Free Rhode Island Red by Charlotte Carter Page B

nonsensical name that singer Slim Gaillard had invented for Charlie Parker during an impromptu recording session.
    â€œCome inside, love. Let me see you.”
    He sat me down at the kitchen table while he made a pot of tea for me. I drank it slowly, gradually calming down, and finally was able to relate the story coherently.
    â€œHenry,” I said mournfully, “what am I going to do? I got her killed. I got her killed , Henry.”
    â€œBut you did not, Nan. How could you know what would happen? You were only trying to give help to a blind girl. She said she couldn’t even pay her rent.”
    â€œI know, but, Christ! It’s so awful. I’m like a wrecking crew, Rooney. Everything I touch seems to crumble and die. Maybe you better beat it back to that loft you once had on the rue Dauphine. I don’t think my tentacles can reach as far as Paris.”
    â€œI pay no attention when you say such things, Nanette.”
    In each pocket of Henry’s overcoat was a brown paper bag. The bags contained identical bottles of cheap Chilean wine which he had picked up, no doubt, at the benighted little liquor store up the block.
    He poured me a glass and undid the buttons of my blouse as I drank. “Go and change your things now,” he said. “I will make something to eat.”
    I don’t know what kind of mouldering condiments Henry found in the fridge or the cabinets, but with their help he made me some fantastic scrambled eggs. I ate like a wolf. We found some stale Fig Newtons in the cabinet and I devoured those too, along with half a quart of milk.
    â€œYou were hungry, yes?” he said, smiling. “The way you were when you came in from school and your mother gave you those … those biscuits.”
    â€œYes!” In my mind I saw, clear as a bell, the image of Mom in her pristine apron. “Milk Lunch Biscuits. She thought they were a treat. But I hated them. My mother never did understand about food.”
    â€œMine did, of course. You are lucky you did not have her as a mother. You would have been a very fat little child indeed.”
    â€œBut you weren’t. You were skinny. And a mama’s boy. And everything was fried in olive oil.”
    â€œYou remember everything I tell you about my childhood, and I remember all about yours,” Henry remarked. “Our lives could not have been more different. And yet, I feel as if I lived there alongside you in Elmhurst. And as if you swam with me and ate the same sweet things as me in my grandmother’s kitchen.”
    â€œMe too,” I said. “I guess we’ve touched souls, Henry. That’s what all the poems are about.”
    â€œI want to see some of your poetry.”
    I rolled my eyes. “Oh, God. Maybe another night, sweetie.”
    â€œYou used to write them in school. When you were so unhappy. When you were daydreaming.”
    â€œI could have used a friend like you in school.”
    He smiled slyly. “Do not be so sure. The only way I could have known you then is if I were your teacher. I might have kept you long, long after school—touching souls with you. And then what would your parents think?”
    We both laughed.
    â€œDo you know what I am thinking of now?” he asked mischievously as we cleared the dishes.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œThat strange hotel near the Opera, off the boulevard Haussmann, where I had the flu.”
    â€œYes. The hotel du Nil. Where all the maids were from Barbados.”
    â€œI stayed there when I was very young. And so did you. And we both thought that nil meant zero, when it really meant the Nile River. What do you think that means, Nanette, that we both made the same mistake?”
    â€œI don’t know. But did your mom also tell you when you were little that you were a very smart child, but sometimes you were a fool too?”
    â€œMaybe. I suspect not. In fact, I don’t think anyone has ever told me I was very