The Traiteur's Ring (23 page)

Asshole. Wonder whose wife that is he’s fuckin’? Who gives a shit? Not worth gettin’ my ass kicked.

The man disappeared out the top of the ramp, and the voice evaporated with him.

“What the hell was that?” Christy said, rubbing her thigh where the briefcase had struck her.

“Sorry, baby,” Ben said. “You okay?”

“Oh, sure,” a smile replacing her irritation. “Guess he took a look at my Navy SEAL and thought twice, huh?”  She took his arm again.

“Guess so,” Ben wondered if the man’s wife and her lover were in real danger or if those had been just angry thoughts that went nowhere. He tried for a second to reach his mind back out to the angry man, but found he couldn’t. For a moment a picture of an auburn-haired woman shimmered in his head and then evaporated, but he thought maybe he had just made that up. He decided there wasn’t a damn thing he could do either way and pushed the encounter out of his mind.

I’m on my honeymoon.

He took his wife’s hand again.

A short time later they exited the airport in their Dodge Charger from Alamo (a man’s car he had chuckled to her when they picked it from the row of choices), and he had put the airplane ride and the angry man with the cheating wife out of his head. He followed the directions the GPS called out to him (they decided the feminine, electronic voice should be named Betty) and followed the red line on the colored map. He didn’t really need it. Not because he knew his way around New Orleans – truth be told, he could still get around the back wood swamps of the bayou he supposed, but had never really learned the city – but because it was easy to get to downtown or the Quarter from the airport.

His home had been a good drive away, and for poor folk of the bayou with no car to drive anywhere, it could have well been a continent away. When people asked where he was from he said Louisiana, but never claimed New Orleans, though some would argue it was the nearest civilization to their shack in the swamps.

“Feel like home?” his wife asked, as if reading his mind. The thought of her reading his mind struck him as ironic under the circumstances.

“Never did,” he said. He looked over at her and smiled. “When you see where I’m really from, you’ll understand.”

Christy nodded.

He followed I-10 past the fork with I-610 and after only a few minutes headed south, Betty told him to take the next exit. Once off the interstate he was grateful for her help finding Dauphine Street, however, and moments later they pulled into the Dauphine Orleans Hotel. He wondered if they were closer to Bourbon Street than they wanted to be, though Christy had been told the hotel was pretty quiet for the Quarter – at least according to the Website and what she read in Frommer’s. Still, the heart of the chaos on Bourbon Street looked to be only a block or two away. Ben shrugged and slipped out of the Charger and pocketed the keys.

“Checking in, sir?”

The man (he actually looked to be a boy barely old enough to drive) looked at him expectantly in what Ben thought to be a silly bellman’s type uniform complete with white gloves.

“Yeah,” Ben said. He hated to be called “sir.” That was a title for officers, not E-Fives.

“Name?” the boy asked, his pen poised above a pad of tickets.

“Morvant,” Ben said. Then, he smiled and took Christy’s hand as she came around the car to join him, “Mr. and Mrs. Morvant.” Christy beamed and wrinkled her nose.

“Very good sir,” the boy stopped. “I have cousins named Morvant,” his proper language slipped into an accent more familiar to Ben. “They from the wetlands, though.”

Ben said nothing, but shifted uncomfortably. A thicker voice left the word
Cajun
floating in his head.

The man handed him a stub torn from his ticket.

“One moment, and I’ll get your bags.”

“I can get them,” Ben said.

The boy shrugged as Ben popped the trunk and grabbed their two suitcases and slung a backpack over each shoulder. Christy smiled, and he thought he saw her shake her head a little.

“Need the keys, sir.”

Ben set down a bag and fumbled in his pocket, confused.

“Valet parking,” Christy said.

“What’s that costing us?” he mumbled.

“Less than parking in the Quarter,” the boy chimed in with a smile as he took the keys. “’Specially if you got to pay for the damages to your ride, here.”

Ben laughed. “Fair enough.”

He didn’t mind paying to park. It was their honeymoon, after all. He just felt embarrassed for not expecting valet parking.

A few minutes later they followed the bellman (whom Ben this time reluctantly allowed to carry their bags and walk them to their room) through several quiet courtyards as he told them the colorful history of the hotel. Apparently, it had at one time been a whore house, and they could still see the bordello license over the bar if they liked. Only in New Orleans would such a thing be a source of pride, but Ben had no doubt they would take a picture of it, if for no other reason than to show it to Reed.

They stopped by the bar on the way to the room, and the bellman waited patiently while they cashed in their welcome-to-the-Daupine beverage coupons for ridiculously strong drinks of some sort (Bordello passion the bartender told them, which neither of them could resist). Ben did, indeed, see a framed certificate of some sort which he assumed to be the hooker license from owners past. They sipped the deadly liquid as the bellman led them into their patio room, overlooking one of the courtyards they had toured.

“Wow, pretty nice,” Christy said as Ben handed a few bucks to the bellman.

In fact, the room looked much more modern than he expected from the dated appearance of the rest of the hotel, especially the lobby. He tapped the large plasma screen TV and grinned his naughty boy grin.

“Wonder what kind of entertainment we can buy on this?” he asked and raised an eyebrow.

“Probably nothing we can’t see for free a few blocks away, if my sorority sisters can be believed,” Christy said and wrapped her arms around him.

“True enough,” he laughed.

Shortly thereafter, they sipped what was left of their drinks as they caught their collective breath beneath the white duvet cover after “christening the room,” as his wife put it. The sex, the too strong drink, and the long flight all crashed on him at once, and he realized he felt half-starved.

“Lunch?” he asked.

“Ooh, yes, by the pool?”

“Perfect.”

Ben felt the last of his tension ease away as they slipped into shorts and flip flops. Thoughts of the airplane voices, the angry man with the cheating wife, and then his fears about some crazy old man his mind made up in a dream slipped away with his waning stress.

Chapter 21

It turned out Bourbon Street really was only a block away, and Ben wondered if it meant he was getting old that he worried about the noise they might endure when they went to bed later. A short stroll down Court Street from their hotel found them hand-in-hand on the stone streets of the tourist center of the Quarter. They turned right and strolled a block and a half to the Old Absinthe House and found the bar without difficulty. The plaque out front told them they would have their first French Quarter drink in a bar frequented in the past by a bunch of people he had not heard of, though he knew Walt Whitman and Oscar Wilde had been writers.

The bar was far from full, but the dozen or so people there looked to have staked a claim to their stools many drinks ago. The bar itself was covered with business cards, plastered to its surface.

“In 1815 Andrew Jackson and the Lafitte brothers plotted the defense of the city from this bar,” Christy said.

“Wow,” Ben replied as the middle-aged woman with crazy, wild hair and a soft smile put two beers in front of them. “You really studied for this trip.”

Christy laughed and held up the short flyer that told the history of the Absinthe House she had grabbed at the entrance, and Ben laughed with her. They bellied up to the bar on their stools, and Ben tried to lose himself in the Quarter atmosphere, but couldn’t quite find it.

“We should walk,” he said after a few minutes.

“What about our drinks?” Christy asked.

Ben laughed again. “This is New Orleans, baby,” He got up from his stool. “Nobody cares if you drink in the street as long as you don’t shoot or stab anyone.”

Sho’ ‘neff true dat.

Ben looked up at the sound of the voice in his head and for a moment he saw the old man, his cane clutched between his bony knees as he sat on the bench seat along the wall, sipping a dark drink out of a tall plastic cup. Then, his lips peeled back revealing tobacco-stained teeth, and he tugged on the bill of the dirty “Purple Haze” baseball cap. Ben nodded back his own howdy before he could resist the urge. Just as his heart sped up the image shimmered and disappeared.

“Getcha some cups?”

Ben looked up at the wild-haired woman behind the bar. She stared back patiently, despite his confused look.

Fuckin’ tourists.

“They rather you don’t carry them bottles,” she said and pulled two green plastic cups from under the bar.

“Thanks,” he mumbled as she poured their beers.

Christy either didn’t notice his moment or loved him enough to ignore them. She took his hand and led him out of the bar. Ben cast a last nervous look towards the bench seat where he had seen his ghost, but only an empty plastic cup sat there.

Back on Bourbon Street, Christy tugged him northeast toward the bars and restaurants and the more residential Esplanade District beyond. The sun had only just begun to set, the sky above the low buildings behind them glowing purple and the air becoming a more comfortable cool. Already the crowd on the street began to swell and they could feel the energy in the air rise. People moved a bit more quickly (or stumbled already had they failed to pace their afternoon intake), and they heard more laughter, loose and unrestrained. In the distance, he could make out the beat of a saxophone licking through a staccato improv. Just beneath it, Ben heard the buzz of voices pick up as well. But they remained within his ability to push back beneath the surface.

“Hurricane,” Christy announced.

Ben looked at her confused. They had seen some remnants of the destruction Katrina had wrought, but here in the Quarter Ben saw nothing to hint at the struggle the city had endured.

“Katrina?” he asked.

“The drink,” she answered with a chuckle and a slap on his arm. She pulled a tourist map card from the back pocket of her jeans. “I think it’s just a few blocks this way to Pat O’Brien’s.” She looked up in the direction they headed. “We turn right on Peter Street, and it’s like a block down,” she was clearly in charge now. Ben enjoyed her enthusiasm. He suspected this was not her dream honeymoon, and he loved her even more that she made it perfect anyway. “I know it’s kind of tourist cheesy, but we have to go to Pat O’Brien’s, right? I mean to out-of-towners like us, that sort of is New Orleans.”

“You have a point,” he said with a good-natured chuckle. The sighting of the old man at the Absinthe had scared him a little, but why the hell let his crazy Cajun imagination ruin this day for his wife?

They made the turn onto Peter Street just as they polished off their beer, and he tossed the plastic cups into one of the abundant black wrought iron trash cans. They immediately identified Pat O’Brien’s by the throng of other tourists that crowded the front, waiting for their turn to buy the famous brain-numbing drink.

Ben and Christy melted into the crowd and enjoyed the ‘people watching’ as they stood in line in the courtyard by the front bar. They very wisely passed on the trash can-sized “Magnum Hurricane.” A rowdy group of boys with UAB Wrestling sweat shirts crowded around one of the huge drinks and sucked the poison up through long straws, laughing and cat calling, their eyes already red.

“That’s gonna leave a mark,” Christy muttered as she ordered their drink. They decided to share one, and Ben ate the three dollar glass deposit. They left the rowdy bar with their souvenir glass and headed back towards Bourbon Street, sipping the powerfully toxic alcohol slowly as they walked and lost themselves in the people watching and the energy of the Quarter. Back on the main drag, they found a rustic wrought iron bench and sat down to drink and watch the early revelers.

“Are you having fun?” she asked him as she handed him the tall Hurricane glass.

Ben took a long sip. The drink tasted deceptively mellow, but he knew enough to not be fooled.

“I am. I would have fun anywhere with you, but this is actually a wonderful time.” He handed the drink back, and they watched two girls, who had to be chilly in their mini-skirts and spaghetti strapped tank tops, who continually peeked back over their shoulders and giggled at the two boys stumbling along behind them. “I wonder what happened with Reed and Amy,” Ben said as he watched the drunken pursuit.

“Oh, God,” Christy exaggerated her response with a joyful eye roll. “Please, oh please, let one of them have passed out before……Well, you know – just before.”

They both laughed.

“Where do you want to eat?” she asked him, her hand warm on his thigh.

“Why, anywhere you like, Mrs. Morvant,” he said. “I’m guessing you researched a couple of options for us.”

“Jeez, am I that obsessive compulsive?” She smiled and took another sip on their straw.

“Yes,” he answered simply, and they both laughed.

“Well,” she said with mock indignation. “I’ll have you know I planned on us browsing around and just finding something that looked good. We’re going to be spontaneous.”

“So,” he kissed her on the cheek. “You planned out a period of bein’ spontaneous in your rigid schedule – is that what you’re saying?”

She laughed again and playfully punched his arm.

“Yeah, I guess it is,” she said. Then, she kissed him on the mouth, her hand tickling a little farther up his leg. “Are you having second thoughts about your controlling wife?”

Ben looked at her happy face and felt totally content.