The Moviegoer - Walker Percy [7]
Yes! Look at him. As he talks, he slaps a folded newspaper against his pants leg and his eye watches me and at the same time sweeps the terrain behind me, taking note of the slightest movement. A green truck turns down Bourbon Street; the eye sizes it up, flags it down, demands credentials, waves it on. A businessman turns in at the Maison Blanche building; the eye knows him, even knows what he is up to. And all the while he talks very well. His lips move muscularly, molding words into pleasing shapes, marshalling arguments, and during the slight pauses are held poised, attractively everted in a Charles Boyer pout—while a little web of saliva gathers in a corner like the clear oil of a good machine. Now he jingles the coins deep in his pocket. No mystery here!—he is as cogent as a bird dog quartering a field. He understands everything out there and everything out there is something to be understood.
Eddie watches the last float, a doubtful affair with a squashed cornucopia.
“We’d better do better than that.”
“We will.”
“Are you riding Neptune?”
“No.”
I offer Eddie my four call-outs for the Neptune ball. There is always the problem of out-of-town clients, usually Texans, and especially their wives. Eddie thanks me for this and for something else.
“I want to thank you for sending Mr. Quieulle to me. I really appreciate it.”
“Who?”
“Old man Quieulle.”
“Yes, I remember.” Eddie has sunk mysteriously into himself, eyes twinkling from the depths. “Don’t tell me—”
Eddie nods.
“—that he has already set up his trust and up and died?”
Eddie nods, still sunk into himself. He watches me carefully, hanging fire until I catch up with him.
“In Mrs. Quieulle’s name?”
Again a nod; his jaw is shot out.
“How big?”
The same dancing look, now almost malignant. “Just short of nine hundred and fifty thou.” His tongue curves around and seeks the hollow of his cheek.
“A fine old man,” I say absently, noticing that Eddie has become as solemn as a bishop.
“I’ll tell you one thing, Binx. I count it a great privilege to have known him. I’ve never known anyone, young or old, who possessed a greater fund of knowledge. That man spoke to me for two hours about the history of the crystallization of sugar and it was pure romance. I was fascinated.”
Eddie tells me how much he admires my aunt and my cousin Kate. Several years ago Kate was engaged to marry Eddie’s brother Lyell. On the very eve of the wedding Lyell was killed in an accident, the same accident which Kate survived. Now Eddie comes around to face me, his cottony hair flying up in the breeze. “I have never told anybody what I really think of that woman—” Eddie says “woman” as a deliberate liberty to be set right by the compliment to follow. “I think more of Miss Emily—and Kate—than anyone else in the world except my own mother—and wife. The good that woman has done.”
“That’s mighty nice, Eddie.”
He murmurs something about how beautiful Kate is, that next to Nell etc.—and this is a surprise because my cousin Nell Lovell is a plain horsy old girl. “Will you please give them both my love?”
“I certainly will.”
The parade is gone. All that is left is the throb of a drum.
“What do you do with yourself?” asks Eddie and slaps, his paper against his pants leg.
“Nothing much,” I say, noticing that Eddie is not listening.
“Come see us, fellah! I want you to’ see what Nell has done.” Nell has taste. The two of them are forever buying Shotgun cottages in rundown neighborhoods and fixing them up with shutterblinds in the bathroom, saloon doors for the kitchen, old bricks and a sugar kettle for the back yard, and selling in a few months for a big profit.
The cloud is turning blue and pressing down upon us. Now the street seems closeted; the bricks of the buildings glow with a yellow stored-up light. I look at my watch: one is not late at my aunt’s house. In an instant Eddie’s hand is out.
“Give the bride and groom my best.”
“I will.