A Life Without Fear

by Leo King

  Running cold water over his face, he stared at his reflection for a long time. Looking back was a man as haggard and tired as the woman he loved. His five o’clock shadow was unseemly and his hands were shaking.

  He’d now gone more than a day without his anxiety medication, and he’d been going between feeling just fine and having miniature fits of crazy. It didn’t help that during his entire conversation with Rodger, he had been sure he was seeing members of the Nite Priory watching him. He wasn’t sure if it was really them or his stress making him see things.

  Unsurprisingly, he felt the calmest when he was with Sam. It was like she was his new drug. And at that moment, he really needed a fix.

  Face and hands clean, Richie stumbled out of the bathroom and into the lobby where Sam was waiting. She was sitting and squeezing her charm in her hands. She flashed a small smile at him as he sat down beside her, then she slid into his arms and rested her head on his chest. He couldn’t help but notice how good she smelled and how soft she felt.

  “Hey there,” he said, already feeling calmer. “You ready to get out of here?”

  The doctors had examined her. They had expressed concern over her having two fainting spells in a twenty-four-hour period, but they had found nothing wrong with her. She was prescribed some motion sickness medicine and told to follow up with her doctor. She ended up making an appointment with her psychiatrist, Dr. Klein, for tomorrow.

  Richie had only left her in the lobby because she had asked for some fresh coffee. That was when he had run into Rodger and Dixie.

  “Yeah,” she said, grabbing his waist and holding him close. “Let’s go home and rest up before tonight. I’m not going to be robbed of an evening with my boyfriend and my best friend.”

  He walked with her back to the car, thinking about Jacob. Something about him didn’t seem right. Richie got that he cared for Sam, but he seemed almost… fake sometimes.

  At the car, Richie got in the driver’s seat, while Sam leaned over and put her head on his shoulder. “Mind if I rest like this on the way home?”

  He kissed the top of her head. “It’s probably not very safe.”

  “I don’t care. I need to be next to you.”

  She stayed like that as he drove home.

  A little while later, Richie was in Sam’s bedroom getting dressed. His clothes, even though they had been laundered, were starting to show signs of wear.

  As she came out of the bathroom wearing a tank top and panties, he said, “Ya know, if we have the time, I’d really like to go back to my hotel room and get a fresh change of clothes.”

  She let out a short “Ha!” and started rooting around in her dresser. “We should go get you some new clothes. You know, make you look snazzy and sexy.” Thankfully, she was in a better mood and seemed ready to have a good evening.

  He chuckled. “Really now, Sam? The ‘let’s have the girlfriend dress the boyfriend’ bit? Isn’t that completely cliché?”

  She stuck her tongue out at him. “Hun, you have a great body, but a complete lack of fashion sense.” She winked.

  As Sam turned back around to get out her clothes, Richie admired her shape. She had such an amazing butt. He found himself falling in love again. He couldn’t get over how strange he felt—no one had ever had this kind of an effect on him before. It was like something in her was feeding off his desire. If he was ever going to believe in succubi or sexual demons or any of that nonsense, it would be because of Sam.

  He pushed those thoughts away as she turned to him and held up a black T-shirt with a pair of red lips and vampire fangs on one side and the words “Bite Me!” on the other.

  “What do you think?”

  He snickered. “Going out in New Orleans in a vampire T-shirt? Sam, how very Gothic of you.”

  “Oh, hush, you,” Sam said, putting the shirt back. After rummaging around for a few more moments, she pulled out a dark purple T-shirt with a skeletal figure wearing a top hat and holding a shovel. The back of the shirt had “Dig My Grave” written on it. She looked at the shirt quietly, her lips pursed.

  Richie leaned in and examined it. “Hey, isn’t that the dude from the Patterson voodoo tour? The one who digs your grave right before you die? Ya know, Baron Samhain?”

  “Baron Samedi,” she said, staring at the print. She seemed transfixed.

  “Hey, Sam, you OK?” he asked, touching her arm.

  She jumped back as if he were hurting her, her bangs sliding over her face, her pupils heavily dilated.

  He blinked. What the hell?

  Sam rapidly shook her head. When she looked back up at him, her eyes were back to normal and her hair was out of her face. “Sorry, just spaced out a bit. That stupid ride really messed with my head. Voodoo. Loa. Barons. Sometimes I think I’m possessed, ya know? It would explain so much about my screwed-up life.” She put on the T-shirt. It was a perfect fit.

  She had mentioned being possessed so casually that Richie wasn’t sure if she was serious or not. He wasn’t superstitious by nature and certainly didn’t believe in ghosts, but with how she’d been acting lately, he wasn’t sure what to believe.

  “Well, if you ever want to talk about it, just let me know,” he said as he finished getting dressed.

  She pulled on some black jeans and nodded but didn’t say anything. She was silent all the way to his hotel room at the Ritz Carlton as well, just writing in her notebook with that silver pen, scribbling down notes on her story.

  Once there, while he got dressed in fresh clothes—a business casual outfit that looked as good as it did out of place—Sam called Jacob to tell him where they were. Once he was dressed and shaved, Richie looked through his bags once more for any traces of his anxiety medication.

  They were all gone. He really had lost his pills. It really had been over twenty-four hours since his last dose of medication.

  “Jacob’ll be here in a few minutes,” she said, resting her hands on his back. “No pills left, huh? Not even an emergency supply?”

  “Nothing,” he said, his lips tight. He was already feeling his heart rate increase to an uncomfortable level. Just thinking about it upset him. “I’ll have to call my doctor in Pittsburg on Monday, get the prescription sent to a pharmacy here, and then go fill it. It’s gonna be a major pain in the ass.”

  Sam laid her head on his shoulder. “What can I do to help?”

  Richie nervously clenched his jaw. “Just be with me. I need to work through it. To be honest…” He pulled her into his arms. “I’ve been relying on them way too much. And if I’m going to be a good man for you, I need to stop letting this stuff hold me back.”

  She leaned up and placed a small kiss on his lips. “Never think that you’re less of a man for having that problem. This is all from your abuse as a child, right?”

  He kissed back. He hated remembering what his father had done to him, haze or not. It was a painful memory he’d rather submerge with writing, sex, and booze instead of actually facing his problems and sorting through them.

  And yet Sam made him want to face his problems, conquer them, and truly live.

  “I don’t want to use that as an excuse anymore.” Richie smiled.

  She laughed softly and tousled his hair. “Okay, then. No more excuses. No more fussing about it. We’ll get your meds when we can. We’ll deal with the bigger issues when we can. Until then, I’ll keep you too distracted to go crazy.”

  He leaned in and was just starting to kiss her with more passion when there was a loud knock on the door.

  Richie jumped back like a cat from a vacuum cleaner. “Shit!”

  “It’s probably just Jacob.” Sam opened the door and said, “Hey, Jacob! We were just talking about you.”

  Jacob entered and gave her a brief hug. He was wearing a leather jacket over a black shirt. His hair was combed back and he looked pretty slick. He reached over and shook Richie’s hand. “Hey, Richie, looking good. Not very Nawlins, but good nonetheless.” He popped Richie gently on the arm, which
stung anyway.

  Richie managed a grin. “This is the hip urban dress style in Pittsburg. All the cool people wear it.” It was a lie and he was sure everyone knew it.

  Sam patted Richie fondly on the bum. “We’ll fix you up tomorrow. For now, let’s get out of here. I want to eat and then hit the town.”

  Richie followed, rubbing his arm. Jacob’s grip and his “friendly” arm pop were way too strong. What’s this guy’s problem?

  In the elevator, Sam and Jacob decided, after a brief conversation, to have dinner at Landry’s Seafood House, a Cajun restaurant located on the Mississippi River in the French Quarter. Watching the two collaborate like the long-term friends they were, Richie started to feel like a third wheel. It was only when Sam took his hand and smiled softly at him that he stopped feeling that way.

  In the lobby, he was tasked with getting Sam’s car out of parking while Jacob took her outside to check out the new chrome on his bike. She showed such interest in Jacob’s motorcycle that Richie, who was beginning to think he’d be competing all night for Sam’s attention, wondered why she didn’t own a motorcycle instead of a car. She seemed to really go for them.

  Heh, I guess there’s more to Sam’s tastes than fine furniture and coffee. He was going to have to really get to know her—what she liked and what she disliked.

  The concierge raised his upper lip as Richie approached, as if he smelled something foul. Richie shrugged. He had already offended the concierge several times by vastly under-tipping him and had ended up splashing in the muck of a back alley for it.

  “Hey,” Richie said, reaching into his wallet and pulling out both a fifty and the parking slip. “I need to get my car out of valet parking, and I don’t know where to go. Can you handle that for me?”

  The concierge looked at the fifty with what could only be called surprise. “I will have your ride brought around right away, Mr. Fastellos.”

  Richie walked away with a smirk as the concierge called valet parking. If the fifty hadn’t worked, he likely would have clocked him right there. Richie was getting really tired of people walking on him.

  Once outside, Richie saw that it was already getting dark. He approached Sam and Jacob, who weren’t looking at the motorcycle so much as across the street. Following their gaze, he saw a line of police cars, lights flashing, heading into the French Quarter.

  “What’s going on?” he asked, approaching the two.

  Sam was frowning. “Not sure. Looks like something’s going down on Bourbon Street.”

  Shrugging, Richie went to the doorman and asked, “Hey, bud, what’s going on with the police?”

  “There’s been another victim of the new Ripper,” the doorman said, shaking his head. “Mayor Barthelemy got the French Quarter under martial law, it seems. Heard that SWAT and everything is there.”

  “Serious? Holy crap,” said Richie, looking back over at the flashing lights on Bourbon. “Who was it this time? Any idea who the victim was?”

  “No idea her name, some cop’s daughter,” replied the doorman.

  Richie’s brow furrowed. The only daughter of a police officer that he knew of was the teenage daughter of Detective Aucoin, the one he had seen in the precinct just the other night. His eyes widened as he remembered Sam saying that the next victim in her story was a teenage girl. The two facts clicked together in his head with uncomfortable precision.

  No. It couldn’t be, could it?

  He decided not to stir the pot until he had more information.

  Approaching the two as Jacob put an arm around Sam, the cuff of his leather jacket lifting enough to show a skull tattoo on his left wrist, Richie said, “Hey, guys, we’re going to need to find a new place to eat. There was another victim last night. The mayor’s got the French Quarter locked down.”

  Both turned to Richie with surprised looks. Jacob immediately backed off. “Let’s go to the lakefront. There’s a Landry’s there as well. My treat, guys. Just follow me.”

  Richie put his arm around Sam. “You good for this, hun?”

  She nodded. “I can’t let this ruin my life. Do you know who the victim was?”

  Richie bit his bottom lip and looked down at her. She was starting to show signs of stress again. He felt the feverish desire to protect her overwhelm him. Taking a breath, he bent the truth. “The daughter of a cop or something. Some chick in her mid-twenties who goes to Tulane or something. I didn’t get the details. It’s nothing like your story, though.”

  That seemed to relax her. As her car was brought up front, Richie took the driver’s side. He hoped his fib was accurate. He didn’t think Sam could take another coincidence.

  Once at Landry’s at the Lakefront, the three of them took a few minutes to get situated. Richie was impressed by the lake. From the parking lot, he could look out over it. While he couldn’t see the water in the nighttime, he could see lights moving across the horizon far away. It was amazing to see such a huge lake this far south.

  As he stood there, taking in the sight, Jacob stood next to him and said, “Impressive, isn’t it? You should see it in the daytime.”

  Richie looked over. “Man, Lake Erie could hold twenty Lake Pontchartrains. This thing is a pond.”

  As he walked with Sam to the restaurant, he was sure he saw Jacob’s face get red. That made him smile.

  Landry’s was one of those places Richie had wanted to eat at before leaving New Orleans. From the outside, it looked like an old fisherman’s bar, the weather-beaten wooden planks a perfect match to the brackish water washing up from Lake Pontchartrain. A pelican perched on a nearby halogen light.

  Inside, the restaurant continued the fisherman’s bar motif. There were decorations of swordfish, life preservers, and even ship wheels on the walls, interspersed with photographs of local sailboats and commercial fishing trawlers. The high-vaulted ceiling was lined with dozens of fishing nets. The sound system played zydeco music from the local radio station.

  It was a busy Saturday night, but somehow Jacob managed to get the three of them a booth within a few minutes of arriving. The hostess who showed them their seat glanced over at Richie, blushed and giggled, and then hurried off.

  Sam, seated next to Richie, leaned over to Jacob and asked, “So, what was that about?”

  “Oh, our hostess is a fan of Richie’s,” he said with a grin as he sipped his water. “She’s going to get her book and Richie’s going to autograph it.”

  Richie just stared at him as Sam started laughing. This guy was a real piece of work. But if it got them a seat and it helped Sam enjoy herself, he guessed it was OK.

  She continued to laugh out loud. “I can’t believe you, Jacob Hueber. You really are too much.”

  Jacob winked at them. “Nah, just looking out for my best friend. And giving her boyfriend a hard time.”

  Once again, Richie felt confused. He really didn’t know what to make of this guy or his intentions.

  “So, Jacob,” he asked. “You and Sam met in college?”

  The hostess came back and showcased a copy of The Pale Lantern as if it were her prized possession. As Richie scribbled a generalized dedication to her, he listened to Jacob.

  “Pretty much. I knew her from creative writing classes. Even back then, she was a recluse, kept to herself. However, at that time, there was a series of assaults on campus. A nutcase was beating up students who walked around at night. Some of them were hurt pretty badly, too. The cops never did catch the guy.”

  “Wow, seriously?” Richie handed the book back to the hostess, who scampered off.

  Sam’s head was lowered and she grabbed Richie’s hand underneath the table. “Yeah. Seriously.”

  Jacob continued, “Anyway, I walked with her at first just to keep her safe, from class to her car. Over time, we got to know each other. And one Halloween, I had two tickets to Anne Rice’s vampire ball. I took Sam, who was dressed as Elvira. I was dressed as Gomez Addams. And after that, we became best friends. Right, Sam?”

  “Yeah,”
she said, looking pensive. “Can we talk about something else?”

  Jacob got an “oh, crap” expression.

  Not missing a beat, Richie said, “Sure, Sam. Let’s talk about something else. I think I see the waitress coming.”

  Jacob ordered for the group, leaning back and playing up the cool act for the waitress—a rather attractive redhead in her early twenties. Richie watched as he finished the order by blowing her a kiss and winking at her. But she rolled her eyes and gave him a glare before heading off. This guy was not fooling anyone with the stud act.

  “Oh, Lord, Jacob,” said Sam, waggling her eyebrows, “if you pick up another girlfriend, I’m gonna hit you with my breadsticks.”

  He blinked and looked over at her. She was chuckling along with Jacob. Seriously? He couldn’t believe Sam couldn’t tell that Jacob was being a creep. Was she just blind to him or something?

  Dinner was relatively mundane after that, with Sam and Jacob talking about bikes and thrill-seeking. Richie learned that although she wanted to own a motorcycle and would love to do things such as skydiving and hang-gliding, she never did because she always got out of breath. To him, that was just more hard evidence that she had a heart condition she never knew about.

  The conversation continued until dessert, when Landry’s radio stopped playing music and a newscaster came on.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” said the newscaster in a genuinely distressed voice, “we have just received word that Commander Ouellette of the eighth precinct is giving a press conference concerning the latest murder in the new Bourbon Street Ripper investigation, as well as the state of the French Quarter lockdown. We take you live to City Hall.”

  Richie felt Sam tense up. She took out her shoe charm and rapidly squeezed it. Placing his hand over hers, Richie said, “Let’s get the check and go.”

  “All right.” Jacob left the booth to go pay for the meal.

  As Ouellette’s voice came over the radio, Sam gripped Richie’s hand tightly. All around, men were protectively placing their arms around their female companions. Parents were telling children to hush. Everyone was silent as the commander of the eighth precinct spoke.