House of Blues (16 page)

"Skip. This isn't a good time."

"I've got Tricia. It's a long story, but she's
way under the weather. I almost had to arrest her."

He looked as if she'd slapped him.

"Sorry to ruin your evening." She hoped she
didn't sound sarcastic, but she was so unnerved she wasn't sure.

Darryl was someone important to her. He was not only
a bartender, he was also an English teacher, a musician, and a member
of a family she knew and liked a lot. Once, they had made tentative
moves toward dating, when she wasn't sure where her relationship with
Steve was going. Jimmy Dee adored him and so did Kenny. Sheila was
frankly in love with him.

Skip couldn't bear to have him think ill of her.

He said, "But what are you doing here?"

"She wouldn't go home. She—" She stopped,
unsure what to say next.

He must have seen how upset she was. "Let's go
get her."

When Skip let Tricia out of the car and took the
cuffs off, she began the hysterical sobbing again, but this time on
Darryl's shoulder.

He looked at Skip over Tricia's wracked body and his
face was inexpressibly sad. She had seen him look that way before,
and it always had the same effect—it made her want to press him to
her breast.

A woman stood on the porch, a young black woman, also
light-skinned, with long, brownish, curly hair. She was in
silhouette, but Skip had the impression she looked like a movie star.
She got back in the car.

"Are you okay?" asked Jim.

"
There's nothing wrong with me a little crystal
wouldn't fix."

"I'll take you to Charity."

He took her to Steve.
 
 

10

Grady had gone home for a few hours to write and to
get more clothes, and since his mother had company, to be away from
her for a while. He was pleased with the children's story he'd
written—not that it was anything he would ever be able to sell (or
would even want to), but it was fiction and it wasn't about vampires,
and it was a start. Toward what, he wasn't sure; maybe just away from
the damned Undead. He was realizing more and more how sick he was of
their everlasting blood lust.

With his father dead on the dining room floor and
most of the rest of his family missing, vampires seemed a trifle
superfluous, a sort of playing at gruesomeness. It came to him
suddenly that he was truly done with them—that there was no going
back—and that surprised him. All he had written was the tiny
exercise about the planet where spaghetti grew on trees, and he had
no plans for anything else. Yet he knew in that moment—when he said
good-bye to the vampires—that there would be something else. He
just didn't know what.

That was frightening. Writing was safe because it
wasn't life. If he didn't know what to write, he cou1dn't write now,
and if he couldn't write, how could he keep reality at bay?

There's the House of Blues, of course. And
alcohol.

But if I stay out late and drink, then I won't
feel like working tomorrow.

The thing was, he wanted to get on with it, he wanted
to do it, whatever it was.

The only thing to do is gut it out.

He turned on his computer and sat in front of it, a
quote he had once heard flitting through his head. It was a recipe
for successful writing: "Sit staring at paper until drops of
blood form on forehead."

If that's what it takes, I'll do it.

But his mother came over.

Nonplussed, he let her in. "Are you all right?"

"I just wanted to see if you're all right."

"
Why wouldn't I be?" She never came to Race
Street.

"I don't know. You know how I'm kind of psychic
sometimes. I thought maybe you were feeling a little down."

"Can I get you something? I have tea and beer."

She seemed to consider. "Maybe just some water."

He got her water and himself a beer, which might
interfere with the writing, but it didn't look like that was
happening anyway.

"Mother, you know I'll be over there soon. You
should have waited for me. You're moving around too much for someone
who's—um, bereaved." He was shocked at himself—shocked that
he couldn't even say "lost her husband" or "widowed."

"People are supposed to come to you," he
said.

"Well, I was kind of passing by."

"Nina told me you were at the restaurant today.
Don't you think you should leave that alone for a while? I don't see
how you can even think straight with all this going on."

"
Well, Grady, somebody's got to do it—a
restaurant just doesn't run itself."

"Mother, no one expects you to be down there
right now. And Nina's got years of experience. She can handle it."

"Grady, I'm going to ask you something. You know
I don't intrude on you and your relationships—I'm always very
careful about that—but I'm going to ask you something about Nina."

Oh, Lord. Here we go.

"
Why does she hate me? What possible reason does
she have to treat me like she does?" Here, as Grady had known
she would, Sugar teared up. He went to get her a tissue.

"
I'm sure she doesn't hate you, Mother."

"
Yes, she does. It's evident in all her dealings
with me. She treats me like I haven't got good sense."

"
She's got a lot on her mind right now, with Dad
and Reed gone."

"She ought to think about the fact that I'm her
boss."

"You're her boss?" Grady hadn't even begun
to consider that.

"
I'm your father's heir."

"But Reed—"

"Reed's not here, Grady."

"Well, look, I wouldn't worry about Nina. She
does a good job and you shouldn't let her get under your skin."

"I don't think she's doing such a good job. I
went in there today and she wouldn't even order crabmeat! Can you
imagine Hebert's without crab? People are going to quit coming if
they try to order all our famous dishes and they get told they don't
even exist."

"
Mother, the dishes exist, we just don't have
them every day."

"
I think she was just being contrary. She
doesn't like me, so she has to contradict everything I say."

Grady had gotten Nina's phone message about Sugar:
"If you can't keep that woman out of the restaurant, there's not
going to be any Hebert's."

He said: "You've got to remember she has a lot
of experience. I think my inclination would be to defer to her."

"
Well, I wouldn't mind deferring if she just
wouldn't be so mean to me. She hates my guts, Grady, and I don't know
why." She was getting teary again.

"Mother, you always have an enemy. No matter
where you end up, it's always somebody." He regretted it the
minute he said it.

She looked utterly bewildered. "What do you mean
by that?"

"
Nothing. I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't talk
to me about Nina, that's all. I think you know how I feel about her."

"No. I don't."

"You know we saw each other for a while."

"You're still in love with her."

Glad to have distracted her, he tried for an answer
that might elicit her maternal concern, a bonding sort of answer
that  might also have been true, he wasn't sure. "I guess I
am," he said.

"Well, she isn't in love with you." There
was malice in her voice, all the nasty triumph of a child delivering
a hurtful riposte. He felt the usual anger rise up, felt the way he
was used to feeling when she said something mean, but it was only a
flash.

It's just how she is, he thought, if not with
resignation, then with something close to it; with something
approaching calm. Perhaps his father's death was having the effect
deaths are supposed to have, that of making much of life seem
trivial.

He wasn't about to respond to the content of what she
had said, and couldn't think how to answer the tone. Perhaps his
silence told her she had gone too far, that she ought to backtrack.

She said in a softer voice, "Into each life some
rain must fall."

He hated her clichés. Again he didn't answer.

"I've been unlucky in love too, Grady. It was
one of my greatest sorrows when your father turned against me."

Oh, no.

"It was love at first sight, you know. He was so
different then."

"Mother, please don't tell me."

Tears flowed out of her eyes, as much on cue as if
he'd turned a faucet. "I don't have anybody to talk to. My own
son—"

See a shrink, dammit.
But
he said, "It's just painful, that's all. If you really need to
talk, go ahead."

Wimp.

"We met on a blind date—did you know that?"

He shook his head, stunned that he hadn't known it,
that it wasn't a piece of family mythology. His parents had never
talked about such things.

"
I was a senior at Sacred Heart and he was
already in college.

He was a junior at LSU, home for Christmas vacation.
I couldn't believe someone like me got to go out with someone like
him."

Grady's curiosity was piqued. "What were you
like?"

"Well, I was naive."

"
What else?"

"I guess I was pretty."

"Come on, Mother—you had to have been pretty."

"
Well, I was considered rather . . . pretty."

Suddenly he saw her through his father's eyes: blond
with big tits.

"
And he was . .

"
Worldly?"

"More than that."

"
Well, what?"

She looked uncomfortable. Finally, she shrugged,
apparently deciding there was only one way to say it. "He was
Arthur Hebert."

"
What did that mean?" He thought he knew
full well.

"There was nobody like him in New Orleans. When
I saw him in that coat and tie, hair slicked back, so tall and
everything, I thought I'd swoon. We went to a fraternity party, and I
had my first drink. Can you imagine? I just never dreamed I could
marry somebody like that. Then when the children were young . . . She
stopped and started to cry again. This time he waited her out,
wondering about her odd reference to "the children"—probably
she was talking to herself more than to him.

"We were so happy, Grady. You can't imagine how
happy we were. You were the cutest little boy and your father just
loved you so much. And then a few years later, I don't know, this
mean streak came out."

She had never talked like this. He said, "You
saw it too?"

"Saw it! or course I saw it. He started treating
me like a servant."

"Oh. Did he change toward other people?"
Meaning himself.

"Other people? How should I know? All I know is
one day we were in love and the next day he hated me. He just turned
against me, right in midstream."

"When was it, do you remember?"

"I don't know when I first noticed it. It must
have happened gradually. All I know is one day I woke up and I had no
husband."

"Do you think it had anything to do with what
happened?"

The Thing.

They never spoke of it. Grady's heart pounded.

"What do you mean ‘with what happened'?"

"You know. At the restaurant that day; that
time. On Sunday."
Don't make me name it
.
He couldn't; he was quite sure he couldn't get the words out.

"
Oh. No, of course not. In fact, we were close
for a while after that, and then he went back to treating me like
dirt again. He just turned against me, that's all. One day, he up and
turned against me. My own husband."

She could probably get a golden retriever to tum
against her—or at least she could convince herself that it had.

"And then he turned you against me," she
said.

"What?"

"My own children. I know the way he talked about
me. What am I talking about? Usually he did it in front of my face.
He made you hate me."

"Mother, you know that isn't true."

She was sobbing, sunk in such a swamp of self-pity it
would take a crane to pull her out of it.

"Do you think Reed hates you?"

"Once he turned against me, then he just didn't
care, that's all. He had all the mistresses he wanted—slept with
everybody in town and didn't care who knew it."

"Did he?" Grady had never heard a whiff of
it, and he didn't like to think of himself as naive.

"Well, if you didn't know, that's a blessing,
that's all I can say about it. I've been thinking about what happened
the other night, Grady."