Ciji Ware (5 page)

I bailed out of LA so I could get over that rat, Jay Kerlin. I’d hoped I’d make some really good friends here
and maybe even get a life!

A life? What she had on her hands here was a complete disaster!

Corlis leaned against the headboard of her mahogany bed and pounded her fists on the mattress in a fit of frustration.

With sudden determination she threw aside the covers, switched on her bedside light once again, and stood next to her canopied bed. The graceful antique loomed large in a bedroom distinguished by a classic carved marble fireplace and high ceilings. From a drawer in her mahogany highboy, she took out some running clothes, putting on a pair of gray sweatpants and a sweatshirt with the faded blue letters UCLA stamped across her chest. She grabbed a few dollars out of her purse and marched resolutely toward her front door.

It was nearly six when she emerged from her brick building into the moisture-laden morning air and gazed briefly at the globe of yellow light atop the old-fashioned streetlamp. She knew perfectly well that she was taking her life into her hands walking the streets of the Big Easy at this early hour.

So what if she got shot?
she mused dejectedly, striding down Julia Street toward the river. At least it would solve her current dilemma—finding another job in a town where she’d already become a public pariah among the city’s upper crust.

Fifteen minutes later Corlis cut across Convention Center Boulevard past the towering World Trade Center. She continued along the riverfront in the direction of Jackson Square in the French Quarter, focusing her gaze on the mist rising from the broad Mississippi on her right. When she reached Decatur Street, twinkling crystal lights winked at her from the magnificent magnolia trees that bordered the city plaza across from the Café du Monde, her early morning destination. Saint Louis Cathedral, the scene of last night’s calamity, stood sentinel over the square. The church’s triple spires soared heavenward and disappeared into the humid blue-gray fog of early morning, a leaden, murky atmosphere that could easily transform itself into a sultry rain at a moment’s notice. A yeasty aroma poured out of a bakery vent nearby.

December in Louisiana.

Dank. Disgusting. Decadent. Delicious.

As she paused to absorb the magnificence of Jackson Square and its gated park, she indulged in a moment to consider how swiftly she’d fallen in love with the physical beauty of New Orleans—an exercise that only increased her gloom. Who would ever hire her in this town again? Victor Girard would hardly give her a glowing recommendation. Nor, obviously, would Jay Kerlin at her former station in LA.

She caught sight of the café’s green-and-white awnings, also etched in pinpoints of sparkling lights, and was suddenly reminded that it was practically Christmas, a mere three more shopping days till the twenty-fifth. She’d been kept so busy at WWEZ, she hadn’t bought any presents for her few family members in California, to say nothing of shipping them west. And except for Virgil and Manny, she had no one to buy for in New Orleans. At least if she became a fatal crime statistic walking the streets at this hour, it certainly wouldn’t ruin anyone’s holiday around here.

Get a grip, McCullough!

Once at the celebrated Café du Monde, she drummed her fingers restlessly on the takeout counter in the courtyard.

“Thank God this place stays open twenty-four hours a day,” she said to the clerk while she waited for her coffee. She was starved for conversation with
somebody
.

“Yes ma’am,” the clerk said mechanically, handing Corlis the paper cup filled with café au lait.

“Oooh, this feels so nice,” she added inanely, grateful for the cup’s soothing warmth spreading through her fingers.

“Yes, ma’am.” The clerk nodded patiently, handing her a few silver coins and a small white bag containing an order of beignets, diamond-shaped raised doughnuts without holes that had been deep fat fried only seconds earlier and dredged in a thick layer of powdered sugar. After the night she’d had, beignets were the only antidote she could think of for her downward spiraling funk.

As she took a sip of her pungent chicory-laced coffee while recrossing Decatur Street toward the park, her gaze traced the trajectory of winter sunlight filtering anemically through the trees that bordered Jackson Square.

Gingerly, Corlis trod across the slate paving stones, slick with dew that fronted Saint Louis Cathedral, and encircled the park. On her right the Pontalba Building, with its refined red brick and granite four-story facade—along with its twin across the park on St. Peter Street—embodied the architectural essence of New Orleans. Lacy cast-iron galleries, bedecked with Christmas lights and seasonal swags of pine boughs and glittering decorations, ran the length of both blocks. These elegant buildings were thought to be among the oldest apartments in the New World. A place in the Pontalba offered one of the best addresses and most spectacular views in the entire city.

Well… I’ll never live in one of those. Not now.

Corlis walked slowly under the Pontalba’s arcade and caught sight of the homeless man with the scuffed boots whom she’d nearly tripped over the previous evening. At this early hour he lay curled up against one of the iron pillars supporting the building’s metal gallery overhead, a large piece of cardboard crimped over his shoulders. He was snoring peacefully.

A few yards distant, a tarot card reader swathed in a turban and flowing caftan was already setting up her collapsible table, staking out a coveted spot to sell her psychic wares when the tourists arose.

“Mornin’ sweetheart,” she said in a husky voice, startling Corlis from her reverie. “Let me do a readin’ for you, sugar. Your luck’s bound to change.”

“No… no thanks,” Corlis replied, walking faster. Farther on, a disheveled young woman, pushing a rusted grocery cart and accompanied by an emaciated hound on a length of rope, wandered in front of the cathedral cheerfully chattering to herself.

To Corlis’s left, a city groundskeeper was shoving a large metal key into the big padlock that secured the park’s cast-iron gates against intruders at night.

“Mornin’,” he mumbled.

“Morning,” Corlis mumbled back, her gaze fastened on the park’s magnificent equestrian statue of New Orleans’s savior, Andrew Jackson.

In the two short months during which Corlis had lived in Louisiana, she’d become inordinately fond of Old Hickory and the story of his ragtag army. On a mist-shrouded morning like this one, in January of 1815, Andrew Jackson had ordered his motley assemblage of cannon and artillery to attack a superior British force menacing the city and pounded them into ignominious submission.

The fearless soldier was a man after Corlis’s own heart. Like Don Quixote, Aunt Marge, and other Crusader Rabbits she could name, he hadn’t folded his tent just because the odds were against him.

A pathetic amount of good it does a person these days to try to do the kind of honest journalism I believe in…

Moodily she walked down the path and drew closer to the enormous two-story statue that anchored the plaza square. Would she never learn, she wondered, gazing up at Andrew Jackson’s prancing bronze horse? The Ebert-Duvallon nuptials were just another story for pity’s sake, like hundreds she’d done before. Nobody in this town but
she
cared whether or not it told the absolute, unadulterated truth. And besides, the director and her editor had tried to warn her to check with higher-ups before airing the piece, but she had pulled rank.

And who’s going to worry except Aunt Marge and me that I no longer have a health plan?

So. Was it worth it? Was the fabulous shot of that twenty-five-foot bridal train and the moment of truth it symbolized worth getting
fired
over? Or had the story resonated with
her
… because Jay Kerlin had been such an absolute heel, and she should have blown him off—just like Daphne Duvallon blew off Jack Ebert last night—long before she found out that Jay was two-timing her with Miss Sunny, the weather woman!

Jeez Louise… was the story she did last night journalism, or had it merely been a case of bizarre revenge?

Putting such a disturbing thought from her mind, she drank deeply from her paper cup of coffee and wondered how in the world she was going to keep up her mortgage payments on the row house she’d impulsively bought five days after arriving in New Orleans. At the time, the small down payment seemed much more sensible than paying rent, but now…

Corlis wandered farther down the cement path in the direction of her favorite park bench, clutching her bag of beignets so tightly her knuckles turned white. In the distance the cathedral’s pale facade provided a dazzling backdrop for a community filled with breathtaking side streets and cunning courtyards that made the place terminally charming and one of the least “American” cities in the country.

Lord, how she’d grown to adore this town! How could she leave New Orleans? But what was she going to do to support her addiction to this city, not to mention pay her outstanding bills?

Utterly dejected, Corlis sat down on the park bench and immediately felt the seat of her pants soak up the dew like a sponge. “
Merde!
” she exclaimed to the pigeons, wondering if after all the years of French colonial influence in New Orleans, the birds actually understood the French word for
shit
.

Inside the white paper bag, the beignets had grown cold and unappetizing. The words of her former diet coach suddenly rang in her head.

“A minute in your mouth. A lifetime on your hips, Corlis!”

With a sigh she tossed the confections into a trash can nearby and somberly stared at Andrew Jackson’s bronze countenance, wondering what Old Hickory would have done in such dire circumstances.

More to the point—what was
she
going to do next?

***

“What do you call those?” Corlis asked, pointing to a tub full of fragrant white flowers mixed with waxy green magnolia leaves. On impulse she had walked inside the small flower stall a half block down the street from her house, thinking that a bouquet on the coffee table of her living room might boost her lagging spirits.

“Stargazers,” the slender young man replied.

“They’re lilies, right?” she confirmed.

“Yep… the real fragrant kind,” the clerk agreed. “Just arrived on the truck a few minutes ago. Those closed ones’ll open up as it gets warmer during the day and smell real pretty.”

“I’ll take a dozen,” Corlis said decisively.

Arms full, she trudged up the creaking wooden stairs to her second-story apartment, wondering where she could go after New Orleans. Sioux City, Iowa? Hartford, Connecticut? The idea of moving again and coping with strangers at a new TV station, along with having to abandon beautiful Julia Street, made her want to jump off the Huey P. Long Bridge. By the time she’d opened her front door and walked down the hallway into the kitchen, she’d moved on to another distasteful topic. Since she’d already trashed the cold, uneaten beignets, she forced herself to consider which breakfast item in her refrigerator had less fuzzy green mold on it: the box of Chinese take-home moo goo gai pan or the five-day-old slice of pizza.

Rejecting both, she poured a cup of oatmeal into a saucepan of boiling water and set it on her pint-size stove. The efficiency kitchen had been carved out of another former closet. She put the flowers in a glass vase and wandered into the adjacent living room. She positioned the perfumed stargazers on the coffee table next to her beige linen couch and lay down to rest while she waited for her breakfast to cook. Once again she turned over in her mind the tumultuous outcome of the previous twenty-four hours. Suddenly exhausted from her sleepless night and long walk by the river, Corlis heaved a deep sigh and closed her eyes.

Everything seems such a tangled web! If only…

Her thoughts drifted aimlessly as she inhaled more deeply the sweet-smelling lilies in the vase at her side. Conscious of her stomach’s rumbling anticipation of the oatmeal warming on the stove, she tried her best to stop itemizing the complications that currently plagued her. In the distance, she could hear the faint hoot of a riverboat. Her thoughts floated further afield like a river craft tugged seaward by the tide. The lilies’ cloying perfume seemed to intensify to funereal proportions, filling the room with their overwhelmingly pungent odor.

Whoa! These things really pack a punch! I’ll get daisies next time…

Corlis sensed her face growing warm. It was as if her cheeks were exposed to a source of heat that caused a flush to fan up her throat. Beads of perspiration broke out on her forehead. The heady scent of the flowers grew even stronger. Their sweetish fragrance actually made her feel queasy. When Corlis opened her eyes, she was startled to see not
one
vase of waxy white lilies—but armloads of snowy blossoms. Their ornate silver containers formed a melancholy phalanx positioned against the opposite wall in a darkened parlor that was lit by a single candelabrum standing sentinel at the head of an open coffin.

And inside the casket’s silk-lined depths lay the body of a person whom Corlis McCullough had never seen in her entire life!