Diary of a Blues Goddess (3 page)

"I'm not ecstatic." I widened my brown eyes to look innocent. "Just mildly pleased," I muttered under my breath.

He turned around as he reached the landing. "I heard that." He faced forward and walked down the hall, continuing, "I know I was an idiot for putting up with her. I know it. But let's leave the I-could-have-told-you-so-Jack looks alone."

I contorted my face into my best effort at looking appropriately sad and nodded. I tried to refrain from taking the remaining stairs two at a time and skipping down the hall to his old room, two doors down from mine. He opened the door and set his suitcase and guitar on the Oriental rug one of Nan's old lovers, the mysterious Mr. Punjab, had shipped her from India, with a letter professing his undying devotion.

I sat down on the bed, and Jack came over and sat next to me, exhaling slowly. "Just like old times. Two years ago, was it? The Mardi Gras I found Leigh in bed with her old boyfriend?"

"Yeah. That was the year we all took leave of our senses."

"Well, I can't say I like finding out my girlfriend was fooling around on me, but I do love this place. I was almost relieved to move out, knowing I was coming here. Knowing you were here. And Nan."

"And Dominique."

"She's here? God help us all. Yes… even Dominique. Though if she comes at me with any of her mud masks or aromatherapy treatments, I'm going to lock her in the room with Sadie's ghost."

"She doesn't believe in Sadie."

"Yeah, well, wait until she's home alone some night and hears the door slam. "Jack draped an arm around my shoulders and pulled me closer to him. "Did everyone know except me?"

"Know what?"

"Don't play dumb with me, Georgie. About Sara."

I shrugged. "I don't know, Jack. You always seemed more in love with her than she was with you, but it wasn't my place to tell you. Or any of the guys'."

"Hey, next time… if there is a next time… I give you permission to stop me. Between you, Gary, Tony and Mike, someone in that band had better talk some sense into me. You guys are my best friends. You're supposed to prevent me from dating women like her."

"And what exactly is a woman like her?"

"Trouble. Two-timing trouble. I don't know. See… I'm not even sure I can spot them when I see them. But you can. You knew. It's that women's intuition."

"Women's intuition. Bullshit. Look… she flirted with every guy in the room. But even if we had all tried to say something, it wouldn't have mattered. People in love don't listen—especially men. You go on autopilot. And the pilot is your penis."

He grinned at me mischievously. "Then you better talk to Jack Junior down there and stop me from making another mistake."

"I make it a point not to be on a first-name basis with my friends' penises. As far as I'm concerned, Jack Junior is on his own."

"That's not very nice, leaving Jack Junior with no sense of direction."

"His direction is up—and hard. Jack, you—and Jack Junior—always go for the blond-haired, blue-eyed beauty queen with ice water in her veins. Do you not see a pattern?" I shook my head. "Why is it up to me to point out your woefully bad taste in women?"

"Because I'm a man. We're stupid. It's a genetic failing in our chromosomes. I admit it."

"Thank God. It's about time."

Jack and I have been friends ever since he joined Georgia's Saints, our band, replacing our old guitarist, Elvis, who got into channeling "The King." Shortly thereafter, Elvis showed up at a society wedding in a sequined polyester jumpsuit instead of the requisite tuxedo. We were sad to see Elvis head for fame and fortune in Vegas—or at least a gig singing "Love Me Tender" at this little wedding chapel. But Jack fell into a groove with us, as if he'd always been part of our group.

I flopped back on the bed. "I am sorry about Sara. I never liked her, but that doesn't mean I'm happy that you caught the little bitch with someone else."

He fell back next to me. "You're practically oozing with sentimentality, Georgia."

"Yeah. I know. It's one of my many shortcomings."

"I don't know that you have as many as you think. Anyway, I figure a night blinded by tequila, a few clubs, some R and R at the Heartbreak Hotel, and I'll be over her in no time."

I rolled over and kissed his decidedly stubbly cheek.

"That's the spirit… You're face is all scratchy. You need a shower and a shave. I'm going to go take a nap before the wedding tonight."

"Didn't
you just
get up?"

"Yeah. But that means nothing to us creatures of the night." I feigned a Transylvanian accent.

He stretched. "Sara and I fought all night long. A little shut-eye sounds good to me, too."

I got up and walked to the door. "Sleep tight. Watch out for Sadie."

"I'm more afraid of the wandering drag queen and her mud masks."

Hours later, Jack frantically knocked on my door. "You ready to go?"

"Of course not."

He opened my door, handsome in his black tux. "Jesus Christ, you're not even
dressed
?"

"You know I am genetically incapable of being on time."

That is my stock answer. I also blame it on pantyhose. And sequins. They're a deadly combination.

Sequins are unforgiving. If you want to wear something that screams out that you've indulged in a chocolate binge of epic proportions, including Junior Mints, followed by a pint of Heavenly Hash ice cream, wear sequins. If you want to remind the world—no, flaunt to the world—that you use the treadmill in your bedroom as a coatrack, wear sequins. If you want proof that God in heaven, indeed, has a fucking sense of humor, then look in my closet. In the colossal cosmic joke that is my life, I wear sequins every weekend. I live in sequins.

And so there I was, in my best bra—which simply means my two cats haven't chewed it—and a slip, staring at six sequined dresses like a sparkling, spangled rainbow, and dreading putting any of them on.

"Gary's going to kill us," Jack said, his hair still wet from the shower.

"You shaved. Very baby-faced now. Cute."

"Sara liked that whole slightly edgy musician look, complete with perpetual five o'clock shadow, so it's outta here. She also hated the earring—" he pointed to the small diamond stud in his left ear "—so it's back. Now stop talking, Georgie, and start dressing."

"I
hate
these dresses. Every damn one of them," I moaned. "Sure, you all get to wear classy black tuxedos, but I have to look like a refugee from the 1970s."

"And you would rather wear… what? Your bra onstage?"

"No. But not this." I held up a silver-sequined gown. Being in a wedding band is like being stuck in the disco era. Think of every song you've ever heard by ABBA, and imagine singing them each and every weekend while grandmas and aunties, often in sequins themselves, take to the floor, usually dancing with prepubescent nephews and grandsons who roll their eyes and wish their private-junior-high hell would end. Playing conventions is worse. Imagine two thousand dentists converged on one dance floor in the grand ballroom doing the 'gator. That's a lot of bicuspids you're looking at. Now picture that you have no time for a personal life because you're singing for
other
people's personal lives, and you get the idea.

Georgia's Saints is the most popular wedding band in New Orleans. We do a set of zydeco at conventions. However, most white men can't dance, and they sure as
hell
can't dance to zydeco, no matter how generic we play it, so truthfully, what we do is pretty basic, though the guys are excellent musicians and my voice can even make a ballroom full of funeral directors get up and dance. I've been friends with Gary, the keyboardist, since my freshman year of college, and we formed the band seven years ago while we were still in school—first for extra money, then, as we started getting booked even a year in advance, we devoted ourselves to it full-time. Gary is stuck in another dimension. He actually
likes
ABBA. He also likes leading the hokey-pokey, singing to grandmas in sequins and getting a room full of computer geeks from Silicon Valley to do the electric slide. He was positively giddy when the macarena craze began. Gary is balding, and probably all of five foot four, married now with three kids born in four years—like he doesn't know what causes that?—always short on money so he accepts any job that comes our way. He's also a great keyboardist and gifted arranger—even if what he arranges are KC and the Sunshine Band songs. I forgive him his eccentricities, like the fact that he refuses to believe disco is dead, and the hippest he gets is listening to vintage Madonna, and he forgives me mine.

He accepts that I am always late, always have a run in my pantyhose, crave Junior Mints, often have chipped nail polish and, to cap it off, lipstick on my teeth, and that I always cry, no… sob… at weddings. Something comes over me, and so I keep a tissue tucked in my cleavage just in case. I also wear waterproof mascara. Dominique is wrong. First of all, she wears mascara that runs despite my arguments for waterproof. Second, though she accuses me otherwise, I also still believe in love. I don't know whether I cry because I think the love between two people taking to the dance floor for the first time as husband and wife is so beautiful, or because I'm not sure I believe it ever really lasts. Or because some of the greatest guys in my life prefer wearing pantyhose and mascara, just like me, and want to borrow my clothes. Or because no one's ever asked me to marry him.

I want to get married someday. But after all I've seen as a wedding singer—grooms making out with maids of honor in upstairs hallways, the bride's side ending up in a massive brawl with the groom's side, and even a couple of no-show grooms on the big day—I picture, instead, me growing old like Nan. Still in this house surrounded by my friends and a few cats. I'll be the Crazy Cat Woman of New Orleans. Though, with all the eccentric characters in this town, I'm sure that coveted title is already taken.

"Georgie! Decide already!… Come on! What about the red sequins?" Jack pulled me back to the immediate crisis of what I was going to wear at the wedding we should have left for twenty minutes before. He grabbed the red dress on its hanger and thrust it toward me.

"Convention-wear." I hung it back up. "Stuffy parents of the bride do not want their wedding singer dressed in red. They prefer silver, pale blue… lavender, even."

"Then wear the silver. The silver is fine."

"Well, I have a slight problem with that."

"What?"

"Guess?"

"Your fucking pantyhose."

I nodded. "The silvers got a thigh-high slit." Pantyhose is the bane of my existence. They can put a man on the goddamn moon, land a probe on Mars, but they can't make a pair of pantyhose that are runproof? If men wore pantyhose, I can assure you they'd have an entire Pentagon division devoted to finding a way to make them. I know that it's oh-so-sexy to go without pantyhose, but I rather like my control tops. It's the runs that kill me.

"Georgie… honest to God, we don't have time to stop at the drugstore to buy a pair."

"I know." I shook my head. My hair was amassing into ringlets, thanks to the fact that I hadn't left enough time to blow-dry it straight. My hair has a life of its own. I look white—sort of. People ask if I am Spanish or "something." The "something" is pretty accurate. Nan's mother was black, my father had some Cuban on his mother's side, and my paternal grandfather was half-Cherokee. Down through the generations what I have from the maternal side of my family, besides a love of New Orleans and music, and great pride and a pretty strong stubborn streak is willful hair.

"Come on, Georgie," Jack urged. "Just wear the silver, and we'll worry about the pantyhose on the way." Tack, quite possibly, knows more about pantyhose than the CEO of Hanes or L'eggs. In fact, every single member of the band has at one time or the other raced out on break to buy me a pair. And Jack and Gary have also bought me tampons in an emergency. Being in a band with four guys is like having four very tolerant brothers.

I threw the silver dress over my head, Jack zipped me, snagging my hair in the zipper and causing me to shriek in pain. After extricating my curls, and Jack pulling the snagged hair out of the zipper, I grabbed my makeup bag and the one pair of hose I did have that had a smallish run that might be stopped in its tracks by Wite-Out. Yes, clear nail polish works better, but when none is available, Wite-Out will do. It sort of glues the run to your leg. Elmer's is a close second. I've even tried Crazy Glue in a pinch, though I very nearly glued my fingers to my leg.

Jack and I flew down the stairs, blowing kisses and waving to Nan as she sat on her balcony, watching us pile into Jack's old Buick. If I have willful hair, he has a willful car. I settled into the passenger seat and started putting on my makeup, while he put the key in the ignition. We both crossed ourselves simultaneously in prayer that the car would start. It did. A testament to the power of miracles and the Patron Saint of Jack's Car, whom we'd named Saint Mary Emmanuel of the Buick. Jack drove us out of the city of New Orleans toward the plantation where the wedding was to be held.

In the tiny little mirror on the visor, I watched my crimson lipstick smear on my chin as I applied it at the precise moment we hit a bump. I sighed. What the hell was I doing? How did I get to be a wedding singer in sequin dresses, pantyhose and cat-chewed bras? What I really want to do has nothing in common with dental conventions or weddings. Or leading a roomful of thirteen-year-old bar mitzvah boys on the make in the limbo (which inspires them to try to look up my dress). Or the macarena.

I want be a blues singer.

But I'm a prisoner of a fear so cold it wakes me up in the middle of the night—when I find myself talking to the spirit of Sadie. If you sing at a wedding, you have a captive audience. A roomful of people are probably so drunk they wouldn't know an off-key C from an A-flat. They're happy with disco and cheesy standards. Conventions are more of the same. People pretending to be single for the weekend grope each other in grand ballrooms. But blues and jazz enthusiasts are a breed apart. They're obsessed with jazz, with what makes one instrumentalist a wedding-band player, and another John Coltrane. And the great ladies who have sung the blues are legends who cast a very long shadow. So I've been taking the easy way for a long time—so long that I sometimes tell myself I don't mind being where I am. Singing ABBA instead of Billie Holiday.