Spike was sure he had parked his car at the far corner of the park, but when he got to the place there was a rusty beat-up Toyota Corolla in the spot. He knew the French Quarter well, but it was around four thirty in the morning and he was exhausted. All the buildings and the street corners seemed the same. And the longer the night got, the more confused and lost he felt.

He walked a block over to Dauphine. There it was. Somehow he always ended up on Dauphine. He opened the passenger door to get the dog. Spike could see his own breath, not something he was entirely unaccustomed to, but so rare that it always amazed him, made him think of God and first breaths and wonder how those things could exist in the same world as himself. He looked down at the dog. “Well, Brandy, Love had a good night. Let’s go get something to eat.” There was a length of rope on the floor; he tied it around the dog’s neck.

A few blocks away Spike tied the dog to a street lamp and walked inside a corner store. It felt like an overcrowded hallway: one-pound bags of flour, boxes of cereal for two, a few baskets of fruit. He headed to the back, following the light of a glass case filled with large aluminum containers. A few minutes later he emptied a small basket at the cash register and reached into the pocket of his hooded sweatshirt; he was afraid to take out the thick wad of cash, so he peeled off a few bills in his pocket and carefully slipped them out, holding them close to his stomach to make sure there wasn’t a hundred dollar bill in the bunch. The cashier didn’t look up from the scanner until everything was in a plastic bag: a grape cold drink, a bottle of water, a barbecue rib hot plate, a two-pound bag of dry dog food, and an extra paper plate and bowl. Spike collected his bag and went outside for the dog.

Soon they were heading down Dauphine. Spike half expected to see the dog’s namesake in the distance, his old friend Brandy, probably wearing a sparkly pink and white jogging suit and a ridiculously little white patent leather backpack, working on her switch. The hormones didn’t completely take away the facial hair, but they did soften it. Brandy waxed and plucked out the stragglers. Spike could still hear the ripping sound of the wax strips. No great boobs yet, but they were growing into something pubescent. Brandy had said that she didn’t care about that so much, what she really wanted was a nice round ass, better than boobs any day. She didn’t have that either.

Bourbon Street was busy tonight. It always smelled of beer and urine and cigarettes, but there was hardly anyone on Dauphine, no stink. Seven hundred dollars. If things went on like this, if he kept having seven hundred dollar nights, he’d be a millionaire in no time.

Spike looked up at the cast iron on the townhouses and wondered where he would live with all that money. He bumped his bulging pocket as he swung the rope around then slipped his hand in to keep the money from falling out. Seven hundred dollars was almost enough to get him out of his aunt’s car and into a real place. He’d been sleeping in the car nearly two months. Ever since he’d had it out with Brandy. Brandy his former friend. Brandy, who was just a few blocks upriver on Dauphine; who, if they were on good terms, would hold his money for him and sympathize with how he had earned it; who would be sure he didn’t lose the money or get robbed. Brandy, who would help him find his own place. Hell, Brandy would probably loan him another three hundred, if he needed it. But they weren’t on good terms.

On the next corner, on the other side of the street, he saw a building with bright picture windows. He pulled the hood of his sweatshirt over his head and began to walk toward it. It was the Double Play. Brandy would be working tonight. The girls at work had always given him a hard time about her, and Spike figured they were probably right. He probably did owe Brandy, but he didn’t know exactly what. He couldn’t give her love; he didn’t have any for her. Still, he thought, he could walk in and try to apologize about things, or try to say thank you, or ask if he could come back on different terms, real roommates. He had money. He could give her money.

Around midnight, after begging to get out of work early, he’d entered a hotel lobby with maybe fifty dollars in the pocket of his sweatshirt. Tips people had given him in the club that evening. Admiration for his strength and flexibility, his youth and inexperience. At that point in the evening, he still didn’t believe that anything would happen. He figured the older dancers, the street hustlers, just liked to tell stories. As he opened the glass doors on St Louis Street, he told himself he was just checking things out. The lobby was on the second floor. Just inside the glass doors was a large black fountain and an elegant marble staircase that flanked it on both sides. It was a ritzy hotel that awed and terrified him.

Spike jogged up the stairs. At the top he saw that the front desk wasn’t facing him but looked sideways; he remembered to slow down. No one likes a young black man jogging through a hotel lobby, not unless he’s wearing a uniform and a name tag. The floor was marble, like the stairs, and all the furniture was wooden and bulky and looked like ribbons were carved into it. He had seen the elevators from downstairs and turned away from the front desk to meet them. Seeing his reflection in the brass doors, Spike wished he was a few inches taller and thicker, but he was covered in muscle and for that he was grateful. He slipped off the sweatshirt and draped it over his shoulders. The white bandana tied around his head was straight, but he tugged on it so that it sat comfortably behind his ears. If only he had a pair of diamond studs. Still, he pivoted a bit and nodded in approval. The elevator door opened a moment later. Good fortune, a sign. The night should go well.

On the top floor was a small landing with two doors. He turned to the left and knocked. There were firm footsteps inside and the twisting sound of the doorknob, then the man was in the doorway, tall and lean with receding black hair and a towering white forehead. His smile seemed to take over the lower half of his face. It was unnerving to Spike who hadn’t noticed much about him when they spoke earlier in the club. Spike had stopped at their table and the man had said something about how much they liked Spike’s stage set and how amazed they were to find a club like this one, a club for a couple like them. But as the man continued all Spike remembered was trying to distinguish the man’s voice from the loud music and countless other conversations, the tense feeling in his chest, and trying not to stare at the young glowing blonde woman, the man’s wife, sitting in a wobbly wooden chair, out of place, wearing a pale puffy golden dress that reminded him of cotton candy. Spike thought of the three hundred fifty dollars the man had offered at the club — three hundred fifty a pop — returned the smile, and stepped through the doorway.

The woman was inside, sinking into a couch, wearing something long made of pink silk and cream colored lace. Her straight blonde hair fell along her shoulders, and her features looked less polished than in the club, more natural.

“Hello, Spike.” The man stepped past him and closed the door. “Come in, have a drink. We have a bottle of cognac with peach nectar, does that sound good?”

“Sure.”

“We also have beer, if you prefer?”

“Oh no, I had a daiquiri earlier.” There was a daiquiri shop on every other corner in the French Quarter. “I never had cognac with peach nectar before. Sounds good.” The man stood beside Spike in the narrow entrance, his head tilted and his eyes adrift, vacant somehow. Spike didn’t know how tall the man was, but more than his own five feet ten inches, for sure. The wife had yet to say anything.

Spike glanced over the room, looking for the bed; there was a couch and heavy dark curtains, two doors leading somewhere, and an alcove with a counter and a small refrigerator, but no bed. He bobbed his head toward the man, “You’re George, right?” The man nodded, and Spike gestured over to his wife nestled on the couch, “…and Kerri?” She nodded, and Spike worried that she was nervous and would call off the whole thing, or worse, her husband wouldn’t let her.

“And you’re Spike.” The man rested a hand on his shoulder then walked into the room. “I’ll get you that drink.”

The man’s hand left a warm sensation on his shoulder. His dad used to talk to him like that, trying to explain why he couldn’t hang outside their apartment in the projects. Spike wondered what his dad would think of the people he had been hanging with since leaving home, what his dad would think of Spike being here. He liked to think his dad would applaud his good luck, but mostly he figured his dad would never believe him that things like this happen, or that the people he met were for real.

“That’s not your given name is it?” asked the woman.

“No.” Spike didn’t move from the door. His cheeks were beginning to feel sore from smiling.

“Tell me your real name.” The woman patted the cushion beside her.

Spike shook his head and jogged over to the couch, sweatshirt in hand, hoping the woman was watching his chest move beneath the sheer white tank top he’d bought on the way to the hotel. He sat inches from her and put his elbows on his knees.

“So, what’s your real name, Spike?” the man asked. He handed Spike a glass of cognac and peach nectar. With the other hand he dropped a little green pill in Spike’s palm, just like the white one he’d given Spike earlier, when they’d made arrangements.

“Well?” The woman’s voice was soft.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” Spike put the pill in his mouth and took a sip. Her hand was stroking his thigh. Pale, it gleamed there on his shiny black pants, slipping back and forth. Leaning back, eyes closed, he tried to concentrate on her hand. He didn’t want to tell them anything. Not that Love was his real name. Not that he had a dog. A dog named for his old friend Brandy, even though the dog was a boy. And certainly not that the dog was asleep on the passenger side of the faded black Chevy Malibu his aunt had given him as a gift for making it through high school. When he returned, around four or five in the morning, the dog would raise his head and wag his tail then go back to sleep. Earlier that day, he had thought his life would always be exactly that way. The woman’s hand moved further up his thigh, and he tried to imagine what she tasted like.

“Try us.” The man said. Spike opened his eyes. The man was on the other side of the room by the closed curtains, bending over to pick up a black bag.

“Dondrell.”

The woman grimaced and Spike scooted closer so his leg was against hers.

Dondrell was his best friend in high school. The only one his father tolerated. He mostly forgot what it was like at home, tried at any rate. His dad was the first person in his life to tell him that a young black man shouldn’t run through a hotel lobby without a uniform and a name tag. Not that his father worked in hotels. They were not allowed anywhere near the French Quarter: no Mardi Gras parades, no jazz bands. Spike could understand it when they lived in the projects. He and his brother went to school and home, mother or father escorting them. While they were at school his father did landscaping. He raked, weeded, edged, and mowed the broad elaborate yards of the fancy houses in the Garden District. One thing Spike could say for his father, he worked hard, real hard, and saved. He saved so much that he was able to buy them a small slab house in Gentilly. Spike thought that maybe, if things kept up like this, he would start to save, too.

And now he had seven hundred dollars in his pocket, minus the bag of groceries. There was a dark stoop across the street from the Double Play and Spike sat down on it. He wondered how long he had before sunrise. The bright light from the windows cast just enough light for Spike to make out his hot plate, and inside he could see a large square counter in the middle of the room. It looked more like a diner than a bar. Men in tee-shirts and flannel shirts were hunched on the stools and a few over-dressed ‘girls’, like Brandy, were peppered between them. Brandy was there, behind the bar, wiping down the counter. Her hair was in a bob that just hit her round fleshy shoulders. She’d gotten those hair extensions shortly before kicking him out. Her face seemed softer than the last time he’d sat here. The hormones were working, but Spike could still see the fat black boy in the picture she’d showed him many months ago. He didn’t think he could ever look at her and not think of that fat black boy.

They ate like that: Spike, his hot plate on his lap, and the dog, a paper plate on the sidewalk. Spike watched the window as he chewed. Brandy kept her plump lips a deep pink and always managed to pencil in her eyebrows perfectly. Once he’d asked her if he could try. She’d hesitated then handed over the pencil. After a few minutes of deep concentration on Spike’s part, she’d looked in the mirror and gasped. If she had been a real girl, he might have gone for her, maybe. Of course she was terrified of dogs, and Spike wasn’t sure if she knew about her namesake.

He had been living in the car for a week when he acquired the dog. He noticed the stray wandering around the park while he sat on a bench eating. The dog jogged over to him, and the first thing Spike noticed was a ribcage, then the black and grey coat. The dog came up to Spike’s knees, and Spike rolled his eyes. Without moving his bottom, the dog leaned over and sniffed Spike’s knee. Spike had shaken his head and thrown a few bones. After they finished eating, he realized he’d seen the dog before. “You been in this park the last few nights.” The dog had a benign expression. Spike had patted his head and put him in the car.

In the light of the Double Play, Spike tore more meat off the ribs and looked around. The street was still mostly empty, although some people did come and go. He saw a skinny white girl with her hair pulled tight on her head, her mouth a thin line; she grabbed some condoms out of a large fishbowl on the counter. Out the door, she rushed across the street toward a thick middle-aged white man in a sweater. Spike turned back to the bright picture windows to see Brandy washing glasses in a sink behind the bar. He licked his lips, searching the plastic bag for a napkin as he watched.

At the hotel, while he was still admiring the woman’s pale hand on his leg, the man refilled Spike’s glass and handed it to him. Spike reached up, clutching it, but this was water. “Don’t want to overdo the alcohol,” the man said. Spike’s arm seemed to float up to his mouth; he took a gulp. Cold water cascaded down his throat and, slowly, a sinking realization that he had no idea what he was supposed to do next.

“Kerri, give the boy a kiss. I know you want to.” The man had just collected Spike’s empty glass and was sitting across from them, snapping parts of a camera together. Spike was enjoying the floaty feeling in his arms, and wondering if his legs would feel the same if he tried to walk. Suddenly the woman jumped on top of him. She straddled him, bit his lower lip, and then licked it. He felt self-conscious kissing her; his mouth was so dry. She pulled away for a moment, and he looked at her, desperate to explain that he wasn’t what she thought he was: not a smooth hot guy, just a kid who’d finally turned eighteen after waiting a long long time. A kid who was excited just a few years before when he got to share a real bedroom with his brother, instead of the living room they shared in the projects. A kid who was still disappointed that when they moved to Gentilly and he went to a nice school, he wasn't allowed to join the band, or play football, or nothing. No, he had to spend his time out of school playing video games in his room, waiting till he could get out of the house, and only once had he seen what his city was so famous for, a Mardi Gras parade. He had sneaked out of the house with Dondrell. They spent all of a Sunday afternoon in the dense crowd, watching the riders in their masks and shiny shirts, the kings and queens, dukes and ladies-in-waiting all tied with rope to large high floats covered in huge papier-mâché flowers and in front larger than life bare-chested statues painted in bright blues, greens, and yellows. He had jumped the highest and managed to catch a spear from a rider on the second level of a two-story float. It was in a duffle bag in his aunt’s car, the feather hanging on by a thread. When he got back to Gentilly his father took off his belt, and Spike’s backside was so raw and bruised, he couldn’t sit right for a week. Shortly after, Dondrell had moved by his family in Houston.

Spike heard a click and turned into a camera lens.

“You’re in his face, George.”

“Sorry.” The man backed up as the woman shoved her tongue into Spike’s mouth. At first he thought she tasted of cognac and peach nectar then he thought maybe that was his own mouth. Just as he was remembering what to do, she slid down to the floor and began to fumble with his pants. Her eyelids looked heavy from between his knees, and it made him think of a blanket, of his being under the big comforter his grandmother had handed down to him. It had faded square and triangle shapes and lumpy places. Every day after school, he had climbed beneath it and worked himself into a pale sticky liquid. For a moment he worried that he would come too soon, but then the woman got up.

It suddenly occurred to Spike that if the sun began to rise, Brandy would see him sitting across the street, littering the stoop with the bag, the dog’s paper plate and bowl, himself. He hoped he still had some time, blanketed by darkness. There was sweet tangy barbeque sauce on his lips, where the woman’s tongue had been. After wiping his mouth and fingers, he scooped beans onto his fork. He downed the lot of them in seconds, scraping the bottom of the container. There was corn and white bread toast left, one slice for him, one for the dog. Brandy’s place was up the street. He had passed it without realizing, 522 Dauphine, REAR. Early on, she had told him that she hardly got any mail. The post office didn’t seem to understand the address ‘REAR’. But that was the address, plain as day on the door. Why the confusion?

When they had first met he thought something was off about Brandy. But she was so kind to him, and as he’d just left home and had no place to stay, she’d taken him in. At first she didn’t expect anything, nothing at all. She’d run away from home too, years before, before finishing high school, when she was a fat black boy named Branford. But you never forget these things, she’d said.

Brandy poured shots into little plastic cups. You forget what you want to forget, Spike figured. Like the reaction people have to a fat black boy waiting for the streetcar. It gets replaced by the reaction people have to a plump question mark waiting for the streetcar. That fat black boy is gone.

Spike took a large forkful of sweet corn with a few bits of bacon, then another, and another. His cheeks were swollen with corn, but he just kept chewing. Brandy handed plastic cups of pink drinks across the bar to tall elegant ‘girls’, beyond beautiful, who looked past her as they took the cups, delicately handling them as if they were crystal. The dog looked up at him, wagging his tail, melting Spike with his longing expression. “You got to wait, Brandy.” Bits of corn sprayed out as he spoke, and he raised the back of his hand to cover his mouth. The dog’s tail wagged faster. Brandy prepared another pink drink.

In the hotel room, her head no longer between his knees, the woman spoke to him in a breathy whisper. “Come here,” she said, standing and pulling his hand. When Spike stood up his whole body felt floaty. And he thought of the first time he had laid eyes on that pink stucco house in Gentilly with wavy black wrought iron on the door and little faux balconies around the front windows. He really thought he could go out on them and when he told his father, he hit Spike on the back of the head. “Those just for show, boy.” Spike had been amazed the first time he wandered through the French Quarter and saw people out on real black iron balconies. Someday he would be standing on one, looking down at the kids in the street. Spike managed to push his tennis shoes off just inside the bedroom door. His feet sank into soft wonderful carpet.

It was still dark out when he scraped up the last of the corn with his fork, gathering drops of salty sweet liquid, rolling them around on his tongue. The dog paced, about to jump. Suddenly, Brandy was across the room at the empty section of the bar, her back to the customers. She lifted her head, the bottom of the plastic cup just above the tip of her nose. Spike took the slice of white bread toast and tossed it a few feet. It teetered on the edge of the curb and almost fell into the gutter, but the dog rushed to it and quickly choked it down.

As he stuffed the Styrofoam container back into the plastic bag, he wondered how many drinks Brandy had had that night, and if she was far gone would she be more, or less, inclined to speak to him. She had always said, no matter how much things change, some things always stay exactly the same way. He could walk in right now and try. They could share a place and keep their distance and no one would feel they owed anyone something other than money. The seven hundred could be a deposit or two months rent. Brandy did all right but she could always use money. Hormones weren’t free, never mind surgery.

His father didn’t even believe that there were people like Brandy in the world. There were a lot of things his father liked to flat out insist weren’t there. Then there were the other dancers, they would give him lots of shit if he went back. No matter how many times Spike had told everyone at that club that he wasn’t taking it up the ass or giving it. Brandy might have blown him a few times when he was drunk and horny. Spike didn’t consider that leading anyone on. What man was going to turn down a blow job? What drunk man? Brandy had other ideas. Ideas she threw in his face when she finally kicked him out.

But if he paid rent and they had rules, it wouldn’t have to be that way. There wouldn’t be any misunderstandings.

Spike got up and walked the dog across the street. He stood on the edge of the curb, bouncing slightly; he felt his calf muscles stretch and something fall out of his pocket. The dog sat on the sidewalk looking around, lonely. Then Brandy looked up, right at him, but she wasn’t wearing her glasses and the street light was out; she couldn’t see to the edge of the curb in the darkness. He was invisible to her now. But he could see her very well. He could make out a few bumps on her face. Bumps the powdery make-up had not managed to cover, and Spike wondered if they were pimples or ingrown hairs, ones the hormones hadn’t gotten rid of yet. Months before he had sat on her toilet and let her treat his razor burn and acne with a slimy green mask. She was fond of everything wrong with him. Her little apartment, a former slave quarter in a small courtyard, was three little rooms across with wooden panel shutters covering the bedroom and kitchen windows so that you couldn’t look out, or walk out, on the neighboring courtyards — her ‘REAR’ apartment.

Inside the hotel bedroom, Spike had taken the woman’s face in his hands, hoping to make this one count. He felt like he was dead and floating above her; he had to concentrate hard to manage it, but, finally, he placed his lips on hers, more a tickle than a kiss. Then he awkwardly breathed into her mouth as if he was trying to bring her back to life. He leaned in and they almost fell over. Somehow they ended up on the bed. It had been so long since he had slept on a pillow, never mind a bed. It seemed he was watching this scene from somewhere else, maybe the couch in his parents’ house. Brandy knew how much he wanted to see his mother and they had planned a secret visit, but Spike had never followed through. His mother would be able to tell him how to get his own place, where to go. But maybe he was kidding himself. His father plucked her out of her parents’ house at fifteen. Spike rubbed his eyes. He tried to focus on the woman long enough to figure her age, twenty-five? Thirty? When had she married the man with the clicky thing who’d offered Spike so much per round? His head sank into one of those pillows and for a moment he imagined himself falling into a deep sleep. Then he remembered the money the man offered and flipped the woman over.

Who would he tell about this? His co-workers would probably say the same thing they had when he got out of jail for “trespassing” at another ritzy hotel. “Don’t let management find out. You get fired – you got to go dance at the gay clubs. And you keep pulling that shit and you won’t only be getting your freak on with pretty white ladies.”

Spike thought he saw something on the ceiling. He’d lost track of time. Glancing down for a moment, he saw short dark hair and broad square shoulders. He lifted his head up and squinted for a closer look. There was a thick black spider web between the headboard and the ceiling. As he looked closer it started to shine like it was covered in glitter. Then he heard the man cry out.

Car wheels rolled slowly behind him. Spike hopped off the edge of the curb and turned to the sound, slipping his cold hands into his pocket. It was a police car. The passenger side window was rolled down, and an officer, dark in the shadow of the car, looked at him. As the car passed he realized there was nothing in his pocket. He panicked and looked around. There it was, a wad of bills nestled in the shadow below the curb. Snatching it up, he turned back to the Double Play. Brandy was on the other side of the bar now, talking to a balding man with a pinched face. For a moment, Spike wondered if she was seeing the man, and he wondered if the man was the type to take care of a woman, buy her things, mow the lawn, ride to her mother’s on Christmas day. Things he would do someday. Someday, when all this madness had passed.

Eugenia Rainey lives in New Orleans with her husband and four daughters, where she works as a composition instructor and a tour guide. One of her stories was recently published in Future Earth Magazine.

He mostly forgot what it was like at home, tried at any rate. His dad was the first person in his life to tell him that a young black man shouldn’t run through a hotel lobby without a uniform and a name tag.