Consider Me Gone, page 5
part #1 of Time Shadows Series
Romy still managed to point out the best jazz houses, identify a few key buildings, and recommend bars and eateries. Finally she brought them to the corner of Bourbon and St. Peter’s Streets. With the surrounding noise, it would be a miracle if anyone heard a thing she said.
“And now the moment you’ve all been waiting for,” she called, turning to face them. “Bourbon Street, where a little bit of Mardi Gras is alive and well every day of the year. I’m going to deliver you to one of the city’s famous watering holes where you can explore the Quarter on your own afterward. How does that sound?”
“Fantabulous,” one of the FlashTeck dudes called out. “Bring it on!”
“And that’s exactly what I’ll do. Follow me.”
Pat O’Brien’s was the closest so that would be the destination of choice. She’d do as she always did: settle them in with a drink in a glass as high as an apartment building.
Her reward would come shortly afterwards when she’d slip off home to bed with her pockets jingling with tips.
5
Romy ushered the group through the stone archway into Pat O’Brien’s courtyard establishment. She loved the a place as much because of the historical ambiance as the Flaming Fountain or party atmosphere.
Though the building was built in 1791 and had originally been the site of a Spanish home though little was known about the occupants. Still, there was just something about the balconies overlooking the courtyard that plucked at some long ago memory she could not grasp.
Meanwhile, her peeps tended to love the twelve inch souvenir glasses of mixed alcohol that she had arranged by way of drink vouchers. Most visitors stayed on for more, of course.
“Hi, Lucas,” she greeted the doorman. “How about a few good tables for my friends here?”
Lucas, tonight’s gatekeeper host, was a tall, good-looking black guy who Jo had briefly dated and whom Romy had come to know from regular tour visits. If she hadn’t been so smitten with Adrian, she might have fallen for him herself. He worked at the drinkery part-time as a way to fund his business management studies. His enjoyment for people seemed to come as natural to him as breathing.
“Sure thing, Romy,” he said with a wink. “Any group of yours is a group of mine. I’ll find you some good spots. Got a big group clearing out now. How y’all doing, anyway?” he called over his shoulder as he beckoned the troupe along. “Enjoying ‘Nawlins, folks?”
Stan called out, “I’d enjoy it more if I could find myself a date for the night. Got any real women in this city? I was expected hot little numbers in a place like this.”
“Oh, be quiet, Stan,” one of the FashTeck guys called out. “You wouldn’t know what to do with a hot number if you tripped over her.”
The others guffawed as Amy linked arms with Romy and rolled her eyes. “He’s just getting over an ugly divorce,” she whispered. “The first couple of times I met him he wasn’t like this.”
“Really?” Romy said. As if she cared. All she wanted to do was to get home to bed, not hear the sorry tale of a relationship gone bad. She had one of her own, minus the relationship part. 9:15. Twenty minutes away from mission accomplished.
They followed Lucas into the lush patio. True to his word, he sat them deep in the garden courtyard a few yards away from the fountain’s multicolored fire and light display. “Here you go folks—a prime spot for the light show.”
“Wow, look at that: fire and rain”, Dave sad appreciatively.
As they took their seats across three tables, Lucas leaned over to whisper into Romy’s ear. “See you’ve got a live one there. If he gives you a hard time, I’ll boot him out on his ear.”
“Thanks, Lucas, but I can handle him,” Romy whispered back. “I didn’t take kick-boxing for nothing, that is if I can still do my thing after months of no practice.” As if she’d had time to do more than study, work and breathe in months.
Lucas backed away, laughing, hands up in surrender. “I wouldn’t tackle you, girl.”
Romy laughed, too. As if she’d ever use her kick-boxing for anything other than exercise. What a ludicrous thought. Her smile died when she gazed across the room and saw Adrian Countway enter the courtyard with a woman on his arm.
She forgot to breathe.
He strode midway across the space, scanning the courtyard for a table, as if determined to select his own seat rather than be directed by the host—so like him. But who in hell was that woman, anyway? She looked familiar but Romy couldn’t place her.
Adrian Countway with a woman? Well, why not? Why wouldn’t an attractive single man be with a date? But thinking logically couldn’t stop the sense of being punched in the heart.
It was as if someone had tipped a cauldron of boiling emotions down her throat. This wasn’t jealousy, this was rage. Or maybe lust or guilt—a brew too powerful and unexpected to bear.
How dare he! She fought an overwhelming urge to run over to him and slap his face, beg for forgiveness, demand an explanation, all at once. But for now, Adrian seemed to be looking in every direction but hers.
Bewildered, she struggled for control while her bile rose and her body trembled. Thank God, he hadn’t seen her yet. Where could she hide? A headache pounded her cranium with the force of a head-on collision. Escape, she needed to escape before she did something unthinkable.
Keeping her head down, she plotted her route. She’d dash around the perimeter of the courtyard and up the stairs to the ladies room. Only the crowd jammed the corridors and she had to push her way through the crush. Still, she only managed to take the first three steps to the second level before Stan caught up to her.
“Hey, Frenchie, wanna dance?” he said right behind her.
Startled, Romy turned and looked straight into his eyes. With one hand gripping a glass of beer, he reached for her with his other and began tugging her back down the stairs.
“Allez-vous-en!” she cried, tugging her hand away and running further up the stairs. “Laisse-moi tranquille!”
“What the hell! You’re not talking that French crap to me, are you?” he called after her. “Come on, baby, don’t give me that. You know what you really want. Let me give it to you, American-style.”
Blazing fury, she ran back down until she stood one step above him. In one quick thrust, she shoved him hard with both hands, and watched as he stumbled backwards, arms flailing.
For a stunned instant she saw his glass fly into the air and smash onto the stone floor, registered his shocked expression as he clutched the railing.
This can’t be happening. She couldn’t have just done that.
Recovering his balance, Stan charged back up towards her, red-faced and calling out ‘damn little foreign bitch’ in a stream of verbal shrapnel.
The crowd stopped. Everybody stared.
But Romy didn’t run. She waited for the drunken lout to get close enough for her to smell his beery breath before delivering a swift kick where the idiot would feel it most.
The force sent him reeling backwards and this time he would have hit the floor had Lucas not caught him on the way down. “Okay, buddy, you’re outta here,” he said righting Stan and setting him on his feet.
“Me? That French bitch pushed me!”
Romy’s gaze met Luca’s before she glanced over his shoulder long enough to see Adrian pressing through the crowd towards her, shocked amazement all over his damn handsome face.
She turned, taking the steps two at a time until she reached the long outer hallway to the washrooms. A thrill of power mixed with an adrenalin rush pushed her headache temporarily into the distance.
Damn, but that felt good! Bastard got what he deserved but then a dizzying sensation seemed to be sucking her down.
“Romy, stop, please!” Adrian’s voice.
By the time she reached the ladies room, the headache had arrived with blinding intensity and with it, churning of nausea. She pushed her way through the vanity room towards the stalls muttering ‘sorry, sick’ to everyone in her way. She reached a cubicle just in time.
Minutes later, she settled into a chair in the adjoining vanity room, trembling with weakness deep inside the eye of the headache’s storm.
Time stalled inside the migraine’s center. Propped in a chair, she dimly heard women come and go, heard the washroom door swing open again and again with every sound or sensation magnified inside a grey, sick haze.
One woman passed her a wet towel, another a glass of water. Many others asked if she’d be all right. Women understood headaches in the deepest sense and the waves of sympathy soothed her.
Eyes closed, she nodded her thanks and said she just needed to keep her eyes closed and not move. No, she didn’t want a taxi, thanks.
Then, after what seemed like hours later, she heard a woman’s voice penetrate her fog.
“You’re Romy?”
She blinked up at the woman standing over her—a blond wearing an eye-stabbing red dress.
“Aren’t you the Frozen Angel lady Susie and I met today? I’d recognize you even without the grease paint. Small world, isn’t it?”
Romy tried to focus on the woman’s face. Susie’s mother, she realized in shock, was Adrian’s date. She just couldn’t grapple with that just then. All she could do was stare as the woman’s red shift morphed into a long black dress and back again. God help her, but maybe she really was going mad.
“Are you going to be all right?” the woman asked, her expression concerned. “I’m Veronica, by the way. I’m with Adrian Countway, and he asked me to see how you were. We were just about to go to a show but he insisted I check on you first. Look, supposing I give you fare for cab fare so you can get yourself home?”
Romy stared into her steel blue eyes. “What are you wearing?” she mumbled.
The woman glanced down at her red dress and back to Romy. “What do you mean? Forget my clothes. You should go home or to a doctor or something. You had an episode earlier, too.”
Shaking her head took too much effort. “Migraine. Can’t move. Just need to be left…alone.” And the ladies room had become her refuge against whatever or whoever waited for her beyond those doors—Adrian, Stan, her tour group, the explanations for her embarrassing behavior. Besides, if she tried to walk now, she’d only topple over.
“I’ll call you a cab.”
“Don’t. I mean, no, thanks,” Romy said, hearing how her voice turned harsh. “Please. Just turn off that one overhead light when you leave. I just need to be alone.”
“You look like hell. If I were you, I’d get myself some help.”
“Laisse-moi tranquille” Romy mumbled. “Leave me alone!”
“Suit yourself.” After hovering a while longer, Veronica left, switching off the lounge light on her way out.
Romy averted her face from the direction of the stalls where the punishing white fluorescence still blasted. Though she heard women mutter around her after that, no one seemed to notice her sitting in the dark.
The minutes passed in a foggy stretch. She must have dozed. When she bolted upright, her heart galloping, stillness had settled everywhere. She heard no sounds—no voices or music rumbled from downstairs. Could she have slept right past closing time? Now she’d have to find her way out of a locked, alarmed building.
Befuddled, she rose, taking a few tentative steps towards the door. Too dark, everything was far too dark. Outside, the corridor hung suspended over a lake of shadow where things croaked and cheeped and only a single sconce of burning rushes lit the way.
She blinked. Since when did O’Briens use that little touch of dangerous authenticity? Where were the building’s exit signs and the night lighting?
She glanced over the balcony, disorientated. New Orleans’ ambient violet sky made luminous at night by a million lights had been replaced by stars spangling over a foreign world of ghostly trees and strange shapes. She shivered, despite the warmth. This was no New Orleans she knew.
Gripping the railing, she attempted to steady her mind. Not a dream, she realized. Once again, she had been spliced into the past. So how in hell could she splice herself back?
A woman’s voice sounded nearby. What takes him so long? Surely he has not forgotten our rendezvous?
From what Romy could tell, she was totally alone yet the voice was very close, too close. It took seconds before Romy realized that the voice was inside her head!
She stifled a scream. Someone was thinking in French inside her mind! With those thoughts came a rush of strange feelings, of powerful anxiety mixed with anticipation.
Tonight will be the night. I will do this thing at last.
Romy felt heartbeat increase and her hands go clammy and slick. She tried to wipe her palms on her skirt but her arms refused to move.
I hear footsteps! He comes!
Footsteps sounded down the corridor and her body turned to the dark shape of an approaching figure. Romy's feet, disconnected from her will, moved down the corridor towards the man. A bizarre zap of electrified joy hit, a joy she could observe yet not quite embrace.
“At last, you have come,” she whispered in French as she fell into the man’s arms. “I feared you would not.”
“I had to slip out unnoticed. I believe Señora Viscaya suspects, but oh, Claire—”
Her lips found his before he could speak, her tongue plunging deep inside his mouth eager to taste the hot, dangerous elixir of whiskey, smoke and man.
She heard his sharp intake of breath, whether from the shock of her boldness or the force of his own desire, she could not tell.
He suddenly wrenched himself back to hold her at arm’s length, searching her eyes. Torch light flickered across his face. “How long I have waited for this. I—“
She pressed her hand to his lips before he could speak again. “As have I,” she whispered. “Love has its own sanctity, yes? For once, we will let love rule. Let us not speak, let us do!”
“Claire, my sweet Claire,” was all he said but all she knew or cared about communicated in the way he returned her kiss, the way his questing hands now roamed across her body, the way his breath quickened, his heart pounded.
Claire. Romy clung to the name, experiencing everything, hearing Claire’s every thought, sharing the same emotional and physical heat, all the while struggling to remain herself. It was like experiencing ex-rated movie in virtual reality.
As Claire’s hands ran across the man’s body, Romy tried taking mental notes of the man: lean frame, medium height, long dark hair half-hidden under a broad hat, thin beard—no goatee, maybe—a sharp interesting face. Those eyes! How could she forget them? It was Antonio! And, could he kiss! For a moment desire swamped her along with Claire, all attempts at being a detached observer lost, as she sank under a hot tide.
Claire’s hand slipped down the man’s thigh to message the thick satin straining across the man’s crotch. Oh, he feels so wonderful! Romy, awash in heat, agreed completely.
“My God, Claire,” the man said with a gasp. “You do not behave as any convent girl I have known.”
She fell to her knees with a laugh. “And how many convent girls have you truly known, sire?” she asked as she began to unbutton his breeches.
He leaned against the wall, bracing his legs to give her full access, his face flickering so many emotions—wonder, anticipation. “Pitifully few if this is what they teach you!”
“Romy, what in God’s name are you doing?” His voice choked outrage.
Romy looked up into the flushed face of Adrian Countway. She snatched her hand away in horror. The clear memory of Claire’s actions confirmed her situation: she had been messaging Adrian’s crotch just as Claire had been stroking Antonio’s. Here. In a public place!
“It’s not me,” she said, scrambling to her feet. “It’s her. You have to believe that!”
“Is it drugs or alcohol, Adrian?” a woman said with a grim laugh.
Romy swung around, gazing right into Veronica’s face. All urge to explain herself evaporated. Pushing past the two of them, she fled, heading for the stairs.
“Wait! Romy, please!” Adrian called after her.
Romy reached the restaurant’s main floor and dashed through the courtyard. The crowd had thinned to a few night owls hanging out by the bar. Faces blurred, voices fast-forwarded into a buzz. Nothing or nobody mattered.
Outside, peace briefly enveloped the sidewalk until she turned the corner and waded into the neon frolic of Bourbon Street. Laughter poured around her like cocktails over ice. A saxophone played a smoky riff from somewhere overhead while rock music threatened the sound barrier further down the road.
An unknown male voice called out to her to show him her ‘titties’ in exchange for a string of beads. Romy stepped over the cheap plastic necklace and kept running.
Stumbling to a walk, she glanced over her shoulder. No sign of Adrian or anyone else following. Straight down Bourbon was the quickest route home but she couldn’t risk the catcalls and leers for the next two blocks.
Instead, she cut down Ursulines, intent on crossing Dauphine and then right to her Governor Nicholls Street cottage, avoiding anyone who might be dogging her path.
Of course, Adrian knew where she lived and might get the fool notion to wait for her there. He’d urge her to seek medical attention and after tonight, she’d hardly blame him.
Her heart finally slowed. What had just happened? She’d just had a past life experience not associated with her angel freeze performance and it had occurred with violence and excruciating consequences.
She needed help and soon. If not so late, she would have hopped a taxi to Louisa Dupre’s residence and begged for assistance right on the spot—as if Louisa ran an emergency clinic for the paranormally challenged. Get a grip. She coughed out a laugh, thinking of how ludicrous all this had become. It couldn’t be happening and yet it was.
She fought for calm. The danger had passed, in any case. She’d survive, maybe even leave town and change her name, take an education degree back in Nova Scotia and forget all this.
