Diary of a Blues Goddess (22 page)

On Thursday night, Dominique, Angelica, Lady Brett, Maggie, Tony and Rick and I met at Rock 'n' Bowl. Zydeco played as we took lane six and ordered several pitchers of beer. I had asked Jack to come, but he declined, as I thought he would. When I called Maggie to invite her, she said that he had phoned her and apologized for rushing to her on the rebound from Sara. Again, I thought of telling her that we had slept together, but I hoped we were all past it now. Why dredge up the event and hurt her more?

Everyone else was already in the lane when Rick and I arrived. He shook hands with everyone, but I noticed he stiffened ever so slightly as he met the queens. Angelica, Lady Brett and Dominique had apparently gone thrift-store hunting. This was one of their favorite pas-times, and they loved to find oddities like fuzzy dice, plastic snow globes and wonderful outfits they could piece together. They had found three identical bowling shirts, black, with red dice on the breast pocket and the name Shirley embroidered over them. Each of the ladies had on capris and bowling shoes, though as we sat down, Lady Brett, who always wears a blond bouffant wig, was complaining about them.

"Is it so fucking hard to make an attractive bowling shoe? Would it kill them to make something in black leather?"

"Tell me about it," Dominique whined. "I mean… look at mine. They're like clown shoes.
Clown
shoes."

"And who knows who wore them last." Angelica shuddered. She whipped out a small bottle of Elizabeth Arden's Red Door and sprayed the inside of each shoe before inserting her feet.

"A little stacked heel is all I ask," whined Lady Brett.

While the "Three Shirleys," as we christened them for the night, clucked and bitched, Maggie offered Rick a seat and made small talk. Tony was tying his shoes.

"I've never bowled before," he said to me as I sat down next to him and started putting on mine—which had snappy Velcro closures.

"Really? Well, it's not too complicated."

"I'm more a football man myself," he said in the singsong way his lilt rose and fell. "Soccer." He finished tying his shoes and watched a bowler in the next lane. "Doesn't look too hard. Care to make it interestin', Georgie?"

"Such as?"

"Brunch at House of Blues. Loser pays."

This was a bet of unprecedented monetary proportions."I hate to steal from you, Tony. Sure you don't want to wager a roll of Neccos?"

"You don't scare me, little girl."

"You're on," I said, and we shook on it.

We bowled several frames. Rick was actually a very good bowler. I sucked. Tony was worse. The queens were all about prancing to the line and wiggling their asses as they flung the ball down the lane like a bastardized version of shot put. Style over substance, you might say. Plus they didn't like putting their fingers in the holes—might damage their acrylic nails. They were all terrible. However, they could make a lot of noise.

"Shake that 'thang,' Angelica," Dominique cheered as she sipped her beer. The music was playing full blast, a Buckwheat Zydeco song called "Walking to New Orleans." I was swept up in the fun and laughing until tears ran down my face. Maggie and Lady Brett had climbed onto their chairs and were dancing go-go style. Rick looked as if he was having a good time, too. Until he spotted someone in lane eleven.

"Jesus Christ," he muttered to me after he got a spare.

"What?"

He slid down on the bench. "See that guy over there? The one with the white golf shirt and khakis?"

"Yeah."

"A client of mine. A
big
client of mine. I do all his estate planning."

"So?"

He eyed me incredulously. "So?
So
? Have you looked at the crew we're here with?"

I looked at our party. Three Shirleys in matching bowling shirts, an Irishman in a Hawaiian shirt so bright it was blinding and a porkpie hat he wore sometimes, a now-violet-headed Maggie in a black Ozzy Osbourne T-shirt and a leather miniskirt. And me. In a black vintage baby-doll dress, white bobby socks and red-white-and-blue bowling shoes with Velcro closures. Considering that one time we came to Mid-City Bowling Lanes the queens wore matching 1960s airline stewardess uniforms they found in another thrift-store run, complete with pillbox hats and patent-leather clutch purses, I thought we looked pretty tame.

"We're out having fun, Rick. This isn't a business dinner."

"You wouldn't understand, Georgia. Much as I'm having a ball with you, my life isn't all fun and games."

"Mine isn't either."

"Well, look, there's no point arguing… we should go."

"Go? We still have five frames left to bowl. I have brunch riding on this."

"Brunch? Can we grow up a bit here? Or can you tell your friends not to be so loud? Maybe he won't see me."

Angelica had scored a strike through sheer luck, and everyone else was jumping up and down with excitement.

"No. I can't. We're here to have fun. This was
your
idea. I didn't ask you to meet my friends. You made it seem like you could handle being out and about with the denizens of the Heartbreak Hotel instead of the River Road crowd."

"I can. I'm just not going to risk losing Hiram Crawford as a client. Can you do me this one favor… can we just leave? We'll go out with all of them again some other time."

"Where can we go in this city without risking you being seen with us?"

"I'm asking you nicely, Georgia. I can't let this guy see me here."

"You know, Pack… you told me that you were jealous that I lived in a crazy house with my nutty grandmother. But you're not. You don't fit in my world. I don't fit in yours. Worse, you don't approve of my world, or you wouldn't give a flying
fuck
what that guy thought of you."

"Don't make this into something bigger than it really is."

"You can leave," I snapped, hearing my own heartbeat as my anger rose. "But I'm staying and finishing the game."

"Fine. I'm leaving," he said tersely. "I'll call you tomorrow." He bent down to change his shoes. By now, the gang had caught on that we were having a fight.

He stood and nodded to all of them. "I've got a big workday tomorrow. You all finish the game. It was great to meet you."

He leaned down and kissed my cheek as I turned my head away from him. I watched him stride out of the alley, and I didn't know whether to cry or stay angry.

Tony sat down next to me. "If you think your guy gettin' angry with you is going to make me ease up on my punishing game of bowling, you have another thing comin', Georgia Ray."

I smiled. "It was nothing. He just can't handle being seen out and about with the Three Shirleys over there."

"They actually look conservative tonight. Has he seen them in their tiaras?"

"No."

"Or remember the time they wore matching poodle skirts?"

"They were into the rerelease of
Grease
."

"I kind of like their bowling shirts."

"Tony… no offense, but this is from a man who wears shirts that look like someone threw up in Technicolor on them. Do they wear Hawaiian shirts in Ireland?"

"No… and it's a pity, too."

"I worry about you."

"I worry about you, too, Georgia Ray."

"I'll be okay. This is just what I get for dating a rich lawyer. We'll work it out."

I glanced over at the man on lane eleven. He bowled a perfect strike. Then he strode back to the bench, sat down next to the well-dressed man next to him and promptly kissed him on the mouth. I started to laugh uproariously.

"What's so funny?" Tony asked me.

"You know, I couldn't even explain it. Just one of God's colossal mind-fucks." I leaned over and kissed him on the cheek, rested my head on his shoulder. With Tony, the world made sense. It was about blues, and finding that place that was mine alone.

With Rick gone, I felt myself relax. Maybe I hadn't realized myself how I had been tense, wondering if Dominique might slip and call him Casanova, or her new nickname for him—Dick. I wasn't embarrassed by Dominique. Yes, she was occasionally high maintenance. Occasionally, as when urging me to wear a thong, or plumage, or to buy a twelve-inch vibrator, she was a shade to the left of vulgar. But I realized something.

Maybe, just maybe, I had more of my aunt Irene and Nan in me than I thought. Yes, my friends were unconventional. But they were family. Bowling shirts, bouffants, the fuckable scale, trash talk and all.

"Ladies… Tony… " I stood and went over to pick up my bowling ball. "Prepare to be amazed."

I approached the lane, swung my arm back… and promptly made a gutter ball.

I still needed to work on my approach.