Page 73 of The Big Easy & Other Lies
“The apples have twenty-dollar bills pinned to them.”
“That makes more sense.”
We surveyed the party. Creatures of every stripe from the spooky to the naughty lounged on the game room furniture.Just Danceblared from the massive TV where a pirate wench and Tinkerbell were locked in a dance battle. A warlock and Freddy Krueger played pool while a toga-sporting Caesar with a Cleopatra tucked under his arm looked on. Laughter floated in from the open French doors, and every other hand held a red plastic cup.
“Is the punch spiked yet?” I asked.
“As soon as Tate Anders showed up,” he confirmed. “Aunt Cecilia is pretending not to notice. I think as long as no one pukes in her rose garden, she’ll let them get away with it.” He slid his hand into mine and tugged me toward the stairs. “Speaking of getting away, want to step into my lair?”
It was a fitting invitation coming from someone dressed as a werewolf. I scratched the furry sideburns he had glued on to meet his fake goatee. “So what you’re saying with this is that tonight’s really not about making out?”
He clawed at the beard to tear it off. I batted his hand away, laughing. “Kidding. I was kidding. And yes, take me to your lair. I owe you a psychoanalysis.”
We weaved our way around the partygoers that dotted the closest sweeping staircase. I hadn’t seen Angelique yet but I’d put money on her wearing a Southern belle ballgown complete with hoop skirt so she could sweep down the beautiful stairs. The whole setup with the curving staircases winging off each side of the foyer was too perfect not to take advantage of. Rhett led me to the left side hallway. “Welcome to the east wing,” he said, smiling. “It’s for guests, but I have my own semi-permanent quarters here now.”
Quarters? He had quarters? I had a glorified closet.
I hesitated. “Are you sure it’s cool if I come up?”
“Yeah. Angelique is too busy to worry about where we are.” I must not have looked convinced. “Is something else bothering you?” he asked.
“Your aunt. Will she care?” She might be delighted to see me working in her kitchen, less so to find me hanging out in her house socially, much less with her nephew.
He laughed. “She will definitelynotcare. In fact, I’m supposed to bring you by to say hello to her.”
“Oh,” I said, unsure how I felt about encountering Mrs. LeBlanc in the capacity of Rhett’s date.
With a firm grip on my hand, Rhett threw open the first door on the left, and waved me in. I stepped onto thick plush carpet and took in the gray walls. White wainscoting ran around the lower third of them for the entire length of the room, and white wooden blinds popped against the gray paint. It could easily have read as feminine, except for Rhett’s clear imprint all over the space.
Several cork boards hung at unevenly spaced intervals on each wall, maybe a half dozen of them, each covered in magazine photos of musicians or the cover art from different albums. A gunmetal gray comforter covered his bed, and a leather jacket hung off one of the dark wooden bed posts. Several Converse high tops lay in a jumbled pile near the footboard, and a pair of black half boots crowned the pile.
It wasn’t a mess by any means, but it didn’t look like he’d rushed around to straighten and make it immaculate for me. It was comfortably lived in. I wandered to his nightstand where a book lay open face down and read the spine. “King Oliver.Never heard of him. What was he the king of?”
“Jazz music, basically. I’m reading up on some of the local greats.”
I nodded. It was so like him to study deeply into something he was obsessed with, and “obsession” was the only way to characterize his fascination with New Orleans jazz. I edged over to his desk chair, too self-conscious to linger by his bed. He watched me, quiet and still as I took it all in.
I unpaused the music he’d been playing through his laptop. Dr. John, a New Orleans legend. Of course. “Why jazz?” I asked.
He looked startled. “Why jazz?”
I nodded. “It’s not cool. I thought we decided you were a closet emo kid.”
He smiled. “I don’t care about being cool.”
“Ah. So you’re a hipster.”
“Only if you can be one by accident.” He pulled over a bench that sat outside his closet and took a seat near me.
“Seriously. Why jazz?” We’d talked about so many things over the last few weeks. I felt like I’d known him forever, but almost daily I discovered something new and interesting about him. Of course I knew he loved jazz. Of course I knew how many hours he spent listening to jazz artists and working out his own compositions. He’d only played two for me, but they were incredible. Yet in all that, I couldn’t remember ever asking himwhy.
He crossed his legs and drummed on his thigh in time to the music. “My mom was homesick for New Orleans when my parents moved to Chicago. For a long time, I think. She played a lot of New Orleans music to feel connected. She said it was a slice of home. If there was music on, it was jazz. I was only four when I could hear the differences in the artists and pick out one piano or trumpet player from another.”
“Is it a nostalgia thing for you too? Because it reminds you of being a kid?”
He shook his head. “No. Even when I was little I could see how I could find a jazz musician to match any mood I had. And when things got rough with my dad, I wrote my own music to deal with it.” He shifted in his chair like he couldn’t find a comfortable spot.
“Rough how?” I knew he didn’t have a close relationship with his dad, but he hated talking about it. He said it made him feel like a teen movie cliché. I wanted to know more but I didn’t want to push. I understood the need to keep things private. But it hurt that I’d opened everything to him while he held back.
