Diary of a Blues Goddess (37 page)

"Hey, lass."

I just rushed forward and hugged him tightly. At first he kept his arms down by his sides, but eventually he encircled me.

"I love you." I said it first.

"I love you, too."

"I've missed you. More than I ever thought I could."

"Baby," he growled in my ear, "I've missed you since the moment I met you. I need you."

We stood in our embrace until it was time for him to go on again.

Taking his hand somewhere near three in the morning, when the band was done, in the city that never sleeps, we walked long blocks until we got a cab, and went back to my studio. I showed him in, and I lit two candles and then turned to face him. His was a face that mirrored my own. He knew loss. He knew the blues. We'd had each other all along.

I took a step closer to him. He put his hands on my waist and drew me still closer.

And because he understood me, he simply kissed me. And I knew, though Rick had made me feel crazy and insatiable, in love and in lust, though Rick's kisses had made me forget all men before him, it was this love that took a kiss to another level entirely. Casanova Jones was a myth of my own making. This was real.

I breathed him in and let him envelop me, finding a place in his arms that felt like home, like my old house with its ghosts, I felt a sense of belonging. I kissed him again, more hungrily. He undressed me slowly, then took off his shirt and jeans. He moved toward me again, breathing ragged and we touched each other, holding on to each other like survivors, two souls who almost drowned.

"Wait," I urged him. I went over to the CDs I had brought with me. I found Etta James. I put it into my boom box and started to play "At Last." Tony was lying in my bed, and I went to him and slid into the space he created for me in the crook of his arm. The music said it all.

At last.

Dear Diary,

So if my aunt Irene, the original Blues Goddess had a diary, why not me?

I'm writing this at a desk, in a rather drafty cottage in Ireland. I took a walk today and saw sheep. Sheep! This is a long way from queens and magnolias.

We played well last night. Tony and I and the band of blues lovers he's dug up here. He and his brother opened a pub, and we play for the tourists and the locals and anyone who loves the blues. After this, we're going to Chicago. Then L.A. Or maybe vice versa, depending on a toss of a coin. In L.A., I've got a pretty good shot at making a recording. Final touches on the deal.

Tony and I still play poker to kill the time. But not for candy. First it's strip poker. Then when we're out of clothes, we play for sexual favors. Then we just say fuck the cards and let's make love. We're not so quiet anymore. We talk incessantly
—
I guess finally sure this is it. Each other. We heal all the heartache we each carried with us. The blues place
.

My father is still sober. One day at a time, he tells me. We speak on the phone every week.

Nan is happy. She and Red are like any honeymooners, here in Ireland to visit. Including leaving a Do Not Disturb sign on their hotel door until well into the afternoon. Anyone who thinks old age can't be sexy ought to get a load of those two. And Red is finally, even legally, my grandpa. He had been all along, I suppose, but this just cements it.

Dominique and Terrence are running the Heartbreak Hotel. Dominique hasn't given up her go-go boots.

Maggie and Jack didn't make it. Not for lack of trying. He's moved on to a magnolia queen, a Southern girl, without the tattoos. I don't even know that Maggie is sad anymore. Sometimes you find those unrequited loves aren't all they're cracked up to be.

The Heartbreak Hotel will always be full, I think. Right now, it's Dominique and Terrence, and Lady Brett. The Heartbreak is a house that craves people. It welcomes the brokenhearted until they can figure out their broken parts and off they go, like doves being set free. But as Angelica says, as long as there's love, there's the risk of heartbreak. It's just fighting your fears so that you can live life.

Like Dorothy in
The Wizard of Oz,
I thought I had to escape to become a great blues goddess, but now I find myself lookingforward to going home. The Mississippi Mudslide wants me for a guaranteed gig nearly every Friday. So after Ireland and Chicago and L.A., we'll go back to our house and the garden
.

We'll go back to the triumvirate of spirits: Sadie, Honey and my mother. We'll show them how we've changed. We'll show them the new love in the old empty spaces.

Now that I am happy, everyone wonders if I still love the blues.

The answer is yes.

Because it wasn't just about the notes, but about the silences, and about what the notes could say.

The notes could speak the things I couldn't. They're a part of me.

Like New Orleans.

And Dominique.

And the queens and the three Shirleys.

The blues are my family and my father.

The blues are Tony. The way, when we make love, he knows just what to do, and as I sink to his cock, as I touch him, there's a familiarity. And when we press our chests together, heart to heart, we speak the same rhythm.

The blues are the Heartbreak Hotel.

They are my mother.

They are death and they are life.

And they whispered to me all the time.

"Georgia Ray," the blues said to me, "you are a blues goddess."

And now I say back to them, "I am."

I am the Blues Goddess.