Chapter One
I was awakened at three o’clock in the morning by the sound of a garbage-pail cover being kicked across the sidewalk. A moment later, a woman’s voice, harsh and shrill, shouted, “I am not going with you! Do you understand? ”
I rolled over and tried to drop back into the oblivion of slumber. The woman’s voice pursued me, tearing at my eardrums. I couldn’t hear the man with whom she was arguing.
The air was heavy with humidity. The bed was a big four-poster antique, placed in the back of a high-ceilinged bedroom. Huge French windows opened onto a balcony, lined with wrought-iron grillwork. This balcony extended out over the sidewalk. Directly across the narrow street was Jack O’Leary’s Bar.
When I had tried closing the windows, the heavy, muggy air had made the room stifling. When I opened the big windows, sounds from the old French Quarter of New Orleans came pouring in.
The screaming voice ceased abruptly, and I started drifting off once more into slumber.
Then a fresh disturbance broke out. Someone started playing little tunes on an automobile horn. After a little while, another horn chimed in.
I got up, kicked my feet into slippers, and walking over to the open window, looked across at Jack O’Leary’s Bar.
Apparently some roisterer had gone out to get the car and driven down to pick up the rest of his party. He leaned on the horn with a long blast, then a succession of short blasts to let his companions — and the world at large — know he was there. While he blocked the street, another motorist wanted to get by. Other cars rolled up. Soon the whole street was echoing to the din of repeated clamor. As the pressure behind the motorist who was blocking the road became more insistent, he tried to get action out of his own party by pressing the palm of his hand against the horn button and holding it there.
It was a one-way street, with parking permitted on both sides, leaving only a narrow lane down the center for the traffic. The congestion stretched back for a block now. The clamor was insistent, terrific.