Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Warren
Levette came back to The Carousel every night for the next week after we met.
It wasn’t uncommon for men to drink away their money every night, but Levette didn’t seem like the kind.
He gave off a bureaucratic aura, as though he were wealthier and far higher station than the likes of the rich Edwin Landry.
It seemed to me like he was playing at being a lower station than he actually was, trying to fit in with the rich of the French Quarter like they were of the same status.
We didn’t speak much when he frequented the bar, but there was something hypnotic about him that drew my gaze, time and time again. Each time, I found those bright eyes locked on mine and a small smirk playing at his lips as though we shared some secret.
Perhaps we did, I confess. I sensed the sensuality behind his looks and felt my face flush each time.
Being raised in a tough Irish Catholic home had prevented me from entertaining my ‘deviant desires’, as my father had called them.
I knew the meaning behind Levette’s gaze, and it pained me to ignore it.
But how I longed for a connection that took away the loneliness I was drowning myself in. I craved to feel something, anything, that would give me a drive for life once more.
The following Sunday was the first day that I had taken off in weeks. I normally took every shift I could take to feed myself and make sure rent was paid. But after working too many days in a row, my boss could see I was exhausted and made me schedule a day off.
Growing up, Sundays were for church and cooking.
My mother would make us put on our best clothes and we’d walk down to Saint Mary’s, spending our afternoons listening to the preacher condemn us to Hell for our sins.
I don’t know at what age it happened, but something shifted in me during my teenage years.
I couldn’t stomach hearing that God loved us, but that he would cast us below for all the hideous things we were doing.
“Why would God want us to suffer?” I had asked my mother one day. “That doesn’t sound like my God.”
The barely contained fury on her face is something that still haunts me. “How dare you presume to know what God thinks? What He wants? You heathenous child!”
She called my father into the kitchen, and there he beat the blasphemy out of my mouth.
They had presumed that I was trying to rebel, blaspheme against the One who had created us. But they couldn’t have been more wrong. I wanted to understand, to get a grasp on how I could stop myself from being thrown into the fiery pits for all my wrongdoings.
I lay there that night, wincing from the bruises forming on my stomach, and prayed. I told God that I was sorry, that I would do better. That I would try more. But something had switched in my brain and I no longer felt the connection to our church, to our Sunday worships, as I had before.
That Sunday without work, and since I no longer attended church at that stage in adulthood, felt unusual rather boring.
I walked around the Quarter, failing to find the magic in it that I normally did.
While the hustle and bustle was still there, it wasn’t enthralling me.
I wandered aimlessly for hours, caught in a cycle of people watching while not taking anything in.
The afternoon passed to evening, and I found myself still wandering until I ended up outside Saint Mary’s.
The service of the day had long since finished and I knew the chance of running into my family was slim.
There was a bench across the street and I sat that for what felt like hours, just looking at the outside of the building.
“It’s been a long time since I saw you here, Warren.”
I offered a fond smile to Father Smythe as he took a seat beside me.
In the ten or so years since I had last attended mass, Father Peter Smythe had aged substantially.
His black hair was now entirely gray, wrinkles marking age on his and making his eyes look weary.
Yet, he still looked happy. As though all that was weighing him down physically could not touch his soul.
“Father Smythe, it’s good to see you.”
“Would you like to come inside? My confessional is always open, son.”
“I’m just fine here, thank you, Father. I don’t find my peace by sitting on a pew anymore.”
The priest tilted his head, looking at me thoughtfully. “But have you found peace anywhere else?”
I considered that question for a minute before answering, knowing it was something I had asked myself so many times. “Not yet, but I’m still searching. Though I do know that, for me, it’s not in there,” I said, nodding my head towards his church.
Father Smythe sighed sadly, patting my shoulder. “I hope that you come home to the Lord one day, Warren.”
“I never left Him, Father. If I love God, shouldn’t He be with me anywhere?”
That earned me another shoulder pat before the priest left me to my thoughts.
I stayed on that bench until the sky changed colors and the stars started to shine.
The temperature dropped and the cold air stabbed at my arms through my shirt.
The streets were illuminated with the dull glow from the street lamps, shining a hazy yellow onto all the buildings and casting dark shadows as people walked through.
Staring up at the sky, I was lost somewhere between praying and a barrage of thoughts of all I had lost and allowed myself to give up.
I was a somber, sad young man. Life was not easy for anyone in that era, but it felt to me as though everyone pretended otherwise, whereas I was being eaten alive by my own sorrow.
I desperately wished to be like everyone else, except my brain did not work in the same way.
The idea of pretending for the sake of societal acceptance was not something I wanted to do.
I already had to hide such a major part of myself that tucking away my sadness seemed like giving away all of myself to the world for nothing.
The bench creaked as someone sat down beside me, breaking my trance state.
I looked up to see the object of some of my spiraling thoughts looking at me with a soft smile.
He slung a suited arm over the back of the bench, his hand resting so dangerously close to my shoulder that I almost wanted to shift where I sat—closer to or further from him, I wasn’t sure.
“Bonsoir, Warren,” he said, the heaviness of his accented words sending a shiver down my arms.
I inclined my head. “Levette.”
“I went to The Carousel. You weren’t there.”
There was a hint of sadness and curiosity to his voice. As I looked over at him, I felt myself breathless. The yellow hues of the candle-lit street lamps reflected on the tan of his golden skin, making him appear almost glowing in the dull light.
“I took a day off. You didn’t stay to drink and enjoy your evening?”
Levette raised a brow, pursing his lips slightly as he looked at me knowingly. “I didn’t find the company to be so enjoyable this time.”
It upset me how deeply happy that simple comment made me, the way it brought a blush to my pale skin. I was not allowed to feel that way, to want or have someone like Levette. I shamed myself, and society damned me. But oh, how his eyes on me made me forget all of that, even for a moment.
“You look lost in your own melancholy. Tell me, what troubles your beautiful mind?”
I turned my gaze back to the stars. They sparkled in the dark night and for whatever reason, they reminded me of Levette. Bright and beautiful and shining against a backdrop of darkness.
“The world, and my place in it, troubles me,” I admitted, letting out a sigh. I let my gaze drop back to Saint Mary’s. “Are you a church going man, monsieur Fortier?”
Levette chuckled, the sound deep and rich, but oddly sardonic. “Ah, this is what pains you? I see.” I could hear him tap his fingers against the metal of his cane. Tap, tap, tap. “I knew faith once, a long time ago. But I am, much to the probable dismay of your God, a deeply troubled sinner.”
“It doesn’t worry you?” I heard myself ask, my voice pained. “Damnation, I mean.”
He studied me, his eyes roaming over my face like he was searching for something. “My relationship with damnation was sealed a long time ago. You, dear Warren, don’t seem like you want to be damned. Perhaps there is time for your redemption?”
Memories of my childhood came flooding back to me. All the key words of horror thrown around by my parents and the church to put kids in line, make us start acting as perfect as they wanted us to be. Even when I tried, it was never good enough.
“My parents moved us here because of the famine back in Ireland. I was only around two, so I don’t remember it.
They had struggled to survive for so long and this was supposed to be their fresh start.
It was still a struggle, but we had food and a safe place to live, and so they were extra thankful to God.
The Catholicism in our household was suffocating.
At every turn, I was sinning and my mother would scold me and tell me that Hell awaited me. ”
Levette tsked and shook his head. “A mother should show only love to her child. I am sorry that she showed you such a poor version of herself.”
I shrugged. “It was all I knew. But how is a child supposed to thrive when they’re told that they’ll never see Heaven?
Even from when I was young, that broke my heart.
I know God, and I hold Him in my heart, but reconciling my Creator with the ideals that I was raised with is something I can’t quite fathom.
How could my father, someone who believed himself to be holier than thou, beat me senseless for the simplest of things?
How could my mother allow it to happen? How could my brother stand idly by, dismissive in my pain? ”
“Oh, you poor thing,” Levette whispered. I felt his fingertips lightly brush my shoulder, a small show of support that wouldn’t have us shunned.