Polaroid Paragraphs #2 - "The Great Pretender"

On the bus heading for the store, Henry would imagine he was riding the street car, usually the Saint Charles line, on the way to the French Market, maybe.  He’d talk his every move through in his head like he was telling a story, but then he always narrated his activities, even if he wasn’t projecting them onto New Orleans. When he was just out of school, he randomly decided to take a Rosetta Stone course in Conversational Greek.  That’s what this was like – learning to sound like a native in conversation.

“Hey, where y’at, Sammy?”

“Awrite, friend, awrite.  Just on my way – gotta make groceries ‘fore the family shows up tomorrow, y’know.  How you been?”

“Awrite, too. Jest so tired.  Runnin’ home to make some dodo ‘fore tonight. Me and Liz are goin' by Tipitina's.  I could shore do with a huck-a-buck right now, it’s so hot!”

"I hear ya, man."

He’d have little chats like that inside his head all the time, honing his vocabulary, cadence and most especially pronunciation, for when he met someone who might seem charmed by knowing someone from N’Orlins.  Well, someone who seemed, anyway.

It was the instant key to acceptance, sounding like you were a son of the Crescent City, and most anybody would start up a conversation with you based on that.  You had to be real good to fool natives, though.  You had to talk “Yat” and not just Southern or Cajun or Creole.  You had to know the difference between uptown, downtown and backatown.  You had to know that Esplanade was pronounced Ess-pluh-NADE, not Ess-plah-NOD or that Burgundy was pronounced with the accent on the second syllable, not the first.  It was Bur-GUN-dee Street, not BUR-gun-dee.  That word was hard for him. He always messed it up.  Always-always-always-always!

You had to mention the flyin’ horses at the fairgrounds, Spanish Fort, Hubig’s pies, and the former glory of Uglesich’s – but not too often.  Too often and you were immediately suspect again.  There were thousands of things to mention like they were an old favorite of yours, or that your grandmere had told you about, but not so often those remembrances dominated the conversation.  

There was a girl at his supermarket, maybe five years younger than him, but really cute, and he wished he had the nerve to ask her out, but she wasn’t ready yet.  He would always maneuver to go through her line when she was at a register, or need help finding something when she was out on the floor.  She was from Minneapolis, which you’d think would be as far from New Orleans as a person could get, culturally, but there was all kinds of music floating up and down the river, cross-pollinating things between the cities and at all points in between.  He’d been in Minneapolis years back for a family wedding.  He and his cousins went downtown expecting to see ice cream parlors and churches, and came back drunk as skunks and sporting new tattoos.  If only she’d been from Alaska or some such place.  But still, she was starting to warm to him.  A few more “chere’s” and “darlin’s” and he was pretty sure she’d go out with him.

Even people from home could be cagy at times.  There was a strong connection between Fort Worth and New Orleans it seemed, and a whole quiet mass of people who spent lots of time passing back and forth.  They could spot you a mile off if you were a fake.

He struck up a little conversation with his seat mate on the bus about how they thought the Saints would be doing this year, or the “Aints” as some old, fatigued, fans called them.  It was getting pretty lively.  The man knew nothing about New Orleans, but was a big football fan, so he talked a lot about that and Henry got to talk a lot about football fever in the city.  Two conversations in one, but talking at each other and neither listening.

The bus made a stop and an old black man probably in his eighties got on the bus.  Henry eyed him cautiously and clammed up while the man next to him kept yapping about rankings and trade options, and was even slip-streaming in and out of his fantasy football league picks.  There was nothing ominous about the man who just got on, or his blackness, but Henry knew him, and he knew Henry too well, and that was the scary part.

He was from New Orleans, born and raised, and had only left because Katrina had come, and in his absence, taken his Marigny home away.  He knew the old man would bust him wide open and call him out for being a pretender.  He’d been very rude the first time he’d caught Henry in a lie, and Henry still stung from the rebuke.  Something about getting your own damn life and stop playing games with other people’s story.  No, not something like – almost exactly like.  He’d looked Henry right in the eyes and said, “Man, you are so full of shit.  I don’t know what you’re playing at, but you need to get your own damn life, and stop spouting stories you’ve made up or heard from other people. Ain’t no damn game!”

Coming down the bus aisle, the man briefly eyeballed Henry, who avoided looking directly back and hit the bus stop cord. Thirty seconds later, he was on the sidewalk, or banquette, as they used to call sidewalks in New Orleans.  He’d walk a little ways and catch the next bus at the stop coming up.  Maybe he’d walk down the median in the grass and trees for a ways.  Wait, not median. Neutral ground. He kept forgetting. It’s median here, yes, but it's neutral ground, not median, in New Orleans.

One of these days, he’d have it all down perfectly, and everyone would welcome him.