“I want gumbo and Bananas Foster and a muffuletta.”
“Central Grocery on Decatur makes the best,” Beth exclaimed above the noise and chanting of the marchers around them. She glanced at her watch and shook her head. “Though, they’re probably completely sold out by now. You’ve got to go first thing in the morning.”
“Maddy,” Grant snapped, grabbing her arm. “We’ve got to get off this street. Now.”
Maddy gave Grant the same wide-eyed look of confusion she would if she had been awakening from a dream and found a man serenading her with a ukulele. She gave a simple nod and allowed him to pull her out of the crowd as the parade continued down Chartres Street.
Beth rushed after them. “Hey! Where are you taking her?” she yelled at Grant, following them down Wilkinson Street, which branched off to the right of Chartres.
Grant glanced back at Beth without slowing.
Maddy turned and grabbed Beth by the shoulders. “Beth,” she started, then closed her eyes a moment. When she opened them again, the eyes seemed not only calmer to Beth, but filled with a depth that threatened to spill from her soul like tears from a broken heart. “Theo might seem like a real jerk sometimes but he honestly respects you, and trust me when I say that he will treat you like a princess if you give him a chance.”
Beth just stared at the other woman with a confusion that was so profound she couldn’t find an appropriate response. Instead, the words that exploded from her mouth were, “What the hell are you talking about?”
Maddy nodded sagely and continued in a calm unemotional tone. “Things are going to go from bad to worse with me very soon, and you don’t want to get involved.”
“Maddy,” Beth chuckled disarmingly, “I’m going with you and there’s nothing you can..!”
“You can’t come with us,” Maddy snapped flatly, giving Beth a firm push away from her.
Beth’s eyes reddened then hardened a split second later. “Fuck you, you crazy bitch!”
Maddy drew a hand to her mouth as she continued to back away from the teen.
Standing in the street a few yards away, Grant rushed back and tugged Maddy down Wilkinson Street after him. “Now, Maddy! Now!”
Mere moments after Maddy and Beth parted company, two darkly-dressed men wandered casually up to linger in the exact spot where the others had just been standing. One of the men lifted his chin in the direction of the departing girl in the St. Louis Cathedral t-shirt. Trading looks with the shorter man at his side, they followed her discreetly for a half a block until the parade reappeared, continuing up Chartres. When the girl had rejoined the crowd marching toward the cathedral, the taller of the two men immediately stopped and shook his head to the other.
Together they turned in slow but opposite circles like sonar dishes searching out an elusive signal. If anyone found good reason to focus on them, he would have immediately recognized the frustration on their faces.
But in the center of the sensory hurricane that was the French Quarter, everyone was adrift on their own island.
After rushing the full length of Wilkinson Street at a steady clip, Maddy stumbled and went to one knee. She ripped the shoe off of her foot and threw it as hard as she could against a street lamp, then began to sob uncontrollably.
Grant glanced back down the way they had come, toward the sound of the fading trumpets of the parade. He put her at his back almost defensively, resting his hand on her shoulder instinctively without a look back at her.
He knew he would have to wait this one out, but it would be okay now that the threat had been alleviated. The anxiety he had felt earlier like a prickling heat-rash itch at the base of his skull had subsided. He had never felt anything like it before.
“I’m done,” she managed unevenly between her choking sobs. She dropped to her bottom and scooted back away from the street lamp until her back was to a building wall. She buried her face in her hands and began to sob with abandon.
Retrieving the shoe from the sidewalk where it had fallen, Grant dropped back against the wall himself and slowly lowered himself down beside her. He kept his silence, ignoring the looks of passing tourists and considering the shoe he held in his lap.
“Why can’t I be more like you, Grant?” she asked in a small voice. “No attachments. Pushing everyone away. It’s easier that way. Neater.”
“You can’t.”
Maddy peered up, her face reddened and tear-streaked.
“That’s not you,” Grant told her. “You want to be happy. You try.”
Blotting her eyes with her sleeve, she stared up at him. “But don’t you want to be?”
He sighed and gave her a sad smile. “That’s… a very good question.”
Maddy gave a short uncertain laugh and took a deep hitching breath. She looked back toward Chartres, her eyes squinting with emotional pain of her memory. “Wow! That hurt more than it should have.”
“Well, what did you expect,” he replied, handing her the shoe. “You hurt her and she was just lashing back at you.”
Maddy considered him. “Yeah, but I did the right thing by her by making her go,” she murmured, casting a quick look at Grant. Slipping the shoe back on, she slowly gathered her legs beneath her.
Grant leapt up and gave her his arm as she rose.
She looked up at the intersection up ahead and nodded. “I think that’s Decatur,” she said with a gasp. “Oh, Café Du Monde’s up there!” Giving his arm a single tug, she started around the corner.
Grant shook his head and trotted after with a smirk. “See that’s exactly what I was just saying.”
“What?” she asked innocently, craning her neck to look across Decatur Street at a set of steps leading up between two buildings.
“You were just crying and now look at you.”
Ignoring him, she pointed to the steps opposite them. “Oh, the Riverwalk! Ah, hell, we have to see Old Miss, don’t we? I mean, it’s an imperative!”
She rushed toward the crosswalk up ahead at St. Peter and turned to beckon Grant expectantly. “Sorry, but if I have less than twenty-four hours left, I only get one chance at this.” The crosswalk changed and she sprinted across, turning to wait for Grant who was moving at a trot.
Looking back across the street, Maddy gazed at the fence-line of Jackson Square and at the bevy of horse-drawn carriages awaiting passengers, the street vendors, the painters, the musicians and rising above it all was the legendary triple steeples of the St. Louis Cathedral. She froze, blinking back a sudden overwhelming wave of emotion.
“This is it,” she said in awe under her breath as Grant reached her side.
“What?” He turned and looked back at Jackson Square and found himself smiling in spite of himself. It was a postcard image of the square and the cathedral. “Wow, huh?”
Maddy nodded and swallowed the emotion back, trying to fight the urge to cry knowing that he wouldn’t understand what she was feeling and misinterpret entirely.
“I spent my whole life just a few hours away from this place and this is my first time here,” Grant said to her in frank wonder. “What took me so long, right?”
“The timing was never right,” she said softly. “I think we were meant to share this.”
Grant glanced over at Maddy but her glistening eyes were focused in the distance beyond him.
“It was on my bucket list of places to see before I died,” she said. “And here I am.”
“Okay, don’t get all morbid on me, kid,” Grant said with a dark chuckle.
Finally, she looked at him and gave him a sad smile. Blindly, her hand reached out and found his.
“No, you don’t understand. In the same way I get short glimpses into the future, I’ve been seeing this moment all my adult life. Me. Here. Looking back at the cathedral, hearing the Dixieland jazz, and smelling the fried food and the musk of the horses. And there was always someone standing by my side. But I never saw his face.” She looked around and found his face.
Grant swallowed awkw
ardly, his eyes flittering away and his hand letting go of hers self-consciously.
Maddy lowered her head slightly and nodded to herself. “You’ve got to give me a moment here. I’ve been running my whole life to catch up to this moment.”
Somewhere behind them a soulful voice began to sing an old blues song.
“Maddy, I-I gotta say,” Grant sighed. “This is the weirdest damn day of my life.”
“Join the club,” she replied with a dark smile. “And I do the impossible on a daily basis.” A mounted police officer clip-clopped by them along the curb, his head slowly scanning the street before him. Maddy absently reached out and ran her hand across the horse’s flank, almost as if to assure herself that this was not a dream.
“When we were on Chartres, I had this overwhelming sensation to get off the street,” he told her. “That’s why I was so insistent.”
She reached out and squeezed his arm. “Good. You communicated perfectly.”
“Yeah.” Still hearing the blues, Grant looked around and spotted a street musician sitting in the shade along the corner of the building behind them. “It was an odd feeling. Like an irresistible force. Like a storm at sea.”
“And now?”
“I’m perfectly calm. Not even a ripple on the surface of the water.”
Maddy nodded and studied Grant. “Interesting. And you never felt this before?”
“Not that I’m aware,” he answered. “What do you make of it?”
She shrugged, casting an almost playful smile at him as she turned, then almost as an afterthought she stood on her tippy-toes and kissed him on the cheek. “I’m just glad we’re on the same side.”
She paused to listen to the musician behind them. Dark glasses obscuring his eyes, the aging black man played that blues standard “It Hurts Me Too” on a twelve-string, its open case lying invitingly next to him. A passing man dropped some assorted change from his pocket, seemed to think twice then tossed a single wadded dollar bill in as well. Lying in the shade next to the man and assessing everything happening within his sphere of influence was a grey and white terrier, who gave the old black man a nudge with his nose at the appearance of the dollar. The man simply nodded and continued playing.
Grant joined Maddy who stood at the musician’s feet and listened.
As he sang about things going wrong, they turned to look at each other at the same moment and spontaneously chuckled.
Grant reached out and took Maddy’s hand.
Her eyes lit up briefly. Then she felt the wadded bill in her hand a moment later as his hand released hers. She held the bill out over the guitar case and let it roll off the tips of her fingers, trying not to express the disappointment she felt that the man beside her was only letting go of money instead of something more important.
But it’s progress, she told herself.
The terrier blinked down at the bill and turned its head slightly in confusion, giving a tiny whine. He gave the musician a nudge then a gentle scrape of its paw.
“Gimme that,” the blues man said, reaching out and holding his hand out as the dog scooped up the bill in its teeth and gently dropped it in its master’s palm.
Maddy gave a hop and clapped her hands in elated surprise.
The old man held the bill between two fingers. “Nah, it’s real alright, Gus, but you don’t recognize it, cuz you done never seen one before.” He turned his head up as if to look at them. “A hundred is more than generous. Brings an honest man to look for strings.”
“Okay, that was impressive,” Grant admitted with a grin.
“Look it as a down payment for services not yet rendered to generations of tourists you have yet to meet,” Maddy told him.
“Sounds reasonable enough,” he responded, pushing the bill down into the inside pocket of his brown suede jacket. “Guess I’ll get busy and start with you folks. Any requests?”
A scruffy-looking man in his thirties shuffled up next to Maddy. “Bet you twenty bucks I can tell you where you got them shoes.”
“Ah hell, Grimey,” the blues man groaned. “Why don’t you leave these good people alone?”
“It’s okay. Tell me,” Maddy said.
“You got them on yo feet,” Grimey replied, giving them a huge laugh and setting his shoulders expectantly as he awaited his reward.
“Double or nothing says I can do that trick for real and tell you where you actually got your shoes,” Maddy countered.
“Naw naw naw,” he uttered. “I’ll just take my money.”
“No no no, Grimey,” the blues man cut him off, two twenties appearing in his hand as if by magic and holding them in the air. “I got her forty bucks right here. And Hell! Since I already know the answer to her question, if she don’t guess right, I’ll tell her anyway just for the fun of watching you squirm!”
“Sure thing, Deacon,” the con man sang out. “Your money’s good with me. Take your shot, lady.”
Pausing a moment as if to recall, Maddy looked Grimey directly in the eye and answered, “Last week you stole them from a drunk that passed out on a Jackson Square park bench.”
Deacon, the blues man burst into laughter as Grimey backed away from them urgently--eyes bugging out in wonder. Finally, he turned to retreat, casting a few suspicious looks back over his shoulder as he disappeared into the crowd.
“Don’t know how you guessed that, but it sure was satisfying to see a man get what’s coming to him,” the blues man said, slapping the two twenties down on the pavement at Maddy’s feet.
“We can’t take that, sir,” Maddy told Deacon.
“Well, you better take it, sunshine,” the blues man shot back. “You done won that bet fair and square. Besides, I couldn’t buy me a better story for forty bucks. Hell, for a hundred you already laid on me, I should have given you his entire rap sheet.”
Maddy traded a look with Grant before scooping the money up. She started to toss the money in the case, but the old mutt lifted its salt and pepper snout and leveled an almost offended look at her. Instead, she clutched the money protectively in her fist and rose to her feet.
“Thank you, sir,” she replied, starting away.
“Please, call me Deacon,” the old man responded jovially. “Now, how about that request?”
Maddy shrugged and looked back at Grant. “Any Louis Prima will do,” she said casting a playful look back at Grant.
The blues man began to sing “Just a Gigolo” as Grant started after her. “What just happened here?” he ventured to ask.
“Well, you gave a blind man with a generous nature a hundred dollars, and because I provided him an entertaining story, Fate gave us forty dollars change,” she replied. Then considering the two twenties she still held, she corrected herself. “Personally, I consider it more than Fate.”
She pocketed the cash.
“Hey, I know better. That wasn’t just a wild guess. How did you know about the shoes without his ever telling you?” he asked as he caught up to her.
“That’s the thing, though. He did tell me. Or he would have told me. He said so himself. Remember?”
Grant considered a moment before shaking his head in confusion. “Nope.”
“Okay, follow the yellow brick road of logic. I would have lost that bet. I just learned from my mistake before I made it.”
“So, you changed reality,” Grant shot back.
“Well, if you want to get technical,” she concluded, grabbing Grant’s arm and linking hers around his. “The generosity of strangers never ceases to amaze me. It’s folks like Deacon that are protecting us right now. This crowd is our shield.”
20
Just as an elderly couple rose from their seats beneath the covered patio of the famous Café Du Monde, Maddy and Grant slid into their still warm seats, setting down the two paper cartons of beignets and two cups of jet-black chicory coffee freshly ordered from the windows.
Maddy dumped the change she received in the center of the table and considered it.
�
�It’s kind of amazing when you think about it,” Grant said, taking a bite of his beignet and washing it down with coffee. “We meant to give away every penny to that man and still managed to get coffee and beignets. We even got some change out of it.”
Maddy held a beignet up and eyed it as if it were made of gold. “‘Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they?’” She took a huge bite and closed her eyes in ecstasy.
Grant narrowed his eyes at her and shook his head. Despite how hungry he was, he set the fried dough back down in its container and pushed it aside.
“What?” Maddy asked, opening her eyes.
“Too sweet for me.” Looking away from Maddy in obvious irritation, Grant wiped the sugar off of his hands with a napkin and grumbled, “Were you raised in a convent or something?”
“No, Grant, I was not. I was raised in Florida by Mr. and Mrs. Murphy,” she replied plainly, assessing him patiently. “My folks weren’t the church-going type.”
“Can we talk about something else, please?” Grant snapped, tossing the wadded napkin to the table.
“Oh, I see. Never discuss religion, politics, or the Great Pumpkin, right?”
Grant stared down at his coffee.
“I guess this is the first opportunity we’ve actually had to talk about something other than a direction to run.”
“And there’s been little discussion on that topic lately,” he interjected grumpily.
“We’re safe for the moment, Grant. Deal with it,” Maddy told him, finishing her last beignet and eying Grant’s untouched stash. After a brief hesitation, he slid his beignets over to her.
“So, you’re from Florida originally?”
Maddy smiled. “You have been listening,” she replied, reaching out and attempting to wipe the powdered sugar from his lips. “It’s hard take a man in makeup seriously.”
Snatching the napkin from her, Grant swiped the powdered sugar from his face.
“You have family back there?” he asked.
Maddy stopped chewing and wiped the sugar off her own face. “No,” she stated simply. “Not anymore.”
Remember the Future Page 14
