My Give a Damn's Busted

by Carolyn Brown

  “What is the Ruth Lawson stuff? You’ve really been to the Café de la Paix, haven’t you? And the islands? All those places we laughed about, you’ve been there, haven’t you? You were playing poor and laughing at me.”

  “The Ruth stuff is the same as the Hayes stuff and yes I’ve been to those places, but no, I was not laughing at you. I wasn’t playing poor. I just wasn’t claiming to be rich. Seems you were in the same place.”

  “I told you more than you did me,” he said.

  “Which still doesn’t make up for the fact that you were Hayes. So don’t take that attitude with me,” she said.

  “I’m not happy anymore,” he said bluntly.

  “Well, don’t blame me. I didn’t do it.”

  “Yes, you did,” he protested.

  “I won’t carry the burden for that. You did it to yourself. You could have ’fessed up anytime. Like at the lake when we were in the water?”

  He grimaced. “If it’s any consolation, I wanted to tell you. I almost did that day at the house when we were painting but Sharlene arrived before I could tell you. What do we do now, Larissa?”

  “Well, if you are Hayes, you can go to hell. If you are Hank, I’m starving and those finger sandwiches in there ain’t going to do a thing to whet my appetite.” She didn’t tell him that it would take more than physical food to satisfy the longing in her heart.

  “I’m your slave until midnight,” he said.

  “Then use your cell phone and call us a cab. Where is a good place to buy some boiled crawdads and Cajun rice?”

  “I know just the place.” He felt as if he’d just been given a second chance to get into heaven’s doors.

  And this time he wasn’t going to blow it.

  Chapter 14

  “Y’all been to a wedding?” the waitress asked.

  “A fundraiser,” Hank said.

  She pointed at Larissa and said, “I figured you for the maid of honor.” She moved her finger to Hank, “And you for the best man. Guess I lost that dollar bet.”

  “What’d the other party think we were?” Larissa asked.

  “Just plain old rich folks.”

  “Why’d you think we were part of a wedding party?” Hank asked.

  The waitress pushed a strand of brown hair up under her cap. “Because folks that rich don’t come in here, especially dressed up like y’all are. You’re too old to be out for a prom and besides, the season ain’t right. If you were at a fancy fundraiser then she was right and I was wrong and that means I’m out a buck.”

  “I’m sorry.” Larissa opened her purse and put a twenty in the waitress’ hand. “Pay off the bet and keep the rest for thinking we’d been to a wedding. I like that better than being rich.”

  “Thank you!” The waitress beamed.

  Larissa wondered if she was a winner or a loser that evening. She glanced at the menu and folded it. The café sat between two empty warehouse buildings in a little weathered shack. The sign declaring it to be Crawdad Heaven swung from the ceiling of the porch. It was painted in stenciled letters with a crawdad wearing a halo at the end of the wording. The place was about the size of the Honky Tonk with booths along three sides and tables in the middle. Fishy aromas wafted through the kitchen into the dining room and she inhaled deeply.

  “It doesn’t take you long to make up your mind,” Hank said.

  “I know what I want,” she answered. She looked around at the fish nets hanging from the walls and ceiling with sea shells thrown haphazardly into them.

  He looked across the table. “In all things?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Want to expound upon that while we wait on our drinks?”

  “Nothing to discuss. If you are Hank, you know what I want. If you are Hayes you know how important it is to me. This is a neat place. I wonder if the ladies at home would learn to cook crawdads. If they would I’d put in one just like this in Mingus. Any one of those old empty buildings would do to start. I’d finance it and we could give the Smokestack some competition. I’d best stop thinking about Larissa and Mingus. Ruth Lawson bought you so I’d better get into character.”

  He reached across the table and laid his hand over hers. “I’ll always be Hank to you.”

  She shook it off and looked around the restaurant. “It’s not the Brasserie Bofinger, is it?”

  “No, but then I doubt the Brasserie Bofinger would serve crawdads. You want to go to Italy? We can be there in that restaurant tomorrow. I’ll call the airline and book a flight. We can go just as we are and buy what we need there. Did you bring your passport?”

  “No, I did not and I’m not interested in an impulsive flight with you. You broke my heart but it didn’t kill me so I must be a stronger woman for the pain of it,” she said.

  “I’m so sorry, Larissa. Please forgive me,” he said.

  The waitress returned with two large glasses of iced tea and took their order for a bucket of crawfish with all the sides. The tea tasted better to Larissa than the wine she’d had at Martha’s house.

  Guess I’ve really made the change from Ruth to Larissa when I’d rather have a sweet tea as expensive wine, and jeans and boots as this gorgeous dress. I wonder where Hank is in his double life tonight. He said he’d always be Hank to me. What does that mean?

  “What are you thinking about?” he asked.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “There’s a faraway look you get in your eyes when you are into the deep thought. You had it,” he answered.

  “I was thinking about Ruth. That’s who bought Hayes so that’s who I should be tonight.”

  “And who is Ruth? I haven’t met her. Is she your only alter ego or do you have many?” he asked.

  “Only one alter ego and I’d forgotten about her until I came down here with Mother.”

  “Tell me about Ruth,” he said.

  “She’s my opposite. Refined. Quiet. Well read. Artsy-fartsy. Loves the little sidewalk cafés in Paris and gelato in Italy. She wouldn’t be comfortable in the Honky Tonk and that’s why I’d forgotten about her.”

  “Tell me about her when she lived in Perry,” he pushed.

  “We were the quiet rich folks,” she said.

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Grandfather wasn’t on every board in the town of Perry. He didn’t run for county offices or wasn’t on the board at the college in Stillwater. He made a bunch of money and then retired young to enjoy a simple country life. Everyone knew I lived out in the country in a fancy house. But after a while they thought my nanny was my real mother and that I lived there because my mother worked there. It was confusing because my mother told me my father’s name was Morley and all the other kids went by their father’s last name. But my mother, my grandfather, my grandmother, and I all had the same name and they told me my father had left my mother when I was a tiny baby.”

  She hesitated.

  “Go on,” he said.

  “I existed and then one day I wanted to live. I can’t explain it but I went on a scavenger hunt to find myself and wound up in Mingus. I went to places where my name didn’t matter. I could be Betty Boop and no one cared. It didn’t matter if I was rich or poor or if my name was Lawson or Morley. I started using my first name rather than my middle one and I liked who I was when I was Larissa. By the time I met you, I wasn’t leading a double life. I was Larissa Morley.”

  He reached across the table and laid his hand on hers. “I know that.”

  “But you were living a double life. You were there on a mission and that was to break me down so I’d sell the Honky Tonk. You betrayed my trust and I don’t give that to every beggar off the street.”

  He withdrew his hand. “I’m sorry. That’s all I’ve got, Larissa. I can’t undo it or redo it. I made a mistake in not telling you who I was but I can’t turn back the clock.”

  “Why did you want my beer joint anyway?”

  “I didn’t. Mother did. It’s taken two weeks, a damn good detective, and a lot of
phone calls but I’ve got it pieced together. Mother and Dad were married before she ever knew a thing about Ruby Lee…”

  She butted in. “What does Henry and your mother have to do with Ruby Lee?”

  “Dad was in love with Ruby Lee. He’d met her at a cattle sale in Dallas. He was there to buy and she was working a second job as a bartender at the sale. They both fell hard and the heat between them lit up half the state of Texas. Her aunt died not long after they’d met and Ruby decided to build a beer joint in Mingus. She loved bartending more than office work and Mingus fit the bill for everything. It was right over the line into Palo Pinto County which was wet and Erath was dry. Dad wasn’t very far away so they could see each other all they wanted. Dad was all for her moving close to him, even wanted her to move to the ranch and marry him. But the proposal had a condition. She had to give up bartending and not build a beer joint.”

  Larissa frowned. “Why? She was a bartender when he met her. You don’t change people.”

  “Think back to the sixties. Women worked outside the home but respectable ones didn’t operate a beer joint every night. Dad had a big ranch and lots of money and his pride got in the way. He didn’t want folks to say his wife had to run a two-bit beer joint. She refused to marry him unless he let her do what she wanted. She built the Honky Tonk. Then he’s at another cattle sale in Dallas and one of his friends invites him to a party with him and his wife. He meets my mother who, in her words, had never seen so much man in a pair of boots. A few weeks later they flew to Las Vegas for a weekend of fun and they got married on a fluke. He told her about Ruby Lee on the way home. He says it was to clear the air so they could start off fresh.”

  Larissa whistled through her teeth. “Not a good choice.”

  He nodded. “Mother refused to give up her company and friends in Dallas. Can’t you just see her on a ranch with cows and chickens? She wanted Dad to leave the ranch and go to work for her in the corporation. He’d have died within a year in the big city. Mother was jealous of Ruby Lee and afraid that Dad would go back to her since he and Mother were only together on weekends and you’ve got to remember how close Ruby Lee was every night of the week. So Mother got it in her head that she’d buy the Honky Tonk and Ruby Lee could go elsewhere. Ruby Lee laughed at her. It became an obsession and it’s never ended. The amusement park was a ruse to rope me into the idea. Mother wanted it. She had the financial investors to back her so I went after it. I had no idea that Ruby Lee had played a part in Dad’s past until this summer.”

  Larissa shrugged. “I see. Life does get tangled up like a fly in a spiderweb, don’t it?”

  “Yes, it does.”

  She looked across the table at him, straight into those whiskey colored eyes that she’d been so attracted to from the beginning. “I’m Larissa. Who are you going to be when you grow up?”

  “I’m thirty-two years old. I guess I am grown up,” he said.

  “Not until you let one of you come out and play, and tell the other one to take his toys and go home.”

  He tested the waters. “Which one would you want to come out and play?”

  “Honey, that’s your decision. Talk to your heart. Not me or your mother or Henry can make that decision. Until you do, you’re going to be miserable. I’m Larissa. I’m not Ruth. Ruth would like Hayes probably when she got to know him. Larissa wouldn’t.”

  “Is that the voice of experience?” he asked.

  She smiled. “It is.”

  The waitress arrived with a galvanized bucket of crawdads and poured them out in the middle of the oil cloth covered table. She tied a kitchen towel around Larissa’s neck and repeated the process with Hank. “That’s to protect your fancy duds.”

  “Does everyone get this treatment?” Larissa asked.

  “Oh, yeah. We protect grease stained T-shirts just as much as we do tuxedos. We just get more of the T-shirts than we do tuxes. I’ll be right back with your corn and potatoes.”

  Larissa picked up a crawfish, turned it over, and peeled the hard shell away from the white tail meat. She dipped it in red sauce and popped it into her mouth. “Mmmm,” she muttered.

  “Good?” He followed her example.

  “Better than New Orleans. You ever ate them down there?”

  “Never ate them at all but you are right, they are right tasty. Like big shrimp with more flavor,” he said.

  “You live close to this little place and you’ve never visited it?” she asked.

  “One of the secretaries in the office pool is from southern Louisiana and discovered it. She was singing its praises last week,” Hank answered.

  The waitress brought a platter of corn on the cob and boiled potatoes. She picked up a pitcher from a nearby workstation and refilled their tea. “Anything else for you folks?”

  Larissa shook her head.

  “Then enjoy your meal.” She quickly headed to a table where two new customers were seating themselves.

  Larissa peeled, popped, chewed, and had another ready by the time she’d swallowed. She wiped her hands on the bright blue towel and buttered two ears of corn while she chewed that bite. She handed one to Hank who’d barely gotten the hang of peeling the tails.

  “Try the corn while it’s hot. They boil it and the potatoes in the same pot as the crawdads. It’s wonderful.” She held the corn in her hands and chewed her way around the side like a squirrel.

  He did the same. “This is better than finger food at Martha’s for sure.”

  “Glad I didn’t let Emma or Holly outbid me?” she asked.

  “I might have gotten more than crawdads from either of them,” he answered.

  She shot him a dirty look. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

  He shrugged. “That I don’t know what we are doing here. You have just as much of a two-people personality as I do. You were so mad at me at the town meeting that you were steaming hot and then you write a check for fifteen thousand dollars for a few hours of my time after you refuse to meet me for a talk. You don’t want to be Ruth Lawson but you were acting like her when you left Holly and Emma in the dust of your dollars. That proved to them that you were the daughter of the rich Doreen Lawson. Larissa Morley wouldn’t have done that. She would have started the bidding at a dime or maybe even a penny and had something to say about my sorry ass not being worth anymore than that. She might have even thrown something at me before she spit in my eye and told me to enjoy my night with either Holly or Emma or both of them. I liked her better than Ruth. And you are sending mixed signals.”

  She wiped her hands and untied the towel. “And I like Hank better than Hayes. From now on you can call me Abe.”

  “Why’s that?”

  She stood up. “Because I’m freeing you. You are no longer a slave but a free man to go where you please and do what you want. Finish your dinner. I’m going home. You are free to finish out the evening with Emma or Holly or both of them on my dollar and tell them they don’t have to send a thank-you note.”

  He thought she was teasing until she walked up to the front desk and talked to the waitress. In less than a minute she was out the door, into a cab, and gone. He started to run after her but the cab was gone before he could wipe his hands and stand up. He sat down with a sigh and looked at all the food before him. He was still hungry and he’d have to pay for the dinner so he might as well eat. She would be at the hotel or she’d drive back to Mingus. Either way, she still had a cell phone. And these days she was picking it up instead of letting it play the first part of “My Give a Damn’s Busted.”

  He chuckled. Larissa did have a temper and it had surfaced. He was glad. He didn’t like Ruth anyway. Granted, she was knock-down gorgeous in that red dress with her hair swept up on top of her head and she’d put an extra beat in Hayes’ heart and made his pulse race. But she wasn’t his Larissa, the woman he liked in cutoff blue jeans with a paintbrush in her hands or else jeans and a hay hook in both hands. Oh, sure, he’d have the same reaction if he saw her all dolled up in a d
ress and high heeled shoes as Hayes did. They were both men who appreciated beautiful women. Hayes would never look twice at Larissa. It would be Ruth that took his eye.

  Hank had fallen for the impish woman with a foggy past. Now that he knew where she came from and what she really was doing in Mingus, he admired her even more.

  Now the problem lying before him was deciding who the man was eating crawdads and corn with his fingers.

  In the wake of Hurricane Larissa, he made a decision as he slowly peeled crawdads. He was Hank Wells, not Hayes Radner.

  ***

  Larissa was sitting in the middle of her king-sized bed, eating a hamburger and fries from room service when her cell phone rang. She checked caller ID before she answered it. If it was Hayes or Hank, she wasn’t answering it. She’d had enough of both of them for one night.

  “Hello, Mother,” she said.

  “I’m outside your door. Can I come in?”

  “Sure. I’m on my way.” She pushed her food to one side, slid off the bed, and swung open the door.

  Her mother swept into the room in a navy blue silk robe over matching pajamas. “What are you doing home so early?”

  “How did you know I was home?” Larissa asked.

  “Hayes came back to the party without you. I made excuses and Rupert brought me back to the hotel. What happened?”

  “I’m having supper. Crawl up here on the bed and get comfortable. I’ll tell you all about it. Does Rupert mind you leaving him alone?” Larissa asked.

  Doreen shook her head. “He’s fine.”

  “Tell me before I begin what Hayes did when he came back to the party.”

  “He put a bid on Martha’s painting that very few people could think about outdoing. When a couple of women tried to talk to him, he said that he had been bought for the night and the rules were that he couldn’t flirt. Martha laughed and said she was going to put him between a rock and a hard spot. He wasn’t allowed to flirt but the rules didn’t say anything about the losers flirting with him. When we left Emma and Holly were being absolutely shameless.”

  Larissa turned green and laid the remains of the burger and fries on the bedside table. “Those bitches. I might scratch their eyes out yet. What will he do with the painting?”