Orange Gin

I’d almost forgotten about Paris until I reached into my coat pocket and found it. That old rosary of hers. And, she hadn’t used it for secular reasons, either. I almost laughed out loud. Nobody who wasn’t from Beaumont would even get the joke. There’d been a headband with a black net bow and a bunch of bracelets, too, but the rosary and cross was all I’d kept. It was plastic.

I could walk through pretty much anything and had. I thought about that time I’d gone all the way to Beaumont when Paris had died. There hadn’t been anybody else to go back and settle her affairs. Boy, she had died hard, just as hard as she’d lived in that old rooming house on Broadway. She'd been living there that last couple of years down the road and across from the old deserted Sears building on Magnolia. It was hot September when she’d gone on. At that time of year, Beaumont's like being locked in a low-rent steam room with old dirty wet towels. Jules's quarters stunk to high heaven. The smell alone was enough to knock you over. I had to keep going outside to catch my breath, but it was just as muggy and miserable out there.

The old lady who ran the rooming house was sitting on her back porch drinking orange flavored gin straight out of the bottle. She had deep snuff stains in the creases next to her bottom lip. She kept watching me like I was going to steal something, but there wasn’t anything worth the trouble. She’d yell out at me every time I came outside, “Hey, you Paris’s girl?” And, I’d nod and say, “Yes, ma’am. I am that.” She must’ve asked me twenty times. I lost count.

How anybody could live like this was beyond me. She still had some of those dresses from back in the day, every one of them needing a good cleaning. I wondered to myself if there was even a soap made that could get rid of that nasty stench. She’d gone all 80’s from the looks of things. Scarves, rubber bracelets and the kinds of trinkets you used to see Madonna wearing. Paris was more LuLu in the ’60’s than Madonna from the 80’s. Looked like she’d been shopping at the Gateway Lerner’s where they sold cheap clothes for even cheaper high school girls. I didn’t even hate her any more. Just felt sad for her. I felt that feeling you get when you witness somebody who's lost at life. 

When I got everything boxed and bagged up for the Salvation Army, I began to drag the items out to the street. There hadn’t been one thing I’d wanted to keep out of her belongings. I don’t even remember putting the rosary in my pocket. All of it just amounted to a wasted life. From the years of drugs and booze-drinking, that’s all she had to show for it. Some cheap old Madonna-looking knock offs. Well, they’d be for somebody else now, provided anybody else would even want them.

“Some old guy come over here last week a knocking on the door looking for Paris.” She started laughing. “I had to tell him to go on.”

I didn’t answer, but that didn’t stop her. “Look like one a them old sailors.” She started laughing again. “Paris liked them old sailors. Not a one of ‘em speaking any English. Sounded Russian. Or outta Norway. Like one a them rats.” That really made her laugh.

“The truck said they were picking up tomorrow morning. That ok?” I asked her, not really expecting an answer. She had on an old sleeveless house dress like they used to wear thirty years ago. Probably got it at the Sear's when it'd been open. It had little flowers, orange and blue. Her arms were brown and flabby and you could see an old yellow-brown bra strap dropped down from where the red piping trim was torn loose.

“Girl, you want to pick me up some more orange gin, that’d be fine. I’ll make sure your stuff don’t walk off.”

I figured what the heck. There was a liquor store on Calder, the only kind of business left down here in this end of town besides the old churches. I remembered when there was commerce all around, even downtown. I used to walk down there and eat breakfast at the old Crosby Hotel. They had the best pancakes and syrup. An old black man waited tables there for a hundred years. He wore a hat and a starched white jacket with a black bow tie. Then, I’d go to the Liberty for a movie. I always dreamed of better, but that was about the best it ever got. Not all the memories were bad. I'd known there was another life out there. I just hadn't known how to get to it.

It felt good to put Beaumont behind me. I could see it in my rearview when I drove out of town. Past the old Rao’s Bakery, still open and still selling day-old rolls for half-price. The catholic church and hospital that tore down the Gaylynn Movie Theater and turned it into a parking lot for people dying of cancer. The refineries with that eternal ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ burn-off. Flat, sour, cruel, hard Beaumont. I didn’t owe it anything and for once, I didn’t expect anything. I thought this would be my last trip back here, but I was wrong. Fate was going to play a dirty trick on me. One thing I’d learned for sure, life had a way of turning the tables on you.