Page 66 of The Shop on Royal Street
My lips opened, a barely audibleticksounding as I peeled my suddenly dry tongue from the roof of my mouth. I wanted to move away, disappear into my room, but my feet seemed glued to the floor, unable to move even if my brain insisted on it.
“I miss you.”
An odd sound, like invisible ions rushing through space, crackled and popped in the air between us. A language that was more of a song, or an emotion, than words danced from the receiver. I’d heard it when Melanie’s grandmother Sarah had called on the same phone. Completely indecipherable to me and most people, but somehow understood by Melanie. And Beau.
“Can you help me find her? I know she’s alive or she’d have told me. I’ve been searching for so long and I can’t do this on my own.”
The same rushing noise came at me again, making my ears ring. I heard Beau lean against the desk, the wood creaking. “Not her.” His voice sounded defeated and tired, and I wanted to go to him and put my arms around him. But I remained frozen to my spot. “Not her,” he said again. “I want her too much.”
The room seemed to zing and buzz with electricity for a moment. Then silence fell, as if the person on the other end was waiting for an answer. Then Beau’s voice, still a little slurred: “She’s dangerous. I can’t afford to lose my focus. I can’t ever let that happen again.”
The silence fell like a shroud. Then, like it was a whisper without a source, I heard a single word.Nola.
Something soft and wet tickled my ankle. I yelped, imagining a large cockroach or a rat—neither too far from the realm of possibility in any building in New Orleans.
The receiver slammed down into the cradle. I stood, motionless, only the sound of the dog’s licking giving us away.
“Nola?” The light reached only up to his knees, but I felt Beau looking at me.
“How did you know it was me?”
It took him a moment to answer. “The dog.” The desk creaked as he stood, and the movement made me suddenly nervous. “And your scent. It’s...” I felt rather than saw him shrug. I waited for him to say something like how I smelled like hair detangler or sawdust. Or dog shampoo. Instead, he said, “Intoxicating.”
He swayed toward me, his feet stumbling as he struggled to balance himself.
I reached forward and wrapped my arms around his bare chest. After Jolene had dumped out the contents of the thermos and made him eat her chicken soup, she’d put him to bed on the couch in the living room, becoming more than a little bossy when she told him that she didn’t care if he normally slept naked as a jaybird—he was keeping his britches on in our apartment. Thank goodness, since I was currently pressed front to front against him.
“Let’s get you back to bed.”
He began walking in the direction of my room, and it took all of my strength to redirect him back to the couch. Either he was sleepwalking or Jorge’s miracle cure took a long time to work itself through.
After fluffing hisWizard of Ozpillow (borrowed from Jolene) and covering him with a blanket, I affixed the brand-new leash to the equally new collar and took the dog outside for a potty break. So far, he hadn’t had any accidents, which meant that he’d been house-trained at some point. I tried not to feel sad knowing that he had another home and that someone was probably looking for him right now. Which was why I wasn’t going to name him. Because I didn’t want a dog.
When we returned, I navigated my way up the stairs and into the apartment from the glow of the streetlight shining through the stairwell window. I unhooked the dog’s collar and he immediately jumped up on the armchair instead of heading back to his bed. After thinking for a moment, I slid the coffee table across the rug to block the door at the top of the steps just in case Beau decided to sleepwalk again.
His phone lit up and vibrated on top of the coffee table. I glanced down and saw there was a text message and photo from Christopher. It was only one word:Jeanne. Without slowing down to think first, I held my finger down on the message to open it up and fill the screen.
It showed a screenshot of a black-and-white photograph of a woman from sometime in the sixties. Her dark, wavy hair was puffed up in a bouffant style, her shoulders were bare, and her delicate collarbones were decorated with a strand of pearls. She was looking off to the side, as if the photographer had asked her to peer into her future. Unable to stop myself, I let my eyes slide to the message bubble.
This is Jeanne Broussard. Is this the woman you saw? Tell Mimi. It’s going to get worse. LMK if you got more pictures today
The screen went black but I continued to hold the phone, staring at it as if an explanation of some sort would magically appear. But I had a feeling that I didn’t need one.
Stealthily, I replaced the phone on the table, then crept toward thesofa. I lowered my head close to the pillow, holding my own breath to listen to Beau’s breathing, hearing mostly the dog licking himself in places I didn’t want to know about. I began to straighten, but Beau’s strong arm reached around my waist and pulled me down on the couch, holding me tightly against him.
I braced my forearms on his chest, trying to see his face. “Beau? Are you sleepwalking?” I couldn’t hide the hopefulness in my voice. Because if he was, he wouldn’t have seen me reading his text.
Instead of an answer, his fingers gently took hold of my face and pulled me closer. With the shadow of my head blocking any ambient light, I couldn’t see the intention in his eyes, but I could feel it in the length of his body. In the trembling of my own as I lowered my barriers for one dangerous moment. When his lips touched mine, a burst of light seemed to explode behind my eyes—or was it in the room?—illuminating everything I’d been feeling for Beau much longer than even I wanted to admit.
I felt myself slipping and falling, losing myself in the warmth and the pleasure and the mindless joy of lips on lips and skin on skin, the mere fact horrifying me. I lifted myself up on my hands, for all the reasons I’d be kicking myself for the next day. They had nothing to do with him having a girlfriend and everything to do with how I knew what it was like to want something outside of myself so much that I would sacrifice everything I loved to have it. And Beau Ryan could easily fit into that category if I slipped just once and allowed him in.
“I’m not Sam,” I whispered, praying that he was sleeping, that this had all been a dream playing out in his potion-addled brain.
“I know.” The two words rumbled in his chest beneath me, and in the darkened room I saw the reflection of the streetlight in his wide-open eyes.
And then, just as suddenly as I’d found myself grabbed and hauled on top of him, Beau’s arms fell from my waist and the light in his eyes went away as his breathing returned to the steady rhythm of sleep.
I waited to make sure he was sound asleep before carefully sliding off the couch. The dog jumped down from the chair, but instead ofcoming to me he leapt onto the bottom of the couch, at Beau’s feet, and curled up as if he planned to be there for the long term.
