Chapter 9 #2
“All good. This was a preordained breakfast meeting with Bennie, one of my brothers. Come on, let’s get another coffee and some fresh beignets.”
“Sounds good,” I said, and I fell into step with him, only slightly behind and to the right of him. He reached back with his hand, and without thinking, I took it – at which point he pulled me up even with him.
“Always right beside me, or just ahead of me – never behind me,” he said gently and let go of me. I felt myself blush and nodded dumbly, unsure of what to say. He smiled and winked at me.
We went into the Café. He held the door for me, even though I reached it first. He simply reached past me and hauled it open before I could.
The line was long, as it always was at the French Quarter location, and Chainsaw got into line, asking me, “You know what you want?”
“Ahhh…” I perused the menu over people’s heads. “A Café Au Lait and Beignets,” I said, adding, “And I’ve got it.” I reached into my small purse slung crossways over my chest, but Chainsaw stopped me with a hand over mine.
“You saved my life, Doc. The least I can do is buy you a cup of coffee and some breakfast.”
I blushed again, this time from the intensity of his gaze.
“I was just doing my job,” I said humbly, and his smile grew.
“And I’m doing mine, as a man, so don’t argue.”
“Okay, objection withdrawn.” I held up my hands in surrender, and he laughed.
“Thought you were a doctor, not a lawyer,” he said as we moved up in line, and I smiled at the light banter.
“Might as well be both with the way insurance companies are and how the American healthcare system works.”
“Can’t argue with you there,” he said, and he looked thoughtful for a minute.
It was an unfortunate reality that it was less about actual patient care and more about shareholders and bureaucracy, jumping through hoops and advocating that, hey, I’m the doctor, you’re the bean counter – leave the diagnosis and what is and isn’t medically necessary treatment to me.
We moved up, talking and bantering lightly, and it was fun. It felt good, and I felt… safe. I hadn’t realized how bad things had gotten and how much of a prisoner I’d begun to feel like in my own life.
We reached the counter and placed our order. Chainsaw paid, and we stepped aside to collect things when they came up for us. After that, I had to follow his lead and drop behind him as we threaded through people and tables to the outdoor patio.
There, we found a table with three women and one of Chainsaw’s brothers. They’d pulled a four-top and a two-seater table together so that the six of us could sit.
“Dr. Genesis Bordelon, I’d like you to meet my brother Bennie. That’s his ol’ lady, Sandy, and this is our president’s ol’ lady, Alina, and our VP’s ol’ lady, Corliss.”
“You can call me Cor,” the pretty brunette said with a warm smile. She had her long, straight brown hair swept up into a messy bun, held in place with a pair of pencils.
“Nice to meet you all,” I said, taking the seat beside Bennie and across from Chainsaw.
“The girls are opening up a witchy gift shop down that way.” Chainsaw jerked his head in some vague direction that lay deeper into the French Quarter somewhere.
“Oh, yeah?” I asked.
“It was a shop I used to work at, The Mystic’s Dream, but my boss wanted to retire, and I met up with these ladies just in time.” Sandy said. “They’re going to take over the lease and we’ll be up and running in no time.”
“We’re just finishing up a shop re-design and redecorating to our aesthetic, I guess you could say,” Cor said.
Alina didn’t speak, but she was smiling softly and pleasantly, and just seemed to be soaking up the sun, which, given her fair skin and red hair, I hoped she had on some SPF or something. The doctor in me never quit.
“So, you’re the doctor the night Chainsaw got brought in, huh?” Bennie asked, eyeing me from behind a pair of deep brown aviators. I couldn’t see his eyes or read the rest of his expression, so I wasn’t sure what to think, yet…
“Uh, yeah. I was one of the residents on duty at the time, but now I’m an attending.”
“What happened?” Alina finally asked, and her attention was fully on Chainsaw from behind her Ray-Bans.
“It was before all of you girls’ time. I got shot to shit and rolled into NOLA Mass General. Doc Bordelon made sure I was taken care of right.”
“And you guys stayed in touch? That’s so sweet!” Sandy said, her brown curls in a high ponytail that swept down her back.
“Not exactly…” I said on a slightly uneasy laugh, not really sure what to say. I connected my gaze to Chainsaw and hoped he could read my silent plea for a little help from behind my own dark lenses.
“Naw, I gave the doc my number and said if she ever needed anything to call me up.”
“Oh?” Alina perked up slightly and asked, “What came up?”
“For right now, that’s our business,” Chainsaw said. The girls all paused, looking back and forth between me and Chainsaw, but didn’t say another word.
Bennie pitched in and said, “Let’s change the subject for now, shall we?”
“Tell me about your shop,” I said, eagerly grasping onto the only other subject we had in common thus far. “What’s that about?”
“Oh, you know, airy fairy witchy shit,” Alina said with a slightly self-deprecating smile and tone.
“It’s more than that.” Sandy rolled her eyes.
“I’m intrigued,” I said slowly.
We sipped our coffees and munched on our beignets, attempting to keep the powdered sugar carnage off our outfits.
I listened to Sandy, which I guess was short for “Sandrine” which was a beautiful name.
She gushed about Swamp Witch Designs, which was part witch shop, part gift shop, and part décor – with something like a splash of art supplies thrown in?
It seemed Alina had taken to making her own watercolors from things she found in the swamp, which was amazing all on its own.
“We’re carrying some of the watercolors that Alina’s done that haven’t already found their way into some of the local coffee and gift shops,” Corliss was saying.
“We put in some work at the shop this morning. We’re just waiting for LaCroix and Hex to get done with the first round of inspections at the distillery. They’re supposed to pick us up,” Alina said, trying like hell, it would seem, to get the subject off her and her art.
The two other girls weren’t willing to let her off the hook so easily, it would seem, so in a last-ditch effort and a tinge of annoyance to her tone, Alina stoutly turned the subject back onto Chainsaw and me.
“I didn’t know you’d been shot, let alone that you still knew your doctor. When was that?” she asked him.
“About three years back,” he answered, leaning back and shifting in his seat. “And it’s not like we stayed in touch.”
I was suddenly the center of attention at the table, and couldn’t help but laugh a bit nervously.
I was drawing breath to attempt to stammer out some kind of a lie or explanation that didn’t sound quite as wild as the truth of it, when I was saved by a masculine, “Yo!” from the other side of the ironwork railing surrounding the café’s patio.
Cor didn’t even bother to try and suppress her squeal of delight at the sight of two more brothers on the other side of the patio surround. She leaped to her feet and, flinging herself past tables to lift herself up on the edge of the fence to press her lips against the taller man’s.
He was lean, tall, and fit in a wiry sort of way, while the shorter man beside him with the tattooed bald head was just about as wide through the shoulders as he was tall. My daddy would have said “ built like a brick shithouse” – and the comparison was as good of one as any.
He was so musclebound that he could barely cross his arms over the engine-grease-stained white tank and leather vest he wore over it.
Alina rose to her feet and drifted in the terrifyingly tattooed man’s direction. Even though he wasn’t nearly as tall as the man beside him, he was still much taller than her, but he bowed in her direction like she was his whole world and brushed his lips against her proffered ones.
I swallowed hard and felt my blood turn to ice in my veins when the bald man with the tattooed scalp’s eyes turned from Alina’s face, and his alien eyes fixed across the short expanse of patio onto mine.
They were darker than the night itself – and I do mean wall-to-wall darkness.
Like he wore some kind of contact lenses that covered not just his iris, but his sclera as well.
I felt a shiver tick down my spine, my bones rattling against one another like someone tickling down some off-key piano keys.
“That would be LaCroix, and the tall one is Hex,” Chainsaw said from across from me. I couldn’t seem to tear my eyes away from LaCroix – their president. I mean, I knew the rules. You weren’t supposed to stare, but LaCroix made it really damn hard not to.
It wasn’t a flamboyant thing, though. It was a predatory thing. When you were a citizen and essentially cannon fodder to a brotherhood like this, you were stupid to not have that prey instinct and hyper-vigilance.
Whereas I’d felt perfectly fine in Chainsaw and Bennie’s company, suddenly, I worried internally that perhaps contacting Chainsaw like I had, had been a bad idea.
I’d done my level best to leave this kind of life behind, after all. Looking at LaCroix, I was reminded why club life was a hard life.
Too late now, I thought.