Free Night Swimming by Robin Schwarz

could conjure up such a feeling of isolation in her?
    “Do you want to buy one, my dear?” the clerk inquired. “They’re very popular.” The clerk looked exactly like one of her dolls, with tight red lips and blank eyes. She lifted the figure up and shook it so that Charlotte could hear the tiny gold bell ring on the top of its hat.
    “No,” Charlotte said, “no, thank you,” and she walked on as if she were turning her back on an accident.
    Voodoo tours, tarot readings, and visits to Marie Laveau’s grave were posted everywhere. It was as if she had just entered the underworld. Jugglers, street clowns, and mimes insinuated themselves on every corner. Musicians, ladies of the night, and their patrons were just rolling home at nine in the morning. And yet, in spite of its dark underbelly and questionable gods, it was wondrous and bewitching to Charlotte.
    The houses resembled cakes trimmed with sugary white icing, while intricate iron braiding encircled the porches like charm bracelets and wedding ribbons. Balcony apartments boasted so many flowers, they looked as if they were defying gravity: lingering in midair, not quite falling down, not quite staying up.
    Charlotte decided to stay at the Cornstalk Hotel on Royal Street. A cast-iron fence, known as the cornstalk fence, enclosed the property, and morning glories climbed over it like a chain stitch.
    She entered and rang the silver bell on the welcome desk. A middle-aged man came out from the back.
    “Do you by chance have any rooms available?” Charlotte inquired.
    The man looked her over but avoided eye contact, as though the less he looked into her eyes, the less he knew about her. And that was just fine with Charlotte.
    “Yup, got the back room available. It’s very large.”
    Large? Was that a slight? Jesus, Charlotte, let it go. “I’ll take it.”
    He simply handed Charlotte the key and pointed the way. “Last room on your left.”
    She stayed in New Orleans for two weeks, gorging herself on Creole and pastry, po’boys and oysters, blackened catfish, and powdered beignets. She’d wander into seedy establishments to enjoy unknown drinks that had their own swampy aftertastes and left her feeling sluggish and happy and forgetful that she was dying.
    Mrs. Sippi was a bar on Tulane Avenue. In Charlotte’s brief visit she took to going there on a regular basis. She’d never been a “regular” anywhere before, let alone at a bar, but she liked the idea of going to a place where they recognized her, where they said, “Good to see you.” Maybe it was because the bartender spoke to everyone equally: the millionaire with his spats and Panama hat, the call girl with the extreme cleavage, the dwarf with his bad jokes. And then, of course, there was Charlotte herself. She wore a proper paisley dress with flats and took up nearly two stools. But he talked to her, too.
    One night Charlotte dared to exceed her personal limit. Everything that had been a rule in Gorham, New Hampshire, was broken here in New Orleans. She allowed herself to laugh too loud, live too large, and drink too much. She had chosen to drink mint juleps that night, and they tasted so damn good, she had another, and another.
    “Henri, why do you call your bar Mrs. Sippi when you’re in Louisiana?”
    “’Cause dats wheres I’m from, darlin’.”
    Charlotte paused. “You happy, Henri?”
    “Happy enough.”
    “What makes you happy?”
    “I gots my wife, my chillun, my gran’babies. I gots weekends off, a good fishin’ hole, a friend or two.”
    “Is that enough?”
    “Plenty for me.”
    “What if someone told you you were dying? What would you do then?”
    “Then? Well, den I guess I’d take stock.”
    “How?”
    “I come to ’preciate what I gots more den I do.”
    That’s reasonable,
Charlotte thought. “Anything else?” she asked.
    “Well, I guess I’d smoke my ganja a little mo den I do.” Henri laughed.
    “Ganja?”
    “Yeah, you knows...