Maddy and Brigham reached for a frog leg at the same time and giggled at each other. Maddy heartily began to eat, reaching for one of the oysters before she had even swallowed her first bite of the frog, while Grant simply sat watching Brigham.
“How bizarre, right?”
Brigham blinked across at Grant, the breaded frog leg drooping in his fingers. “How’s that?”
“I mean you two meeting out here after, what, three years?”
“Well, more like two and a half,” Brigham replied, glancing around at the plates of steaming food surrounding them almost as if attempting to locate a problem.
“What a coincidence, right?” Grant’s eyes wandered up to Maddy, who froze with the half shell in her mouth, almost as if caught with her hand in someone’s pocket. Slowly, she withdrew the shell from her lips and set it on the empty bread plate beside her.
Brigham stared at the bread plate with a troubled expression. “How’s that for fate, eh?” He gave a weak chuckle and dipped a spoon experimentally into his turtle soup.
Grant quietly tried his gumbo and gave a nod of appreciation.
Maddy glanced up at him her eyes stern and confused.
The live jazz band paused between numbers and Brigham lifted his head along with the rest of the patrons to give them a hearty round of applause.
“If you cats don’t mind, we’re gonna take a short break here,” the lead singer announced. “We’ll be back in a few.”
The sound man slapped in a disc and grabbed his jacket from his chair.
As the Doobie Brothers “You Belong to Me” began, Grant stirred his gumbo lazily, his eyes examining Brigham. Ignoring him, Brigham turned to Maddy and opened his mouth to speak when Grant cut him off.
“So, they don’t allow smoking in this casino?”
Brigham stared at Grant questioningly. “They do in the casino but not in the restaurant.” he answered. “But you’re with me. Go ahead and light up.”
“The reason I ask is because I noticed that you said that you went outside for a smoke,” Grant challenged, fixing him with unblinking eyes.
Brigham gave him a smile. “Yeah, that is what I said, Grant,” he responded, settling back in his chair to study the other man. “Sometimes I just need to put some distance between myself and all this. Breathe the air of the Quarter.”
Grant met Brigham’s look with his own. A few moments of silence passed at the table.
Maddy lowered her head closer to her bowl, her shoulders slumping.
“If there’s something you’d like to ask me, Grant..?”
“There’s plenty I’d like to ask,” Grant replied.
“Then by all means.”
“Trouble is where to start.”
Maddy darted her eyes from one man to the other with something akin to wonder, until finally pushing away from her plate, dabbing her lips with a napkin. “I should run to the ladies room.”
“Please let me escort you,” Brigham responded rising from the table.
Grant immediately leapt to his feet as well. “I’ve got this.”
As Brigham turned his darkly veiled eyes to Grant, Maddy stepped between them.
“I’m going to go alone and I’ll be okay,” she interjected with her eyes on Grant.
“You think after the way this day has gone, I’m going to just let…”
“Yes, you are,” she snapped. “Because I need a few moments to myself, Grant.”
He slumped slightly and found his seat again.
Brigham remained standing a few moments longer, watching her disappear around the corner before taking his chair as well.
Grant swished the ice cubes around his untouched tumbler of whiskey and after apparent consideration returned it to the table without a sip.
Staring down into his own whiskey, Brigham sighed heavily. “Listen, I can understand if you don’t trust me.”
“What’s not to trust? An old friend shows up after two and a half years under suspicious circumstances and begins wining and dining us…”
“The truth is that I’m in love with that woman,” Brigham stated bluntly, his voice fading slightly. He cleared his throat with a cough and glanced toward the ladies room self-consciously.
Grant’s eyes widened in utter surprise, not so much in response to the revelation itself but to Brigham’s sharing of it.
“I let her disappear on me once and I’ve regretted it ever since. So, yes, from your perspective my actions might seem to be that of a madman. But then you’re not in love with her.” Brigham’s eyes affixed to Grant in challenge. “Are you?”
Grant’s eyes darted up to the other man nervously. “Am I what?”
The other man’s eyes lingered on him a moment. “Since the first moment I saw you with my Madelyne, I’ve been asking myself, what is this man’s relationship with her?” He leaned forward slightly.
In response, Grant settled back, putting an equal amount of distance between them again.
“How are they involved? Are they friends? Are they lovers? Are they related?” Brigham continued. With each question, he scrutinized Grant’s reaction. “Did one of these mythical boyfriends she always talked about running from finally manage to get to her stay?”
Boyfriends? Maddy? Grant thought.
Grant took a slow even breath, vaguely feeling a dull ache from somewhere within. “So, what was your conclusion,” he asked.
“The woman’s always been an enigma to me,” Brigham continued. “But you. I can read you like a book, and you know what I see?”
Maddy rushed back into her seat as if re-claiming her musical chair. “Here I am! How’s everybody getting along? Nice, I hope.” Her eyes fixed on Grant. He ignored her.
“Barnum and I were just having a very stimulating conversation, s’all.”
Brigham’s eyes flashed up at the obvious misstating of his name.
“Sorry. Brigham,” Grant finished, with a glance in the other man’s direction.
Maddy’s eyes flickered from one man to the other and sighed heavily. She shot to her feet again, giving a forlorn look down at the food. “So, how about that dance you promised me two and half years ago?” she asked Brigham.
The Brit nearly knocked his chair over, climbing to his feet. “B-But of course, Madelyne. It seems that I’m not the only one with an amazing memory.”
Moaning slightly under his breath, Grant returned to his gumbo with less enthusiasm than before.
Ella Fitzgerald’s “I’ve Got a Crush on You” began to play.
Brigham rose to his feet, extending his hand to Maddy.
She stood and started to reach for his hand, then turned back to take a quick sip of her drink. As she leaned across the table, Grant glanced up and caught the single wink that she tipped before turning back to the Brit and allowing him to escort her onto the dance floor.
Pausing with his spoon held loosely in the air, Grant set it aside, his eyes watching Brigham and Maddy step onto the empty dance floor, every patron’s eye on them, each face blessing them with a pleasant smile.
After a moment, Grant sat back in his chair heavily, his shoulders slumping in defeat.
23
Brigham offered Maddy his hand. She gave him a mischievous smile before taking it and stepping closer, while still maintaining a secure distance between their two bodies.
“Brigham Gordon,” Maddy stated with a chuckle. “What are the odds?”
“Not bloody likely,” he replied with a smirk. “Like I said before, it’s more like fate really. We had some good times back in Vegas, didn’t we?”
Maddy’s smile flickered and died. “No, actually that wasn’t a good time for me,” she admitted, glancing up at him. “Nothing to do with you, of course. Just a bad few weeks.”
“Things better now I hope.”
“It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.” Her eyes flittered up and over his shoulder to the table where Grant sat. She could see him staring awkwardly around the room, looking ill at ease. W
hy did he always look so uncomfortable? Had she ever seen him off guard and relaxed?
“So, who is this Grant character, Madelyne?” he asked bluntly. “And should I be jealous?”
Maddy smiled brightly, her cheeks reddening slightly despite herself. “Well, I don’t know. You can be anything you want, Brigham.”
“Should I be?”
He gave her a direct look in the eye, a look she couldn’t maintain.
“No,” she replied, her eyes sliding down his chest to examine the tip of a scarlet handkerchief sitting perfectly exposed from his jacket pocket as if sculpted from cedar.
It was then that she was reminded of what had rubbed her the wrong way two and a half years ago. There was always something so rehearsed about this man, nothing spontaneous. Despite his efforts to the contrary to seem carefree, he was a very deliberate man. And with her particular abilities, she could always see him coming hours away. She realized back then that she could never live like that.
So, why hadn’t she seen him coming this time? If it was true and their meeting was a complete fluke, how did this change her fate, if at all?
“Forgive me, Madelyne,” he said quietly but with honest passion, “but when I saw you standing there in the street my heart bounced. I looked at you and realized that all my success is pointless without someone to share it with.”
“You just need an audience to help lift that weighty ego of yours, Briggs, that's all.” The moment the words left her mouth she felt cheap for saying it. She tried to tamper it with an apologetic smile and a demure laugh as if to say: Just a joke between friends, right?
It didn’t seem to matter anyway. He hadn’t even seemed to have heard her.
Unabated, he went on. “Suddenly I remember happiness again. Youth. Innocence.”
Maddy sighed in exasperation. That was Brigham in a nutshell. So busy delivering his lines that he had forgotten to listen to the other actor’s dialogue.
Pulling him closer, she propped her head on his shoulder--the better to get to the heart of the matter, the reason she had agreed to the dance in the first place. “Brigham, I need a forged passport to get me out of the country. You still connected?”
Looking down at her, the Brit blinked in obvious surprise. She could actually see him recover his ego and shift position. “For you, my dear. Anything. I'll make some calls.”
Maddy glanced over his shoulder to see one of the wait-staff talking to Grant at the table. Somehow she sensed there was an issue.
24
“I’m not sure I understand,” Grant replied, blinking up at the maître d'.
“This was arranged by my boss Brigham Gordon, who assumed that you might want to do some gambling later downstairs,” the maître d' explained, handing him a plastic card with the casino’s emblem on it.
Grant slowly, tentatively reached out to take it.
“It has some funds already loaded onto it at the courtesy of Mr. Brigham.”
Grant blinked up at the suited man. “He wants me to gamble.”
“As his guest, he just wants you to be as comfortable as possible while in his establishment.”
Grant frowned down at the card. “How much?”
“Ten thousand.”
Grant’s eyes snapped up in astonishment. He held the card out to the man. “A-As much as I appreciate the gesture…”
The maître d' gave a quick bow and immediately departed.
Grant stared after the man then turned his eyes back to the dance floor. Slapping the card down to the table top, he watched as Maddy and Brigham continued to dance, their faces very close as they whispered to each other about God knows what. Maybe the old days and whatever they had back then.
What kind of relationship did they have back then, he wondered? What a fool I was to have stayed! Maddy had no one else before, so of course, you were the go-to person. Now, she’s got Barnum there, he thought bitterly. And do you resent her, really, for making such a sensible choice?
His eyes moved inevitably back to the card lying on the table.
“Goddamit,” he hissed venomously as he gave in to the inevitable.
25
The elevator doors opened downstairs onto the casino level and Grant strode out. Removing the card from his pocket and expertly twirling it between fingers, he moved directly to a window and snapped the card down upon the counter in front of the uniformed gentleman.
“Hi,” Grant said, a bit nervously.
“Hello, sir,” the cashier promptly answered, standing slightly straighter.
“Can you please tell me how much is on this card?”
Flipping the card over, the cashier drew a hand-scanner and ran a laser across the mag-strip on the back of the card. He glanced over at his computer monitor and said, “Ten thousand exactly, Mr. Frederickson, sir.”
Grant nodded and gave the cashier an extra-long look. “So, my name is on this card?”
“Yes, sir.”
Grant stared down at the card with a troubled expression, his hands resting casually on the counter.
The cashier blinked across at him. “Will that be all, sir, or would you like me to cash it out?”
“Cash it out?”
“Yes, sir.”
Grant wet his lips almost hungrily. “You’re saying that I can just cash the card out.”
“Of course, sir,” the cashier answered. “It’s your money. Of course, the casino would prefer that you take chips instead, you understand.”
Grant nodded again, his eyes lingering on the card.
Looking slightly uncomfortable, the cashier still managed to maintain his pleasant demeanor. He waited patiently, his eyes darting up over Grant’s shoulder to the couple that just stepped up behind him.
“Of course, you can hold onto the card. Use it at any machine or get chips at the table should you decide to…”
“I’ll take ten bananas,” Grant interrupted curtly.
“Certainly,” the cashier responded, sweeping the card expertly toward him. Running it through another scanner, he gathered ten yellow chips from a drawer and counted them out on the counter in front of Grant, then slid them into a small tray.
Instead of taking the tray, Grant took five of them in each hand and pulled them protectively to his chest. Lowering his head, he turned quickly away, nearly colliding with the couple behind him before looking up and veering away at the last moment like a man leaving the scene of a crime.
He moved from one table to the other, his breath quickening.
The sound of coins crashing grew louder in his ears as he stepped deeper into the casino.
Grant blotted his forehead with a sleeve and started up to an open spot on the first available blackjack table.
The bearded dealer acknowledged him with a blank expression.
“New player!” the dealer’s cry went out.
Grant looked from the Dealer to the chips in his hand and backed slowly away from the table with a single shake of his head. Shoving the chips deep into his pockets, he spotted a men’s room. He moved directly to the nearest basin and splashed water on his face. Taking a few breaths, he straightened and studied at himself in the mirror.
He retrieved a single chip from his pocket and wound it dexterously through the fingers of one hand. He gave a sad smile and glanced up.
A ten-year-old wearing a Texas Longhorns ball-cap stepped out of one of the stalls behind him and watched Grant’s finger trick with an awed smile as he washed his hands. “Pretty cool trick, Mister.”
“Only thing I’ve ever been good at,” Grant said under his breath. “That and self-destruction.”
The smile on the kid’s face dimmed a few watts. “Okay bye,” he grunted, moving quickly toward the exit past the hand drier and wiping his hands on his blue jeans.
Sighing heavily, Grant squeezed his hand into a fist around the chip and headed out to the casino. Head down, he started in the direction of the blackjack table out of memory. When he finally looked up, he found Maddy standing about
ten yards away between him and the table.
Registering the troubled expression on her face, he felt that she clearly saw in that moment the slowly darkening shade of his soul.
He waited with both dread and relief as she approached.
“What are you doing?” she said sternly, looking down.
He followed her eyes to his closed fist and slowly--like a child revealing something it shouldn’t have access to--opened his hand to reveal the yellow chip.
Maddy stared down at it then slowly back to his face.
“Are you going to leave me and go back there?”
Grant closed his fist with a snap and held it stiffly down by his side, his thoughts too disjointed to form a cohesive sentence.
Leave me, he wanted to say? But aren’t you gone already?
Then another voice seemed to say: Does it really matter to you what choice she makes? Is what you’re about to do good for you? And for your soul?
“Did your life have that much appeal that you want to go back?” Maddy asked.
As Grant looked away from the judgment in her face, his eyes fell on a suited man wearing the loud pastel colors of the casino setting up a large sandwich board on the far side of the room. Uttering not a word, he started immediately toward it past Maddy.
Maddy lowered her head and started in the opposite direction. Burying her face in her hands, she rushed toward the elevator.
Rushing up to the color advertisement, Grant grabbed the sleeve of the gawky young suited man and pointed at the sign. “Where is this?”
The man glanced at the tight grip on his sleeve and swallowed awkwardly. “It’s not open yet. Next week,” he managed, gently extricating himself.
Grant leaped forward and snagged his sleeve again. “Yes, but where will it be when it opens?”
“Upstairs,” the young man answered, backing slowly away, reclaiming his sleeve again. “One level above the Old Miss restaurant.”
Grant released him and spun back to the advertisement.
It read: "The Bayou Blues Club--Coming Soon." The sign displayed a color photo of the stage area of the proposed club, revealing a big faux cypress tree in the center of the room, Spanish moss and all. Murals of grey pelicans taking flight over cypress knees and an old ramshackle cabin complete the illusion of a bayou.
Remember the Future Page 17
