After polishing off both before the song ended, he refilled them and loaded a plate with the red beans and rice. He sat at his small, round kitchen table while he ate, drank, and got lost in the music.
It was midnight by the time the fog of inebriation draped over Connor’s eyes, and he cleaned up before staggering to his bedroom. Collapsing on the bed, he managed to check his phone to make sure the alarm was set for 4 a.m., and then drifted into an oblivion of nightmares.
3
French Quarter, New Orleans
Liza knew she was being a total tourist, but she couldn’t help herself. The last time she’d been here, she was blitzed on monsoons the entire time and most of her memories of the French Quarter and Algiers Point were hazy. She figured the novelty would wear off after a few weeks of living here, and since she had a few hours to kill before her meeting with Jimmy Hall of Frenchmen Street Records, she opted to meander around the square of streets that made up the French Quarter—or simplythe Quarter, as the locals called it—taking in the sights and sounds andsmellas if it were her first time to ever set foot here.
The smell was interesting. On the one hand, the sweet, yeasty scent of fresh beignets drifting from the open-air Cafe Du Monde was heavenly, and she was going to indulge herself momentarily, but swore up and down she wouldn’t make the pastries a habit. On the other hand, the Quarter kind of reeked. The heady, but not necessarily overwhelming scent fell at the intersection of river water, cigarettes, diesel fumes, something that was probably urine, dead fish, and manure. All of which made sense, given that Decatur Street flanked the Mississippi where she was standing, and mule-drawn carriages rolled along the wide avenue.
Despite its strong scent, the river was quite picturesque, similar to her last memory of it. The water glittered, and the white ferry glinted in the sun as it churned its way toward Algiers Point. Between being drunk at the time and it being ten years ago, Liza couldn’t really remember much of riding the ferry, but she remembered this spot and when she’d last stood on it.
It had been night. The Crescent City Connection, the two large bridges that connected the sections of New Orleans severed by the winding Mississippi, had glowed silver against the inky sky. Her hair whipped at her face andhis, as he’d tenderly held her cheeks and kissed her long and slow.
That memory managed to survive the effects of alcohol leaving her bloodstream and the many years that passed because, all things considered, it had been pure magic. Music drifting from the Quarter and filling the atmosphere, while hope filled her chest after he’d whispered sweet, yet determined promises in her ear. Short as their relationship had been, she should’ve known better than to take such declarations of love and forever to heart. But she was only twenty-one at the time, never been in love, and—truthfully—had probably given too much weight to his American hero status.
Not that he wasn’t heroic. Even now, after everything, she retained a significant measure of respect and admiration for the things he’d endured. But the things that make a man a good soldier don’t automatically translate to making them the kind of person you can spend the rest of your life with. Soldiers were just people; fully capable of dishonesty and cowardice when not towing the line of duty.
Regardless, standing there again all those years later, the wind once again whipping her hair and the music once again filling her ears, Liza closed her eyes and allowed herself to indulge in that one good memory. Just like the touristy Quarter itself, she was sure the novelty would wear off after a while.
“Liza Hardin,” came a graveled, yet feminine voice from nearby.
Liza snapped her eyes open and whipped her head to the right to see an elderly woman wearing a white head scarf, white dress, and a long strand of ruby-red beads. Her brow crinkled in total confusion. “Yes ma’am? Do I know you?”
“You do not.” A toothy grin stretched the woman’s paper-thin cheeks. “But I know you. And you have arrived right on time.”
Liza pulled her chin close. “I beg your pardon?” She squinted. “How do you know my name?”
The old woman chuckled as she raised one arm at the Mississippi, gesturing with an upturned palm. “I know many things.”
Liza raised one eyebrow as she clutched her purse close to her side. Sweet and friendly as the elderly lady seemed, the situation also seemed like good opportunity to get pickpocketed. “Do you now? Are you one of the French Quarter fortune tellers?”
“I am a teller ofikusasa,” the woman declared.
“Ikusasa,” Liza repeated. Dare she ask? “What exactly is that?”
The woman shook her finger at Liza, sending the rainbow of beads on her wrist jingling. “Ikusasais destiny, Liza Hardin. I know yours.”
A patronizing smile plastered itself across Liza’s face as she took a step backward. “That is really interesting, but I’m here for work. I don’t have any cash on me, and I have a meeting soon, so I can’t really do a fortune-telling session today.”
The old woman lifted her bony index finger and pointed across the river at Algiers Point. “Lowo muntu udinga wena.”
Liza took another step backward and held her purse tighter. “Okay…?”
“Ikusasa lakho liphelile lapho.”
“I’m really sorry.” Liza closed her eyes and shook her head before glancing at Jackson Square and checking the time on the large clock on St. Louis Cathedral. “I have to get going.”
A trombone wailed from somewhere in the Quarter that somehow sounded simultaneously close by and distant. A bone-chilling gust of wind blasted down the avenue. Leaves fluttered from God only knew where because there were no trees on this stretch of Decatur, and then they swirled and swooped before hitting the sidewalk, and the wind carried them away.
Liza’s eyes stretched wide as her gaze shifted from side to side. “Whoareyou?”
The elderly woman offered a tender smile. “Forgiveness can save a man’s life.” She patted Liza’s arm and then turned to walk away. “Yours too.”
The woman plodded along in the opposite direction and Liza stood like a stone statue. The trombone wailed again, sounding much closer, and she turned her head toward it just as a colder gust blasted her face, forcing her eyes closed for a second. She opened them and turned to look back at the elderly woman, only to find that she was nowhere to be seen.
Liza shifted her gaze again as her jaw hung open, and she clutched her purse tighter. She turned a small circle and noticed there wasn’tanyonewithin a hundred or so feet of her. The old woman was just gone, as if she’d disappeared into the atmosphere like a curl of cigarette smoke. She blinked as she reminded herself that there were hundreds of those kinds of tourist attractions in New Orleans. Fortune tellers, illusionists, magicians, and so forth. Her tight grip on the top of her purse assured her that nobody could have slipped a hand into it without her noticing.
