The Weeping Time

1950

Steel hammered as the train’s wheels coughed and rattled. Black cypress trees protruded from the murky bayou alight with a bed of alligator eyes reflecting the train’s lights. Naked on their sides, a young couple writhed and dripped with sweat on the narrow bed.

A young man grabbed a fist full of the woman’s vermillion hair at the root and tipped her head back, answering her open lips with a languid kiss. She whimpered in tempo with the creaking mattress springs and rocked her hips to the rhythm, skin rippling with the knock of each thrust from behind.

“Say my name,” he panted into the back of her neck as his teeth grazed the skin.

“Charlie,” she groaned. “Oh, Charlie!”

“Now in French.”

She opened her eyes, and the creases of delighted agony in her face smoothed. “Uh,” she sighed.

Charlie Cullmann, of the Cullmann Advertising fortune, blew gusts of acrid breath into her ear as he bared his teeth into her freckled shoulder and thrust his last. Margaux Boucher, of Nice, rolled onto her stomach and stretched over the edge of the bed to find the pack of Old Gold. The breeze from the window barely broke the sweet, nostalgic musk of their secretions. Her zippo clicked and the warmth of its small flame cast a thin circle of light beside the bed as Charlie fell asleep.

Margaux’s eyes peeled against the peripheral glow of the cigarette’s red ember as she withdrew into the subterranean of her mind. A silver ribbon of smoke twirled from the ember.

Come morning, Charlie filled two breakfast plates to the brim in the dining car as Margaux nursed a latte and her first cigarette of the day. She rattled off something in French when he sat down.

He raised an eyebrow at her and shook out his napkin to tuck it inside his collar. The early sun glared in the cream white of his cardigan and quip of pomade in his hair.

“Translation?” he said and lifted his fork.

She grinned as she dabbed the ash off on the glass saucer. “You are 23 and hungry,” she said. Her sapphire suit, tapered at the waist with a brown belt, drank the daylight.

Charlie’s fork impaled a chunk of sausage as he said, “And you’re 28 and vampiric.” Grease stained his smile a dark pink. “Everything you say sounds so mellifluous,” he added. “I hardly know when you’re being mean.”

She propped her elbows on the tablecloth and leaned in. “I promise to only say the meanest things in English,” she winked. “Like, perhaps I should have left you in Florence.”

Charlie smiled fondly with the memory of tracing the only three French words he knew into her vulva on the terrace of his father’s palazzo, just days after their serendipitous encounter on the streets of Santo Spirito.

Margaux looked out the window and said, “This next one will be something special, I can feel it.”

“I wish I could be so sure,” he said as he unfolded a brochure from his pocket.

On the cover was a bronze statue of a confederate soldier atop a white marble column, framed by fronds of palm and oak trees. Below, the words City of Historical Charm in white cursive.

“Savannah, Georgia,” Charlie sighed as he flipped the brochure to the back with a drawing of three black women balancing bowls on their heads as they toddled down a stone staircase. He thought it all looked rather dusty and dull. What the south thought they had so much to be proud of, he could not fathom.

“Have I been wrong before?” she said.

They left their luggage in a quaint boarding house and ventured into the city under the veil of night. The distant odor of the lake ebbed and flowed, mingling with the rustic charm of Savannah, a stark departure from the metropolitan sophistication of Charlie’s New York. Yet, the Spanish moss cascading from live oak branches and the soulful brass melodies resonating from West Broad Street immersed him in an enchanting Southern symphony.

A yellow leaflet flicked against his feet boasting bold, blue block letters announcing a civil rights rally at Bolton Street Baptist Church. He scrunched his nose at the reminder of the south’s incessant religiosity.

A ferry sailed by on the black water of the Marsh Island Channel as Charlie followed Margaux down the steep cobblestones. They followed the artery of streetcar tracks past sparsely lit queues of warehouses and factories. Charlie scanned the veil of fog swirling about their feet and the blackened alleys, nostrils flared and mouth a tight line. Margaux’s camera flashed.

They came to the entrance of an overpass, and in the camera’s next flash was a figure crouched by the tracks. Charlie paused, but Margaux’s steps marginally slowed. He gritted his teeth. In the peripheral glow of gas lights outside the tunnel, their eyes retraced the vague silhouette.

“Margaux,” he whispered. Goosebumps rippled up his arms in the hiss of his own echo.

Another flash made out the hazy splash of color, a wool blanket wrapped around a black man. Charlie strode forward to catch Margaux’s arm and yank her back up the slope, but she cursed and smacked him away and he flinched in the warped sounds the walls threw back. He kept behind her and mirrored her wide arc around the man. As they grew closer, they made out a low moan emitting from the man’s chest. Charlie curled his lip but his eyes fixated in morbid fascination. The man did not seem to notice them as they passed and emerged through the other side.

As they moved up a flight of stairs away from the river, Charlie stopped glancing over his shoulder. The large stones slanted again, so they bent forward and widened their stance as they climbed.

In the lightning rod of her flash, a rank of brick vaults yawned up the slope. Margaux balanced with one arm against the brick as she climbed faster. She photographed the empty cement floors, cluttered with leaves of last season and bird nests, archways branching off the neighbor vault. Chalky brick walls awash with green, fuzzy moss.

“How much do you think we’ll make bringing people in here?” she said as she ducked into the next vault.

He forced a smile. “Depends on the stories we tell,” he offered. He lost sight of her.

“We have struck gold!” her voice rang.

He crossed his arms tightly and envisioned the man from the tunnel following them. He shuddered. Margaux’s voice broke through closer this time, and he jumped.

“What do you suppose these were for?” she asked.

He shrugged, “Whatever we say they were for.”

She smiled in the dark, and her kiss caught him off guard. The camera that hung around her neck pressed into his abdomen. The husk of her moan vibrated against his lips.

He said, “Hey, what do you say we try out those clubs we passed by?”

She drove her mouth harder against his and grasped a handful of hair at the back of his head. The warm rub of her hand kindled his groin. He checked the entrance again, but only the song of crickets responded.

As she knelt down, he wondered if she minded being amongst the spiders and dirt, but then he remembered that French girls were far less perturbed by the threat of indignity. Charlie tipped his head back and closed his eyes to concentrate.

A shadow flitted behind his eyelids, and the flap of wings clapped over his head.

“Margaux!” he gasped, pulling away and covering himself. “Bats!”

She sighed and stomped to her feet. “Soft American,” she muttered.

Margaux entertained Charlie’s whims for the next couple of hours and then left him in the raucous frenzy of crashing cymbals, muted lights, and sweat-slicked bodies. I might never understand, she thought as she pondered Charlie’s fondness for jazz music. He let her retire easily enough, but the hangover would render him infantile by morning.

With deliberate steps, she unfurled a crinkled paper from her pocket, the address beckoning her through the maze of iron-wrought fences and meticulously trimmed hedges. As she reached the split in the hedge, the path unfolded before her, leading to an ivory revival home. She turned toward its symmetrical shutters and pristine white columns.

Alain opened the door quickly under the arched doorway. In the 13 years since they first met, he hardly aged a day over 35. A polished thicket of dark brown hair and shock of blue eyes, a thin mustache and clean-shaven jaw, and the smallest of lines etched into his powdered brow. A pair of full lips that she loved.

“You made it, mon cher,” he said as he kissed her cheeks. “I was beginning to worry.” Smoky cologne wafted from his burgundy robe.

“Don’t be daft,” she pushed him aside as she escorted herself into the foyer, her tongue finally at rest in its native Bermondsey rhythm. A chandelier dangled from the high ceiling overhead, its brilliance bleeding through the brocade drapes, and a Louis XVI chair leaf-gilded and tapered on flute legs perched in the corner by the door.

“I hope your darkroom is ready,” she said.

“It patiently awaits your product,” Alain said softly as he closed the door. “Where did you leave your copain?”

She waved a hand, “I left him at the bloody club. Did you want to meet him?”

“Chee-ky,” he pinched her arm as he led her up the stairs, passing paneled wainscoting. Alain’s manicured hand rode the balustrade as they traveled to the end of the hall. Through a cracked bedroom door, Margaux glimpsed a naked man’s bronzed backside nested on a four-poster bed.

“I didn’t know you had company,” she said.

“Please,” he said. “It’s only the valet.”

The darkroom’s red safelight and vinegary stench of the stop bath sang of nostalgia. Alain stood at the enlarger table as he prepared a tray.

“Are you sure they’re ready?” he asked.

“You teach French,” she quipped. “Not photography.”

Hours later, she gazed pridefully on the photos. Cast against the matte backdrop of night, the crouched bum’s silhouette would make a powerful contender for their advertisement. Her vision was clear enough to taste: The Unveiling - Ghost Tours of the South. Eager tourists and stupid young people would follow her through the brick vaults on River Street and shudder as she invented ghosts and murderers. Easy money.

With Alain’s magnifying glass, she looked closer at something in a photo of the vaults. Carved in the middle of a brick face was an isolated scar. In the redlight, her eyes traced the figure, like a W and its inverted reflection, fused in the center. Its looped edges reminded her of the strange shapes in the wrought iron fences she passed earlier that resembled hearts. Though not quite.

Across the hall, Alain poured a drink in the encroaching break of day that slithered into the study. While she developed her photos, he kept the light low and turned on the ceiling fan. As he waited, he marinated in the tickle of anticipation and kept himself awake with the reminiscence of their days as teacher and pupil.

At last, her footsteps clomped across the hardwood floors and then muted the study room’s rug. She handed a photograph to him and pointed to what looked like a dust mote in the frame. When it didn’t blow away, he sat back in his favorite antique chair and gingerly slipped reading glasses up his nose.

“Mmm,” he chuckled. “That which cannot be burnt. What does Côte d’Ivoire mean to you, my dear?”

“What, the Ivory Coast? Wasn’t your father stationed there?”

He nodded as he plucked out a briar pipe from his robe pocket. “Très bien,” he said. She handed him a zippo. “Merci,” he said. He charred the top layer of tobacco and drew in short puffs. He used the bottom of the zippo as a tamper. “The natives there like to mark everything they touch with these…doodles. Perhaps you can use them for your new business.”

Margaux arched her eyebrows and her eyes glazed over as the cogs churned. Her expression reminded him of the very same she wore when he taught her complex verb tenses. He smiled.

“You may want to explore a certain cemetery as well,” Alain added as he stood up. She took the photograph back from him, and he circled behind her. “Bonaventure.”

His hands rested on her shoulders.

A smile crept across her face. “We’re going to be rich, aren’t we?”

Alain smiled back and said, “Good fortune indeed.”

His thumbs gently kneaded her muscles, and she tilted her head sideways. Goosebumps fanned across the flesh of her neck, fine hairs erect.

“Are you cold?” he whispered into the back of her ear. The air thickened with an unstoppable force, signaling the imminent storm fueled by memories of unbridled pleasure.

She closed her eyes in the gavel of her heartbeat and rubbed her wrist, whisked back to being 15 years old and naked on his couch. He had bound her hands above her head by a curtain cord. An arctic breeze from the open window embalmed her in its icy fingers, broken only by the warm sternness of his hand between her legs.

Her suit peeled off easily. She shivered as his teeth scratched the nape of her neck and cold hands glided across her bare breasts. Each time, she moistened faster than the last.