ROBERT BAYLOT - IT COULD BE MY LAST NIGHT

 Robert Baylot's fiction has appeared in Mysterical E, Every Day Fiction, and The Blue Moon Literary and Art Review.  He has also published poetry in a variety of publications including Deep South Magazine, Poetry Super Highway, The Broad River Review, and others.  He writes from Germantown, TN.

​It Could Be My Last Night
 

​Heh, so you had the roast beef po’boy and are taking it easy in the Big Easy?  Great for you and for me.  I’m Phil.  I own Phil’s Deli. Have for 45 years.
Look, you appear to be about through.  Mind if I pull up a chair?  You got one of the few table seats that overlook Chartres.
So I am looking for a woman, a particular woman, and I don’t know her name. I tell this story in the hopes I can find her. We do love our stories in New Orleans.
Ok, so as I said. I’m Phil. Real name, Phillip.  Someone long ago called me Phil, not to shorten my name.  No one does that in New Orleans.  In fact, we add names.  He thought maybe I was from Philadelphia and that’s where the deli’s name came from. So, ok, I’ve been Phil for a long time now.
Early morning, one day, I am cooking sirloin roast, cooling it, and slicing it. Ham, turkey and corned beef too. Customers say they “die” for Phil’s Deli food, but I am the one dying. Not contagious, though.  You can relax. 
So any way, Terrell was a kid when he started helping me.  See him over there. Wave to him.  He does a lot of my work now.
If today is my last day of life, here in New Orleans, then the deli would all be Terrell’s tomorrow.
So I wake up this morning not long ago, and my heart is beating fast, hurts a little, hurts a lot.  My brain tells me and my gut tell me, Phil, this is it. Your last day.    
            Just panic attacks, some say. 
            So last week, I am in that bathroom over there. I don’t know why I’ve taken a bread knife with me.  I look at the cracked mirror, see my saggy eyes, saggy flesh, and red tired eyes, and I realize I am holding the bread knife.  I’m trembling.   
I throw the knife toward the sink and it bounces back at me and takes a little slice of my stomach, nothing serious. I dabbed up the blood with an old Times Picayune and then threw the crumbled paper down over the knife.
            So Terrell knocks at the door.  “You all right, Mr. Phil?”
            “Fine,” I say, but I’ve not been fine in years.  I shouldn’t have to explain it was my last day on earth. 
            “Have you seen the bread knife?” he asks.
            “What’s with you and the bread knife, Terrell?” I pull it out from the trash can and wash it in the sink, at least to get the blood off.  “Man, what’s it doin’ in here? Run it through the scalding hot water.”
            So I walk to St. Louis Cathedral after work, over that way, like I always do after work, and get in a back pew, invisible. I pray: “Let this end of my life come.”
Most everyone in the Cathedral has got to be praying for new beginnings.  I’m praying for an ending. Different kind of prayer should get some attention from the so-called Good Lord. Of course, I can’t end it myself. Not playing by the rules.
Not in a bad way. I don’t want to hurt anyone.
            This day at the Cathedral that I am telling you about is different. A few pews over a lady wearing a black veil prays the rosary, slowly fingering each bead. Maybe she had prayed there a thousand days and I had not noticed, but this day I did notice. She is praying with intensity.
            I want to know what she prays for.
            That night, I try to sleep.  You know deli work starts early, but if this is my last day, I’m thinking. Terrell will be there. 
            I roll over.  I close my eyes until I have to open them again. Why couldn’t I  be in heaven where all those fluffy clouds are?  I want to look down on New Orleans and see the river flow by that crescent bend, see the spires of St. Louis Cathedral, and look down on Phil’s Deli?
            So I get up, write my nightly message, similar but never exactly the same note and here this night it says: “I know this is my last night. Bless Terrell, who will take over Phil’s Deli.—Phil.”  So Terrell will know it’s his deli now.
            And back in bed a few more hours later, at some point, I lose consciousness and I am struggling to breathe. For some reason, I think I hear the ring of the deli bell.
And finally I dream  I am outside my body and standing next to me is Alicia at 15. She was my sweetheart, at least in my mind. I smile at her.
            I reach to her and she is as beautiful as she had ever been, and then she just evaporates. My heart is racing because in this dream, I have lost her again.  
Yeah, that is sad.
            Then like acts in a play, the next act is my mother. She sits by me and I try to reach out to her, but my arms are very short because suddenly I am a baby.  
My mother turns to me and I see her face, and then her face contracts.  She cannot breathe, and she evaporates.
Man, my heart was racing when I woke up. And my heart is in no kind of shape to be racing.             It is four in the morning this day.  I am alone. And I feel a sharp pain in my chest. Man, is this the answer to my daily prayers? But it is not an answer.
            I get up and hold the photos of Alicia and my mother.
            So this day, after work, I walk to St. Louis Cathedral, the shadows lengthening as the sun begins to set. I see the three spires of the cathedral and nearby the statue of Andrew Jackson.  I see an odd mix of couples, older men and younger women.  Women with cropped hair and tattoos with old crusty men with heavy eyebrows.  Tall men and short ladies.  Tall ladies.  Gay couples.  Older men and women with high shorts and long stretch socks carrying unfolded maps of the French Quarter.  Artist couples displaying caricatures and landscapes. Musicians occupying their turf.  One plays a saxophone while another a slide trombone and now and then he sings like Louis Armstrong.  Kind of like Armstrong.  Nobody is exactly the same. I’ve never noticed so much activity before, but it’s been there, I guess.
The large door of the cathedral closes behind me. I see the lit votive candles. I light two myself, for my mother and for Alicia. I’ve never done this before.  Didn’t believe in what those candles could do.
            I kneel, toward the back of the cathedral as close to a corner as I can get. People walk the aisles and look at the columns, the statues, and the altar.  Across the way, I see the woman with the black veil.
            And as I pray, I cannot ask God to end my life. Instead there is a tug on my heart, and I pray that God will tell me what my life is for. I look up and the altar appears to be lit up so bright.
            The lady moves. She makes the sign of the cross, and pushes herself up from the pew; she genuflects in the aisle and starts toward the door. I get up and follow her. I just don’t do impulsive things, but here I am doing it. I say, “Ma’am.”
            She turns. Surely she has seen me these many days in the Cathedral.
            “Ma’am, can I ask you a question?”
            A crowd is gathering near the door, just past where they sell mementos and holy items. I open the door and we walk out.
            I ask her what she was praying for.  Like it was really my business, but I had to know.
            She turns it back to me. “Why do you pray?”  
            We walk away from the door and turn down the street, walking past the array of artists.
            “I lost my mother and a girlfriend when I was young,” I tell her.
            “And you pray for them or for their memory?”
            “I pray for my release. I pray to be taken from this world, as my body tells me over and over that this is my last day.”
            “Your body must be telling you wrong because here you are,” she says.
            “It would seem,” I answer. “And you, are your prayers being answered?”
            “I pray for my husband I lost ten years ago. I pray for my daughter, a young nun, who died at 25, caring for children in an African village.”
            “And do you pray for for yourself?”
            “I ask that my memory of them stays strong.”
            She begins to walk away from me and I tell her my name and ask her to join me for beignets and coffee.
            And we talk. At the Café du Monde. In the open air, coffee cups clink and finished plates of beignets are scooped up around the tables, being followed by more beignets and coffee.
            That night, no panic attacks, though I feel their absence. It’s like a parasite has been removed from my body, something so real, so expected, something I was so dependent on.
            I fall asleep in my easy chair, and the only one woman I see in my dreams is the lady in the black veil. So maybe I am up for something new, or at least I think so.
            The next day, I walk to Jackson Square and see the musicians. There are street performers, mimes, gymnasts, and acrobats. Had they always been there too?
            I enter the Cathedral and light two votive candles. I look up at tour groups and adults taking kids by the hand to follow the guides.  
            I don’t know what to pray, but I stumble through.
            I look for the lady with the black veil.  Could she have come 1,000 days and now not be here the day after I talked with her?  I had not asked her for her name. We had made no specific plans, but I had expected to see her.
            I get up and follow a tour group and listen in for a few minutes and then I walk back to the small area where they sell religious items.
            “There is a lady,” I say to the clerk, “who is always here; she wears a black veil and sits in the back row.”
            But the clerk doesn’t remember her and says that she thinks she would remember someone in a black veil who was in the Cathedral every day.  She says black veils are not that common any more.
This is a real lady that has disappeared.  This is no ghost. She is not like the dreams of Alicia and of my mother, but I am puzzled.
 So I leave the cathedral that day, walk through the French Quarter and beyond, talk to the men who sell vegetables, talk to people at the Café du monde. I go down every street. I go down the Riverwalk, stopping in various shops along the way, listening to jazz playing, smelling the jambalaya cooking and shrimp etouffe.
At the riverfront, I see the cruise ship when I hear the calliope. I see The Natchez churn its way up and back down the River.
And I visit the Cathedral at the same time, though now my prayers are very different, and I talk to everyone who will listen. I am looking for the lady in the black veil.  I am looking to continue the conversation.  If you see her, will you tell her that Phil of Phil’s Deli is looking for her and wants to talk?
            Have I told you this story before? I know I have told so many people. Mostly I am looking for a woman, a particular woman, and I tell this story to anyone who might listen, and in New Orleans, people like a story. Maybe you want a beer on the house? Oh, I see you are ready to leave.  I understand.  Do let me know if you ever might see her.  Tell her about Phil and how he wants to see her.
The End