New Suns Read online

  So things like that started adding up, and Johnny wasn’t working for a while, and he wasn’t making money off comedy at all, and I was kind of carrying us. I still had enough to save, and it’s not like either one of us was big eaters, and we don’t have no kids, so it wasn’t the end of the world, but god damn. And then he was like, “You see this bullshit?”

  I was folding laundry. I don’t like to say it like that, because I don’t want people to think that Johnny doesn’t help out around the house because he does. Neither of us is big on chores, I fucking hate them, and he feels the same way, so what we do is any time we can, we break up the chore into parts and we mix and match. Like I’ll wash the dishes and put the laundry in and maybe even take it out, and then Johnny will fold it and put it away, and put the dishes away, too, but actually, the day I mean, it was the other way around. I was doing the putting-away, but that was because Johnny had washed and dried, so I was just doing my part.

  Of course, I knew what Johnny meant because it was all over the news and everywhere. You know how it was last summer with the monuments, and with the football players and I know I’m supposed to have an opinion on it, but the right opinion depends on who you are talking to and I feel like I don’t have that much skin in the game, you know? I mean, sure, we were taught that the monuments are there to remind us of our heritage or whatever, but people act like our heritage can’t be bad, and like taking them away would dishonor the dead or something, but I feel like a statue is a statue is a statue. My Uncle Russ says what’s next, they take down Mount Rushmore? But didn’t we kill up all the Indians and take their holy ground and carve a bunch of Great White Fathers into it? So, like, maybe take that down, too, but Jesus Christ if I ever said that, I would get an earful, and the truth is I don’t even care that much.

  I remember when Dale Lubin got shot right in his fucking face and they ruled it a suicide, but come on, his hands were ziptied behind his back. Dale was just as white as me and Johnny, but he grew up poor and he was still poor, and when I think about the cops who shot him like that just going home to their families like nothing happened and just living their lives, I get real mad, and I have to stop thinking about it. That’s what Johnny brings up every time someone mentions all the black kids getting shot in the news and he says, well, you didn’t see fuckin’ Dale’s face all over CNN, and I mean, he’s not wrong, but he’s not right either.

  Anyway, Johnny was talking about the football players kneeling during the “Star-Spangled Banner” and how when we were at Sunday dinner with his cousins last week everyone was talking about how disrespectful it is to the flag and the troops and that’s what a lot of people are saying on TV and stuff, too, but I been watching football all my life, and since when do the players come out for the Anthem? Not since always, I’ll tell you that much.

  But I listened to Johnny gripe about it a minute while I folded clothes, and really, I was folding too slow because the smell of clothes fresh out the dryer is maybe the best smell in the entire Earth except for the smell of a baby’s scalp.

  Johnny said, “It’s a goddamn disgrace is what it is,” and that’s the first time I felt it. Like I remember when I was real little, and my family would go up to see my Uncle Russ in Chicago at Christmas time. He had this big old house just all piled on top of itself. Like you’d go up a flight of stairs, and you’d think to yourself, that’s it. No more house. Nobody would put more house on top of this much house. But when I started, I started on the ground floor where we always came in at the side door by the garage, and of course there was more house, because for one thing, stairs led down from there into the basement, but there was always more house. I would wake up in the twin bed at like five in the morning, and I could just feel the whole house full of family sleeping way above me and below me, and I knew I wasn’t by myself and I knew that if criminals or monsters or like enemy soldiers busted in, there were a bunch of people who would literally fight to make sure they couldn’t get at me and kill me, and it was the warmest feeling, and that was how I knew what love and family were. It was that kind of occupiedness-of-our-surroundings with other quieter folks.

  Right then, it was like there were two of me. One of me was normal and listening to Johnny grouse about millionaire football players with so much money that they could take the time to disrespect the Flag before doing their goddamn job, but the other me was like a twin sister, a Siamese twin that had been asleep my whole life, but she was awake now, and she could feel that not-aloneness. She could feel someone else, and she did not know if that Someone Else would be willing to fight criminals or whoever to save her.

  And Johnny said, “Honey. Hey. Earth to Alaina-Rose. Where you gone to?”

  And I said, “Nowhere. I’m right here with you, Johnny Lamarque.” Because it feels so good to hear him say my name, and it tastes so good to say his.

  THE NEXT TIME I noticed was at work maybe a week later? There is this one guy named Ronald who is not even that old. He has MS, and also he’s not right in the head, but I think the not-rightness is connected to his condition? Well, as soon as I started working there, my supervisor Yvonne told me that Ronald doesn’t believe a healthy person should have a bowel movement more than once a week, so he would just fight to hold it in as much as he could and when it came out, it was just god-awful. Yvonne showed me what to do and how to do it, and let me tell you, I will not mention any more of that because Christ alive. Anyway, I only mention it now because this was one of those days where Ronald lost the battle and actually went and I was getting rid of the stuff into the toilet, and trying not to really look at it, let alone smell it because like I said: Christ alive.

  And I was in the middle of reaching for the toilet handle when I knew there was somebody else in the bathroom with me. That feeling of not-aloneness was stronger this time, and I mean, I know I’m only nineteen, but you know how it is when you experience something that’s not in any of the movies or books that you’ve ever read or anything like that. Like, I mean, the hair did stand up along my arms, and I felt a sensation like cold wet fingertips touching the back of my neck, but there was more to it than that. There was kind of a sound that wasn’t a sound like I read one time about this deaf guy who was near an explosion, and the closest he ever came to hearing anything was feeling the vibration of it through his feet? It was like that. It was like there was this sense that I wasn’t born with, and something was trying to connect with it and had to translate itself to my body some other way.

  And so I knew someone was with me, but I also knew that person wasn’t paying any attention to me. Like I knew they were focused on themselves so that if I could see them, they would be standing at the sink staring at themselves in the mirror, but they were as aware of me as I was of them—but not quite, because I knew that if I turned around to look at the mirror, I would not see anyone there, and also there was not anybody there because the person I sensed was not a person.

  I asked Yvonne about it when we were smoking together out back. I love her so much. She is an older mixed lady whose hair is so nice it looks like a wig. Like seriously, someone should take her hair and make wigs just like that in every color and sell them to drag queens at Fifi’s and to anybody who wants to have just killer hair.

  Yvonne tossed her fake-but-not-fake hair and was like, “You mean, like ghosts?”

  And I said, “Yes. No. Yes, but not like ghosts.” And I searched for an explanation with my free hand. “I mean, like, working here, did you ever feel like you weren’t alone when you were sure you were alone, but not like there was a person there with you. Like, something that’s not a person, that never was a person, but also isn’t bad or scary?”

  And she was like, “Girl, what?”

  And I laughed, you know, and I said, “Shit, girl! You should see your face right now!”

  And she didn’t buy it at first. She was like, “Is you joking me?”

  And I cackled, but realer than before, and I said, “Come on!”

  BUT I KNOW th
ere’s no ghosts. Like, I know. If ghosts were a thing, my mom or my Grandma Rall would have come to me by now, and not only have they not contacted me, but I’ve never even felt them watching me. Any time I’ve seen them or talked to them in dreams, I could tell it wasn’t them, that it was just more of me, you know? Like, in that one psych class I took at the community college back in Lafayette, Mr. Charm taught us about how other people in dreams aren’t really other people, they’re just also you representing people and other stuff to yourself. It makes sense because can you imagine if all the things and places you dreamed about were real? Where would they go when you wake up? Who would be responsible for clearing them away and storing them like the sets for high school drama productions and stuff?

  I talked to Johnny about it, and he was like, “Those things and people aren’t you. They’re just projections created by your mind, and when you wake up, they’re uncreated, and so they’re just not.” We were punishingly high.

  But that makes even less sense to me. Uncreated? What is that? I took physics in high school, and my God, what a shit-show that was, but at least I know that you can’t just uncreate matter or whatever. Like, it has to go somewhere. It has to become energy or something.

  I think about that, sometimes. About what it would be like to be unborn. Uncreated. You would too, if you saw what I’ve seen.

  OKAY, SO JOHNNY started picking up some work here and there. Like he would go in and be an extra on TV shows and in movies, and then Christy Darmody posted on Facebook that somebody dropped out of his monthly showcase he does at the Joy, We There Yet at the last minute. He needed anybody who could do a solid ten, and Johnny was the first one to step up, so just like that, he got on the show. This was a big deal. It was the first showcase Johnny got since we moved here, and it pays two hundred dollars.

  I came home from work that night, and Johnny was in his greasepaint. He looked just like he did in high school, but without the dreds, and it blew me away. He was wearing a pineapple shirt and cargo shorts and sandals with socks, and I was like, What…?

  He just looked me straight in the eye, and he was like, “I’m Hemi Boufee the Parrothead Juggalo. Gimme some Faygo and a cheeseburger, and I’ll eat that shit in paradise!” I can’t do it right, but it was a scream.

  What Christy didn’t tell anybody is that Vinny Doppler was in town doing that Stagecoach Mary movie and that he was doing half an hour to close. By the time we got to the Joy, word had gotten out, and the place was packed. Johnny did his ten, and people were howling. I looked at the crowd, and I saw the lights go on behind everybody’s eyes the second he did his intro, and he leaned on that catch phrase without being hacky about it. He destroyed. Then Vinny came out and killed even harder. It was—God. It was the best.

  In the green room after the show, Vinny saw Johnny after Johnny washed off his paint and was like, “Holy shit. I remember you from Laffy, my dude! Who turned you into a comic?”

  Johnny was like a plant in one of those timelapse videos. He unfurled. He’d been eating shit at open mics for months, and now Vinny. Fucking. Doppler was calling him a comic.

  VINNIE TOOK US everywhere that night. We went to Titties and Ditties at Candomble’s. We went to the back room at Troy’s. Johnny was beyond thrilled. He didn’t even get a big head or anything. He just listened to everything Vinnie had to say.

  I felt more of them, though. Beings like the one at work, like the one in the house that time. They were everywhere. All over the streets in the French Quarter. They threaded through the crowds on Frenchmen outside the jazz clubs and restaurants. They stood in with the audience at every club. They crowded into every bar. They are aware of us. They see us when we think we’re alone.

  The one at the apartment wasn’t there when we got home. I don’t know where it was, but it was just us in our little shotgun that night. I called in sick to work. I’m not one to do that. I’m not one to call in just because I’m hung over, but I was jumpy and out-of-it, and I knew there were more at the Home than the one that was with me in the bathroom.

  “Hon, you okay?” Johnny asked me right before we turned in. “You seem a little weird.”

  “This has been the greatest night of your life,” I said.

  “Uh, yeah,” he said. “Probably. Definitely. Definitely.”

  “Well, I’m your person, and I’m happy for you,” I said. “More than happy. I’m ecstatic.”

  He looked at me for a long time, like he was trying to figure out if I was telling the truth. I was, though, and he could see it. He just nodded.

  “So, let’s talk about it in the morning.”

  I DREAMED OF Grandma Rall that night. Except it wasn’t her. It wasn’t me, either. It was one of them. We were back at Uncle Russ’s house, and the smell of Christmas dinner cooking was all through the house. Seafood dressing. Dirty rice. Etoufée. Mirlitons. And pies: mincemeat, strawberry rhubarb, chess pie.

  Grandma Rall sat at the kitchen table, her back to me. She was naked, and I could see the rolls of fat at her sides. I knew it wasn’t her, but I felt bad for her. I felt bad that the thing had her body just out like that. She would have been so embarrassed.

  I asked it what it wanted from me.

  It turned in the chair, and I almost saw its face. I backed up against the dishwasher and the dishwasher turned on. Startled me. It started gesturing with its hands, with both its hands—and I couldn’t quite see everything it was doing. I understood just like it was speaking clearly like you and me right now.

  no

  “What do you mean? Why are you watching us?”

  nearby

  “What are you watching for? What are you hoping to see?”

  nothing seek nothing except

  “Except? Except what?”

  for under the blown apart without wholeness unkind of mercy

  “What?” An aching feeling stole over me then. It was like loneliness, but not. It was like a song I’d heard but didn’t quite remember. It was like being at the wrong end of a telescope, and then being crowded out of myself.

  It stopped answering. It was—The whole time, I felt like it was extremely difficult for it to communicate with me. Like, it would pause for a long time after everything I said, and then it would answer, like it was translating my words to itself. When it stopped responding, it was like it had reached the end of its ability to understand or to make itself understood, and so it just dropped its borrowed hands to either side of the chair and waited.

  I willed myself awake and there was blood on both sheets. My period had started in the night.

  JOHNNY WAS GONE all day and into the evening. It didn’t occur to me until he texted around four that he was with Vinny on the set. In the meantime, I tried to go for a walk in City Park, but they were everywhere. They stood on the neutral grounds, staring at traffic. They were out front of every home and every business, and I knew they were inside, too. There are so many of them. So so many.

  I called my friend Eileen from JP’s and asked her if she’d felt anything weird. I explained.

  “Naw, baby, that’s fucked up. So they like ghosts, but not ghosts?”

  “They’re not ghosts. They’re—They were never alive. They’re too alien, but I don’t think that’s even the right word, because I think maybe they’ve always been here.”

  “Damn. But, like, they out of phase, or some shit? Like they live at a angle to us?”

  “Right! That’s right!” I said. I almost jumped up and down. “Like if you could turn in exactly the right direction, or see from exactly the right angle, they’d be there. But you can’t, because the angle doesn’t exist.”

  “You should talk to my cousin Pharell. He teaches astronomy at Tulane. He know all about Planck signals and baryons and shit.”

  “What the fuck is a baryon?”

  “Girl, don’t start me to lying,” Eileen said. “That’s some shit he mentioned at Mamaw house don’t make a lick of muhfuckin sense.”

  TALKING TO EILEEN made me feel bett
er. She was always good for a laugh, and it didn’t solve my problem, but I put her suggestion in my back pocket, you know? Like it made me feel better that there was a thing I hadn’t done yet that I could do. Once I had that, I didn’t feel like I even needed to come see you. I couldn’t stop thinking about the thing from my dream, and I knew I’d have to talk to somebody—like some authority or something, eventually. I just wish I’d—I wish I’d talked to someone before it happened.

  nothing seek not except

  Word salad. Like you hear from a schizo street person, but—except I knew it wasn’t. I knew it had told me something important.

  Johnny was lit when he got home. It was no big deal—he’d earned himself some leeway, the way he’d been busting his ass. He kissed me hello and plopped down in front of the TV and started flipping through channels. More of the same. The President daring North Korea to nuke us. Pundits yelling at each other on the news. Shootings. Beatings. Rapes. Torture basements. I couldn’t take it. I went to bed early.

  I WOKE TO Johnny standing in the bedroom doorway, blinking at me through a haze of pot smoke and too many beers. “Hey,” I said.

  He didn’t answer right away, and in the silence, I realized that something—some thing—stood between us. And you know what? It wasn’t so bad. For the first time, I was as aware of one of them as I would have been of anybody else, and it wasn’t frightening or off-putting. It just was.

  “Hey,” Johnny said, finally.