Ciji Ware (32 page)

In the subway heading downtown, Daphne replayed the scene in Eleanor’s music room, wondering briefly if she
had
completely lost her mind. Should she head for Juilliard, burst into Rafe’s office, and beg the maestro to give her her job back?

By the time the train whizzed by the Forty-Second Street station, she found herself comparing the excitement and joy she’d experienced playing jazz and blues with Althea and Willis to the sheer dread that clutched at her stomach as a browbeaten member of the Oberlin Chamber Orchestra.

“No guts, no glory,” she muttered ten minutes later when she opened the triple locks at her apartment. It was now empty except for the last of the cardboard boxes that Daphne’s neighbor promised to give to UPS the following day. She glanced at her watch. The phone was due to be turned off at five o’clock. Her plane was at seven. She’d have a few moments before the cab arrived to take her to JFK to check her email on her laptop and write the last of her farewell notes.

Under “new mail” there were several messages from friends wishing her well, a short missive sent three days earlier from King and Corlis who had logged on at some cybercafe in Rome to tell her they were having a fabulous honeymoon, and a final entry monikered
Fogcityphotog
.

How long had it been there? she wondered, checking the date. It had arrived five days earlier. Her pulse beat a shade too fast for her to ignore. Her life had been so chaotic since she’d gotten back to New York that this had been her first chance in a week to check her email. She clicked the “read” button and quickly scanned Sim’s brief note.

Greetings from the wilds of the Trace.

Hope the Big Apple still has bite.

Best, Sim.

Light and polite. Nothing more.

Well, what did she expect?

Should she answer?

What could she say—as briefly—that would match the minimal amount of effort he had expended in this cryptic communication? Her entire life had turned upside down. Try putting
that
into a two-line electronic message, Mr. Fog City Photog!

Just then, the buzzer sounded on her intercom. The cab had arrived.

“Gotta go,” she said aloud. She pushed the intercom’s talk button, and shouted, “Be right down!”

She swiftly clicked the “save as new” button, shut down her laptop, packed it inside its black leather case, and made one last survey of her five-flight walk-up.

She’d answer Sim’s email when she arrived in Natchez.

Or not.

***

Daphne’s rented minivan was filled to overflowing with her baggage. She could barely see out the rear window as she drove north on Interstate 10 from the New Orleans airport. The April air positively had a
tang
to it, she thought happily as she sped past Oak Alley where azaleas and tulips bloomed everywhere in the surrounding gardens.

Unfortunately, she’d missed King and Corlis’s return from their honeymoon by two days. However, they would likely be horribly jet-lagged, and she was anxious to get settled into her new routine. Furthermore, Daphne didn’t want to risk running into her mother and father on the streets of the Big Easy. She’d tell everyone of her decision, once she knew what her daily routine would be.

A quick stop at South of the Border for a soft-shell crab sandwich, and before long, she was just minutes away from downtown Natchez. When she turned onto John Quitman Parkway, she noticed the sign pointing to the entrance to Monmouth Plantation. By her watch, it was two o’clock, with a bright sun high in the sky. A good day for shooting photographs. Simon Hopkins would be out in the woods someplace, stalking some rare bird life. Before she could stop herself, she turned into the long, curving gravel driveway and pulled into an empty space in the visitors’ parking area.

“I’d like to leave a note for a guest?” she inquired politely of a pleasant-faced woman manning the reception area.

“Certainly,” the desk clerk replied genially in her soft, lilting accent. “Here… let me get you some paper and somethin’ to write with.”

Daphne smiled gratefully and jotted down the news that she was back in Natchez and that she’d explain why when she saw Sim.

She folded the paper and handed it to the woman behind the desk with a broad smile. “Please give this to Mr. Hopkins when he returns tonight.”

“Oh… but he’s checked out,” the desk clerk informed her. “’Bout a week ago, I think it was. I wasn’t on duty that day. I can ask Mrs. Riches if he left a forwarding address… or perhaps you’re friends? You can contact him at home.”

“Oh…” Daphne said faintly. “Yes… I’ll do that.”

Well, that was short and sweet
, she thought, fighting an avalanche of disappointment. Simon Hopkins… a man on the move. Was that such a surprise?

Daphne chastised herself roundly for the crushing sense of bereavement that overcame her. Bleakly, she nodded her thanks to the desk clerk and made her way back to the gravel parking lot, the scene of the dreadful confrontation with Jack Ebert.

She hadn’t given Jack a single thought these last pressured days. Simon Hopkins, however, had been another matter. She had allowed mildly lascivious thoughts of him to filter through her brain while half asleep during the flight to Louisiana. And just this afternoon, as she cruised north into Mississippi, the pleasant notion that he’d be here in Natchez, waiting for an answer to his email, had made her impending new adventure even more exciting.

She climbed into her rented van and turned on the ignition. She recognized it as the moment when an entirely new life had begun. She was starting fresh. A totally clean slate. No personal complications. Hopefully, no more strange visitations from the “other” Daphne. And Simon Chandler Hopkins had done what he’d been doing for ten years: he’d moved on to the next location.

Perhaps it was better this way.

Perhaps.

Chapter 14

April 6

In the cold light of day, the Under-the-Hill Saloon looked like a… well…
saloon
, Daphne judged ruefully. Dust motes hung in a shaft of sunshine that illuminated a path from the front door into the gloomy interior. The stale cigarette smoke from years past, and the beer spilled on the bar and tables from the previous night, infused the air with an odor more reminiscent of a Tulane fraternity house than a jazz and blues club.

“Hey there, Miz Harpist,” Willis McGee called, sitting at his electronic keyboard in a corner next to an upright piano. “Welcome back to Natchez!”

“Thanks. Hi, Kendra,” Daphne replied, smiling at his daughter, dressed in Capri pants and a skintight, psychedelic green cotton T-shirt. “It’s good to
be
back. I think,” she added wryly. “It was such a whirlwind, getting myself out of New York, I’m still in kind of a daze.” She reached for one of the spindly chairs tucked under a small cocktail table nearby and sat down on it, back to front. The seat felt slightly sticky, and she was glad she’d worn jeans.

“I’m sorry I was too under the weather to play our last gig,” Willis apologized.

“Well, thank goodness you look a lot better than when I saw you last,” she declared. “How’re you feeling now?”

“Doc said I nipped the pneumonia in the bud.”

Daphne was relieved to note that Willis actually looked pretty fit. His porkpie hat was cocked at a jaunty angle, and his face was clean-shaven.

“Well…” she drawled, looking from father to daughter. “Tell me the truth. Do y’all think I’ve lost my mind?”

Willis peered through the gloom from behind his thick, black-rimmed glasses and shook his head. “Not from the reports I keep getting about you Aphrodite gals.” He pointed to his daughter. “She showed me the outfits y’all were wearing that night.” He clucked his tongue a few times and a sly grin spread across his face. “I
said
‘You gotta do something these days to get folks to walk in the front door’—but man, you gals took me mighty seriously!”

“Blame Althea,” Daphne said with an embarrassed laugh.

“Kendra’s told me kinda what y’all are thinking of doing… but, maybe I have a suggestion that’ll work out good for all of us.”

Intrigued, Daphne grabbed herself a cup of coffee so potent, a spoon was likely to stand up on its own. “So… what are you thinking, maestro?”

Willis chuckled at the nickname and sounded pleased. “Well… Kendra and me have had a couple of good talks while you was up in New York. I told her that me and the boys is gettin’ too old to play till two, three a.m. every night, you understand? So what I propose is this…” He pointed at some music charts piled on top of the piano. “She says you wanna spend a year learning ’bout the blues… jazz… all that stuff. So I think you’ve first gotta work at expanding your repertoire, you understand what I’m sayin’?”

“Definitely,” Daphne agreed.

“Add more numbers for you and Althea to sing—solos and duets. That’s gonna take some time. Meanwhile, you need a drummer and a sax player, and they’ve gotta be gals, if you’re gonna keep this Aphrodite thing going, so…”

“So… Daddy thinks we should get my sister Jeanette to be part of the Aphrodites,” Kendra intervened without preamble. “He just doesn’t want you to think he’s taking things over, or nothing.” She pointed to the deserted set of drums in a darkened corner of the club. “Jeanette’s real good on drums, believe me.”

“That’s a
great
idea!” Daphne had worried about finding such a key player. Then she added, “Let’s run that by Althea.”

“I already did,” Kendra announced. “Jeanette drove down to New Orleans and sat in with Althea last Sunday afternoon while you was up north. She says ‘fine.’ And I have a friend who played very cool sax in my high school band. Sunny’s her name. She’ll come try out later this week, okay?”

“Terrific,” Daphne replied, nodding. “But what about you, Willis? I said in the beginning of all this, we don’t want to steal your gigs.”

“Here’s the rest of my idea,” Willis proposed, warming to his subject. “Management here’s glad as could be to have you singing and playing jazz harp, you know? So, let’s say that when you do your thing with my trio—we’ll get real fancy and call it the Willis McGee Quartet, okay? We’ll just do one long set every evening with Daphne in regular clothes, and then you
gals
can come on for the late sets in your Aphrodite rigs, trying out new numbers every couple a nights, got it? A few days a week, I’ll teach you more songs and help Althea with the arrangements, and, at the end of the day, we’ll split the proceeds from everything both groups do, fifty-fifty. You pay yourselves and
your
extra musicians out of your pockets, I’ll pay
mine.
Kinda like a music company, you see what I’m saying?”

“And once we get our whole act together,” Kendra chimed in excitedly, “we can look for bookings all over the place, and Daddy’ll still have his job here.”

“By that time, girl, I hope y’all are making so much money I can do what your mama wants me to do and
reeee-tire.
Or, at least, just play daytime wedding receptions and stuff like that.”

“That sounds really generous,” Daphne said, touched by the amount of thought that the McGees had given to everybody’s welfare. “I’ve got some savings to tide me over, but I’d better get busy hustling up a daytime job, maybe playing the tea service at the Eola Hotel, or someplace, so I don’t get too far in the hole with this scheme.”

“Don’t forget Monmouth and the Governor Holmes House,” Kendra suggested helpfully. “They do
tons
of swanky weddings and engagement parties. They’d probably love somebody playing harp and dressed all fancy, along with Daddy’s group, don’tcha think?” she asked her father.

Willis grinned at Daphne. “You’d be a good addition and then I can charge ’em more.”

Daphne groaned. “I hate to say it, but you’re probably right.”

“When’s Althea due to come up?” Willis inquired.

“By lunch on Friday,” Daphne replied. “On the weekends when she’s in town, my cousin Madeline Whitaker’s renting her a room, too. Works out well, all around.” She bit her lip in thought. “We’d better meet with Jeanette and Sunny as soon as Althea gets here so we can go over all the numbers we already know.”

“That’ll be cool,” Kendra said, nodding. “Jeanette works the lunch shift as a waitress at the Pig Out Inn and she’s off by three. Sometimes I help out, too.”

Daphne merely nodded, thinking that the Pig Out Inn was a far cry from the elegant Cafe Des Artistes where a lot of New York musicians had been known to augment their incomes by waiting tables.

Get
used
to
it, Daphne. This is your new life.

***

“Now, no arguments, darlin’,” Maddy insisted. “You’ll have the whole top floor to y’self. On the weekends, Althea can have my old room on the second floor, and I’ll be downstairs in the place I fixed up for m’self after Marcus died… so all of us’ll have some privacy in this boarding house we’ve got going here.”