Mark of Love (Love Mark #3) - Linda Kage Page 0,183
still feeling strangely lifted from the sight of that one busker outside. Things were about to get better. I could just feel it.
“I’ll be back by early afternoon,” I reported, pulling away. “You got any plans for today?”
“Oh…” flinging herself up onto a chair at the bar, she reached for a beignet I’d gone out earlier to scrounge up for breakfast. “I’m not sure yet.” Closing her eyes, she moaned and chewed before brushing powdered sugar from her lips and saying with a full mouth, “I might hit up a protest I heard the others were going to start on Royal a little later.”
“Just be careful,” I told her, pointing a stern finger.
A few marches not so far from us had gotten a little violent recently. I didn’t want Leeva caught up in any kind of danger.
“Always am, ma chérie.” She tapped her fingers to her lips and blew a kiss at me. “Now get that adorable little butt to your boring-ass job and serve some lame tables already. Maybe a customer in your section will end up being a handsome and available millionaire on the lookout for an independent-minded half-Creole girl with a quirky set of values.”
“I don’t have a quirky set of values,” I pouted as I opened the door.
“You really do,” she countered, winking at me. “But I love you anyway. Now scoot.”
“Well, if that isn’t a grand dismissal.” I rolled my eyes only to laugh and blow a kiss right back at her. “Bye. Love you too.”
But as I swept into the hallway of our third-floor walk-up apartment and shut the door behind me, I said to myself, “I like my values.”
Leeva was all about the pampered life, but I enjoyed earning my income and making my own way. My maw-maw had instilled a serious work ethic in me that made me feel pride and accomplishment for a job well done. It made me one of the best damn waitresses my café had ever seen too, if I did say so myself. So if that made me quirky, I figured so be it. Quirky was cool in my book.
Humming to the tune the busker was playing on the corner as I pushed from the front exit of the building on the ground floor, I hooked my mask into place and started down the street.
It’d been forever since I’d heard anyone play “Singin’ in the Rain,” and the saxophone rendered it perfectly. Made me want to click into a golden oldies station when I got home from work and see if I could watch a Gene Kelly movie.
I tossed some money into the instrument case as I passed, and the player winked at me in gratitude.
With the pandemic going on, the streets were fairly quiet. A few food trucks were unloading their wares in alleyways, and the rare couple walked past hand in hand for a morning stroll. Some were out walking dogs. But even the lone water truck on Bourbon looked like it was struggling to find something on the street to clean.
Work was only a few minutes away, in the heart of the French Quarter. I usually served the late crowd but I’d caught the midmorning shift this time around. Surprisingly, all the available tables were full by the time I entered through the front door, half of them purposely left empty for social distancing.
“Dori!” my coworker, Anthony, called as soon as he spotted me. His arms were full of plates loaded with pancakes, calas, grits, and sweet potatoes. “Thank God you’re here. We are hopping busy this morning. Whoa!”
One of the plates wobbled unsteadily in his arms, so I dived forward, calling, “Got it!” as I snagged it just before it toppled toward the floor.
Anthony froze a moment with his eyes closed before he blew out a breath and said, “Bless you, baby girl.”
“No problem,” I answered, relieving him of another plate. “This is what I do: serve meals and save the day.” Following him the rest of the way to his table, I assisted with distributing his load to bleary-eyed customers in dusty uniforms who looked as if they’d just gotten off a night shift.
“Enjoy your meal,” I told them with a smile, forgetting that they weren’t my customers.
One of the fellows perked up enough to give me a smile and a once-over, so I made sure to put a little extra bounce to my step when I turned away to stroll off.
It’d been almost a year since Alcée and I had split