The Incident Under the Overpass

by Anne McClane

  “A certain age, eh?” Tonti said, laughing.

  “I didn’t mean… I just, you know…”

  “Don’t fret, I know what you meant,” Tonti said. “What I meant was this: an oyster needs an irritant to produce a pearl. Everything is connected in duality.”

  Lacey looked up from the menu, eyebrows raised, mouth gaping.

  “Too many good things to choose from on the menu?” Tonti asked.

  Lacey shook her head. “Tonti, maybe I have a fever or something, but you’re just not making any sense to me.”

  “What’s there to comprehend?” Tonti sipped her prosecco. “Me and you, at dinner. You and the stately elderly lady. Me and Dotty. You and the menu. All dualities. Conjugates.”

  “Conjugates?” Lacey wiped a bead of sweat from her forehead.

  “It’s nothing. Just read the menu, child, make a choice. Produce a pearl.”

  “Fine, I’ll have a salad. I need something cool. Maybe I’m having a hot flash.”

  “You’re too young for hot flashes,” Tonti said.

  “My thoughts exactly.” Lacey rubbed at her eyes.

  Tonti motioned their server. “Your elderly friend looks like a different person,” Tonti said, changing the subject. “Twenty years younger than she looked crossing the street with you.”

  Lacey turned her head toward Miss Esther Mae. She sat at a table of eight women, including Dotty Trebuchet. Lacey tried to imagine a scenario in which someone like her would find herself at such a mixed table, of both age and race. She came up short, and didn’t feel like asking Tonti for fear of more confusing conjugate pearlspeak.

  “I don’t know,” Lacey said. “She still looks pretty old to me.”

  “She’s much more animated,” Tonti said. “She must have gotten a shot of energy from somewhere.” Tonti gave Lacey a pointed look and then launched into a full accounting and update on her younger son, Greg. And then an in-depth preview of her and Uncle John’s upcoming trip to Brazil.

  The rest of the dinner passed without any more meaningful glances or cryptic mentions, and Lacey was nearly overwhelmed by the tidal force of Tonti’s verbiage. In an evening full of surprise encounters, Lacey was grateful for the familiarity of Tonti’s chattiness. She had not forgotten about Emmaline Bergeron, but struggled to find the right opportunity to mention her. It didn’t come until the ride back to Lakeview.

  In the backseat of Hines’s car, Tonti said, “You’re being awfully quiet, child.”

  Lacey laughed. It was the first time Tonti had quit talking in the last hour and a half.

  “Just thinking about something I read recently, Tonti. Something about Galliano.”

  “Oh, splendid. Do tell. Was it about the Becnels’ long and enduring legacy?”

  Lacey laughed again. She couldn’t tell if Tonti was being sarcastic or sincere. “No, it was about a woman, some kind of faith healer.”

  Tonti’s expression changed. She looked more serious, but her tone was nonchalant. “Hmm. What was her name?”

  “Emmaline Bergeron.”

  The seriousness disappeared. “Never heard of her. You’ve got to be careful of what—and who—you read when it comes to there.”

  There being Galliano, Lacey assumed.

  Before Lacey could offer anything more, Tonti went on about “country folk” in a way that did not sound complimentary, and also how Lacey should be mindful about which healers were sanctioned by the Catholic Church, and which were not, and how this woman must not have been Catholic because Tonti would have heard of her if she was.

  Lacey labored to interject. “So, that’s a thing?” she managed.

  “Is what a thing, child?”

  “Healers. Down there…in Galliano.”

  “Well, of course, child. And not just in Galliano. Everywhere. Were you not raised as a Christian?”

  “Well, yes, but…”

  “But nothing,” Tonti continued before Lacey could qualify. “If you truly believe everything you’ve been taught, believe it in your heart, then you accept it as an article of faith that there are people put on this Earth with the power to heal.”

  Lacey stared at Tonti. She waited for the next words to come out of her mouth.

  “Don’t you think?” Tonti said in response to Lacey’s stare.

  Lacey couldn’t form a response. She didn’t know how to subtly declare that she’d woken up stark naked next to a man whose life she might have saved, and ask whether that was something Jesus had intended. Instead she said under her breath, “I’m not sure what I believe since Fox died.”

  It might have been the boldest thing she’d ever said to Tonti.

  Tonti grabbed Lacey’s hand. “I don’t believe you, child. You know as well as I do that your faith—your faith in a greater good, never mind the particulars—has sustained you this last year. I don’t want to hear you using Fox as an excuse to turn agnostic.”

  “It’s not that,” Lacey stammered. She thought of the strange and unexpected events of the past weekend, and realized, for the first time, how much they underscored how alone she truly was. She thought long and hard before she spoke again.

  “I don’t think I’m ready for life without Fox yet,” she finally said.

  Tonti tightened her grip on Lacey’s hand. The look in her eyes was something like stern sympathy. Without her singsong cadence, Tonti said, “Child, ready or not, it’s time. Fox’s part in your life is over. You know I loved that boy, but Lord, did he have both God and the devil in him. But God always wins. And I know—truer than anything—that the very best part of him loved you like no other. There was a reason he brought you to us, and I have a feeling you’re about to find out why.”

  A thousand questions rushed to the front of Lacey’s brain just as they pulled onto Florida Boulevard.

  “Oh my, I am tired!” Tonti said with a lengthy yawn. “Go on, child, scoot. I will call you this week.”

  Hines opened the door for Lacey. She looked back at Tonti. Her eyes were closed.

  She shuffled out of Hines’s car, mumbled a thank you, and stood mute on her sidewalk, watching the red taillights turn the corner toward Lake Vista.

  10

  “And what the fuck was all that talk about oysters and dualities?” Angele asked.

  Lacey sat at her desk, phone to her ear. She was alone in the office—again. Trip hadn’t even called or emailed.

  “How the hell do I know?” Lacey replied. “This is why I told you, to help me figure it out.”

  Lacey had spent the past sixteen hours stewing over the events of her dinner, and especially Tonti’s parting words. She had parsed out the story to Angele as best she could, over texts and staccato phone calls peppered throughout the day. This was the first opportunity Angele had to give her more than two minutes.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Angele said. “Didn’t you say Fox’s grandmother was crazy? Big Fox’s mother?”

  “I’m sure I’ve never said she was crazy,” Lacey said, standing. “But from everything I’ve ever heard, it sounds like she suffered from bad depression, or was bipolar or something. What are you getting at?” She walked to the picture window. The Wednesday river traffic had been uninspiring.

  “I don’t know. Maybe the grandmother suffered from fugue states, and somehow or other it got passed to you,” Angele said. “And it was all like a plot,” she continued, her voice elevating. “They knew the curse had to pass on to someone, and they set you up for it.”

  The thought of a protracted conversation with her best friend suddenly seemed less appealing to Lacey.

  “Nice,” she replied. “Look, the Becnels are far from perfect, but I really don’t think they made me a patsy for some ancient family curse.”

  “Are you sure about that?” Angele asked, unwilling to let it go. “They didn’t have any problem unleashing Fox on you.”

  Lacey rolled her eyes. Angele’s timeworn distaste for Fox had not softened since his death. If anything, it had worsened once her suspicions had
been proven right.

  She blew out a breath. The phone vibrated in her ear, either an email or text coming through. “Look,” Lacey said, “what if this thing’s not a curse? What if it’s a blessing?”

  Angele ignored her. “What about that Creole healer lady? Maybe this is a regional affliction, and you picked it up like a virus on one of those ridiculous trips to Galliano.”

  “Like Lyme disease?” Lacey said. “I don’t think so. And Fox didn’t…never mind.” Lacey stopped herself from defending Fox’s penchant for Sunday drives. There was no reason to anymore.

  “But I think there might be something to that woman, the healer,” Lacey continued. “Even though Tonti was pretty dismissive of her. But not of healers in general…”

  Suddenly intensely curious about the unread message she held to her ear, Lacey said, “Hey, think on this some more and get back to me. I have to go. How were your folks on Sunday?” Their shorthand meant neither needed to announce an abrupt change in subject or tempo.

  “Good. Dad had a bug or something, so he stayed home while Mom and I went out,” Angele answered.

  “Is he better now?” Lacey asked.

  “I think so. Just a twenty-four-hour thing, I think.”

  “You know my folks pulled a stop-by a few days ago,” Lacey said. “They were there when I went home for lunch.”

  “I don’t know how you tolerate that.”

  “I’m sure you don’t,” Lacey said. “I’ll ping you later. Bye.” She shook her head and checked her phone for the message that had buzzed her ear. A text: I need to see you—Nathan.

  An instant knot formed in the pit of her stomach and tightened. Lacey stared at her phone. All the anxiety from the weekend returned and washed over her like the wake from an ocean liner. Why does he need to see me? Should I ignore it? What if I have to go meet him?

  She gave a thought to what she was wearing for the first time since she’d dressed that morning and suddenly regretted her choice. Her pants were a little too tight, her blouse a little too sheer. It hadn’t mattered in the office, which Trip kept at a frigid temperature—she wore a blazer that covered all her curves.

  Why? She finally texted back.

  Several minutes passed. She built multiple scenarios in her head—she would go home and change clothes before meeting him, or she would keep her jacket on but melt, or she would try to postpone the meeting altogether.

  The reply finally came: Please. Its important meet me at redds on maple. 20 mintues.

  The errors annoyed her. Why didn’t he use autocorrect? She checked the time. It was late enough to close down for the day.

  For precisely fifty seconds, she considered not going. In the other eleven minutes that passed before she finally locked the office door behind her, she looked up Redd’s Uptilly Tavern on Maple Street to make sure she knew where it was, and then spent too long in the bathroom trying to adjust her appearance.

  Less than five minutes later she was sitting in her car, outside the bar, nearly paralyzed. It was a lazy mid-June afternoon in New Orleans. Most of the students from Tulane and Loyola, right down the street, were gone for the summer. The rest of the city were probably away on their annual Gulf Coast vacation.

  She stared at her phone again. It had not yet been twenty minutes since Nathan had sent his text. In no reality—real, mutant, fugue, or otherwise—would she walk into their meeting place earlier than anticipated.

  The door to Redd’s was closed and the sidewalk outside was quiet. The bar across the street from it seemed much busier. She wondered about Nathan’s choice of venue. On one hand, a quiet place would allow for some privacy. On the other, the thought of being alone with him scared the hell out of her.

  She couldn’t put it off any longer. She checked herself in the rearview mirror, dropped her phone in her purse, and stepped out of the car. She left her blazer on the passenger seat.

  Lacey walked in and instantly recognized the place. It had been more than seven years since she’d been in there, and it used to be called something else, but she knew it. She and Fox had gone there a handful of times in their adjustment period from young, single students to young, married semiprofessionals.

  There was no sign of Nathan. Some grizzled men played pool; another group of slightly less grizzled men drank at the far end of the bar.

  She stood near an empty booth and tried to look inconspicuous. She was plotting her escape when the bartender called out to her.

  “C’mon over! I have a drink ready for you.”

  Without thinking, Lacey looked his way, and he gave her a crooked smile marked with dimples on either side. She wanted to pretend she hadn’t heard him, but it was too late. She couldn’t help but smile when he gestured toward the old men at the other end of the bar and mouthed the words, “Help me.”

  He was adorable, a grown-up baby with a mop of blond hair. Lacey moved to the empty end of the bar, and he smiled again. His dimples were almost too obvious.

  He leaned toward her and said in a low voice, “It’s been dead in here—the only customers in my last five shifts have been these good ole boys.”

  “They don’t seem so bad. Doesn’t seem like you have to break up many fights,” Lacey said.

  “Yeah, but I get to see them all the time, and not all their faces combined can come up with one half as pretty as yours.”

  Lacey rolled her eyes. She could tell two things about him: he was not from New Orleans—his accent sounded more Mississippi than anything—and he had that type of charm that put her instantly on edge. It was too much like Fox’s.

  “What’ll you have?” he asked.

  “I thought you said you had a drink ready for me?” she replied, pleased with her witty retort.

  “I do! Fifteen seconds from now,” Mississippi Charmer said. He swept his hand above the bar in a grand gesture and said, “All you have to do is pick your poison.”

  “Fifteen seconds, huh?” Lacey was unimpressed. “How about an old-fashioned?” The drink was the only one she could think of that might take longer to concoct. She didn’t time him, but she did find a drink before her in very short order. “You skimped a bit on the orange twist,” she told him as she sipped. It was very strong.

  “Oh c’mon! That is a beautiful drink, if I do say so myself. Delivered in fifteen seconds.”

  “If you say so.”

  The good ole boys were trying to get his attention down the bar. “I think you’re wanted,” Lacey said.

  “Yeah, I saw,” he said. “Don’t go anywhere,” he said with a wink.

  Lacey rolled her eyes again. She took another sip, and the alcohol went immediately to her head. Get a grip, she told herself.

  She felt her phone vibrate in her purse. She pulled it out and saw another message from Nathan: I dint think youd show.

  Lacey looked all around the bar. She typed a response, asking where he was. She triple-checked to make sure her message didn’t have any spelling or punctuation errors.

  An eternity passed while she waited for his response. She felt alone, exposed, and on the verge of a bad decision. She took another sip. Finally, her phone pinged: Wait 2 more mints and walk to bathroom.

  Two minutes. What on earth for? She ignored his directive. She got up, drink in hand, and walked toward the ladies’ room. She faced the door marked Women and heard a voice behind her.

  “Do you always bring your drink with you to the restroom?”

  Nathan was sitting in a back office, inches away from where she stood. They were separated only by a halfway closed door. She pivoted on her heel, and before she knew what was happening, a firm hand clasped her by the wrist and pulled her into the office. The door shut behind her.

  She found herself nose to neck with Nathan. He held tight to her wrist and braced his other arm behind her head, against the door. The ice in her drink clinked as her hand shook.

  Whatever scent Nathan wore, she wished he didn’t. It was all male, and it reminded her of Fox. An acute emotion pierced her
. “Please let go of me,” Lacey said.

  Nathan released her, and stepped back as much as the cramped office would allow. Lacey was afraid to look him in the eye. When she willed herself to bring her chin up, she was surprised by the look of profound sadness on his face.

  She folded her free arm across her chest and braced herself against the door. “You scared the shit out of me! Why would you grab hold of me like that?”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t want anyone to see us talking. I’m sorry I scared you,” he said. He sounded genuine.

  “Some manners,” Lacey said.

  “Given the nature of our acquaintance thus far, I didn’t think we needed to stand on ceremony. A thousand pardons, ma’am.”

  “Now you’re just being a shit.” Lacey’s hand still shook.

  Nathan’s expression changed. He looked at Lacey with an intensity that made her feel like she was getting an MRI.

  Lacey cocked her head at him and asked, “So, what is so urgent?”

  “You mean other than narrowly escaping death a mere seventy-two hours ago?”

  Lacey focused on a wall calendar behind Nathan’s head. A Saintsation cheerleader heralded the month of April. She fought the urge to reach out and turn it to June.

  “I would think on the other side of it, the sense of urgency would fade somewhat,” she said, trying to sound steely.

  “Not when you think your family might be in danger.”

  Lacey felt the knot in her stomach reappear at the mention of his family. She softened. “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve been stuck in this vicious loop, ever since you dropped me off Sunday morning,” Nathan said. He palmed the back of a rolling desk chair and sat. “Playing over everything that happened, everything I can remember, in my head. I think those guys were waiting for me when I turned the corner off Harrison.”

  Lacey nodded, remembering the conversation at her kitchen table. She knew Nathan had left something out.

  “I guess I suspected something like that all along,” he said. “But it seems too implausible. I know you have no reason—no basis—to believe me, but I’m not a trouble kind of guy. I have no idea why they would have been after me.”