Friday. The day I have off of work and to myself, the day countless New Orleanians leave for lunch and don’t come back. It’s oyster day, fish day, shrimp day. It’s the day Happy Hour starts at 10 a.m. and the streets are clogged with impatient citizens hell-bent on appreciation of life’s routine escapes. I […]
I sat in the first chair inside Cristo’s simple barbershop with my head pitched forward, staring at a pinup poster from World War II. The girl was labeled ‘Ensign Edie,’ a smiling redhead wearing an adapted sailor’s outfit and cap, a sweet little composition of curves and right angles. She had an arm swung around […]
It was long into the afternoon when my girlfriend left me behind at the Black Wave Bar. She’d walk the hot path home, calves scratched by overanxious grasses, and start on dinner. I was to follow soon behind, whenever my songs on the jukebox ran out. In these hard times, you have to see a […]
“Now. I’m stark naked, holed up in a cramped room with two dead whores, my radio is shot to shit, and I’m blue-balled all to hell. Twelve shots in the clip. I’m estimating there’s at least seven of ‘em outside, and they ain’t all going down with one bullet. My options were severely limited.”
“I knew things were bad when the second whore shook, seized up, then slid sideways off of me like a concussed jockey falling out of the saddle. Shot right through the breast. I’d thought the other one just fell or something, you know? She was dicking around with the radio in the corner of the […]