Diary of a Blues Goddess (27 page)

"Do I remember? Do I remember? How can I forget? Dominique was so heartbroken she locked herself in a room with
Steel Magnolias
and
Titanic
for two days."

"Mags… I'm weakening. Casanova Jones called eleven times.
Eleven
times."

"If you even
think
of going back to him, I'll color your hair green."

"Maggie, I think I'm a sex addict. God… you have no idea. That man literally drove me wild. We would do it three times a night. And I miss him. I miss it."

"You'd lose all self-respect, Georgia."

"But… "

"But you caught him with a beautiful blonde. In a Versace dress. With silicone tits."

"Dominique doesn't leave out any details, does she?"

"No. There are no secrets between best friends."

That should have been the moment when I told her about Jack. But I let the moment pass.

"I'm going to take a nap. Coming to Sunday Saints?"

"No… I still feel weird about Jack."

"Okay. Call me tomorrow?"

"Sure, sweetie. But remember, if you feel weakness coming on, call me not Casanova."

"You got it."

I rolled over and sighed. The heart heals in its own time. There was only one thing to help it limp along: a pitcher of New Orleans Hurricanes.

Forget Sunday Saints. By the third pitcher of Hurricanes, we should have called ourselves the Sloppy Saints. Dominique, Angelica and Mike got so hammered on Hurricanes, they talked Mike into taking them out on the town. Jack decided to join them.

"Come on, Georgie," Dominique pleaded. "Slap on a little lipstick and kick up your heels. You'll be over that bastard in no time."

"Dominique, lipstick does not solve everything."

"What lipstick can't, a vibrator can," she cackled. Thank God Nan had gone up to bed. Gary and Annie had left an hour before.

"Yeah, and that and ten bucks will get you a blow job down in the park."

"Oh… you are being spiteful!"

"I'm not. You guys go. Besides—" I toyed with Jack and Mike "—it seems like you have a perfect foursome. Two boys and two queens."

"Fuck you," growled Mike. But off they went, leaving Tony and I with a very messy kitchen.

"Come on," he said. "Let's do the dishes."

We washed and dried in companionable silence. I put the dishes away in the breakfront and was sort of grateful not to have to fend off Dominique's well-intentioned meddling.

"I want to show you something," Tony said after we were done drying. He pulled a bottle of champagne out of the refrigerator and led me toward the garden. It was a dark night, the sort of night New Orleans is famous for. Moody and silent, with humidity as thick as pea soup.

Tony lit a small candle inside a lantern. He had two lawn chairs set up.

"When I'm done with this garden, you won't be able to recognize it."

"What are you going to do?"

"It'll look like an English garden, overgrown and wild. I'm even going to give lilies of the valley a try. Your nan and I spent the mornin' sketching and planning. Over there—" he pointed off into the darkness "—I ripped out the hedges already. Too… architectural. Boring. Doesn't suit the place at all."

We sat down. He opened the champagne and passed me the bottle. "Best thing to cure what ails you tonight, Georgie. Actually, Guinness is, but we're in bloody fookin' New Orleans. So champagne it is."

I took a swig and passed the bottle back to him. His face was impassive and difficult to read.

"Why do you like flowers so much? Doesn't seem to fit."

"Tough Irish street urchin?" He flexed his biceps and laughed. His upper arm had a four-leaf clover tattooed on it, and an Irish flag. "My mother loved flowers. Had a green thumb. Little pots of flowers in the window. Rest of the house was falling to pieces. But she had flowers."

He looked over at me. "When the garden is done, I'm leavin' the band, Georgie."

"What? That soon? You can't."

"Gary'll replace me. I just can't take ABBA anymore. I'm going off to New York. I know some blokes who can set me up with regular gigs. Then I'll head over to Ireland. I've been saving every penny I can since I came to America. My brother and I are going to open a pub. I want to play the blues in my own place."

"But leave… now?"

"I want to be makin' real music, not the crap we play. We play it well. We're damn good. But this Irish wanderer has been stayin' in New Orleans too long."

"I noticed you travel light. One suitcase. If I left, I'd need ten steamer trunks."

"You'd learn to travel light, too."

"I can't imagine that. My records. My pictures. My room!"

"Well, I'm off. When the gardens done."

I took a swig from the champagne bottle. Georgia's Saints was going to be going through changes. It occurred to me perhaps what it really needed to be doing was becoming someone else's Saints.

"Maybe I'll go, too."

"Really?"

"I want to. I truly do, Tony. I want to be a blues singer. I have it in me, but I'm afraid of leaving home. Can you believe it? Twenty-eight years old—almost—and what would I do without Dominique and Nan and Jack and Gary… and you… and even crabby Mike?"

"Life can't stay the same forever."

"I know… " I leaned back and looked up at the sky. No stars tonight. "But I guess I thought I could stay in this haunted house forever. Just doing what I'm doing."

"You could," he mused, leaning back in his own chair. "But you'd always have that feeling. That maybe you could have done something really grand. I figure if you don't reach for it now, when you're young enough to take a pounding in the music business, you'll never do it. I have to go. This isn't why I came to America."

"Why did you come?"

"All I've ever wanted was to play American jazz. I got into the band as a way to make money until I could make the music I really wanted to make. I used to go to this secondhand record shop in Dublin and buy, trade, beg and steal anything I could get my hands on. But I told myself I would make it here. And I'm going to. Then I'm going to go back to Ireland and show my countrymen what the blues are all about."

"You're pretty confident."

"When it comes to music, I am."

"We've been in the band together for a few years but I really don't know much about you except that you're Irish. You love the blues—you know more than I do about them. And you can garden. And you hate roaches… So come on… tell me. Are you a fugitive gunrunner for the IRA?"

He laughed. "No. No.. just a starving Irish musician."

"If you go to New York… maybe I could stay with you if I went there, too. Red has got this friend, and his singer is getting married and moving to Madrid with her new husband. Red's been bragging about me to this guy—not quite as old as Red, but still an old-timer—for a while. Been trying to lure me into auditioning for him. Think I'm crazy?"

"Stark raving mad. But then, so am I. You know I ended up coming to New Orleans on a coin toss?"

"What?"

"It was here or Chicago. Decided at Grand Central Station in New York. Girl broke my heart, and I decided to leave New York."

"So, will you flip a coin when you leave?"

"Depends on whether my heart's broken or not."

I let his comment hang in the air. I felt a surge of determination, steeled by alcohol and a lonely heart. I would leave. If I didn't do it now, I never would—I knew that. Sometimes we have little truths in our hearts, in dark corners where we never shine a light. Then someone comes along with a candle and lights up that corner with something he says or something she does… and we know we can't ignore the truth that's hiding in the dark. Even if we blow the candle out, we know. The truth is there. And it will haunt us as much as Sadie haunts the Heartbreak Hotel.

"When the garden is done, then?" I said, drinking champagne and passing him the bottle.

"When the garden is done."

"New York."

"New York."

"Shake on it?"

He stuck a hand out, and we shook. I looked at the piles of dirt, old hedges in a pile, new plants and seedlings in pots. I had time. The garden looked like shit.