Mr. Jim And The Three Jeeps
In New Orleans the Sculptor's husband is running one kidney light and if anyone is casting a PSA to encourage major organ transplant donation he would be a good candidate for lead actor. While he always looked perfectly fine, somehow the kidney he gave up to his niece back in October is causing him to exude a glow rivaled only by the pregnant mother.
I have the headphones on listening, I think, to Morphine. I'm prepping the sunny side of Rocheblave for painting, about two years too late. I have just returned from across the street where I have stolen a piece of copper wire attached to the Chauffeurs fence and a wire coat hanger from his construction dumpster for use in tying back the bougainvillea growing up the side of the house. Chauffeur bought the house next to him and the lot next to that since the last time I saw him, to bring the total of his real estate holdings to a quarter acre. He is gutting the new acquisition, hence the dumpster, even though he is not really completely finished with his first, original project.
Trying to coat hanger lasso the bougainvillea but avoid the wicked thorns and out of my periphery I see a car parked at the curb in front of Chauffeurs. I fail on the first lasso and a get small puncture to my wrist, but my cat, Virginia, left behind and living it up five floors high in New York, has done much worse with tooth and claw.
Between songs I can hear the turning over of an engine without petrol or with a bad spark plug wire.
A man calls out from the parked broke down vehicle, a late model Jeep by the way, in much fresher condition than the one I left behind in NY. I pulled the plugs from my ears and walked across the street while the young man leaned his head out the window. He has short cropped hair and kind sad eyes and is advertising a hint of past life by way of the teardrop tattoo. He introduces himself as Darrien and I say Jim and he immediately repeats Mr. Jim. Once you get old there is no turning back. He has run out of gas and is wondering do I have a gas can and where might be the nearest gas station. The gas station is close but the best I can do for a gas can is an empty bleach container, which I encourage him to clean out first at the water hose on the side of my house. There is also a water bottle we can cut the bottom off of to use as a funnel. I offer to drive him over to the Chevron and he then admits to not having any money. But he could call an aunt to bring him some. I'm glad to cover him for a gallon and we get in Bernadette's Toyota parked in the driveway. I have put my razor knife on the ground before getting in the car to seem less like a serial killer, but I forgot my wallet and have to go back in the house to get it. Bernadette is at the desk illustrating for a major children's syndicate. I find my wallet and go back out and Darrien has gotten out of the car and is waiting beside it. I don't immediately see the razor knife on the ground where I left it but I'm not feeling the worry of it. Darrien, I'm certain, had gotten out of the car to remove any doubt that he was standup, and could be trusted not to rifle through the glovebox.
We head off to the Chevron and once he learns I have come from New York he says you should have stayed there, you won't like it here. How he wishes he could go to New York. I try to comfort his grass is greener mentality with a short good and bad of NY description. I explain my past briefly but tell him I know what he means, there is something different and hard to define about this New Orleans that has risen from the muck. It has been two years now since my last visit and in that time there has been progress. Brad Pitt, the movie star, whom many wish would get less credit because movie stars are vacuous, has helped to start the rebuilding of an entire neighborhood, with homes whose aggressive architectural statement seem more interested in the future than the past. The Musicians Village is another large block of impressive rebuilding effort and elsewhere throughout the city new homes with innovative design are being built and if not at exactly a rate to effectively compete with the pre-existing blight, still at a rate to promote some hope that a new and better city might be developing here so many years now after the flood. But since my last visit what was then only talk is now reality and that is the removal of the Lafitte projects, all eight blocks long and two wide of it. The live oak trees are still there and as is customary they left a building or two but it is hard to drive down Orleans between Rocheblave and Claiborne without feeling a pang of loss, even if is the type of pang you might feel when your father dies in prison where he was serving a life sentence for killing your mother.
I slide my card through the reader and punch in my billing zip code and Darrien starts pumping the gas. He slows down shy of a gallon and asks me how much he should pump. I put on my reading glasses and squint at the plastic jug and see that it holds almost a gallon and a half. I tell him to stop at about a gallon and a quarter so we don't slosh gas over the seats of Bernadette and her sister the Restauranteur's shiny late model Toyota. We ended up trading temporarily my somewhat suspect Jeep for the the Toyota so we could travel with more peace of mind. Well, actually, the brother brought his Jeep in from Long Island for the Restauranteur to drive in our absence, and he took my Jeep to sit at his curb over the Christmas holidays and brushed off my apologies for junking up his street rep for two weeks by saying—don't worry about it.
Darrien and me we get back to his Jeep and I'm going to hold the water bottle funnel for him but he says he doesn't think he'll need it and so I just walk away and go back to work. I put my earphones in and lasso the bougainvillea successfully, and while doing so see the razor knife on the ground where I left it, just slightly obscured by a blown leaf. I glance over but am trying not to be nosy while he attempts to start the car and it just keeps turning over and over. But then I hear the engine catch and he is running on gas now so I look over and he is looking over at me and I just nod and continue twisting the wire around the piece of scrap wood I have driven into the soft ground as a stake to hold back the bougainvillea. Darrien pulls away from the curb but stops in the middle of the street and leans his head out the window, and waits, silently. I walk over and he sticks his arm out the window and I shake his hand and he thanks me, Mr. Jim, again, and I say no problem you are welcome. Then he confides to me that he could hook me up with some green and I say if he had any on him I would have just a taste but if he doesn't have it on him I would not want enough to make it worth his while. He offers to go get me some and I say no but thank him sincerely for offering and that seems to make him happy, like we square now, and Darrien drives off easterly on Rocheblave.
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