Vieux Carre Read Free Page B

minute, young lady. When you took your room here, you gave your name as Miss Sparks. Now is that young fellow that’s living up there with you Mr. Sparks, and if so why did you register as Miss instead of Mrs.?
    JANE : I’m sure you’ve known for some time that I’m sharing my room with a young man, whose name is not Mr. Sparks, whose name is Tye McCool. And if that offends your moral scruples— well— sometimes it offends mine, too.
    MRS. WIRE : If I had not been a young lady myself once! Oh yes, once, yaiss! I’d have evicted both so fast you’d think that . . .
    JANE : No, I’ve stopped thinking. Just let things happen to me.
    [
Jane is now at the stairs and starts up them weakly. Mrs. Wire grunts despairingly and falls back to her cot. Jane enters the kitchen
.]
    NURSIE : Why, hello, Miss Sparks.
    JANE : Good evening, Nursie— why is Mrs. Wire sleeping in the entrance hall?
    NURSIE : Lawd, that woman, she got the idea that 722 ToulouseStreet is the address of a jailhouse. And she’s the keeper— have some hot chick’ry with me?
    JANE : Do you know I still don’t know what chicory is? A beverage of some kind?
    NURSIE : Why chicory’s South’n style coffee.
    JANE : Oh, well, thank you, maybe I could try a bit of it to get me up that flight of stairs . . .
    [
She sits at the table. Below, the door has opened a third time. The painter called Nightingale stands in the doorway with a pickup
.]
    MRS. WIRE : Who? Ah!
    NIGHTINGALE [
voice rising
]: Well, cousin, uh, Jake . . .
    PICKUP [
uneasily
]: Blake.
    NIGHTINGALE : Yes, we do have a lot of family news to exchange. Come on in. We’ll talk a bit more in my room.
    MRS. WIRE : In a pig’s snout you will!
    NIGHTINGALE : Why, Mrs. Wire! [
He chuckles, coughs
.] Are you sleeping in the hall now?
    MRS. WIRE : I’m keeping watch on the comings and goings at night of tenants in my house.
    NIGHTINGALE : Oh, yes, I know your aversion to visitors at night, but this is my first cousin. I just bumped into him at Gray Goose bus station. He is here for one day only, so I have takenthe license of inviting him in for a little family talk since we’ll have no other chance.
    MRS. WIRE : If you had half the cousins you claim to have, you’d belong to the biggest family since Adam’s.
    PICKUP : Thanks, but I got to move on. Been nice seeing you— cousin . . .
    NIGHTINGALE : Wait— here— take this five. Go to the America Hotel on Exchange Alley just off Canal Street, and I will drop in at noon tomorrow— cousin . . . [
He starts to cough
.]
    PICKUP : Thanks, I’ll see ya, cousin.
    MRS. WIRE : Hah, cousin.
    [
Nightingale coughs and spits near her cot
.]
    Don’t you spit by my bed!
    NIGHTINGALE : Fuck off, you old witch!
    MR. WIRE : What did you say to me?
    NIGHTINGALE : Nothing not said to and about you before! [
He mounts the steps
.]
    MRS. WIRE : Nursie! Nursie! [
Receiving no response she lowers herself with a groan onto the cot
.]
    NIGHTINGALE [
starting up the stairs
]: Midnight staircase— still in— your [
coughs
] fatal position . . . [
He climbs slowly up
.]
    [
The writer, Jane, and Nursie are in the kitchen. The cronesenter, wild-eyed and panting with greasy paper bags. The kitchen area is lighted
.]
    MARY MAUDE : Nursie? Miss Carrie and I ordered a little more dinner this evening than we could eat, so we had the waiter put the remains of the, the—
    MISS CARRIE [
her wild eyes very wild
]: The steak “Diane,” I had the steak Diane and Mary Maude had the chicken “bonne femme.” But our eyes were a little bigger than our stomachs.
    MARY MAUDE : The sight of too much on a table can kill your appetite! But this food is too good to waste.
    MISS CARRIE : And we don’t have ice to preserve it in our room, so would you kindly put it in Mrs. Wire’s icebox, Nursie.
    NURSIE : The last time I done that Miss Wire