Page 6 of Cognac Secrets
“No.”
He looked over at me, and his expression was a little rueful. “Sorry, I don’t mean to be a dick. I’m not much of a morning person,” he said.
“I am, but technically you’d have to get more than ten minutes of sleep for it to be considered your morning.” I kept my tone light to try and take any sting out of it, but it sounded like I failed.
“Fuck,” he muttered and I shook my head.
“Nuh-uh, no way – you don’t get to do that,” I told him.
“Do what?” he asked.
“Beat yourself up because I chose to stick around,” I said.
He ran a hand over his face and nodded, sighing out and telling me, “You definitely didn’t catch me at my best.”
“It happens,” I said with a swift one-shouldered shrug. “We can’t every day have good days.”
“You’re like this walking inspirational poster,” he said with a chuckle.
“I’m in a good mood!” I cried. “Sue me.”
He laughed a little and said, “I can’t imagine why. Taking care of a drunk idiot can’t be at the top of your list on how you’d like to spend your Saturday night.”
“Hey, if I weren’t hanging out with you now, I’d be at home. Alone. Probably asleep, yes but lonely. You’re doing me a favor,” I said.
He snorted and what came out of his mouth next made be blush. “With the way you look, that’s hard to believe. You could have any guy on Bourbon if you wanted.”
I thought about it for a second and shrugged both shoulders this time and said, “I mean, if that’s true, then I guess I choose you, Pikachu.”
He laughed then, a real one. A good one. One of those laughs that echo from the bottom of your gut and paints the atmosphere with its vibrancy in sightless colors built of rich sound. The kind of laugh that makes everyone around you smile if not break out into giggles of their own. At least it did me.
“You have a good laugh,” I said.
“Thanks?” He cocked his head. “Pretty sure that’s the first time I’ve ever heard that one.”
His faint smile was worth it. He was coming around and pulling out of whatever pit of despair he’d found himself in last night. At least just a little. I smiled on the inside but tried not to let anything show on the outside. But let’s face it, I had never been good at keeping my thoughts and feelings off my face.
He kept checking in my direction as we spilled from the residential street onto a much busier one, and he jerked his head indicating we should cross the street he lived on but stay on this side of the busy thoroughfare.
“Oh, I know where we are!” I said, startled, and he smiled and nodded.
“Yeah, the digs I live in might be crap, but I can’t beat the convenience of its location.”
I nodded and worked my way up the hill with him to the bright lights of the First Call across from the dark and sullen park that held the Katrina memorial and its modern ode to capitalism more so than the actual victims.
I was bitter about that, but I couldn’t tell you why. I mean, I hadn’t known anyone personally interred there, but something about that place just didn’t feel right to me. Any time I’d gone through its gates, I’d felt it… like the spirits there wereangry, sullen, and certainly none of them were at rest.
I tended to avoid the place. It gave me the creeps like no other cemetery or memorial park in the city did.
Bennie held the door for me and we passed into the warm glow of the First Call and got into line. It was busy, but mostly busy with blue-collar folk hustling to work with a mix of a few straggling tourists – the dregs of the nighttime partiers out of the French Quarter. Either that, or tired staff from a lot of the establishments.
“Hey, Sandy,” a tired male voice said from behind me, and I turned my smile, brightening.
“Heyyy!” I gave the guy a one-armed hug. I knew him as DJ Bass-In from one or two of the clubs or bars in The Quarter, and he always played my songs when I asked. Sometimes twice in a night if it was one he knew I really liked.
He hugged me around the shoulders and asked, “Where were you at tonight? I didn’t see you.”
“Oh, you know, some hole-in-the-wall on Bourbon. I go where the beat takes me.”
