“You have time?”
She nods and rises. I grab my coat and drape it over my arm and lead the way through the tables. As she steps past me to lead the way up the concrete walkway that crosses over the seawall, I catch a hint of her perfume. We cross streetcar tracks, her hand touching mine as she negotiates the tracks in her high heels.
We stop at the wooden walkway at the top of the levee and look out at the swirling brown waters of the mighty Mississippi. A warm breeze washes across us, and I wipe the sweat from by brow once again.
“Come on.” She takes a step back and starts moving down the walkway. I smell her perfume again as I move next to her, closer now as there are other people on the walkway, families and street people, some strumming guitars. Someone starts playing a trumpet behind us, an off-tune version of When The Saints Go Marching In.
It’s now I realize there isn’t much more for us to say. We’d spoken twice on the phone, for an hour each time, talking it all out – Louisiana Lullaby, how I found her, the heated Solomon Island nights, and then the arrangements that had me stop over in New Orleans on my way back from visiting my son in Miami. She told me about her retired banker husband and I told her about my Ellen, who passed away two years ago.
When she takes my hand, I almost jump. I swear, I can hear my heartbeat thundering in my ears. We reach the end of the walkway and she tells me it’s called the moonwalk. Another breeze floats over us and she pulls her hand away and runs both hands through her hair.
“That feels good,” she says.
The breeze presses her dress against her and flips it up to her knees in the back. I look at her legs and she turns to me as the breeze rises. She reaches down and pulls her dress up to her thighs, and for a moment she’s the girl in the painting again. I take a hesitant step backward and stare at her legs and feel that hollow, painful longing again, as if the years hadn’t passed at all. And I wonder what might have been if I’d been wise enough to search for her, back when we were young and had the whole world in front of us, our whole lives.
“Not bad, for a grandmother,” she says.
“Not bad at all.” My voice is sad, but she doesn’t notice. At least she doesn’t seem to notice.
She takes my hand again and we walk back up the moonwalk, back to where the trumpeter is playing. He’s tall and black and young and wears a baseball cap backwards on his head. I stop to drop a dollar in the trumpet case at his feet and he winks at me as she starts up a moaning version of Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans.
And we walk back across the streetcar tracks and over the seawall and I remember how many times I’d seen the movie where Ricky Nelson sang that song and I always thought of New Orleans and her. I even became a Saints fan back in ‘67 when they joined the NFL. And felt bad when the Jazz left New Orleans for Utah, sometime back in the seventies. I almost came to the World’s Fair in 1984, but it just wasn’t in the cards, I guess.
And now, she leads me through the French Quarter, beneath black lace balconies to a narrow side street where she’d parked her Volvo. I’m sweating again. I switch my coat to my other hand as she unlocks the car.
“Are you sure you can’t come with me to the party?” She smiles at me and it’s taking me this long to realize how sweet and genuine that smile is, how truly beautiful and nice.
“I can’t.”
She steps right up to me and leans forward and turns her head to the side and I realize we’re about to kiss. I don’t dare breathe. Her lips part slightly, like the petals of a flower and they touch mine, softly, so softly I barely feel them. I press my lips back, but not too hard and we kiss there along that narrow old street, beneath a wrought-iron balcony in the most romantic city in America. We kiss.
Sometime later she pulls away, squeezes my hand again and tells me we must keep in touch. Then she climbs into her Volvo and in less than a minute is gone.
I close my eyes and remember how she was on those hot Solomon Island nights when she came to me when I was the most alone in my life. We kissed back then. We loved back then, a fiery love on a torrid island. With the entire world at war, we loved each other. I feel a tear moving down my cheek and open my eyes and brush the tear away. I suck in a deep breath, throw my coat over my shoulder and walk back to my hotel, back to the real world.
THE END of “The Stuff of Dreams”
This story is dedicated to my Aunt Onelia De Noux
‘Miss Legs of New Orleans, 1943’
There really was a Louisiana Lullaby,
a B-24 bomber which flew 98 missions in the
South Pacific before being shot down over New Guinea in 1944
Onelia De Noux adorned its fuselage
THE END of 3 LOVE STORIES
These stories are fiction. The incidents and characters described herein are a product of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. No portion of this story may be reproduced by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the written permission of the copyright holder.
“Language of the Heart” originally appeared in New Love Stories Magazine, Vol. 2, Issue 6, Nov/Dec 2010
“Five Days Left” originally appeared in Untied Shoelaces of the Mind Anthology, Sep 2011
“The Stuff of Dreams” originally appeared in the Fiction Quarterly of The Tampa Tribune-Times Newspaper, Sunday Supplement Issue, Oct 12, 1997
Note from the Publisher
BIG KISS PRODUCTIONS
If you found a typo or two in the book, please don’t hold it against us. We are a small group of volunteers dedicated to presenting quality fiction from writers with genuine talent. We tried to make this book as perfect as possible, but we are human and make mistakes.
BIG KISS PRODUCTIONS and the author are proud to sell this eBook at as low a cost as possible. Good fiction should be affordable.
Also by the Author
Novels
Grim Reaper
The Big Kiss
Blue Orleans
Crescent City Kills
The Big Show
New Orleans Homicide
Mafia Aphrodite
Slick Time
John Raven Beau
Battle Kiss
Enamored
Bourbon Street
Mistik
City of Secrets
USS Relentless
The Blue Nude
Short Story Collections
LaStanza: New Orleans Police Stories
New Orleans Confidential
New Orleans Prime Evil
New Orleans Nocturnal
New Orleans Mysteries
New Orleans Irresistible
Hollow Point & The Mystery of Rochelle Marais
Backwash of the Milky Way
Screenplay
Waiting for Alaina
Non-Fiction
A Short Guide to Writing and Selling Fiction
Specific Intent
•
For more information about the author go to http://www.oneildenoux.net
O’Neil De Noux would like to hear from you. If you liked this book or have ANY comment, email him at [email protected]
If you liked these stories – pass the word around. INDIE writers like Mr. De Noux sell by word of mouth.
3 Love Stories Page 3
