***   No One Left To Burn  ***

Chapter 1

20

                Dawn came ever so slowly.  The first light of day finally appeared as a faint glow easing itself through the narrow gap in the tapestry drapes.

                I drifted in and out of sleep until the sun was well above the skyline of what I thought was a newly awakening city.    I hadn’t slept well.  I wasn’t what you would call well rested for having spent the past ten hours in bed.  They had been ten tumultuous hours of disturbed and troubled foundering.  I still felt like I could sleep for a week.   I thought I should feel spryer than I did, after ten hours in bed, even if it had been a somewhat skittish repose.

                I knew it had been ten hours because I’d gone to bed at eleven o’clock last night and the clock on the nightstand now said it was nine o’clock .  Nine o’clock !   Shit!  I needed an early start today.  And I didn’t get it.

                I flew out of bed, following the blankets that exploded off of me.  I moved about the room with lightning speed and surging adrenalin.  I was shaved, showered, dressed, and downstairs plopping ice cubes into scalding black coffee by nine-thirty.

                While I waited for the coffee to cool enough to not take the skin off my throat, I passed the time by observing the goings on at a long table across the room. It had been set up to serve breakfast for twenty young professional looking women who were having a meeting of some kind.  I knew how many there were because I counted them.

                I tried a sip of coffee.  It was still too hot.   I started looking at each of the women in the group and tried to decide which ones I’d have sex with.  My standards are fairly high, and a couple got eliminated real quickly.

                After I’d picked two blondes and a brunette I tried the coffee again.  Better, but not yet ready to drink, unless I wanted to completely destroy my taste buds.  I continued my evaluation and selected a redhead and another blonde to join the other lucky ones.

                I dropped another ice cube into the coffee and gave it a swirl with my spoon.  I took a sip.  It was good but a little cool.  The waitress happened by and topped it off.  Just right.  I drank the stuff while looking over the rim of the cup and selected another brunette.  That made three blondes, two brunettes, and one redhead. The count was six out of twenty.  Not bad.  The year I graduated from high school my standards weren’t as high, and the count would have been all twenty of them, plus the two waitresses pouring their coffee.

                I took the Chardon Seafood business card from my wallet and checked the address again.  The place was located on West Tchoupitoulas Street in an area that would be a bitch getting to this time of day because of all the traffic around the Riverwalk.

                The Riverwalk is a huge indoor mall built on the edge of the Mississippi River .  It has a zillion shops of all kinds and descriptions and an almost equal number of bars and restaurants.  They all serve one purpose and that is to separate the tourists from their money.   I didn’t put that quite right.  Their purpose is to separate the tourists’ money from their wallets and stash the cash in their tills.  Cha-ching.

                 Vehicle and pedestrian congestion around this flourishing rip-off establishment was impossible to deal with this time of day.  I was mentally visualizing the best route to get around the gridlock while standing in line to pay my check.

                “How you doing?” She said.  The voice came from behind me and sounded remotely familiar and more than somewhat sensual.  I turned to see what lovely young thing was addressing me.

                “Did you sleep well?” She asked with an impish smile that curled her soft mouth.

                Great Caesar’s ghost!

                “As a matter of fact I didn’t,” I said, while gawking at her wild, frizzled blonde hair, the color of shiny straw.

                “Too bad,” she consoled.

                “I tossed and turned all night.”

                “What a shame,” she said.   “I slept like a baby.”

                I could tell that she had, because she looked fresh and crisp and alive and her eyes were clear and twinkling.  How a person can look that fucking bright so early in the day is beyond me.  Then with a glance at my watch, I was promptly reminded that it was not really the day that was just budding, it was I who was tardy. 

                She was bubbling over and together we shuffled forward toward the cashier.  “If you toss and turn a lot at night, Rick, it could be because you are too tense.  You need to learn to relax.  Did you know that relaxation, true relaxation, is a skill that not everyone has and must be learned by many?   I can look at your face and tell by the hard set of your jaw that right now your entire body is very taut.  Your muscles are rigid.  I’ll bet you dream too, don’t you, Rick?”

                     I was surprised she remembered my name.  I quickly tried to recall hers, just in case I ever got the chance to say something and I wanted to use it when referring to her.

                “What I think you need, Rick, is to acquire the ability to loosen up, settle back and unbend when your daily routine becomes too stressful.  Good heavens just look at you right now.  Your nostrils are actually flaring.”

                So she slept like a baby last night, I thought.  So who gives a shit.  I felt like saying, well, well, fucking good for you.  You little twit.  It’s your goddamned fault that I’m standing here looking narcoleptic.

                “That’s what I do,” she said.

                “What?”

                “I teach relaxation. I help people learn to release.”

                “Release?”

                “I train in the art of massage.  Kneading the body stimulates the circulation and helps make the muscles and joints supple thus releasing tension.

                “To master the technique of total relaxation one must learn the complex functions of the psyche and how to control them, or at least, how to modify the way they interact with the stimuli of the outside surroundings.

                “That’s also what I do.  Psychophysiology.  I’m a psycho-physiologist.  I deal with the interaction between mental and physiological processes.   I’m teaching a seminar here at the Sheraton.  You’re welcome to sit in if you’d like.  It does, however, tend to get a little dry at times.”

                I thought about what she’d said and decided that the idea of me sitting in on what’s-her-name’s seminar would never make it very high on my list of things I’d really like to do.  It actually sounded a lot like bullshit to me.

                It was finally my turn to cough up.  While I paid my bill she continued talking.

                “I’ll be here at the hotel through Friday noon .  Then I’ll be going back home to Denver .  If you continue to have difficulties with restlessness and are unable to achieve a peaceful night’s sleep, perhaps we can talk.”

                She extracted a business card from her purse, penciled her room number on the back and thrust it at me as I pocketed my change.  When I eyed the card, I realized that I would have never come up with her name.  I remembered her saying it last evening, and I could also see why it was not retained for easy recall.  The card read, “Dr. Rafflesia Sismondi, PhD., psycho-physiologist, psycho-sexologist.  I read the card and then looked down at her.

                “What is a psycho-sexologist?”

                “Oh yes, I do that also,” she said.  “I deal with the psychological aspects of sexuality in contrast to the physical aspects.”

                It still sounded like a load of bullshit to me, but I didn’t have time for any further explanations.

                “Okay, Dr. Sismondi...”

                “Rafflesia.”

                “Okay, Rafflesia.   I’ll see how my day goes.  I’ll try my best to remain calm and not get uptight.  And later, if I need professional help modifying the way the complex functions of my psyche interact with the environment, well...” I wiggled her card and said,  “We’ll see.”

                I turned right coming out of the hotel parking garage and then right again onto Canal Street , heading north.  Only in New Orleans , people don’t refer to directions as north, south, east or west.  Here they say, toward the river, which is generally south; toward the lake, which is toward Lake Pontchartrain and is generally north.  West is generally toward uptown, and east was simply New Orleans East.

                So when I left the hotel parking garage, I turned toward uptown and then at Canal Street , which was only one block away, I turned again toward the lake.  I was heading away from the Riverwalk.

                At St. Charles Avenue I turned left and was again heading toward uptown.  My mind had sauntered off, and while I was making that maneuver, I just barely missed getting creamed by one of the electric street cars that run on St. Charles Avenue from the Central Business District, through uptown to the end of the line at Carollton just past Tulane University .

                The streetcar ride is another visitor thing I do when entertaining out of town guests.  For the price of a fare, which is still cheap, you can buy a tour up and down St. Charles Avenue past some of the most majestic homes in the south.  The cars are not air-conditioned.  The sides of the streetcars are mostly windows, which are almost always wide open, year around, rain or shine, hot or cold.

                But for safety sake keep your arms inside.  The branches of the trees lining the streetcar tracks are only inches away; and I know, because I’ve seen it happen, they can knock the shit out of you.  And by all means remain alert when turning your car left in front of the trolleys. 

                The shock of my near miss caused my meandering mind to return, and I was once again in complete control of my crafty faculties.  My plan was to travel on St. Charles Avenue until I got to Felicity, and then turn left to Orange Street , which would take me back toward the river and to Tchoupitoulas street .

                The building I was looking for was to the left off Orange on Tchoupitoulas Street .  I made the turn and started searching.  The area I turned into was light commercial, mostly small warehouses, several vegetable processing operations of varying sizes and a lot of seafood packers.

                Scattered in among the businesses, those that still showed signs of life, were those whose time of prosperity was clearly long past.  Many had their windows boarded up with big sheets of plywood.   Perhaps the pressed board held a faint hope for the future, a rebirth of the area.  Some were not boarded but left to stand as vulnerable to the elements and vandals as they’d stood the day the entrance doors were closed and locked for the very last time.  Most of the windows that had been left unboarded were broken.  Those were the buildings where hope for a future would someday be fulfilled only by a bulldozer or a crane and wrecking ball.

                The address I wanted was on the right side of the street, or on the riverside of Tchoupitoulas away from the lake but still back toward uptown.

                It’s damn easy to get messed up in New Orleans if you’re trying to find a strange place.  The streets don’t run, if you’ll excuse the expression, north and south or east and west.  They actually run pretty much, plus or minus forty-five degrees, to north/south.  The whole goddamned city is laid out at various angles away from the river whose meandering curves shape the city into a crescent.  So if you aren’t familiar with the area you’re going to, you can get really fucked up in a hurry.  I lucked out and spotted the address I was looking for painted on the front of the building and eased onto the clamshell parking lot without a hitch.

                The Chardon Seafood business was housed in a one-story white cinder block building.  White, wrought iron security grills protected all of the windows and the front entrance.  The iron was heavily flecked with spots of rust. 

                I opened the entrance gate, then the front door and stepped inside.  Nothing fancy here.  Old asbestos tiles covered the uneven cement floor.  There were five beat-up, uncomfortable looking chairs in the room.  They didn’t crowd the room, which would measure about twice the size as a master bedroom from Middle America .  Situated in the middle of the chairs, which were arranged in a half-assed circle, was a low rickety table with a Formica covered top.   The table was piled high with ancient issues of Field and Stream Magazine, several old Playboys and there, right on top was an open issue of Penthouse.  I looked down at the magazine and I could hardly believe the pose the girl in the photo was in as she gazed back up at me from Guccione’s artistic, literary work.  The only things she had on were a pair of spike-heeled shoes and a broad smile.  She was lying on her back with her head on a large satin pillow.  Her knees were drawn up and spread wide apart.  She was reaching down deep into her crotch with both hands and was unsophisticatedly holding her labia open wide.  It was some sight.  Bright pink and looking wet and warm.  It reminded me of the yawning, gaping mouth of a grinning, toothless African chimpanzee.

                Jesus Christ.  What some people will do for money.  Terrible.  It was in such very bad taste.  Disgusting.  Have they no shame.  To give the glossy portrait any level of credible aestheticism the fucking spike-heeled shoes had to go.

                Straight across the room from the door I came in, was a wall with a sliding opaque glass window.  The kind of window you’d see in a doctor’s office. It was open.  I walked up and peered in, half expecting to see a nurse in a stiff, starched white uniform.  Not so.  The little office area was empty.

                To the right of where I was standing at the little window was a door that must have been to another office.  I figured that to be the case because I could see a door from the nurse’s station that would open into it.

                Two doors to one office.  That must be where the boss was.  Maybe that’s where the nurse was, in the doctor’s office with the doors closed.  Maybe there’s some hanky panky going on here.

                I walked over to the boss’s door and started to bang on it.  Before I could do that, however, I heard a muffled noise like the sound of a door latch clicking closed.  It came from somewhere behind the little office.  There was another door exiting the nurse’s station through the back wall, probably leading to the plant processing area.  The room I was in was quiet again, but back there somewhere I knew there had to be somebody.

                I filled my lungs full in preparation for calling out a hardy “Hello - is anybody here?”  I let the air out with a wheeze when I heard the muted sound of a toilet flushing, followed shortly by the splattering sound of a running faucet.

                Again I heard the muffled noise that sounded like a door latch clicking closed.  Then a soft tap, tap, tap echo of shoe heels when contacting the concrete floor.  The sound was coming toward me, getting louder with each step.  Someone was walking down the hall behind the small office.

                The door in the back wall swung open and I was back in business again.  The person, who inhabited the office that I suspected to be that of the nurse, clerk, receptionist, secretary or whatever, had returned.  She was startled when she saw me standing there and dropped the paper towel she was using to wipe her hands.  I was glad to see her paying strict attention to the ever-present need for personal hygiene.

                She gave me a friendly smile as she walked over to where I was standing.  She was a curvy and attractive woman around sixty, short.  Real short - not quite five feet tall, but she carried herself straight up and was proud looking.  I’ll bet she felt six feet tall on the inside.  Her hair was brownish, lightly streaked with gray.  Her skin was fresh and clean and her brown eyes glistened.  Jesus Christ! I was in a state of shock. It was my Aunt Beatrice Wallace.  Well not really, but shit fire, she did look exactly like her.  I couldn’t believe the resemblance.

                I stood there with a boggled mind while the woman continued walking toward me.  The picture in my mind suddenly flashed back to my last teenage summer vacation in Gunnison , Colorado .  That’s where my parents used to send me every July because it’s high and dry and cool there.  And believe me, it was way too fucking hot and humid where we lived in Grand Island , Nebraska .  So, as soon as the wheat harvest was over, I was off to cool, colorful Colorado for a month long visit with Aunt Beatrice and Uncle Ted Wallace and my most delightful cousin, Abigail.

                Over the many summers I’d been going to Colorado to visit the Wallace’s, Abigail and I had become very close, very close indeed.  Kissing cousins you could say.  I’d never met a girl with whom I had so much in common.  I liked sports and she liked sports.  I liked music and she liked music.  I liked art, and she liked art; and so on and so on.

                I’d just graduated from Grand Island High School .  Abigail was a year younger than I was and she still had a year to go at Gunnison High. I guess I must have been seventeen then and Abigail would have been sixteen.  If she hadn’t been my first cousin, I would have stolen her away from Aunt Beatrice and Uncle Ted and Gunnison High and made her my wife.

                But, Abigail Wallace was, in fact, my first cousin and we could not marry.  Sigh.  What we could do, however, to console our savage impulses and to gratify our adolescent desires - was fuck.  And we did that every chance we had, because I liked fucking and she liked fucking.  And that is wherein lies the rub, my loyal reader.

                The rub came in the form of Aunt Beatrice who walked into the barn one cool and breezy afternoon and saw her lovely daughter Abigail on her back on top of the hay stack with her legs thrust high above her head and crying out youthful wails of passion, while I lay atop her with my white, hairless bare ass rhythmically jerking downward with each joyous plunge.

                I mentioned that this happened during my last summer vacation in Gunnison .  Well, it was the last day of my last summer vacation in Gunnison .  And if my Uncle Ted hadn’t gone to the calf auction in Montrose, it might have been my last fucking day on earth.  Aunt Beatrice had me packed, at the Gunnison county airport, checked in and on board the plane to Grand Island in less than one hour.

                Although that was my last visit to Gunnison in cool, colorful Colorado , I still occasionally think about my cousin Abigail Wallace.

                The nurse, receptionist, clerk, secretary stopped in front of me and asked if she could help me. 

                “Yes,” I said.  “I’d like to see Mr. Whitney.”

                “I’m sorry,” she said.   “ Mr. Whitney won’t be in today.  He called in early this morning and said he wasn’t feeling well.  But he did say that he thought he’d be in tomorrow.  Could someone else help you?”

                “Huh?” Another of my brilliant responses.

                She repeated it again like she thought I was fucking deaf.  Only this time a little louder, enunciating each word.  “He-won’t-be-in-today. He-called-in-about-an-hour...”

                “Yes, yes, I understand what you said.  I just wasn’t prepared for it.  You see, I have a plan; well, I had a plan.  You know, wham, bam, thank you ma’am, and now...”

                “Huh?” Came her shrewdly worded reply.  Neither of us, at that moment, would be thought of as members of the intelligentsia.

                Whitney wasn’t in!  Shit!  I scrunched my eyes closed hand over my face.  I intended to talk to Charlie today and I didn’t really give a shit if he was sick.  I knew I could get his address and phone number from the book, but I asked the nurse, receptionist, clerk, and secretary for them anyway in the interest of saving time.  It was a good thing that I did.

                “I can give them to you,” she offered, “but they won’t do you any good.  He won’t be there.”

                “Huh?”

                “He won’t be there.  Mr. Whitney moved into his new apartment this weekend, actually yesterday, and he hasn’t given me his new address or phone number for our records.  Perhaps you can come back tomorrow.  I’m sure Mr. Whitney will be in then.  I think he just has a little case of the flu today.”

                She started to sound like what she really wanted was for yours truly to get the hell out of there.  I decided to oblige her and said I’d try to stop by the next day.

                 I walked toward the exit and my eyes fell again upon the open Penthouse.  For some very strange reason I had a sudden vision in my head of my Aunt Beatrice.  She was shaking her pudgy finger and scowling at me from those pink, wet, warm folds.

                Jesus!  Talk about repressed, latent feelings of rejection.  I thought again of my delightful cousin Abigail Wallace as I reached down to the pile of magazines and flipped the Penthouse closed.

End Chapter 1 - Go Back

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