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On the Downhill Side
“In love, there is always one who kisses and one who offers the cheek.”
--French proverb
I knew she was a virgin because she was able to ruffle the silken mane of my unicorn. Named
Lizette, she was a Grecian temple in which no sacrifice had ever been made. Vestal virgin of New
Orleans, found walking without shadow in the thankgod coolness of cockroach-crawling Louisiana
night. My unicorn whinnied, inclined his head, and she stroked the ivory spiral of his horn.
Much of this took place in what is called the Irish Channel, a strip of street in old New
Orleans where the lace curtain micks had settled decades before; now the Irish were gone and the
Cubans had taken over the Channel. Now the Cubans were sleeping, recovering from the muggy
today that held within its hours the déjà vu of muggy yesterday, the déjà rêvé of intolerable
tomorrow. Now the crippled bricks of side streets off Magazine had given up their nightly ghosts,
and one such phantom had come to me, calling my unicorn to her--thus, clearly, a virgin--and I
stood waiting.
Had it been Sutton Place, had it been a Manhattan evening, and had we met, she would have
kneeled to pet my dog. And I would have waited. Had it been Puerto Vallarta, had it been 20” 36’ N,
105” 13’ W, and had we met, she would have crouched to run her fingertips over the oil-slick hide
of my iguana. And I would have waited. Meeting in streets requires ritual. One must wait and not
breathe too loud, if one is to enjoy the congress of the nightly ghosts.
She looked across the fine head of my unicorn and smiled at me. Her eyes were a shade of
gray between onyx and miscalculation. “Is it a bit chilly for you?” I asked.
“When I was thirteen,” she said, linking my arm, taking a tentative two steps that led me
with her, up the street, “or perhaps I was twelve, well no matter, when I was that approximate age, I
had a marvelous shawl of Belgian lace. I could look through it and see the mysteries of the sun and
the other stars unriddled. I’m sure someone important and very nice has purchased that shawl from
an antique dealer, and paid handsomely for it.”
It seemed not a terribly responsive reply to a simple question.
“A queen of the Mardi Gras Ball doesn’t get chilly,” she added, unasked. I walked along
beside her, the cool evasiveness of her arm binding us, my mind a welter of answer choices, none
satisfactory.
Behind us, my unicorn followed silently. Well, not entirely silently. His platinum hoofs
clattered on the bricks. I’m afraid I felt a straight pin of jealousy. Perfection does that to me.
“When were you queen of the Ball?”
The date she gave me was one hundred and thirteen years before.
It must have been brutally cold down there in the stones.
There is a little book they sell, a guide to manners and dining in New Orleans: I’ve looked:
nowhere in the book do they indicate the proper responses to a ghost. But then, it says nothing about
the wonderful cemeteries of New Orleans’ West Bank, or Metairie. Or the gourmet dining at such
locations. One seeks, in vain, through the mutable, mercurial universe, for the compleat guide. To
everything. And, failing in the search, one makes do the best one can. And suffers the frustration,
suffers the ennui.
Perfection does that to me.
We walked for some time, and grew to know each other, as best we’d allow. These are some
of the high points. They lack continuity. I don’t apologize, I merely pointed it out, adding with some
truth, I feel, that most liaisons lack continuity. We find ourselves in odd places at various times, and
