A Streetcar Named Shenanigans - co-written with Rob Byrnes

The Circle of Hell Bar is one of my favorites in New Orleans, although not one I frequent often. It’s old New Orleans, in the Hotel St. Leone, elegant and swank, with a bar that actually rotates with tableaus of the seven deadly sins as you spin. Pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth. They were all there in both tableau form and human form. The bridal party in the lobby alone had envy and pride easily covered. Especially envy since I ran into my friend Alvin, who as Mr. Gay Leather 2019 was about as hot a man as is possible to find and he had his arm around me in a familiar and friendly manner. Those straight women could not understand why someone like Al would be so chummy with a woman like me—in my forties, grey in the hair and wearing jeans, a brown leather jacket, and a t-shirt that said, ‘Let me know when the Sinners go marching in, I’ll be in that number.” Don’t worry, girls, he’s not my type. But you’re not Mr. Gay Leather’s type either.

After getting some rich top soil dirt gossip from Alvin, I settled in the bar and was now at Lust, an older man leering at a young woman, staring directly at her cleavage. Not one I wanted to gaze at while drinking a fancy cocktail. Less now that I’m older, but even being tall and queer as a purple three-dollar bill, I still have to endure enough of those leering gazes. Some of those memories invoked my gag reflex.

The bar has drink prices to match its setting. Fair, for what you’re getting, expertly prepared Sazeracs or Vieux Carres, comfortable places to talk instead of blasting music. It’s at the busy end of the French Quarter, impossible to park without paying. Or a long walk from my home in Tremé, just outside the lower Quarter. There are many bars on the way, ones with less expensive drinks and a queerer clientele, so I rarely make it here.

But I had just met with a client at her high-rise office in the CBD; just across Canal Street from the French Quarter, an area of tall buildings and business. Not to take a case, but to finish one and get paid. She was a high salary executive in a real estate firm with all the perks that went with the salary; her husband had gone missing and I had found him—in Biloxi, and in the arms of a casino show girl. She was happy with my work, and those pictures would save her an alimony payment and kick him out of the Garden District home they shared. She paid and gave me a bonus.

My car parking was covered for at least two more hours, so I decided to celebrate and treat myself to a Sazerac at the Circle of Hell Bar. It was midafternoon, not as crowded as it would be in an hour or so. For the first time ever, I got a seat at the actual revolving bar. I’ve been here before, but not often enough for anyone to know my name; giving me the chance to be anonymous—another tourist passing through, here for a brief flash and gone. This was the end of work for me today and I was looking forward to a slow and quiet time. I’d been Micky Knight, Private Detective all day and now it was time to be a nameless woman nursing her drink.

***

Grant Lambert hated looking like he was just another tourist passing through.

But there was work to do and Grant Lambert could only pass in a place like New Orleans by looking like a tourist. A guy like Grant Lambert never looked like he belonged where he was. He didn’t even look like he belonged in his own living room.

He also hated this damn bar, packed with real tourists and rotating at a barely perceptible pace, not enough to move him away from whichever annoying conversation the real tourists were babbling as they celebrated drinking in a place where famous (and infamous) literary lights once drowned their sorrows, as if finding a joint like that was some great accomplishment. Like the annoying couple right behind him. “Harvey, you can’t be looking at those girlie places, not with our kids in tow.” “Wasn’t looking at them, was looking at the Big Ass Beer sign.” “Don’t say big ass, the kids might hear!” “They’re not here, Mabel.” “But you might slip up and say it!” “I think they’ve probably heard it before” “But I haven’t heard them hear it before.” “Yes, Mabel.” Grant muttered, “Shoot them or shoot me.”

Not to mention there were all those other tourists clustered around, getting in his face as they tried to flag the bartender’s attention with five-dollar bills, which was probably the tip money, because a fin hadn’t bought a drink in this joint since 1972. But as one of the only beer drinkers in the bar, let alone probably the only person who’d be paying with a stolen credit card, he wouldn’t really know.

“Just try to fit in, would you?” Chase LaMarca, sitting to his right. was Grant’s partner in both life and a career which wasn’t practical to report to the IRS. He spoke in more than a whisper but less than full voice to be heard over the din of day-drinkers. Grant tried to shush him; Chase ignored it. “You’re not acting like you’re enjoying yourself.”

“I’m not.”

They called this place the Circle of Hell Bar, and Grant felt all kinds of hell. The tableau he was about to gently rotate away from was an old guy giving the eye to a busty young woman. The woman didn’t do anything for him, but the old guy looked like the perfect mark: wealthy, self-important, and needy. Too bad he was just a painting on the wall.

On Grant’s left, a woman shoved herself up into a too-small space at the bar and ordered a Sazerac. Grant groaned loudly and she gave him the side-eye. She might have muttered something about fucking tourists out of the corner of her mouth, but he couldn’t be sure so he let it slide and turned toward Chase, who was also giving him the side-eye and daring him to say something.

When he did, it was only to point away from the bar. “That table just opened. Let’s move.” A relief to both Chase and the Sazerac Woman.

Grant lightened up when he was no longer bellying up to the Circle of Hell Bar’s actual circle of hell. Chase would have attributed his attitude to motion sickness, except it took a long fifteen minutes for the bar to make a complete rotation and, anyway, Grant was usually in a bad mood. Often that served their more illicit purposes, because no one wanted to mess with him or test his patience, but his sour attitude wasn’t helpful when it came to jobs like this.

Now in his mid-fifties, Grant was too old and too stubborn to change. Chase – slightly younger but no longer young, despite the best work of his moisturizer and hair stylist – was more adaptable, but they were stuck with each other, so they’d make do. They’d been a team through a few decades of middling success, and it was too late to start over. Chase’s seat at the table faced the entrance, so less than a minute after they sat, he was the first to see a woman with a towering head of blonde hair and a man with slightly-less-towering head of steel gray hair enter the bar.

“Don’t look now, but –”

Instinctively, Grant’s head began to swivel.

“I said… Don’t. Look. Now.” Grant’s head froze mid-swivel. “Dora Lee White and Edgar Richardson Junior just walked in.”

A smile crossed Grant’s lip. It was small, crooked, and probably would make babies cry, but it was a smile, and it was sincere. Dora Lee White, the president of Moral Moms for Freedom, and Pastor Edgar Richardson Jr., founder of the Family Values and Freedom Coalition were actually in the Circle of Hell Bar. Appropriately, the rotation of the bar now had them framed by the Greed tableau. Bordered by Pride and Wrath. As if the bar knew them.

Grant’s smile broadened and – for once – didn’t even seem threatening. “Time to get to work.”

The Sazerac Woman’s shoulders twitched slightly, but neither of them noticed.