---

---

 

I should have noticed when my wedding ring fell out of my pocket. I should have heard it strike and plink on the concrete floor in Big Willie’s dressing room behind the bar when I slung my jacket over a chair. (Jacket? In New Orleans in May? Get real, girl.) But I didn’t hear it. All I heard was Big Willie’s chocolate voice. All over me.

He laid me out on the broke-down couch, careful, like a decorator lays out fabric samples. I reached for his white fuzzy head and thought, this here is an old man, older than my husband, the oldest ever. I thought, why am I with this old man? But then I couldn’t think straight, because Big Willie was keeping the promise he made to me on the bandstand when he slid his horn down from his mouth and he sang to me, only to me. Something about a dance: one leg east, one leg west, Big Willie in between, doin’ his best.

Liquored up, in heat with an old blues man in a room off a bar, I did not hear the wedding ring fall. The wedding ring was in my pocket because I planned it, too, Lord help me. My last night in the Big Easy and I wanted to press myself against the inky heat so I could print it out back home. I wasn’t too drunk to know better. I wanted his hands to smooth me the way he touch that trumpet. And I wanted to hold those fingers in my mouth. Lick each one. I wanted to sing back to him the old Sam & Dave song, “Hold On, I’m Coming.”

My husband, the gastroenterologist, left the club early because he needed his sleep before the medical meetings in the morning. He left me with friends, who promised to see me home. And I told them to go along, which suited them, that I would take a cab back to the hotel after Big Willie’s last set. I work nights, I explained. I couldn’t get to sleep if I went home now anyway. I did, at the end, take a cab. Hours later, after Big Willie and I sweated it out on his couch. Over and over.

I admired his nature.

“You the one been drinking, honey.” He laughed, a big gold-toothed laugh, and poked me in the chest with his finger. “And I takes my vitamins. Vitamin V.” A chuckle, deep in his chest. “You a nurse.” He pronounced it noice, rhymes with voice. “You know about Vitamin V.”

Yeah, I did. But it was book learning.

When Big Willie put me in the cab, he cupped my elbow and whispered, “Come on back, dahlin. Big Willie be here.” He slipped me a business card that I stuck in my purse.

If only I had noticed the ring was gone in the cab. Maybe I could have caught him before he left the club. Before I had tiptoed into the hotel room and woke Charles. “Bren? You have fun?” He rolled over and slept again before I spoke.

That’s when I felt for the ring, from guilt. The clock radio flashed “4:30 a.m., 4.30 a.m.” Twelve hours until the plane took off. In the bathroom, I pulled the card out of my purse. It had print on both sides. One side read:

WILLIAM WASHINGTON

HANDYMAN

A phone number, no address. The other side read:

BIG WILLIE

BLUESMAN

On the bluesman side, no telephone number, but another sentence, “After six, By Appointment Only.” Then the address of the club. I wouldn’t be there after six. I would have to call the handyman number in the morning, after Charles left. What if it was a home number? What if a woman answered?

I wasn’t worried that Charles would notice the ring was gone tonight. And he’d roll out early. But I had to get it back before he come out of the meetings. He could miss some things, but we been married two years in March. He still holds my hand, takeoff and landing.

What is wrong with my mind? I look at myself in the mirror, sallow and puffy under the fluorescent lights. I ain’t plotted like this since I was a kid, trying to get around my parents. Now Charles was the grown-up, and I was the teenager, sneaking out to have sex. I could hear my mother, dead almost ten years, speak: “Girl, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.” And I was.

I brushed my teeth, and flossed. I floss no matter what. Charles and I both do that. He’s not so old. Closer to me than the horn player. But Charles was born serious. He had glasses before he started school.

“He wouldn’t last long in the wild, would he?” my brother said when they met. No, he wouldn’t. “I thought you said you never would marry a doctor.”

I did say that. I said it ever since nursing school. It was easy to say that then, when I was already married. To an artist of the people. Back in the day, I went for the flash. The dashiki, the dreads. Our son’s name is Anwar. (Charles’s son name Trevor. The only black Trevor in the history of the planet. His mother is white.)

I started nights to get away from doctors. I still work permanent nights. I found out I could keep watch just like those shepherds in the Bible.

I turned out the bathroom light and climbed into the king bed. Charles hardly stirred, the bed was so big. At home we sleep on a queen, because Charles blames the king bed his wife bought when he went into practice for the end of his first marriage. He says that a bed for a married couple shouldn’t be so big that you can’t accidentally touch.

I couldn’t sleep. I could smell Big Willie on me, a deep, sweet smell of sweat and rum and cigar smoke. Charles always smelled clean. God did not make him funky.

We met at the bedside of a man who was vomiting blood in the ICU. Even there, called in from home and sleep, Charles looked crisp and smelled like deodorant soap. The patient was hysterical at the sight of his own blood. I talked him down so that Charles could get the consent to put a tube in the stomach to look for the source of bleeding. Once the patient agreed to the procedure, we could sedate him. Charles asked if I had studied meditation. I was flattered and impressed, because the answer was yes.

He’s the soul of moderation, in thought, word, and deed, just like in church. Even his color is moderate, not too light, not too dark. We have friendly, pleasant sex and cook breakfast together on weekends. He is the companion I never thought I would have, after years of living alone, raising Anwar alone. Charles won me over with his steadiness. Only here, I am a black girl again, listening to the West Indian accents of our neighbors. Listening to my father’s Louis Armstrong records. “Wild child,” my father called me, when I swung upside down on the monkey bars, and my thick hair, loosed from its braids, billowed over my face.

I feel like the charms of this city are lost on Charles, that the meetings might just as well be back home in Chicago, for all the difference it made. When we met for dinner, he told me about the new developments in gastroenterology. I told him that the white plantation owners considered octoroons the most desirable mistresses.

“Better than white?” he teased me, touching my tan arm.

“Better than white.”

---

I must have slept after all, because I start awake when Charles kisses me goodbye.

“I’m all packed. Call the bellboy to take the bags, don’t try to take them yourself, okay?”

“Okay,” I mumble. “When will you be back?”

“Twelve-thirty or one.” Noon. That’s my deadline. “We can grab lunch here, or at the airport.”

“Okay.” I’m not worried about lunch.

He’s out the door, but it’s too early to call. I set the alarm for eight-thirty and roll over. Check out time is eleven and I’m packed. I sleep fitfully, dreaming that I have lost Charles in a castle. I keep opening doors to rooms full of French provincial furniture, but he’s not there. Over a bed there’s a pale Christ on a crucifix and I can see under his loincloth, his limp white penis shining against his dark pubic hair.

When the alarm rings, I struggle up and into the shower. By the time I am dressed, my damp hair curling on my neck, I figure it’s a reasonable time to call a place of business. It’s an answering machine. Of course. I curse myself for not trying earlier. I leave my cell phone number and try to sound like a woman with an urgent household chore. God knows who checks the machine. I explain that I have to leave by noon.

I dress quickly but carefully. A lined peach shift with a short matching jacket for the plane. Gold earrings and bracelet. Sandals with heels. Charles told me once, before we were married, “I want you to dress like my wife. A doctor’s wife.” I was surprised and flattered again. I tried it out: Dr. and Mrs. Charles Tate. Used to be African prints when I took off my uniform. Head wraps and big beads. But I loved the idea of how he saw me.

There is no way I can sit in this room. I leave the bags with the bellboy and walk back across Canal Street to the French Quarter. The club is not that far away. No one but the gastroenterologists are up and about this early, because the shops are closed. The gastroenterologists carry purple canvas briefcases that say “Digestive Disease Week,” as though their tasteful leisure wear and purposeful stride didn’t distinguish them enough.

I know it’s not fair for me to make fun of them. Charles works hard. Since Katie Couric had a colonoscopy on live TV, to show that it was no big deal, gastroenterologists can barely keep up with the demand. Charles’s ex-wife squeezed all she could out of him in the divorce but she left before he started making the big bucks. The way he tells it, she married him because he was a nerd training to be a doctor, without considering that he would still be a nerd when he was a doctor.

It’s cloudy and muggy today, as opposed to sunny and muggy the previous days. The few cars look out of place on the narrow streets. When I reach the club, it’s hard to believe it’s the same place I visited last night. It’s shuttered down, and the iron railing of the balcony looks like metal restraints. The only person on the block is a skinny dark man on the curb drinking out of a brown paper bag. He lifts his sloe-eyes when I address him.

“Do you know how I could get into the Club Nouveau now? I left something there last night.”

“Honey, do I looks like I know how to get in any place offa this street?” He cracks a small, sad smile.

Of course. I start crying. What am I going to do?

“Now, now, now.” He stands up, unsteady, and leans toward me. He smells like malt liquor and old urine. “What you lose, baby?”

“My wedding ring.”

He stiffens. “Ain’t nobody can afford to lose a wedding ring.”

“I know, I know,” I blubber.

He and I walk all around the building, looking for a loose shutter, a chink in the armor. Nothing. He offers me a swig from the bottle.

The tears return. Here I am so broke-down that an alcoholic on the street thinks his malt liquor would help. I’m a doctor’s wife. I got a steady job myself. What in me keeps me restless?

My cell phone rings. It’s Willie.

I wail into the phone. The drunk is looking at me, curious.

“I got it, baby.”

“You have it?”

“Yeah. Found it last night. But you didn’t leave me no card.”

No, the doctor’s wife sure didn’t.

He told me to go on back to the hotel, he would drop it off. I ran on about how urgent it was.

There was silence at the other end.

“Willie?”

“This ain’t my problem, princess. You need to hold on to what matters.”

I blushed so hard the heat traveled over the phone. Ashamed again.

Back at the hotel, I told the desk clerk that someone might be dropping off a package for me. Then I sat in the fancy lobby reading People magazine, looking up every few lines, sweating as the minutes passed. Even Denzel couldn’t hold my interest.

Where was Willie? Maybe he wouldn’t come because I had offended him. I closed my eyes and prayed silently. “Lord, if you let me slide this time, I promise….”

I opened my eyes and Charles was standing in front of me. “Ready?”

Oh, shit.

“Mrs. Tate?” It was the desk clerk. I jumped up and hurried over, past Charles. My sandals slid on the polished floor and I pitched forward over the counter.

The clerk handed me a plain white envelope, which I stuffed in my purse. How had Willie got in and out without me seeing him? I scanned the lobby, bustling with people checking out. There was an old man with glasses leaning against a column near the door, a Kangol cap pulled down over his forehead.

Charles came up next to me. “Everything all right?”

I took his arm. “Yes.” We turned and walked together, briskly, like a doctor and his wife, until we were almost abreast of the old man. I heard Mama say it’s not good enough to be ashamed, you got to learn, too. I could not just walk past.

“Hold on a second, Charles.”

I pulled my hand from Charles’s arm and held it out to the old man.

“Thank you for passing the time, Mr. Washington.”

We shook hands and he tipped his hat. “Safe travels, miss.”

 

---

TONI MARTIN is a physician and writer, author of When the Personal Was Political: Five Women Doctors Look Back (2008). Her stories and essays have appeared in East Bay (San Francisco) newspapers and many other publications, including The Threepenny Review, Bellevue Literary Review, and ZYZZYVA. Read her blog, “Random Thoughts,” at the website linked above, and find her on Facebook @ToniMartinWriter.

 

Featured image by Nguyen Linh, courtesy of Unsplash.