Page 3 of The Shop on Royal Street
Melanie nodded, her lips pressed together, her eyes bright; undoubtedly she was remembering the first time I’d moved to New Orleans, as a freshman at Tulane, excited and nervous about this great new adventure. Seeing only my bright new future ahead of me. Until the susceptibility to addiction I’d inherited from both parents had finally found me and it had all gone spectacularly wrong.
I blinked my stinging eyes as I opened my backpack and pulled out my own spreadsheet on recent sales in the neighborhood, earning myself a look of approval and a little bit of surprise. I hadn’t meant to showit to Melanie, not wanting her to know that, despite my adamant demands that I leave my home behind me, there were some things that I would need to hold on to. And because I’d realized that she might need to hold on to a connection to me, too.
“Let’s just say that after living with you for so long, a few things might have rubbed off on me. I’ve found that spreadsheets can actually be useful in situations where organization of details is important. Like house searches. Or class schedules. But not the contents of my dresser drawers.” I raised my eyebrows. “Or shoes.”
“Um-hmm.” That was the Melanie equivalent of letting me know that she was right and I’d figure that out eventually. “Anyway,” she continued, “even in the condition this house is in, it appears to be structurally sound. Which is why I don’t understand the listing price. It’s way below market, even lower than homes in worse condition that were sold before being rehabbed. I just can’t figure out why. I was wondering if maybe this house sustained major damage during Katrina and that’s scared off buyers.”
I shook my head, remembering all the research I’d done before accepting my new job as an architectural historian for a New Orleans–based civil engineering firm. I knew I needed to be fully armed to talk my parents out of all of their objections. “The section of the neighborhood on the river side of Rampart experienced some wind damage, but the Marigny is at a high enough elevation to have escaped the flooding. Most of the nineteenth century–style raised houses are elevated enough so that the floodwaters didn’t do significant damage. I know you won’t admit it, but older houses were just built better.”
Melanie’s forehead creased. “Then why hasn’t it sold? It’s been on the market for over a year, and the price is so far below market that I’m wondering if the sellers forgot a zero.” She raised the worksheet closer to her face and squinted. “The average time on the market for this neighborhood is less than two months—even for those in need of rehab. And, according to my notes, it looks like this house made it to escrow six times before the deal fell through.” She looked at me.“Frank or this Ali person, if they truly consider themselves real estate agents, would have done their research and figured out why.”
I kept my mouth closed, not wanting to mention that they probably had but had thought it best not to tell me. Before Melanie reached the same conclusion, I marched past her toward the back door. “Let’s check out the backyard.”
I threw open the door and paused. “I found the toilet and sink!” Both had been planted along the fence line, a healthy sprouting of weeds spilling out of both and trailing down to the lichen-coated bricks on the ground. Muppet-hair-like spikes of grass poked out from between the worn bricks, many of them missing corners or otherwise broken. A pine coffin, questionably repurposed as a planter, grew surprisingly hardy miniature palm trees, while an impressive amount of something green and fuzzy covered it like a five-o’clock shadow.
Melanie shuddered. “I noticed that the neighbors across the street have a coffin planter, too. Maybe they’d like a pair.”
I looked at Melanie with alarm. “Do you think...?”
She shook her head. “No. It’s not been used for its original purpose. It’s just... not all right.”
“Actually, in the Marigny it’s pretty much par for the course. Did you notice the goat with a rhinestone collar in the yard on the corner? I’m assuming that’s what the homeowner uses as a lawn mower. I think the whole vibe here is cool. It’s pretty eclectic, and I’m excited about the neighborhood music scene. I’d like to get back into writing music, and I think I’d be a good fit here. And my office is downtown, on Poydras, so it’s an easy commute. I could even bike it.”
At Melanie’s look of alarm, I quickly added, “Or take public transportation. Or even Uber it if it’s dark.”
She relaxed. “Or you could learn to drive.”
“No,” I said, shutting her down. “I tried once and just missed getting killed or being sued for everything we owned. No, thanks.” I still had nightmares about my first and last accident, which I’d caused as a newly permitted driver. I’d hit a car in which my dad’s nemesis, MarcLongo, had been a passenger, resulting in my parents’ having to allow Marc to film his movie in our house. I was not eager to repeat the experience.
I struggled to draw a deep breath in the sticky air of the end of July in New Orleans. I glanced at Melanie, whose hair had already frizzed out into wool-scrubbing-pad proportions. “Just like Charleston,” I said, trying to wipe away the look of worry on her face.
She gave me her “mom look,” the one that told me she knew that I didn’t believe what I’d said, either. That despite the shared tropical climate that wilted less sturdy souls, Charleston and New Orleans were merely distant cousins, with traces of a common ancestry apparent in their architecture, built to accommodate scorching temperatures and the always-present threat of hurricanes.
Their separateness was evident in their respective monikers: the Big Easy and the Holy City. The aura of New Orleans was best described as feral, Charleston’s as refined and graceful. My new home embraced decay, painted it in neon colors, and put it on the front porch. In Charleston a lace doily would have been thrown over it. Charleston had palmetto bugs. New Orleans had flying cockroaches. Each city had a place in my heart. One was a place from which to return, and one a place to run toward.
“Hello? Anyone here?” A male voice came from the kitchen.
Melanie and I looked at each other. “It must be the owner,” Melanie said as she delicately stepped across broken bricks toward the kitchen. “We’re out here!”
I held back, as the voice was vaguely familiar. And not in a good way.
“Oh.” This time the voice came from the doorway. “It’s you.”
“Oh,” I repeated with the same lack of enthusiasm.
Melanie began to speak, then stopped suddenly as her gaze fixed on something beyond the doorway, her eyes widening just before a loud crash erupted from somewhere inside the house. An icy blast of air whipped through us, raising gooseflesh over my entire body as a woman’s scream pierced the quiet afternoon.
CHAPTER 2
Stay here.” Beau Ryan, a loose end from my not-so-distant youth, blocked the doorway into the kitchen almost as effectively as I’d blocked him from idle reminiscences of my past. Despite being bossy and overbearing, he had been witness to one of the worst days of my life and the beginning of my blazing path toward self-destruction. My one-year tenure at Tulane had been a disaster, my attempts at spreading my wings translating into a free-for-all of unbridled partying without parental supervision. Not exactly a good choice, considering my genetic makeup. My parents had questioned my failing grades, but it wasn’t until my roommate called them after I’d passed out on the front lawn of a frat house and had to be brought home by a stranger—not for the first time—that they realized how dire the situation had become. And that I needed to come home.
In the intervening six years since I’d last seen him, he’d apparently forgotten that I was not the type to take orders from anyone—especially him. I rushed toward the doorway, Melanie close on my heels. Our shared inability to take orders was yet another thing that bonded us. We entered the front room at the same time as Beau, simultaneously taking in the shattered blue bottles scattered like ink blots across thefloor and the petite redhead with her fingers, the nails painted pink, held over her mouth.
“I didn’t do it,” she said through her fingers. “The door was open, so I walked in, and then the bottles on the windowsill just”—she motioned with her hands—“flew to the floor.”
“Must have been a passing truck,” Beau said.
“Must have been a slamming door,” Melanie said at the same time.
