Dirty South

13

Abercrombie amp; Fitch. Brooks Brothers. Crate amp; Barrel. Starbucks. Trey Brill liked the way his stores smelled. Uncluttered and clean. The dark coffee smell of Starbucks. The faded look to an Abercrombie hat with a cool old rugby logo. The way Brooks Brothers had the same ties and shirts every year. Everything the way you expected it. Trey finished up paying for a new suit and walked out with Christian, who’d hung with him since they left the office. He and his old friend side by side since the time they were twelve. Soccer practices to bars to business partners.

Trey and Christian watched Teddy from the second floor of the shopping mall, looking down at the fat man sitting by the wishing fountain. Teddy sure was sweating a lot today, the back of his silk shirt soaked. He seemed real jumpy, too, like when Trey mentioned that he needed to pick up a suit before they headed to Redfish for dinner. Teddy just kind of freaked out.

“He’s fucked,” Christian said, smiling.

“His own fault,” Trey said.

“People like that can never handle money,” Christian said. “They don’t understand it.”

“True.”

He said good-bye to Christian, and as his friend was walking away, he saw Teddy peer up at the balcony. He was sure that Teddy saw Christian only from a distance and he was glad of that.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Teddy said when he met him at the foot of the escalator. The PA system played some Sting from his Live in Tuscany concert, one of Trey’s favorites.

“He’s my friend.”

“Just don’t think it’s a good idea.”

Trey tried to look concerned at Teddy’s sweating and paranoia while they walked outside to the parking lot and stuck his suit in his trunk. Make him think he was flipping out about nothing. They decided to walk over to Bourbon Street and Redfish. Teddy said he couldn’t breathe in the car.

“Are you doing okay, man?” Trey asked as they walked around the old marble Customs House. It was dark now and he could hear all the dance music and that awful Cajun stuff starting up down on North Peters and through the Quarter. Tourists in tennis shoes and shorts, carrying cameras and cups of Hurricanes, walked by the old brick storefronts and under wooden signs flapping in the warm wind.

“Yeah,” Teddy said, huffing and puffing down Iberville and crossing over Decatur Street. “Just got some things on my mind.”

“Your buddy Travers stopped by,” he said.

“You help him out?”

“Yeah,” Trey said. “Gave him what I legally could.”

“Good.”

Some homeless man wandered over, begging them for a few bucks. Said he needed some bus fare, behind him was the red curved neon of an all-night bar.

Trey laughed at him. “Get a job.”

“Can’t,” said the toothless man.

“Sorry,” Trey said. “Jeez.”

Teddy didn’t even notice. He just had his big head down kicking absently at a dirty Lucky Dog wrapper filled with mustard and stinking onions.

“You believe ALIAS?” Teddy asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know him that well.”

“I need that money.”

“I know, Teddy.”

“I don’t think you do,” he said. “Ain’t worried about creditors, man. See, I borrowed some money from Cash.”

Trey stopped walking by a used bookstore. He put his hand on Teddy’s shoulder. “What’s going on? Talk to me, dog.”

Trey knew Teddy liked when he said “dog.” Made him seem like a true Ninth Warder.

Teddy told the whole story about why he’d gone to Cash for money for ALIAS’s video, said he thought they could make it up on the next record from this guy that Malcolm thought was so great named Stank. But Trey knew that Stank hadn’t even cut the damned album yet. They were already getting killed by the latest releases from No Limit and Cash Money. Last year Ninth Ward Records was making those guys sweat.

Teddy said he had till morning before Cash said he was going to kill him. Trey led him into the restaurant, where they took a seat near the bar and ordered. They didn’t talk until the waiter returned.

Trey took a sip of his dirty martini and looked concerned. Redfish had lots of chrome, yellow Christmas lights, a big fake oyster over the bar that had been turned into a mirror. Nice leather seats. It was all right to Trey, but he liked Emeril’s a lot more.

The waiter brought them a couple of plates of Oysters Three Ways: grilled, fried, and raw on a bed of rock salt. Teddy slurped his right off his plate, gobbling everything up just like the street hustler that he’d always been. Or maybe because he thought this was his last supper or something. Pretty weird. Of course Teddy wasn’t brought up with any class. He hadn’t gone to Metairie Country Day or gone to Vandy on an academic scholarship that his parents bought. He hadn’t spent his winters skiing in Vail or summers down in Baja sipping tequila and screwing girls from UCLA.

Teddy went to Freaknik in Atlanta and still paid women to be seen with him.

“Can we get money from anywhere else?” Teddy asked. “Did you check into the cars or the house?”

“Not in one night, man.”

“Don’t you know some people?” he asked. “People in Old Metairie. That kind of money like chump change to them.”

“Teddy, you are my friend. But it doesn’t work that way. I can’t just call up somebody and ask for a half a million. I mean, they’d think I was crazy.”

Trey stirred the martini with his finger. He knew he needed to call Molly, finally buy that sofa from Restoration Hardware, and maybe hook up with this gash who was in grad school at Tulane. A buddy of his had already fucked her. He’d buy her a drink and take her to the Hyatt or something. Heard she had an ass that just wouldn’t quit.

Teddy buried his head in his hands. The redfish entree came and Teddy pushed it away. “Nick’s got to find it. He has to.”

Trey played with his drink more. Two women, dirty blondes in halters and fake leather pants, walked into the bar. Their boyfriends behind them. Couple of tools in cheap Gap shirts and tourist running shoes. Last year’s Nikes.

“I know this guy’s your friend, but who is he, really?” Trey asked, trying to seem interested in Teddy’s problems. “I mean, as a professional. He’s a teacher, right? My buddy Josh is a lawyer and has three investigators working for him. They’d do a better job. This guy doesn’t impress me.”

“Yeah?” Teddy said. “Nick once got this woman out of jail after forty years. Also took down that L.A. motherfucker that owned that Blues Shack club.”

“So he’s muscle?” Trey asked. “That’s not what we need. Let me get someone good on this. This guy, no offense, man, seems like a real loser. He was wearing a T-shirt with a cartoon on it.”

“I have till the morning,” Teddy said, head up and watching Brill now. “Ain’t you listenin’?”

Trey shrugged. “Aren’t you above this thug shit now? You worked too hard. You don’t need people like that.”

“What you got goin’ on, Brill?” Teddy asked, looking Trey hard in the eye. He held his stare. “You wouldn’t want to see me lose, would you?”

“After all we’ve been through?” Trey asked. “We’re more brothers than you and Malcolm.”

“You still meetin’ with him tonight?”

“Should I cancel?”

“I guess not,” Teddy said. “Don’t have nothin’ to do with my troubles.”

Trey winked at him.

Teddy smiled. “You a hustla too, right?”

Trey smiled back and took a sip of the martini. “You know it, dog.”