When I think about that day I remember thunderstorms in the distance, and thinking it was very warm for December. Which, I suppose, it was – but New Orleans is New Orleans, and it is what it is: hot and humid most of the year, punctuated by a few months in winter when it gets sort of warm and humid. Christmas vacation had just started and my parents had flown me down to spend ten days with, ostensibly, them. I'd flown from the upper midwest, Wisconsin, to be somewhat more precise, from a military school not far from Milwaukee. I was fifteen, not that my age made much difference to events as they unfolded.
My parents had a suite on the top floor of the Royal Orleans Hotel for the duration, and they had me warehoused in a little room by the service elevator two floors below. I remember the room because it had a nice view of the street below, of Royal Street, and the intersection with St Louis Street. When I arrived, on a florid-orange Braniff Boeing 720 from Chicago – by way of Kansas City, Oklahoma City and Dallas – it was late morning and I was dressed for snow. I was, you see, still in uniform and looked like a Marine, albeit a fifteen year old marine, in my dress blues and white hat. My father was supposed to meet me at the gate, which was kind of the thing you did back in 1965, but I had little confidence he'd actually show up.
And, true to form, he wasn't there.
I had one bag checked and made my way to the baggage claim and waited for my bag and, presumably, my father to arrive. Still, and again, this wasn't a total surprise, after a a few minutes I realized he was going to be a no-show again, so I started to look for the way out to a taxi stand – when I saw a girl standing beside me.
"Goose?" she asked, looking me in the eye.
Now I need to step back for a moment and reinforce the nature of the sudden dilemma I found myself in. Recall, if you will, the following: me, aka, the poor, stupid kid, was locked up in a military school. I was fifteen, therefore my mind was testosterone-addled and, basically, due to my age was little more than a moron. Finally, please consider the nature of the girl by my side. Blazing red hair, deepest brown eyes and skin so white you might have considered it blindingly white – were it not for the pale freckles that dappled her cheeks and nose. She reminded me of a teenaged Olivia de Havilland – you know, the doe-eyed Melanie from Gone With the Wind. She was, in other words, seriously good looking or, as my father would have said, easy on the eyes.
All of which does absolutely nothing to explain my response to her rather simple question.
Staring at her like, I assume, any moron might, I asked: "Are you married yet?"
She shook her head, startled, I think, by the absolute inanity of my reply, then tried again. "Goose? I can hardly recognize you – in that silly uniform."
"Goose. Yes. It's me." Let's just ignore I was acting just like one, too, for the time being, anyway. She was smiling – at me – which I considered a lovelier experience than anything in all my previous fifteen years – if only because I knew that smile so well, and I knew what was behind the smile.
"Goodness!" she said. "You're growing up fast! Your mom and dad are still at the country club, and he asked if I could swing by and pick you up."
"How nice of him," and I think I might have added, "to not abandon me at the airport."
And she laughed, then looked at my uniform and scowled. "I hope you brought something else to wear..."
"Yes, by golly, I think I did."
"A swimming suit, I hope?"
I shook my head, thinking of Christmas carols and mistletoe and the utter incongruity of the question. "Are you serious?"
That seemed to rattle her cage and her scowl deepened a bit more. "Well, maybe Rickie has a spare."
"Rickie?"
"You know – little brother? You do remember him, don't you? Or have you been hit in the head recently?"
"Yes, of course I remember him, but when did you start calling him Rickie?"
She shrugged. "He keeps talking about when you two built that model of the Titanic together."
"How appropriate," I said, and who knows, maybe I even smiled. "When was that, by the way?"
"Two summers ago!" she said, now acting exasperated. "Don't you remember anything?"
And yes, clearly I did, but by this point it was too much fun yanking her chain. Still, I remembered one day two summers before, in Mexico City; we'd all flown down for one of my cousin's wedding – and it was then that I'd seen Claire in a bathing suit for the first time. And yes, I seemed to recall building the Titanic too, and even that wedding, but the whole bathing suit thing had been, well, a primal moment.
"Oh yes," I finally said, but I was suddenly thinking about her brother. He had been trying on girl's shoes at the reception, walking around in them, then had asked my mother to put lipstick on his lips. As uncomfortable as the memory was, I remembered most of all going into a bathroom and finding him with a pair of woman's panties stuffed under his nose, masturbating furiously – and yet I had no absolutely idea what he was up to – seriously, I kid you not. I was twelve, if I remembered correctly, and I was, therefore, clueless about such things. Hell, I still was. Military school is not the place to send your kid if you want them to become sexually aware creatures. Military school is about repression and control, not expanding self-awareness, and I was, need I repeat myself, a moron when it came to human intuition. And yet, I suddenly wanted, more than anything else in the world, to NOT wear that kid's swimming suit. Maybe he was contagious...
"He's really looking forward to seeing you again," she said, smiling beatifically. "He's been looking forward to your coming for weeks."
"Ah," I think I might have said, if a bit noncommittally – an image of him in heels floating in my mind's eye...
"So...you only have one bag?"
I smiled, nodded in the affirmative. "Yup. I pack efficiently." For the life of me, I have no idea why I said that.
"Well then," she said, looking at me almost cross-eyed, "let's go."
Claire was then – almost – seventeen years old – going on twenty-five, if you know what I mean – and she had the type of body seen in renaissance paintings of the Madonna, which is to say that by today's standards she was, well, plump. By 1960s standards, however, she was seriously cute, smooth curves in all the right places, and her legs reflected a potent athleticism all her own. She was New Orleans royalty, too, needless to say, and dressed like it in a white dress with big green and white magnolia blossoms printed all over the thing, white tights and little white flats – so her coppery hair literally blazed in fiery contrast.
Can you tell I was smitten? I mean – totally off the charts smitten? Of course I'm not sure it takes a whole lot to get a fifteen year old boy worked up, but she had done it, and had been doing it for years. Hell, she'd been driving me crazy all my life.
But could you even call it love – at fifteen? I thought so, but then again, I had been locked away in a military school for a year and a half – with zero contact between members of the opposite sex allowed – so that might have had something to do with the cascade of emotion I experienced walking beside her out to her car. Her car! – at sixteen, driving a silver Corvette Stingray – yet that car only made her seem more remote just then, even more inaccessible – and even more desirable.
I didn't know the whole story back then, only bits and pieces, but her father had flown with mine during the war, and they'd come home best friends. As war receded from their lives they remained, for some reason, as close – if not closer – than ever, and as a result we traveled to New Orleans several times a year. Still, there's was a friendship from afar, and as close as we were we only saw them a couple of times a year. Always lots of emotion, especially when we reunited, so as kids we had been primed to be close to one another.
And the Collins family owned several restaurants around New Orleans, all of them Very Big Deals, all very famous, their chefs celebrated as the best in New Orleans, so I grew up around that sort of thing – both at home and when we visited. I say at home because my mother was very impressed by all that nonsense, and she tried to incorporate an appreciation of fine dining into our lives at home – perhaps because she had grown up, barefoot I think, on a farm in dust bowl Oklahoma. She had finally made it into the big leagues, I guess, and wanted everyone to know it by the table she set. We were a military family, by the way, yet we didn't move often. I'd spent the first few years of my life near Cape Hatteras, then we moved to California, just north of San Diego, so in my mind I was a California kid.
Ah, yes. Have you ever ridden in a seriously hot car with a gorgeous girl behind the wheel? Windows down, her skirt wafting in the slipstream, thighs so smooth and white you forgot where you were? I swear I'd never seen legs as gorgeous, and just looking at them I could feel my heart racing, my hands starting to shake. I know, it's that whole fifteen thing, testosterone poisoning and all that, but seriously...those few moments are as vivid now as they were on that faraway day. She talked about Christmas, about the tree set up in their living room and the millions of presents all around it, and about her parents and mine playing golf out in Metairie. She asked me about school, wanted to know what it was like being locked up with several hundred boys and marching around like toy soldiers, then told me she was taking me to the hotel, and I was supposed to change clothes there – then she'd take me out to the country club.
And at one point while we were driving along she looked at me – and I guess I was still focused on those creamy white thighs – because when I looked up at her – she was looking at me with this odd expression on her face. And the look we exchanged just then? Oh...the feeling in the air between us! We had, literally, known each other all our lives, and in a way I'd considered her something almost like family – until that moment, anyway. Something changed between us just then, in that one split second. Some fundamental alteration of our orbits, some vital understanding of ourselves – a bit of knowledge you might call eternal, almost primal – had changed. She knew it, and so did I – and the next few minutes passed in silence – as we tried to come to terms with this unsteady new terrain.
She already had the key to my room and led me there after she parked on the street, then she opened the door – and put the key in her purse – as I carried my bag inside the room.
"Why don't you take a shower now," I remember her saying at one point, but I consciously unpacked my bag and put everything in drawers and closets – and she watched me as I did all that, never saying a word but staring at me like I had gone mad. Then, when I was finished she said: "I don't think I've ever seen anyone so obsessively neat and organized in all my life. Have you always been like this?"
"You ever been to military school?"
She shook her head, looked at me while biting her lower lip – a little coquettishly. "You going to take a shower?" she said an eternity later – though she was still grinning.
"Yup." I took some clothes into the bathroom and shut the door, turned on the water, the cold water I feel sure, and cleaned up. After I dressed I went out, saw her standing by the room's lone window looking down the street.
"Look," she said, "you can see the restaurant from here." That place was our touchstone, where our lives had first come together, where her life was grounded, I assumed.
I went and stood next to her – and I swear I felt like spontaneous combustion was a distinct possibility as I looked out that window with her by my side – then she turned to me.
