Chapter 10

Céleste

“Thanks for nothing, Russ.” Asshole. I set the bottle of Tequila back on the shelf, irritated. As a parting gift, before he died, he had a whole fake identification, with passport, made by a buddy of his, and decided to list me as my actual twenty years old, something that, I’m sure, was intentional to keep me out of the bars. “You couldn’t have made me just a few months older?” What a waste of a perfectly good fake identity.

Was probably overkill, as I’m sure no one would remember the grainy picture of the girl on camera after nine years, but he certainly wasn’t above obsessive paranoia.

Keeping on down the aisle, I peruse the limited selection of pop that lines the shelves of Gaspard’s Grocery, a name that sounds fancy, but, judging by some of the outdated food I’ve already stumbled upon, really isn’t.

Sighing, I nab a six pack of Coke bottles and move on to find something for dinner that doesn’t require a stove.

From inside the refrigerator, I grab the last freshly made tuna sandwich from a mostly empty shelf, only to find it’s already two days old. And five bucks. On a groan, I toss it into the basket hanging from my arm, and feel the burning stare of too-curious eyes coming from my left.

I twist to find a young boy, maybe three, or four, years old, with scraggly brown hair, his bright blue eyes watching me from behind thick glasses that seem to magnify them. I’m guessing the woman reaching for a gallon of milk next to him, with her back to me, is his mother. With a smile, I wave back at him, and he turns his head away, as if shy.

It’s when I turn back to what I was doing that I notice his mother’s profile.

Not the glowing, olive skin tone of her Houma heritage, or the exotic upturn at the corner of her eyes, giving her a sort of feline allure that sets my memory off. I’d never remember her that way, given how much she’s changed over the years. No, it’s the long, black, spiral curls cascading over where Dejarae, her family name, is tattooed on her shoulder that has the back of my neck prickling the way it does when I get a feeling about something.

The woman takes the little boy’s hand and moves along toward the cereal aisle. Keeping a short distance behind them, I follow, careful not to draw the attention of the little boy, who seems far more aware of his surroundings than his mother.

“Which kind you want, baby?”

At the sound of her voice, I’m taken back nearly ten years into the past.

“What candy do you want, Cely?” Brie’s older sister, Marcelle, stares down at me, holding the change from the cash my daddy gave me. “They got JuJuBes, bubble gum, or Good & Plenty.”

“No Red Vines?” The only kind of candy I liked was Red Vines. Not Twizzlers. And definitely not the kind she rattled off.

“Ain’t enough money for those and popcorn, too.”

I had to sacrifice some of my cash to pay for Marcelle’s ticket, otherwise we wouldn’t be going to the movies, at all, since she spent all her allowance on makeup.

“Okay.” It’s hard to hide the disappointment in my voice. “Get what you want.”

“JuJuBes it is.” As she pays for the popcorn and candy, Brie and I wait at the opposite end of the counter, where I eye the rack of more expensive candy.

Behind me, Brie toys with the fountain drink machine, trying to catch ice cubes from the dispenser. The theater is mostly empty, aside from one, or two, people standing in line for snacks.

Biting my bottom lip, I stare at the pack of Red Vines. Right there. In front of me. I mean, why would they set them there, where someone could easily take them?

“Excuse me.” The voice brings me to staring back at the woman, who tips her head, expectantly.

“I’m sorry?” Confusion hangs like a cloud inside my head, having gotten caught up in daydreams.

“I need the box of Captain Crunch. Behind you.” Though she carries a slight Valir accent, her words are a bit more articulate than some folks on this island. I’m guessing that’s due to the fact that the younger generation just doesn’t speak it as fluently as the older. Unlike Cajun, it adopts more traditionally French phrases, and there seems to be a degree to which it’s spoken here. For some, it’s fairly thick, and for others, nothing more than an accent.

“Oh!” Breaking out of my stupor, I step aside for her, and her son’s curious eyes are on me again.

“Dat lady is pwetty, huh, Momma?” The cuteness of his little voice is made all the more adorably unbearable by the accent that clings to it.

Pressing my lips together to hide a smile, I look up to see the woman giving me a onceover out of the corner of her eye. Could she possibly recognize me after all these years? I’ve changed the color of my hair a few times, my name each time we moved from one place to another. But at the core, I’m still Céleste. Surely, she has to see some small flicker of that?

When she stares back at me, though, I notice the dilated pupils, the exhaustion tugging the corner of her eyes. Maybe pain. She’s high. That much I can pinpoint in her lengthy gaze, and I won’t dare say a word and risk a scene.

Like Russ said, I can’t draw attention. No questions. But damn. Drugs? I don’t remember much about Brie’s older sister, but the sketchy fragments I do remember paint a picture of a book-smart girl who wouldn’t have touched them.

Unless my head has twisted some of my memories into a whole different picture.

“She is, ain’t she, baby?”

“That’s … Thank you.” I’m the queen of awkward encounters. Doesn’t matter that he’s only three, or four, years old. Kids, in particular, make me nervous, the way they stare like they can see right through a person. I’m just waiting for him to blurt out that I’m carrying a fake ID in my wallet.

Abandoning my stalking, I head toward the checkout, where the clerk manhandles my sandwich as she drags it over the scanner, loosening a small corner of the plastic wrap. The smashed tuna half leaking from the hole she’s opened suddenly doesn’t look so appealing, particularly when she scrapes her finger over the dribbled bits and wipes it on her apron, before closing the sandwich in again.

Five bucks for a sandwich fondled by hands that have touched God knows what on all that cash.

Swallowing back the urge to puke, I make my way out to the truck and toss the food onto the seat beside me. “Should’ve opted for Popeyes, I guess.”

Russ always called fast food fakefood. He often joked that the chicken was actually a powdered mix of discarded parts that’d been ground down into patties and tossed into a deep fryer. Though, even that sounds better than my mangled tuna sandwich right now.

Glancing up, I see who I’m certain is Marcelle and her son exiting the store, making their way across the parking lot toward a beat-up sedan that makes Russ’s truck look like the luxury edition. As I fire up my own vehicle, a part of me is tempted to follow her, if only for the chance of getting to see Brie again. When I shift the truck into reverse and begin to back out, the bag beside me tips, and the sandwich tumbles out, onto the floor.

“Son of a bitch!” I throw it in park again and hunker down to grab the damn thing. The poor sandwich has suffered more trauma in the last ten minutes than an MMA punching bag, and at this point, I’d be better off feeding it to the trashcan just outside the store.

Disheartened, I toss my mangled dinner back inside the bag, but at a startling knock at the window beside, I jump in my seat.

Marcelle stands alongside the truck with her son on her hip, and I roll the window down, taking in the distress etched across her face.

“Sorry. Don’t mean to bother you, it’s just … you’re, like, the only one here. My car … it broke down. I don’t suppose you can give me a jump?”

Leaning forward, I glance around the lot to find that she’s right, it is mostly empty, aside from a few cars that likely belong to the clerk and whoever else works at Gaspard’s.

“Sure.” One thing I was grateful for, having Russ as a pseudo dad, is that I know how to change a tire and use a set of jumper cables. As she walks back toward her vehicle, I drive the truck around and park in front of her clunker.

She stands off to the side, bouncing the boy on her hip, while I grab the cables from the back. “I don’t, uh … actually know how this works. Do you?”

With a nod, I go to work, hooking up the cables from her battery to mine.

“You’re not from around here, are you?”

Shaking my head, I connect the last of the terminals, and set my hands on my hips. “Michigan.”

“That’s a long way. You got family here, or somethin’?”

I pause at the question for a minute. “No. Why don’t you try starting it.”

“Yeah, all right,” she says, as she sets the boy down and scrambles to the driver’s seat. The clicking sound that follows is a bad sign, particularly when the headlights pop on, and when the car doesn’t turn over, my suspicions are confirmed.

“I’m no mechanic, but I’m guessing it’s a bad starter.”

“Are you kidding me?” She slams her hands against the steering wheel and groans. “Like I need this shit right now.”

“Momma, is da caw bwoke?” the little boy asks beside her.

“Yeah, Sweets. I think it’s really broke.”

Walk away. I can hear Russ’s voice inside my head. Selfish, cold Russ, who wouldn’t save a puppy from drowning if it meant having to put down his beer.

Walk. Away, Cely. No connections to this place.

“I can give you a ride. Somewhere.” The words tumble from my mouth before I can even process the consequence of such a thing. It’s not like she’d be shopping at Gaspard’s if she lived far away. Surely, there’s a better store, with a better cereal selection. And sandwiches, for that matter. “Do you live nearby?”

“My sister’s working just up the road a couple miles. I can run in and get the keys to her car from her. If you don’t mind driving me?”

Her sister. Brie.

I can’t. One look at my old friend, and who knows what that’ll mean. “I actually don’t mind driving you home.”

“If it’s no trouble, I have a few more stops to make?”

Oh, no. I’m not volunteering to be her chauffeur for the night. Although, I don’t know if it’s a good idea to let this woman drive when she’s high, either. Not with a little boy in tow. But maybe Brie will take notice and talk her out of it, so I don’t have to be the hypocritical public service announcement for this woman. I can always stay in the car while she grabs the key.

“Your sister is just up the road?”

“Yeah, right up Twenty-Third.”

“Okay, I’ll take you there.”

Smiling, she gathers up her grocery bags and son, and loads them into the truck. Groceries in the back, child in front.

I scratch the back of my neck as I watch her strap her son into the seat belt on the bench between the two of us. “Uh. Should he have a car seat, or something?”

“Nah. He’s a big boy. It’s only two miles.”

A lot can happen in two miles. For instance, I could be so desperate to get her out of my truck, that I accidentally step on the gas and draw the unwanted attention of a cop. Or I could be so damn preoccupied at the thought of seeing an old friend that I blow right through a red light and get T-boned at the intersection.

“Are you sure? I don’t mind if you want to grab it.” Of course, now that I think about it, I don’t remember seeing one in her vehicle, either.

“Look, it’s literally two minutes away, and I promise, we’ll be out of your hair.”

Two minutes. I can deal with two minutes. Drive slow. Don’t blow through a red light.

Simple.

Okay. Once everyone’s mostly strapped in, I pull out of the store lot and head down Twenty-Third, as she instructs. Though I feel the boy’s eyes on me the whole time, I don’t dare take my eyes off the road. Not with a minute and ten seconds left on the clock.

The main strip is flanked by old-fashioned brick buildings that remind me of the French Quarter, with their cast-iron balconies adorned with sprawling flowered vines. Black and white striped awnings stretch over bustling cobblestone sidewalks, where corner bookstores, coffee shops, restaurants, and small boutiques give it a mystical Diagon Alley sort of charm. On the south side of the street, behind the shops, runs a canal, whose boardwalk is lined with soft white lights that add a festive glow at night.

A quaint and beautiful little town, like something straight out of a book.

In spite of its bewitching allure, though, there’s an emptiness that looms like an invisible cloud overhead. A shadow of something absent here. Forlorn and spectral, like ghosts staring down from the sky.

At the light, she tells me to hang a left, and it isn’t until I’m pulling into the parking lot of the place that I notice the neon sign out front. Sinners and Saints.

The place looks like it might’ve been a church at one time, with its neo-gothic architecture, but the sign out front, flashing a woman with half her tits hanging out, tells me this is no holy establishment.

“Your sister … she’s a …. She’s ...” Brie is a stripper?

Nothing against them. Hell, I’ve been tempted by the cash myself in recent months. About a year ago, I tried to do the webcam thing, just to see if I had the nerve, but chickened out the moment I saw a dick pop up on the screen. For the hour that followed, I paced back and forth, paranoid that Russ would swipe up my phone, and some random cock would pop up out of nowhere from a screen I failed to shut out and slap his eyeballs out of his skull. The years have hardened me enough that I don’t tend to get too squirrely about strippers and prostitutes, but Brie? I guess my memories aren’t as reliable as I thought.

“She manages the floor.”

That makes more sense.

“I’m the one who dances.”

Keeping my attention forward, I do my best to school the dumbfounded look on my face, because the Marcelle I used to know, or I think I remember, anyway, was like Brie on steroids.

Unless she wasn’t. In which case, my memories have become so unreliable, I might not even have the right person.

The entire lot is packed, not a single place to park, as I idle through rows of cars, fancier cars, still trying to sort my head on this one.

“Just pull up to the side. That door there.” She points to a door along the side of the building, which I’m guessing is the entrance for the dancers.

When we roll to a stop, she opens the door without unbuckling her son, and just before she closes it on him--and me--I lean forward.

“Wait. Aren’t you taking him with you?”

“I’ll just be a second.”

“Wait, wait, wait. You’re …” Leaving your son with a complete stranger at the back door of a strip club? “What if he cries?”

“He won’t. He likes you. He’s got a … sense about people.”

I do, too, and I’m not liking what it’s telling me right now. Scratching the back of my neck, I glance down to the boy, who doesn’t seem troubled, at all, by this arrangement, then back to her. “Just for a minute?”

“I promise. I’ll go in, get the key, and I’ll be right out.”

Sinking back into the seat, I sigh, as she slams the door shut and heads inside. In the quiet that follows, I clear my throat, doing my best not to notice the awkward discomfort hovering between me and the three- or four- or five-year old beside me.

“You dwive weally dood,” he says, adjusting the glasses on his nose.

“Thanks. You, um …. You did a good job. Sitting still all the way here.”

“Thanks.” His little feet hang off the edge of the bench as he sits fidgeting. “What’s yew name?”

“Ce--Carly.”

“Cecawly? Das a weird name.”

I chuckle at his comment, the tension slowly settling in my stomach. “Carly. My name is Carly James. What’s yours?”

“Dustin.”

“Dustin?”

“No. Dus-tin.”

“Dustin,” I repeat again.

“No, no. Say it wif me. Duh.”

“Duh.”

“No. Das wong.” He slaps a hand to his forehead, and I glance around, wishing his mother would hurry up, because I feel bad that I don’t understand what the hell he’s trying to tell me.

“Does it start with a D?”

“No. A dzaaaay.” Okay, so maybe I was off about his age, because I’m not sure a three-year-old knows how to spell his own name. Unless, maybe they do.

“Okay, so it’s Justin?”

“Yessss!” He kicks his feet in what must be sheer excitement, and again, I find myself chuckling. “Hey, Cawly?”

“Yeah, Justin?”

“I weally, weally have to go potty.”

Shit.

“Um. So … what do boys do? Just … go outside, right? Pee on buildings, or something? You can probably pee on that wall right there.”

“No. I don’t mean pee.”

Shit. Shit. Shit.