the French Quarter Cat's Gris-Gris (Part I) (264 hits)
Category: NoneRating: 2 on 6 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Ballare (View user info) at 2009-06-28 02:37:59 EDT
"Pussy," a voice rang, too loudly, through the humid and honeysuckle-sweet night air, followed by a harsh chuckle. A tall man in a chocolate brown suit stood in the middle of an alley, his straw-woven Stetson crooked on his head as he bent at the middle, reaching a hand down to a scraggy, ragged cat weaving around his ankles.
"Puss-puss-pussy." He clicked his tongue, once, twice, and swiped his knuckles across the cat's head, drawing the word out loudly as his companion nearby choked out laughter from wine-pinked cheeks. The second man, seemingly too drunk to do much else, repeated the word over and over again until he was nearly doubled over and coughing rather unpleasantly, although he still managed to leer at the cat with reddened eyes. When the coughing turned to merciless retching, the source of their amusement startled away into the darkness with a flick of her tail, and the man in the Stetson rounded on his company.
"Y'scared her 'way," he accused, stumbling against the wall so that he had to reach up and clasp a hand to his hat, holding it tight against his sandy hair. "Y'were never t'good at, uh ... keepin' pussy aroun'."
But once he had regained his balance, he clapped a hand to the other man's shoulder and sent them both reeling down the humid alley, jostling and cackling amongst themselves.
The man in the Stetson hat was named Austin L. Lowell, and he had come to New Orleans on a business trip; that was, at any rate, what he had told his wife, and that his travel plans coincided neatly with Mardi Gras was surely naught but chance.
--
Some time later, his companion had somehow managed to acquire a woman for each arm; they seemed unfazed by his jolting walk and instead cooed and purred sweetly over his crude jokes. Every so often one or the other would express some amount of concern over his taciturn friend, turning dark coal-rimmed eyes onto the Stetson bobbing ahead of the trio.
"N'vermind him, m'darlin's. 's fine, I'm sure," he would reassure, taking the opportunity to slide a hand lower and pat a pert bottom, or draw his fingers across pursed, coloured lips.
Austin, meanwhile, found his eyes squinting against the red glow from within shop fronts and the yellow glare of streetlights overhead, and barely acknowledged his friend when he caught up to slur, "'n you were sayin' I couldn't - whachasaid. Pussy, man. Pussy." Then his tone turned surprised, as he took a few staggering steps backward, craning his neck back to stare up at the building they had stopped before: "s'our hotel."
"Yeah," Austin grunted, and made a wide motion with his hand toward the entrance. "Gw'on. I'll - dunno. Find a bar for a few hours. Yeah?"
His companion, with a blissful grin, wove as quick as he could back to the girls, who giggled and tugged at his necktie and pocket square and whisked him off into the hotel.
--
After even the din and celebration of the night had faded to a dull thumping, some distance away in the French Quarter, Austin was alone, save for that same patched and mangy cat that moved drunkenly on a listing back paw, leaping from garbage can to cobble stone and back again.
With a faint sigh, the man lifted his hat from his head and flattened a hand through his hair, blinking hard against the darkness of the street, and he turned to press his shoulders against the bricking of the alley. He mumbled as the cat toppled into a pile of food waste and wrappers, "Huh. S'far as Mardi Gras goes... weren't too bad, I suppose. What about you?"
Jabbing a finger in the cat's direction, Austin seemed only vaguely surprised when the bedraggled animal arched her back and purred, angling her head against the man's leg.
"Ehn. Take off," he grunted, kicking out so that the cat spun away with a hiss. With a condescending shake of her paws, she padded some distance away to wash herself, though she kept one yellow eye trained upward on the lone figure.
As though he owed an explanation, Austin added with a narrowing of his own eyes, "didn't come for the pussy. Got a woman at home."
With an easy turn of his shoulders, the man replaced his hat, and dug his fingers into the pocket of his jacket. He fished around for a moment before he produced a small, grey business card, and this he tilted to and fro, and surely it was only a trick of the silver moonlight that it seemed to flash and reflect for a moment his pale face, his faintly furrowed forehead. Surely?
"Well. 'swas nice talking to you, but I gotta, as they say, go see a man about a horse." The wrinkle of his brow smoothed away shortly afterwards, as Austin shoved himself from the wall and lazily dipped his Stetson toward the sitting cat.
With that, Austin straightened, shook himself all over and took stock of his bearings, and quickened his steps into the dusk of the night. For some time, there was only the cat in the alleyway, passing her paws silently over her whiskers, and her slitted golden eyes glowed in the shadow long after he had gone.
And then even the cat crept away, in the direction he had gone, leaving the only moon to puddle against the flagstone.
User Reviews
Submitted by haikumikoo (user info) at 2009-06-29 11:40:37 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Pretty good, tootz.
Submitted by EmissionImpossible (user info) at 2009-06-29 06:42:01 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
you shouldnt have posted over this....
Submitted by pen_name (user info) at 2009-06-28 14:21:00 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
That was an affecting sob story on my post. I had to come rate.
Submitted by EmissionImpossible (user info) at 2009-06-28 12:28:35 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
this is very odd, enjoyable and odd.
Submitted by Sacrilicious (user info) at 2009-06-28 07:42:04 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I'm not sure how I feel about it either, but I am interested in reading more to find out.
Submitted by Ballare (user info) at 2009-06-28 02:39:17 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
I'm not sure how I feel about this, my apologies if it is not very good