remember a fuckin’ thing after midnight.

  JANE: That I do believe. Now have some coffee, I’ve warmed it. It isn’t instant, it’s percolated.

  TYE: Who’s birthday is it?

  JANE: It’s percolated in honor of our day of parting.

  TYE: Aw, be sweet, Babe, please come back to bed. I need comfort, not coffee.

  JANE: You broke a promise to me.

  TYE: Which?

  JANE: Among the many? You used a needle last night. I saw the mark of it on you.

  TYE: No shit. Where?

  JANE [returning to the bedside]: There, right there on your—[He circles her with his arm and pulls her onto the bed.] I’ve been betrayed by a—sensual streak in my nature. Susceptibility to touch. And you have skin like a child. I’d gladly support you if I believed you’d—if I had the means to and the time to. Time. Means. Luck. Things that expire, run out. And all at once you’re stranded.

  TYE: Jane you—lie down with me and hold me.

  JANE: I’m afraid, Tye, we’ll just have to hold each other in our memories from now on.

  TYE [childishly]: Don’t talk that way. I never had a rougher night in my life. Do I have to think and remember?

  JANE: Tye, we’ve had a long spell of dreaming, but now we suddenly have to.

  TYE: Got any aspirin, Babe?

  JANE: You’re past aspirin, Tye. I think you’ve gone past all legal—analgesics.

  TYE: You say words to me I’ve never heard before.

  JANE: Tye, I’ve been forced to make an urgent phone call to someone I never wanted to call.

  TYE: Call?

  JANE: And then I packed your personal belongings and all that loot you’ve been holding here. Exertion of packing nearly blacked me out. Trembling, sweating—had to bathe and change.

  TYE: Babe?

  JANE: You’re vacating the premises, “Babe.” It’s afternoon.

  TYE: Look, if you’re knocked up, have the kid. I’m against abortion.

  JANE: On moral principles?

  TYE: Have the kid, Babe. I’d pull myself together for a kid.

  JANE: You didn’t for me.

  TYE: A baby would be a livin’ thing between us, with both our blood.

  JANE: Never mind.

  [Voices in the courtyard are heard.]

  NURSIE: Any donations t’keep the cou’tyard up, just drop it in my apron as you go out, ladies! . . .

  JANE: Those tourists down there in the courtyard! If I’d known when I took this room it was over a tourist attraction—

  TYE: It’s the Festival, Babe. It ain’t always Festival . . . gimme my cigarettes, ought to be some left in a pocket.

  JANE [throwing his pants and a fancy sport shirt on the bed]: Here, your clothes, get in them.

  TYE [putting on his shorts]: Not yet. It’s Sunday, Babe . . . Where’s Beret? I like Beret to be here when I wake up.

  JANE: Not even a cat will wait ten, twelve hours for you to sleep off whatever you shot last night. How did a girl well educated and reasonably
well brought up get involved in this . . . Oh, I’m talking to myself.

  TYE: I hear you, Babe, and I see you.

  JANE: Then . . . get up and dressed.

  TYE: It’s not dark yet, Babe. Y’know I never get dressed till after dark on Sundays.

  JANE: Today has to be an exception. I’m . . . expecting a caller, very important to me.

  TYE: Fashion designer?

  JANE: No. Buyer . . . to look at my illustrations. They’re no good, I’m no good. I just had a flair, not a talent, and the flair flared out, I’m . . . finished. These sketches are evidence of it! [She starts tearing fashion sketches off the wall.] Look at me! Bangles, jangles! All taste gone! [She tears off her costume jewelry.]

  TYE: Babe, you’re in no shape to meet a buyer.

  JANE [slowly and bitterly]: He’s no buyer of anything but me.

  TYE: —Buyer of you? Look. You said that you were expecting a buyer to look at your drawin’s here.

  JANE: I know what I said, I said a buyer to look at my illustrations, but what I said was a lie. Among other things, many other undreamed of before, you’ve taught me to practice deception.

  VOICES OFFSTAGE: Edwina, Edwina, come see this dream of a little courtyard. Oh, my, yaiss, like a dream.

  JANE: I know what I said, but let’s say, Tye, that I experienced last week a somewhat less than triumphant encounter with the buyer of fashion illustrations at Vogue Moderne. In fact, it left me too shattered to carry my portfolio home without a shot of Metaxas brandy at the Blue Lantern, which was on the street level of the building. It was there that I met a gentleman from Brazil. He had observed my entrance, the Brazilian, and apparently took me for a hooker, sprang up with surprising agility for a gentleman of his corpulence, hauled me to his table, and introduced me to his camaradas, “Señorita, this is Señor and Señor and Señor,” declared me, “Bonita, muy, muy, bonita”— tried to press a hundred-dollar bill in my hand. Well, some atavistic bit of propriety surfaced and I, like a fool, rejected it—but did accept his business card, just in case. This morning, Tye, I called him. “Señorita Bonita of the Blue Lantern awaits you, top floor of seven-two-two Toulouse,” that was the invitation that I phoned in to the message desk. He must have received it by now at the Hotel Royal Orleans, where the Presidential Suite somehow contains him.

  TYE: Who’re you talkin’ about?

  JANE: My expected caller, a responsible businessman from Brazil. Sincerely interested in my bankrupt state . . .

  TYE: Forget it, come back to bed and I’ll undress you, Babe, you need rest.

  JANE: The bed bit is finished between us. You’re moving out today.

  [He slowly stumbles up, crosses to the table, and gulps coffee, then grasps her arm and draws her to bed.]

  No, no, no, no, no, no!

  TYE: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!

  [He throws her onto the bed and starts to strip her; she resists; he prevails. As the lights very gradually dim, a Negro singer-pianist at a nearby bar fades in, “Fly a-way! Sweet Kentucky baby-bay, fly, away . . .”]

  MRS. WIRE [from a few steps below the writer]: What’s paralyzed you there? Son?

  WRITER: Miss Sparks is crying.

  [Mrs. Wire appears behind the writer in the lighted spot.]

  MRS. WIRE: That woman’s moanin’ in there don’t mean she’s in pain. Son, I got a suspicion you never had close relations with wimmen in your life.

  JANE: Ohhh!

  WRITER: I never heard sounds like that.

  [Jane utters a wild cry. It impresses even Mrs. Wire.]

  TYE’S VOICE: Babe, I don’t wanna force you . . .

  JANE’S VOICE: Plee-ase! I’m not a thing, I’m not—a—thing!

  MRS. WIRE [shouting]: You all quit that loud fornication in there!

  TYE’S VOICE [shouting back]: Get the fuck downstairs, god-dam ole witch!

  MRS. WIRE: Howlin’ insults at me in my own house, won’t tolerate it! [She bursts into the room.] Never seen such a disgustin’ exhibition!

  [Tye starts to rise from the bed. Jane clings desperately to him.]

  JANE: As! You see!—Mrs. Wire!—Everything is!—packed, he’s —moving—today . . .

  TYE: The rent is paid in full! So get the fuck outa here!

  JANE: Tye, please.

  MRS. WIRE: What’s in them boxes?

  TYE: None of your—

  JANE: Our personal—belongings, Mrs. Wire.

  MRS. WIRE: That I doubt! The contents of these boxes will be inspected before removed from this place and in the presence of my nephew on the police force!

  [Tye charges toward Mrs. Wire.]

  Don’t you expose yourself naykid in my presence! Nursie!

  JANE: Mrs. Wire, for once I do agree with you! Can you get him out, please, please get him out!

  MRS. WIRE [averting her face with an air of shocked propriety]: Dress at once and—

  NURSIE: Mizz Wire, I got the hospital on the phone.

  MRS. WIRE: They sendin’ an ambulance for Nightingale?

  NURSIE: Soon’s they got a bed for him, but they want you to call ’em back and—

  MRS. WIRE: St. Vincent’s is run by taxpayers’ money, I’ll remind ’em of that. [She crosses off stage. Tye slams the door.]

  [Jane is sobbing on the bed.]

  TYE: Now, Babe.

  JANE: If you approach this bed—

  TYE: Just want to comfort you, honey. Can’t we just rest together? Can’t we? Rest and comfort each other?

  [The area dims as the black pianist sings “Kentucky Baby.”]

  MRS. WIRE: Cut out that obscene talking up there, I’m on the phone. Emergency call is from here at 722 Toulouse. Christ Almighty, you drive me to profane language. You mean to admit you don’t know the location of the most historical street in the Vieux Carré? You’re not talking to no . . . no nobody, but a personage. Responsible. Reputable. Known to the authorities on the list of attractions. God damn it, you twist my tongue up with your . . . Nursie! Nursie! Will you talk to this incompetent . . . Nursie! Nursie!

  [Nursie appears.]

  Got some idiot on the phone at the hospital. Will you inform this idiot who I am in the Quarter. Phone. Talk.

  [Nursie takes the phone.]

  NURSIE: Stairs . . . took my breath . . .

  MRS. WIRE [snatching back the phone]: Now I want you to know, this here Nightingale case . . . I don’t lack sympathy for the dying or the hopelessly inflicted . . . [She kicks at Nursie beside her.] Git! But I’ve got responsibilities to my tenants. Valuable paying tenants, distinguished society ladies, will quit my premises this day, I swear they will, if this Nightingale remains. Why, the State Board of Health will clap a suit on me unless . . . at once . . . ambulance. When? At what time? Don’t say approximate to me. Emergency means immediate. Not when you drag your arse around to it. And just you remember I’m a taxpayer . . . No, no, you not me. I pay, you collect. Now get the ambulance here immediately, 722 Toulouse, with a stretcher with straps, the Nightingale is violent with fever. [She slams down the phone.] Shit!

  NURSIE: My guess is they’re going to remove you, too.

  [Mrs. Wire leans on Nursie.]

  SCENE TEN

  There is a spotlight on the writer, stage front, as narrator.

  WRITER: That Sunday I served my last meal for a quarter in the Quarter, then I returned to the attic. From Nightingale’s cage there was silence so complete I thought, “He’s dead.” Then he cried out softly—

  NIGHTINGALE: Christ, how long do I have to go on like this?

  WRITER: Then, for the first time, I returned his visits. [He makes the gesture of knocking at Nightingale’s door.]—Mr. Rossignol . . .

  [There is a sound of staggering and wheezing. Nightingale opens the door; the writer catches him as he nearly falls and assists him back to his cot.]

  —You shouldn’t try to dress.

  NIGHTINGALE: Got to-escape! She wants to commit me to a charnal house on false charges . . .

  WRITER: It’s raining out
.

  NIGHTINGALE: A Rossignol will not be hauled away to a charity hospital.

  WRITER: Let me call a private doctor. He wouldn’t allow them to move you in your—condition . . .

  NIGHTINGALE: My faith’s in Christ—not doctors . . .

  WRITER: Lie down.

  NIGHTINGALE: Can’t breathe lying—down . . .

  WRITER: I’ve brought you this pillow. I’ll put it back of your head. [He places the pillow gently in back of Nightingale.] Two plilows help you breathe.

  NIGHTINGALE [leaning weakly back]: Ah—thanks—better . . . Sit down.

  [A dim light comes up on the studio area as Tye, sitting on the table, lights a joint.]

  WRITER: Theren’ nowhere to sit.

  NIGHTINGALE: You mean nowhere not contaminated? [The writer sits.] —God’s got to give me time for serious work! Even God has moral obligations, don’t He? —Well, don’t He?

  WRITER: I think that morals are a human invention that He ignores as successfully as we do.

  NIGHTINGALE: Christ, that’s evil, that is infidel talk. [He crosses himself.] I’m a Cath’lic believer. A priest would say that you have fallen from Grace, boy.

  WRITER: What’s that you’re holding?

  NIGHTINGALE: Articles left me by my sainted mother. Her tortoise-shell comb with a mother-of-pearl handle and her silver framed mirror.

  [He sits up with difficulty and starts combing his hair before the mirror as if preparing for a social appearance.]

  Precious heirlooms, been in the Rossignol family three generations. I look pale from confinement with asthma. Bottom of box is—toiletries, cosmetics—please!

  WRITER: You’re planning to make a public appearance, intending to go on the streets with this—advanced case of asthma?.

  NIGHTINGALE: Would you kindly hand me my Max Factor, my makeup kit?!

  WRITER: I have a friend who wears cosmetics at night—they dissolve in the rain.

  NIGHTINGALE: If necessary, I’ll go into Sanctuary!

  [The writer utters a startled, helpless laugh; he shakes with it and leans against the stippled wall.]