how much I’d liked the way she gripped my collar like she needed to hold on to me before we fell from that moment.
So when I started out this morning and found a small white box on the floor in front of my landing, with the note Thank you for the nap and the rescue and… all the other very good stuff. Let me return the favor, I didn’t really know how to respond, or even what to think.
Up on that rooftop deck with Willow, everything had seemed so simple, so right. But this morning, reality hit me like a ton of bricks. I had no clue what Willow really wanted from me. I only knew that if the dream wasn’t distracting me, then Willow was, and I didn’t have time for any of it. I had sleep to avoid and work to do. There was no time for dreams that made no sense or for women, no matter how beautiful, who would do nothing but distract me from the life I wanted. Even if they made killer cupcakes or smelled like sweet, expensive things I could never afford.
Damn, I couldn’t even concentrate. There were too many thoughts—of New Orleans and a kid in the 20’s, of Willow and the sweet, sinful taste of her tongue, of Duncan and his needy, pestering drama that always seemed to surf around the edges of our conversations.
Noise. Nonsense. Irritation, all of it.
I thundered into my apartment, heading straight for the sofa, tugging off my jacket and tie, my shoes and belt before I crashed and gripped my headphones. Coltrane was on, that beautiful voice of God singing a sax hymnal inside of ten minutes. My neck felt tight and my shoulders ached, so I leaned back, shutting my eyes, not intending to do anything but relax. Just for a little while…
New Orleans
Joe Andres was a mean man. That seemed to be true of a lot of male folk in the city, especially the ones who paid no never-mind to the laws laid down about hooch. Most days I could get away with walking through the drunken crowds, the reckless fools who didn’t give a single thought to the policemen lurking on every corner, itching to find someone easy to stir up mess with. But that was New Orleans, not here in the swamp where mama had taken us to for keeping out of trouble since she said those Irishmen from the Channel were having a fine time celebrating St. Paddy’s Day.
I didn’t mind it so much, except for Joe Andres being up at the Simoneaux house. It was nice to be away from the trolleys and crowds, the wicked gleam in ole Ripper’s eye and the constant worry that my mama and Lulu would get found out for making drink no one was supposed to have. But having a fool like Joe Andres that close by meant I still had to keep at least one eye out for trouble.
I liked my Bastie’s farm. Chickens pecked at the ground on the side of the house, next to the shotgun building with the pale blue door and cream walls where Bastie used to store her gardening tools and the feed sacks for all her critters. That led away from the old creole cottage my granddaddy Bastien had built for her with his own two hands some thirty years ago, before the pipe he smoked festered his lungs like dry rot on a dock and killed him by the time he was sixty.
The house was cedar framed; the color of the wood had gone all dark like the belly of a rock settled on the riverbank, and Bastie kept pretty green shutters on the two windows outfitted at the front of the house. There was a porch with five-foot long steps and handrails, where she kept a whiskey barrel cut in the center to catch the water she pumped from the well. She’d use the washboard inside that barrel to beat and scrub out the laundry on Saturdays all day if the weather was right.
But in front of the porch, just off the side of the cottage, hung an old swing big enough for three people to sit on, swinging back and forth so that the rusted chain that hung from the oak above it squeaked and moaned in a sort of rhythm that made me smile. Bastie told me all her stories on that porch —how she’d worked with her mama in Atlanta, tending to