A Ghost of a Chance by Cherie Claire (book series to read .txt) đź“–
- Author: Cherie Claire
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My head snaps to attention. “What? You talked to my mother?”
“For a woman who routinely left me places as a child because she was too busy practicing speeches for her TV appearances, I doubt she’s worried.”
“You should give her a break,” TB says. “Tulane hasn’t asked her back.”
I’m sorry my mother is out of a job, really, but whose side is she on? She hates TB, convinced I had married beneath me, which is probably true. Now, he’s her best friend?
I nod at the mail in his hands. “The insurance check is on top.”
“I finished the second floor. You’ll hardly recognize it.”
“Uh, huh.” I turn back toward the street and the creepy old man has reappeared on the porch next door. I can’t get to my car, out of the Katrina zone and to the airport fast enough.
“Don’t you want to even look?”
“Nope.” I head to the front gate but I can tell TB is hot on my heels.
“What are you doing again?”
“I told you, a travel writing thing,” I shout out without turning around. I can’t bear seeing that man again, or pondering how a man his age moved so fast. “Like the ones I used to do on the side, although this one is an organized press trip.”
“Where are you staying?”
“The Crescent Hotel.” Crap. I feel like Homer Simpson after he says something truly stupid. Why did I just tell TB that? I make it to the driver’s side and gaze up at him over the hood. He stands there like a puppy dog wanting a bone.
“Can I come?”
Travel writers on press trips receive everything complimentary — accommodations, food, plane tickets. Guests are not allowed. Usually, the tourist bureaus foot the bill and they are not about to spend valuable dollars on people who won’t write about the place. I’ve heard about husbands or wives posing as photographers but that’s about the extent of it. TB had accompanied me once on a trip I arranged on my own, and I hated every minute. I wanted to explore, he wanted to drink and sit by the pool. I wanted to enjoy a nice meal and examine the place on my own, he blurted out to everyone that I was there on assignment so every member of the restaurant visited our table. The next time I arranged an excursion I conveniently planned it over a weekend during football season, knowing well TB wouldn’t give up valuable couch time.
“No, you can’t come,” I tell him tersely.
“I could stay in the room, not bother you....”
“No.”
“I could just hang by the pool....”
I hate to do it but the look on TB’s face, the putrid smell of mildew and decay and that horrid man’s stare make me slip in my car and drive off without another word. I have a plane to catch and nothing is getting me down today, I practically yell inside my head. The guilt is eating me alive and it takes everything not to gaze in the rearview mirror.
“Call your mom,” I hear TB shout out, as I turn the corner and head back to the interstate.
I’m late getting to the airport, mainly because my mother called twice and I fumbled with my purse trying to silence the damn cell phone. The distraction made me miss my exit and I ended up circling Kenner needlessly.
When I finally park, get through security and make it to my gate, I have minutes to spare. I drop my bag at my feet, fall into the chair and breathe deeply, startling the well-dressed man across from me whose right eyebrow raises without him looking up from his laptop.
“Finally,” I say to no one and the man shifts in his chair. Am I bothering him? Doesn’t matter. I’m free of my ex-husband, my overbearing family, my well-meaning friends pushing psychoanalysis and the putrid wrath that was Katrina and on my way to a new adventure and career.
And that’s when she started singing.
A woman about my age, soaking wet, stands dripping in the aisle outside my gate, belting out You Are My Sunshine at the top of her lungs. She looks me straight in the eyes, water leaking off the ends of her stringy black hair, puddles appearing at her bare feet, and explains how I make her happy when skies are gray.
I look around to see if anyone else is watching this woman sing the Louisiana state song written by a former governor, her arms outstretched for emphasis when she hits “You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you,” but no one seems to notice her. A mother and daughter play with an American Girl doll to my right, a businessman devours a biscuit and sausage to my left and Mr. Fancy Pants continues reading his laptop.
Usually I ignore the crazies in New Orleans, too, especially in Louis Armstrong Airport where half of the tourists are glazed and hung over and the other still fresh and slobbering from a night on Bourbon Street. The ones arriving have that get-me-a-drink look and who knows what for a motive so their focus is elsewhere. But this woman is soaked head to toe, looking positively frightened or agitated or both and singing as if her life depends on it.
I lean over to search the airport corridors and two cops are laughing over coffee around Gate Number Four. Esther Williams is still singing and neither one looks in her direction. Weird. The gate agents are busy sliding boarding passes into the machine and a security guard drives up in one of those pseudo golf carts but no one even glances in this poor lady’s direction.
Just when I am about to get up and see if I can be of assistance, Mr. Fancy Pants across from me, his head still bent toward his laptop in engrossed concentration, lifts his right hand and snaps his fingers. One simple gesture, and the singing stops.
The woman appears as if she’s been slapped, her eyes registering intense pain. She bows her head in failure and moves away, her feet leaving prints as she meanders down the aisle.
I glance back at Fancy Pants, whose hand has returned to his side, his gaze never leaving the screen, until they call Zone Three. He closes his laptop and rises, never glancing in my direction, heading to the ticket agent as if nothing had happened.
When I check back on the wet opera singer, she’s gone. Vanished.
Maybe my family and friends are right, I think, wondering where I put that card Mary Jo gave me, the one for the counselor specializing in post traumatic stress disorder. But that woman was standing in the aisle in front of me, singing to the heavens. I know what I saw. And if I’m not totally nuts Mr. Fancy Pants heard her too.
I’m so confused and, like a good journalist, totally curious, but it’s time to get on the plane and start my new career. I sneak one last look down the airport corridor, even check for footprints, shake my head and hand the gate attendant my boarding pass.
Once aboard, I have other things to worry about. I end up lodged between an overweight man hogging the armrest and an elderly woman knitting. I practically wrap my elbows around my chest like a true crazy person and attempt to read my “S” book, something light and funny with cartoon women on the cover with words like “sassy,” “seductive” and “scandalizing” among the back cover’s description. S books make me happy, take me away from waterlines and levee breaches and I’m not going to apologize for it like most women I know and call it “trash.” Right now these books are better than Prosac.
I’m so enraptured in the hunk who runs the town newspaper and his fight with the spirited yet intelligent heroine of the mayor’s office that we land in the Northwest Arkansas airport in no time at all, a good-sized facility in a rural area near Bentonville and Rogers, places most people have never heard of unless they work for Walmart. Bentonville was home to entrepreneur Sam Walton who started the multi-national chain and thus the town became the operational hub of the megastores. Because Walton insisted companies move to the area if they wanted to be part of his dream, and all these new businesses plus Walmart need transportation services, the lovely new airport was built.
Too bad New Orleans never had such pull, I think, as I head down impeccable marble aisles toward the baggage claim. The Crescent City had long outgrown its airport and progressive politicians had suggested a larger international airport almost halfway between Baton Rouge and New Orleans with a light rail in between but the idea never took. As usual not enough money. Or forward thinking. Plus, there was that time after Katrina when the airport became a hospital and morgue so right now all everyone’s thinking about is getting it back to normal.
I wasn’t going to think about New Orleans on this trip, or my flooded home, lack of a steady job and the fact that my electricity would get cut off if my FEMA check didn’t arrive soon. Tonight I would sleep between layers of multi-thread linens and indulge in fine cuisine while PR people drive me around, line up interviews and pay for everything. Only in America could writers straddling the poverty line be wined and dined at posh hotels and four-star restaurants in fun destinations.
“It doesn’t get better than this,” I whisper to myself.
Travel
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