The Dogs of Babel

THIRTY-TWO

Lexy and I had fallen into a kind of quiet peace together after that awful night when she destroyed the first death mask, the night she tried to disappear and I brought her back by holding her fast in my arms. I knew she was embarrassed by her anger that night, by the unruly way it had presented itself, bounding forth like a big, muddy dog to leave its marks on the pristine fabric of the day. But I thought that she was being a bit too careful with me now, that she was keeping herself in check. I didn’t like this change in her; I wanted her the way she was, my wild and tempest-tossed girl. It concerned me, too, that she was spending so much time among the dead. It was time to bring her back to the world of the living.

I decided to whisk her away. She’d never been to Mardi Gras—can you imagine? Lexy, my maker of masks, and somehow she’d never gone. It was perfect. I’d take her away, spur of the moment, a sweet reminder of that first week we spent together. An escape from our dreary, soup-eating, winter selves. I would pack outrageous things for her. A sequined gown. A feather boa. We needed masquerade, disguise, revelry. A drunken debauch. I would take her where she needed to go. A romantic hotel with balconies and French doors and a lurid history. I would dress her up, her bosom sparkling with glitter. I would make her buy me with beads.

The timing worked out perfectly. Easter was late that year, not till mid-April, and spring break came a little earlier than it usually did. Of course, my spontaneity is never truly spontaneous—show up in New Orleans the week of Mardi Gras and expect to find a hotel room? The idea made me faintly ill. I spent months planning it, and somehow I managed to keep it a secret.

I told her the day before we were supposed to leave. I tried to pass it off as a spur-of-the-moment idea, but she saw through me pretty quickly.

“Hey, I have an idea,” I said. It was a Friday evening, the first night of my spring break. Just exactly the time of year when we’d first met. “Let’s fly down to New Orleans. For Mardi Gras.”

She looked up from her book. “Really? Just like that?”

“Just like that,” I said, snapping my fingers in a way that immediately struck me as too contrived. But she seemed not to notice. “It’ll be fun,” I added.

“What’ll we do with Lorelei?” she asked. “I think Jim’s out of town.” Our neighbor Jim sometimes looked after Lorelei when we went away.

“We’ll board her.”

“They might not have space for her on such short notice. You know, they get booked up weeks in advance. Remember last Thanksgiving when we had to take her with us to your sister’s?”

“Well, that’s a particularly busy time. Why don’t I call them? You never know, they might have a space open.”

She studied my face for a moment and broke into a smile. “You’ve already called, haven’t you? You probably called a month ago.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, trying to keep my face nonchalant. I’ve never been much of a liar.

“So if I go through your desk right now, I won’t find any plane tickets? Or computer printouts about the hotel we’re staying at?”

“Of course not,” I said. “I just came up with the idea two minutes ago.”

“So you haven’t gone out and bought a guidebook and reserved a rental car and printed out a list of New Orleans’s best restaurants?”

It was the restaurant list that got me. It had seemed a perfectly good idea—after all, why take a chance on a bad restaurant when it’s so easy to find a good one?—but the fact that she knew me so well made me laugh.

“Okay, okay,” I said. “You caught me. I did all that stuff. But so what? It’s the thought that counts, isn’t it?”

“Yes, and I’ll bet you’ve put a lot of thought into it.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I said. “Well, tomorrow morning I’ll be on a plane bound for New Orleans. Are you coming or not?”

“I’ll be there,” she said, giving me a kiss.

“With bells on,” I said.

“Well, I don’t know about that.”

“I do. I’ve already packed your suitcase.”

The only thing I’d left for Lexy to do was to pack masks for the two of us.

“Whatever you want,” I told her. “Whoever you want us to be.”

“I wish you’d told me earlier,” she said. “I could have made something special.”

“But then it wouldn’t have been so spontaneous and romantic.”

She smiled. “Well, romantic anyway,” she said. “That’s okay. I’ve got a lot to choose from. I’ll find something.”

She wouldn’t show me what she’d chosen. She packed the masks in a separate suitcase and told me I’d have to wait.

In New Orleans, we stayed at a hotel that was said to have a ghost in it: a young woman whose lover had been killed in a duel. She was known as Blue Mary for the cobalt of the gown she wore. There was a little pamphlet about her at the check-in desk. Look for her in the courtyard on warm nights, it told us, look for a woman with a gown of blue and a mass of dark ringlets piled on top of her head. She died of a broken heart, the story went, and now she walks the grounds, crying her lover’s name. Some claim they have seen him, as well, the lover. He walks across the courtyard with his dueling pistol still in his hand. They’re never in the same place at the same time. A pair of ghosts, eternally missing each other.

If you should meet Blue Mary, the pamphlet said, if you should come upon her on a moonless night, don’t run away. Sit with her and talk a while. Tell her what you know. Try to ease her mind. If you should see Blue Mary, take her hand. Try it. You will be surprised at the substance of it. It will be cold to the touch. Tell her to stay with you, to stay put for a while. When she asks if you have seen her lover, say yes. Say that he sends his love, and he wants her to rest. Tell her she can stop looking. Give her a single rose, the pamphlet advised. Tell her it’s from him. She will tell you she’s so very cold. Give her your jacket, lay it gently across her shoulders. And when she disappears, as she always does, say a prayer that this time it’s for good. There’s nothing scary about ghosts, after all. They are sad stories, all of them. She wanders forever, awaiting his kiss. The pretty girl in blue. You can go see her grave, if you like. They believe it’s this one here. Notice the angel carved on top. Run your hands over it. Go ahead.

Lexy was entranced by the story, but I didn’t believe it for a minute. I suspected the hotel of fabricating the whole thing, although the desk clerk seemed quite sincere about explaining it to us. It was all too neat, it was the stuff of those tragic sixties pop songs, “Last Kiss” and “Leader of the Pack” and all that. It smacked of urban legend, the hitchhiker who vanishes before you can take her home, the old woman answering the door with a sad smile on her face: “She died ten years ago tonight.” We’ve heard it so many times.

Anyway, I thought, it’s wishful thinking, all this talk of ghosts. If the dead wandered among us, their spirits still present on this earth, what need would we have for grief? Scary as it is, it’s what we hope for. How else can we go on living?

But Lexy shushed me when I began to voice my objections.

“It’s a sweet story,” she said. “And who are you to say it’s not true? Can’t you give yourself over, just once, to something that doesn’t make any logical sense?”

No, I thought. I can’t. Of course I can’t. But this was our vacation, and I wanted Lexy to be happy, so I kept the snide remarks to a minimum.

The first night, we went to the French Quarter. The reality of it was nothing like I’d imagined: there was none of the mystery, none of the dark magic I had expected. The streets were filled with loud music, with drunken frat boys flashing their penises, with girls lifting their shirts and showing their breasts for beads. The forced revelry of it was all wrong. I was too old for this.

“Let’s go back to the hotel,” I said.

“Oh, come on,” Lexy said. She was drinking a grain alcohol concoction she’d purchased from a walk-up window. It was in a plastic cup shaped like a hand grenade. “We just got here. It’s fun. Let’s make the best of it. Let’s go someplace and dance.”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “This really isn’t my kind of scene.”

“Well, of course it isn’t. That’s the point. Let’s do something a little out of character. Isn’t that why you brought me here?”

I wasn’t sure anymore why I’d brought her there. It was late, and I wanted to go to bed. In situations like this, I was always reminded that Lexy was eight years younger than I was. Or maybe age had nothing to do with it. Would I ever have liked being in a crowd like this?

“Don’t sulk,” she said. “Let me buy you a drink. You want the one that comes in the monkey’s head or the one that comes in the fake coconut?”

“Neither,” I said, making a face. “I had wine with dinner, and I don’t think I should mix.”

“Well, you’re not going to find wine here.”

“Let’s just go back,” I said. We’d stopped in the middle of the street, and people were pushing past us on all sides. I took Lexy’s arm and pulled her off to the side of the street. “There are parades tomorrow, and we have to get up early to get a good spot along the route.”

“I don’t believe you,” she said. “You whisk me away on this trip, which is, like, the most romantic thing you’ve ever done, and once we get here, you don’t want to have any fun.”

“I feel out of place with all these kids. What if I run into one of my students?”

“If you did, they’d think you were a lot cooler than they’d ever imagined.”

“Well, I’m going back to the hotel. Are you coming or not?”

“No,” she said. “I’m going to stay and have fun.”

“Fine,” I said. I felt irritated, and I was starting to get a headache. “Do you remember how to get back to the hotel?”

“Yeah, I’ll be fine.” She turned and walked away from me. I could tell she was annoyed with me, and as I started to make my way through the crowd, I was starting to wish I’d stayed. I almost decided to stay, but when I turned around to look for her, she was already out of sight.

By the time I reached the hotel, I felt terrible. Lexy was right—I’d brought her here to have fun, and then I refused to enjoy myself. I began to worry about her out in the crowds all by herself. What if something happened to her? Or what if she simply decided not to come back at all? Would I ever find her again in this city full of people?

By the time I heard her key turn in the lock an hour later, I was ready to fall at her feet and beg her forgiveness. But when she walked in, she looked flushed and excited. She didn’t look angry at all.

“Lexy,” I said, jumping up from the chair I’d been sitting in. “I’m so sorry. You were right. I was a jerk. I’m sorry I ruined everything.”

“That’s okay,” she said. “You were right. It wasn’t that much fun. It was kind of an obnoxious scene. I only stayed another fifteen minutes or so after you left.”

“Then how come it took you so long to get back?”

“Paul,” she said, her face lit with excitement. “I saw her. I saw Blue Mary.”