A Little Night Music (5 page)

       
              “Not accepted.”

       
              “I want to make it up to you. Have dinner with me.”

       
              Elli shook her head.

       
              “Lunch?”

       
              “No.”

       
              “Coffee?”

       
              “I don’t see a trumpet.”

       
              Jon slung the hand not holding his helmet low on his hips. He let out a sigh that turned him far closer to bastard Jon. “You won’t, either.”

       
              “Please leave.”

       
              “How about a ride? Anywhere you want to go.”

       
              “Chicago?”

       
              He hesitated, but only for a moment. “If you want.”

       
              “Maybe then I can see where they raise men to accost women on the street.”

       
              “Accost?” Jon barked out a laugh. “You practically took me to the sidewalk right there, Sweetheart.”

       
              Macy’s eyes flashed wide with a deliciousness that rivaled jelly donuts. She crossed her legs on a nearby chair and settled in to sip her iced coffee through a straw and watch the show.

       
              “And on top of being the most egocentric,
classically-trained
musician this side of the Mason-Dixon, he’s a liar.”

       
              “You know nothing about me. Except that I have what you want.”

       
              The innuendo was unmistakable. Somehow they had jumped the intertwined tracks between music and sex. Again.

       
              “I know you aren’t man enough to hold onto a woman.”

       
              Elli wanted to bite it back the moment it slipped from her tongue. It wasn’t her—not even close. Fueled by an adrenaline hangover from the kiss and the suggestion that she was the type of woman who hung from the balconies on Bourbon Street, she had wanted to save face. All she succeeded in doing was slugging Jon-the-trumpet-player in the heart.

       
              He pressed his lips together, probably to hedge off words he might regret. His body shifted toward the door in retreat. His gaze trickled to everything and nothing in particular until it found Macy.

       
              “Nice to meet you Macy.”

       
              And then he was gone. Out the door, helmet on,
what-the-hell-just-happened
kind of gone. Elli’s body melted to the hurricane damaged subflooring where she prayed for a well targeted atom bomb to fall on her.

       
              “If you don’t go after him,
I
will,” said Macy. Her voice was bruised, quiet. Very un-Macy.

       
              The bikes engine roared to life. The powerful noise seeped between Elli’s ribs and the carefully-constructed raw materials of her life that did not include a man who thought happiness was a four-letter word.

       
              For all the things she could have said to Macy to explain away why she couldn’t accept his apology, why she couldn’t give the guy ten minutes over coffee because she had fifty calls to make or why having a man kiss you in public until it straightened your hair was such a bad thing, Elli landed on, “I’m wearing a dress.”

       
              Macy’s wide-open mouth collapsed into a compressed giggle that sounded like a duck call. “Who cares? I’ll take care of things here. Go.” And when Elli still hadn’t moved, “
Go-o-o.
”

       
              Jon kicked the stand up on the bike and checked his blindside for traffic.

       
              Elli grabbed her sandals and charged out of the office. The bike was already crawling when she snagged his jacket sleeve to get his attention. He turned, his helmet like an enormous insect head hiding his features. She couldn’t know if he wanted her to remove her arm or run her over.

       
              He lifted his eye shield. The limited view of dark lashes, a slight deviation of his nose bridge—probably from a fight, his untamed brows, all of it wholly masculine and infinitely capable of holding onto a woman, paled in comparison to his green and gold irises cut tight across a distrustful squint. He glanced from the sandals in her hand to her eyes.

She mouthed “a ride,”
God, what was she doing?
She was out here chasing him before she had put thought to it, though a few minutes was the least she could give him after she’d bludgeoned his manhood. Her daddy would recognize the girl who gave a stranger a chance, not the shrewish prude judging from her lofty rat-hole.

Jon handed her the extra helmet strapped to the back then helped her fasten it when she twisted the strap. Her insides played a pick-up game of basketball with the engine revolutions. She had never been on a motorcycle before—a moving motorcycle—but she wasn’t about to tell him that. He might change his mind, and for Elli, who had zero chance three days ago of extracting her Daddy’s trumpet, a change of his mind now seemed a worse fate.

She climbed onto the seat behind him, commenced a thigh-and-arm death grip that could crack a walnut and leaned into Jon Desmarais. Whether he was the Jon from the stage or the Jon from the kiss ceased to matter. Once the horsepower thundered, her heart was quite possibly already gone.

                                                                    ****

         Jon couldn’t say where Elli was taking him. Once they hit Canal Street she had tapped his shoulder and pointed directions at each turn. He couldn’t say he cared one way or another, either. The bike afforded him time to think, if only his libido would cooperate. Elli’s curves wrapped him, bringing her heat, her scent, her ability to completely derail his brain - this time from the reason for paying her a visit. How could he bring up the instrument’s visions without coming off like Artie Page and wanting to off himself from the High Rise—which he had discovered, while Elli was gloriously super-glued to his backside, was the highest bridge in New Orleans.

He supposed they were even now, each having something for which to apologize. Still, when she indicated a final turn and they leaned left and entered the gates of St. Patrick’s Cemetery Number Two, he couldn’t help but think she was telegraphing a warning, 
treat me like an alley cat again, you’ll end up here.

She removed her helmet, slipped into her sandals and hopped off the bike before he had killed the engine. He scrambled to catch up to her, trailing through rows of ornate tombs and crumbling statuaries, turning blind corners and carving up a meandering path to the newer section like a man possessed.
Damn, but this woman walked with purpose.

Jon stopped short at the corner where he had lost sight of her, he found Elli knelt on a marbled stone step leading up to an ornamental crypt complete with sculpted crosses and built-in planters packed with ferns and bright orange blossoms. The Leroux family name was etched on the inset.

He didn’t move, he scarcely breathed,  the gravel underfoot was unforgiving to movement and the gravity of the place settled heavy on his neck the way Billie Holiday’s
Strange Fruit
always did.

“Daddy, this is Jon.” Elli plucked weeds and dead fronds from the nearby planters as she spoke. “Issa says he’s the one, but only you know for sure.”

The one? The one for what?

“Plays a mean Duke, I’ll give him that.”

Elli glanced at Jon with a twinkle in her eye, sadness or humor he couldn’t say.

The pressure of meeting a dead father- a jazz legend and the mysterious conversation that rightfully excluded him eased a bit. He watched Elli bow her head low in silent prayer and when he felt guilt at the admiration of her backside in a simple cotton dress, he listened to the song of the birds and counted stone angels. He nodded a silent thanks to Sam Leroux for the instrument, an instrument that just might help him find himself again.

After a few moments, she made a hasty sign of the cross, and rose.

“How ‘bout that coffee?” She fanned herself with an ineffective hand. “Iced.”

The stone step where she knelt was in full August sun and sweat beaded her forehead, neon lights and bayou sunsets had nothing on red toenails and a messy head scarf. Elli never looked sexier.

They drove to City Park and settled with their cold drinks under a canopy of ancient live oaks stringed with tangled moss. It reminded Jon of the paper lanterns in the last vision, and he again felt the tug of that moment. Jon felt peace and contentment, maybe his first in two weeks.

The motorcycle had offered them little chance to talk until now, but the space and time they had occupied together acted as a truce.

Jon stared at a green statue with no plaque and said, “I’m sorry about your parents. I admire how you cared for your Mom at the end. Not many people do that anymore.”

“How did you…?” she began, before they both said, “Gabe.”

“It was no less than she did for my father. If she could have gone with him, she would have.”

“I can’t imagine that kind of…” he was going to say
love
, but reversed course when he thought of Echo and his prediction of good fortune. A low note of warning played deep in his gut,
she’s a woman, she’ll hurt you in the end
. “Commitment.”

Elli placed her iced mocha on the concrete between her feet and wiped the cup’s sweat from her palm against the flowers of her dress. Jon recognized the act. It was the same mustering of courage he engaged in before the first set each night.

“I’m sorry about what I said. I didn’t mean to be cruel.”

Jon surprised himself when he chuckled. “Yes, you did.”

Elli’s lips twitched in amusement. “Revenge, maybe. For the kiss. But never cruel.”

At the mention of their kiss, Jon’s body hardened. He wanted to tell her he was sorry, but he wasn’t. Even a combined triple-threat of Coltrane, Davis and Ellington’s talent couldn’t tempt him into erasing that memory.

They splashed around a truce the way children splashed in the park fountains to beat the heat. He didn’t want to explain anything about Jessica or the day he had come home early in a dark rainstorm, when he turned on the bedroom lights, the time lag it took before he realized it was another woman in his or the ensuing scandal as Jess’s lover then jumped into bed with the press as Jon tried to hold onto his crumbling marriage. Thankfully, he didn’t have to explain. Elli didn’t ask.

Jon hadn’t yet summoned the courage to ask about the visions, so he opened up the conversation in Elli’s direction. “Tell me about him.”

“My father?”

Jon nodded.

“He
was
New Orleans. From the time he was in diapers and watched his own father play swing for the G.I. dances to the day he took his last breath with a hymn on his lips. He had played that morning. From the front porch like Mama told him not to do because it disturbed the neighbors. She didn’t say anything that morning. She knew. Wasn’t a sad song though. Issa says it was a celebration.” Elli’s voice weakened a bit before she finished. “I wouldn’t know. I never got to hear it.”

Jon’s throat tightened at the hurt in her tone. He knew now why she came to hear him play. She was searching for that last song that would never come. He couldn’t be sure this was the right time, maybe it would never be the right time, but he had to ask before he sweated his courage out through his hands.

“There’s something about that trumpet—a feeling or movement. It takes over when I play.”

She studied his expression, hers completely unreadable. He had come this far. He might as well dive in head first.

“I see things,” he continued. “Visions of other times and people I’ve never seen before. It’s like I’m not in the moment anymore. I’m in a thousand moments, but none of them are mine.” When she still didn’t respond, he added, “I’m not making sense.”

“You’re making perfect sense.” She picked up her drink and commenced a slow, seductive tug on the straw that contoured her cheekbones to the perfection of the park’s sculptures. “My father used to talk about the trumpet’s magic. I dismissed it as the sentimental musings of an old man who lived to play. Then Issa started in on the story when my father died. Swore it had the ability to heal the sick and cure the lame and dance a sinner to Heaven. Made for a good family story, anyway.”

“You don’t believe it?”

She licked a wayward droplet of iced mocha from her bottom lip. He nearly fell back in the shaded grass to cool himself.

“No more or less than the Rougarou.”

Jon tallied up yet another thing he didn’t know about New Orleans or its culture, but if it kept James from hunting him and dragging him back to his eighty story high-rise in Chicago, he wanted to know it all. Including how an unassuming beauty who works in a run down building on the wrong side of town to put instruments in the hands of children who might otherwise never have the chance to play could wriggle her way past his no woman policy so quickly.