Ciji Ware (65 page)

“What?” Daphne said without enthusiasm.

“Jazz Fest!”

“Jazz Fest? It’s not ’til April. We have plenty of time to get tickets.” The annual event that brought the world’s greatest musical talents to New Orleans for two consecutive weekends in the spring was too far off to get excited about, especially considering she wouldn’t be taking Sim, as she’d planned.

“We’re gonna be
in
it!” Althea screeched.

“What?”

“At least it looks like we are if you can just get your lil’ fanny down here for a meeting tomorrow at eleven o’clock. Then you can drive me back to Natchez after lunch Friday, ’cause my car’s broke and none of m’brothers can loan me any of theirs and I hate taking that ol’ bus.”

“Are you telling me that the Aphrodites might be asked to play at
Jazz
Fest
?” Daphne demanded, stunned.

“Got a call from Chappy Barrone today,” Althea declared smugly. “Remember him? He came up to hear us at the ‘For the Birds’ gig? Well, sugar pie, he recorded our stuff that night, made a quick CD, and got the music committee to okay asking us to be one of the openin’ acts. Now, all’s we gotta do is figure out how much they’ll pay us.”

“We ought to pay
them
!” Daphne said, her spirits raised several notches.

“Hell no,” Althea scoffed. “Get y’self down here, and pronto! Be sure to get a move on real early so you beat the traffic coming down I-10 tomorrow mornin’, y’hear?”

Daphne flashed on the memory of Sim Hopkins at the wheel of his car with Francesca sitting beside him and couldn’t bear to face the “Dear Jane” call she knew she’d receive on the house phone in the morning.

“Wait up for me, girlfriend,” she said decisively. “I’m leaving right now and I’ll be there in three hours.”

“Don’t you drive down here late at night like that,” Althea ordered. “And besides, I’m beat. I’m goin’ to bed soon as I can get outta this place.”

“I’ll stay with my brother. I’ve got a key, and I can let myself in and not even wake them up.”

“That’s even
worse
,” Althea exclaimed. “You’ll have to park your car somewhere on the street in the French Quarter and you’ll risk your sweet
life
walkin’ back to King’s place at one a.m., girl!”

“I’ll be fine,” Daphne assured her. “I have to get out of here.”

“Why?” Althea demanded.

“Man trouble. Big Time. Tell you later.”

And with that she hung up the receiver, dashed off a note to Maddy telling her where she’d gone, grabbed her purse and some interview-worthy clothes, slipped on her shoes, and raced downstairs toward her car with only one thought in mind: her mother would keel over in a dead faint when she found out that her daughter might be an opening act at New Orleans’s bacchanal of popular music and hedonistic celebration held right in Antoinette Kingsbury Duvallon’s own backyard.

Screw
it!
Daphne thought, both angry and elated at once.
And
screw
Sim
Hopkins
and
his
long-lost wife!

Chapter 28

Well, that was quick,” Althea commented dryly, pointing to the sign that marked the turnoff to downtown Natchez. “Don’t you want us to live to see Jazz Fest next year, girl?”

“Was I driving too fast?” Daphne asked vaguely. “I sort of do this route on automatic pilot. I’ve been coming up here since I got my driver’s license when I was fifteen years old.”

“That’s what worried me,” Althea retorted. Then her voice softened. “You okay, sugar? After we sang ‘He Done Me Wrong’ driving through St. Francisville, you’ve hardly said a word the whole trip.”

“No. Okay, I mean.”

“Didn’t think so,” she said, watching Daphne make the turn onto Clifton Avenue. “At least you got the Jazz Fest gig to look forward to. I still can’t believe it,” she chortled. “M’brothers are sooooo jealous. I
love
it!”

“Oh, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Daphne exclaimed as she wheeled her Jeep up the driveway to Bluff House. “Sim’s sitting right there on the veranda with Maddy!”

“Well, you have to face him sometime, sugar, even if it’s to tell him to go to hell,” Althea said mildly, “though if I was you, I’d at least hear him out.”

“There’s nothing to hear,” Daphne said, angrily stomping on the parking brake. “I saw all I needed yesterday to get the picture. I just feel like such an absolute
chump.
”

“Daphne, dear,” Maddy called, jumping to her feet so swiftly that the porch rocker tilted wildly behind her. “I’m so glad you’re back. Sim and I were worried to death when we saw your note sayin’ you’d driven down to New Orleans in the middle of the night.”

Daphne marched up the four wooden stairs, gave her cousin a peck on the cheek, and glared at Sim, who said, “You turned off your cell phone, didn’t you?”

“You could have just emailed me,” she said to him shortly, and brushed on by, taking the sweeping staircase two steps at a time. She refrained from slamming her bedroom door, but she sure as hell felt like it.

A few seconds later she heard three raps.

“There’s nothing to say, Sim. Just spare us both the humiliation.”

Sim opened the door, stepped inside, and closed it behind him, turning the key in the lock. “Look,” he began, “I can understand why you’re upset—”

“Upset?”
She marched to the window overlooking the river and wrapped her arms around her chest, hugging herself, her back to the intruder. “I’m way,
way
beyond upset. I was upset yesterday. Today I just want you to go away.” She whirled around and said, “Go! Get out of here! I mean it, Sim. Hit the road, as you do so brilliantly!”

Sim stared at her as if she’d slapped his face.

“You really don’t like to get left, do you?”

“Who does?” she shot back, furious that he should so deftly poke that particular wound. “Who the hell
does
?” Her voice had risen several decibels and she was fighting back tears. “
You
hated it, remember? Remember when your wife walked out? At least she had the decency to leave you a note!”

Sim now appeared angry. “I’ve been calling you for ten hours, so I want you to listen, and I want you to listen carefully. Yes, I’ve spent some time with Francesca—”

“I don’t want to hear about it,” Daphne retorted, her voice raw.

“Well, that’s tough, because you’re going to!” Sim took a deep breath and continued. “As you probably guessed from what I’ve told you before, there was a fair amount of unfinished business between Francesca and me. After ten
years
, Daphne, I had the opportunity to sit down and hash it out with her, so I grabbed it.”

“Congratulations,” Daphne said sarcastically. “It’s just that I would have greatly appreciated it if—before you went to some cozy little motel room in Jackson—you’d have had the guts to tell the woman you were
currently
sleeping with that you were going to do the nasty while you held your little tete-a-tete!”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, we went to her motel room in Jackson. It just sort of happened.”

“Oh, well…
that’s
reassuring.”

Sim glanced around Daphne’s bedroom, and then suggested, “Why don’t you and I sit down… in your office?”

“Because I really, truly don’t want to hear what you’re going to tell me.” She abruptly turned her back on Sim again, willing herself to stay furious and keep her tears at bay.

“Well, that’s too bad, I’m not leaving this room, and neither are you, until you hear what I have to say!” He grabbed her by the shoulders and propelled her into the other room, seating her on her office chair while he sat on the edge of the desk two feet away.

“Sim, really…” she pleaded.

“Francesca got hold of me on my cell phone when I was on the Trace. She called because she wants to cut a deal about the toxic dump.”

“Fine,” Daphne spat “That’s what she does. Cuts deals. Between rats and superrats. So what?”

Sim’s lips hardened into a straight line, but he continued to speak in an even voice. “So, I said, okay… I’d hear her out. Nobody wins when there’s a protracted court battle after a legislature decides something. I met her at the place she was staying in Jackson and we talked about the terms of a deal, which took a long time. That’s why I asked her to bring down my photographs because, by then, I was way behind schedule and had to go back and get my gear before driving to Natchez. Francesca figured she and Jack could confer on the drive down, and if everyone was on the same page, we could begin to nail the terms of the deal the following week with all the parties up in Jackson.”

“Yada, yada, yada… How stupid do you really think I am, Sim? You didn’t call me to tell me this was in the works because the cell towers fell down.”

“I didn’t call you because… I wasn’t ready to.”

“Oh… so
you
get to set the schedule on my life, is that it?
You
get to decide what I’m to know or
not
know?” Daphne slammed her hand down on her desk. “This is just crap! Why am I even talking to you?”

Undeterred, Sim said, “That night in the parking lot after the show I told Francesca that, now that the settlement was in the works, I wanted to talk to her about… us.”

“Who—us?”

“About Francesca and me. About what happened.”

“For God’s sake, Sim… excuse me, but I’ve heard this story before, remember? When we were supposedly falling in love out at Gibbs Hall. I was understanding. I was sympathetic. I was
empathetic
! It happened a decade ago. I’m terribly sorry your baby died, but it did. If you’ve decided now that all is forgiven between you and Francesca and everything is hunky-dory and you two can carry on from here… that’s fine. You just should have
warned
me that a ten-ton Mack truck was heading my—”

“I wanted to ask Francesca why she took such rotten care of her health when she was pregnant,” Sim interrupted with dogged determination.

“You know what? I don’t really care,” she snapped.

“Maybe you should, because her fury and vitriol after the baby died have haunted me, Daphne,” Sim said, pleading now for her understanding. “Made me unfit to be with you or anyone else. All Francesca’s accusations about my not being there for her and her predictions that I’d be an absent dad…
waylaid
me, you know what I mean? It stuck in my gut. Ever since she walked out, I go cuckoo when I’m being criticized for letting someone down.”

“Well you
do
let people down,” Daphne protested. “You let
me
down as my partner in the ‘For the Birds’ benefit! Saturday night after the show you were cold and distant and a pain in the ass, and then you dropped off the radar screen.”

“And you assumed the worst, didn’t you?” he shot back.

“Well, who
wouldn’t
!” she yelled. “You sucked me into your grand scheme to do the benefit when I hardly know how I’m going to make enough money, some months, to pay Maddy the rent! Thanks to you, I really cared about raising money to try to stop the pollution that’s giving cancer to people I know and love.” Blinking back tears she whispered, “I thought you felt the same way—until you took a powder the entire week leading up to the concert and let me do all the work! What am I
supposed
to think?”

“Without knowing
all
the facts, you assumed that my absence
had
to mean I was fooling around behind your back?”

“That’s exactly what I thought and that’s what happened! Give it up, Sim!”

With surprising gentleness, he reached out and grasped her chin between his hands. “Don’t you get it? It’s the same deal for
you
,” Sim said. “You go absolutely nuts when you think a guy is two-timing you or is
about
to do you wrong. It warps all your perceptions.”

Daphne reached for a tissue from a box on her desk and pressed it to her eyes while Sim continued to talk in a voice that throbbed with intensity.

“You and I both suffer from a similar sort of paralysis, don’t you see? And it will doom anything we’ve got going unless we deal with it. That’s what I decided to do about my old stuff with Francesca. Deal with it.”

“Frankly, Sim, from here on out, you and I’ve got
nothing
going here.”

“You’re saying that there’s nothing between us?” Sim asked. “Are you sure you want to stand by that statement?”