Chapter 4
The month after my father died before even hitting the floor, the Hotel Thibodeaux filed for bankruptcy. Actually, more specifically, it was Amelie Esmé Sabine Ana?s Thibodeaux, whose name it was under, who filed for bankruptcy.
Everything my great-grandparents, my grandparents and my parents ever owned was sold off to the highest bidder while I sat there and watched.
Every single piece of heirloom furniture—and they all had wild, elaborate stories behind them that went all the way back to some ancestor’s Creole roots or so-and-so’s decadent Parisian great-aunt. Every etched glass, every Limoges plate, every Christofle silver fork, every Qom silk rug. Sold.
Along with every piece of art I’d ever created.
My early ones that I painted as a child.
The ones that got me into NOCCA, including my favorite one—of our hotel, all expressionistic and colorful. I’d sat outside with my easel every afternoon for a week until I got it just right.
All the paintings from my group exhibitions during school.
All the ones from my senior year solo exhibition at the Nolesque Gallery.
I’d been so excited about that. My dad never quite made it that night, but Sadie did.
All sold.
The only thing I managed to pocket was my dead mother’s wedding ring, by sewing it inside the sleeve of the only coat I had left.
“Marry me, gorgeous.”
“Hey, Lenny.” I pour him his usual, a triple Jim Beam on ice. Lenny Fontaine is a local musician who makes his living playing the piano around town, including here on Friday nights. He always has a drink at the bar before he plays.
“You’re looking even more beautiful than usual tonight, Amelie.”
“I bet you say that to all the girls.”
“You think I’m joking, darlin’, but if you said yes, I’d take you down to the Town Hall right now.”
“You’ve got a gig, Lenny. It’ll have to wait until next time.” We have this same banter every Friday night.
And I do what I always do. Move on to the next customer.
The place is filling up.
I serve a few more drinks and get two more proposals.
I smile like I always do and brush them off like I always do. But tonight I’m feeling the effects of working three jobs. I worked the lunch shift at Salties, and last night I worked my other bartending job at Cajun Joe’s until late.
I’m also feeling my ghosts around me more than usual tonight.
Sometimes it really hits me that I’ve lost everything.
In the photos taken before my mother’s death, my father was always well-dressed and so handsome and happy, with his arm wrapped around his beautiful and glowingly pregnant wife.
Things were run better back then, and everything looked shinier in those old photos.
Which could have had more to do with her than him, I can’t be sure.
I never knew my mother. She died less than a week after she had me, from some complication they couldn’t save her from. So it was always just me and Theo III (what the locals always called him), running our own little universe.
Which proceeded to spectacularly implode.
Of course there’s that other ember in me, the one that glows a deep, dark blue.
The old one, that’s been there my whole life.
The one that wonders if the implosion of Theodore Thibodeaux and his beautiful wife’s lives were ruined by yours truly.
If she’d never had me, she might still be alive.
And so might he, because things would still be shiny and he wouldn’t have had to drown all his sorrows so thoroughly or gamble all his money away just to feel something.
He never blamed me, not once. Not to my face, at least. But still, the ember burned and still does.
My daddy’s ashes got poured into the family crypt.
On the one-year anniversary of his death a month or so ago, I spent my entire week’s wages on a gigantic bunch of flowers and went and placed them on the front step of the crypt.
I wondered why I bothered. But I can’t stop loving him, even though he must have forgotten somewhere along the line that he wasn’t just spending his own money, but any chance I had of a future too.
It’s the only time I’ve ever cried over the whole thing and there must have been a lot of pent up feelings in there because it took me a while to calm it all down.
I sat there and cried hot tears all over those overpriced flowers until the sky turned purple and the stars started twinkling at me like all my lost family members were up there trying to cheer me up from The Great Beyond. So I pulled myself together and walked back to the hotel to start my shift.
After I lost the hotel and went bankrupt, I had no choice but to beg the new owners for a job.
I convinced the manager, a prickly bitch named Ellen Jones—who’s running the place for some all-powerful, unseen billionaire from Houston—that I was indispensable because I knew everything there was to know about the Hotel Thibodeaux.
I was born in Room 27, after all, and with any luck I’ll die here too, just like my daddy did. Hopefully before I even hit the floor.
“I know every creaking floorboard,” I explained, “every dripping faucet, every leaky roof tile and exactly where to put the buckets when it rains. No one else knows that shit.”
She looked me up and down with a critical Texan eye and told me the place was getting a new roof and upgraded plumbing so those details hardly mattered.
It’s amazing when you think about it that our two states sit side by side but you could never mistake a Louisianan for a Texan and vice versa.
We’re just altogether different breeds of human being.
But she did agree to hire me part-time as a bartender and she also offered me minimum wage for five shifts a week as a housekeeper.
Luckily (and intentionally), I have the only key to a small hidden storage room at the back of the building, where there’s a tiny single bed.
Ellen doesn’t know the room exists and she doesn’t know it’s where I’ve been sleeping for over a year.
She also doesn’t know I use the showers in the rooms as I’m cleaning them and the hotel laundry room to wash my own clothes, and what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.
So here I am.
Jimmy’s finishing up his second Southern Comfort. “How come you won’t go out with me, Amelie? Don’t you like me?”
“I like you just fine, Jimmy.” I like you keeping my business afloat, even if it’s no longer mine, and I like your tips, is what I’m thinking.
Jimmy pays for his drinks, then slides me a five-dollar bill and I tuck it into my pocket before eagled-eyed Ellen sees. I don’t feel bad about it either. This hotel raised me and I work hard. And tonight I’m tired.
The money never seems to accumulate.
I try to paint to see if I could eventually maybe sell one, but the only time I have is at night and I don’t want the lights to give away the fact that I’m living in a hidden room for free.
Could I really move to New York?
With thirty-five dollars?
Do I even want to?
Not really, is the answer to those questions.
It sounds cold up there. And kind of … steely.
I’ve only ever been out of the one mile radius of the French Quarter, the Marigny and the Treme a few times in my life.
When I tell tourists that, they’re amazed. I don’t know why it’s amazing. And tonight desperation is making me feel weirdly reckless, like I’m slowly losing my grip.
“See you ‘round, Amelie.”
“Bye, Jimmy. Have fun watching your friend’s band.”
I’m the only bartender on duty tonight even though it’s Friday.
We used to have two and sometimes three bartenders working on Fridays but Ellen said we need to tighten our belts in order to afford the new upgrades.
I don’t bother reminding her that a literal billionaire is paying for the upgrades and that he could also probably afford to pay one more bartender.
I doubt it would budge her hard Texan soul.
The woman might as well be an armadillo.
And her fat cat boss must be the stingiest billionaire out there.
Or maybe all billionaires are stingy, who knows.
Maybe that’s how they get to be billionaires in the first place. Assholes.
There must be a conference in town because there are a lot of people in suits here tonight.
“You’re gorgeous,” one of them slurs. “You wanna come back to my hotel with me? It’s only a few doors down.” A few of his companions leer and laugh.
“No thanks, Casanova.” Some customers make it harder to be polite than others but I’m a pro at this point. “But I’d be happy to get you and your friends a drink if you tell me what you’d like.”
Lenny starts up on the piano and I’m run off my feet for a while.
I notice a guy sitting at the end of the bar.
I didn’t see him come in. He’s wearing a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes and sunglasses.
Which might seem weird in a bar when it’s already dark outside, but nothing fazes me at this point.
This is New Orleans, after all, and we’re only a few weeks out from Mardi Gras.
If anything, I’d say this guy is more conservative than most. He looks …
strong. Not just in a physical way either, but in an existential one too.
Like he’s grounded and somehow fully realized.
His black shirt hugs his broad shoulders.
I don’t usually notice details like the shape of some guy’s shoulders, but the sheer size of him is sort of … impressive.
Clearing up a few glasses, I serve a few more drinks, but I can’t help subtly watching him as I do this.
I’ve never once seen a guy that stood out from a crowd more than this man does, even though all he’s doing is sitting there listening to Lenny play.
And occasionally watching me, I think, although I can’t be sure about that because of the glasses.
He’s not even staring into his phone like most people do when they’re at the bar alone.
I go down to the end of the bar to where he’s sitting. “What can I get for you, sir?”
His eyes are barely visible through his sunglasses, but when our eyes do meet, he slowly slides them off and sets them down on the bar. There’s a hint of amusement in him at my use of the word sir.
Wow.
He’s very good-looking.
Like, amazingly good-looking, in a low-key, no-big-deal-to-him kind of way. He wears his seasoned, laid-back charisma like a second skin he’s unaware of. His eyes are a vivid shade of blue-green that’s striking even in the dimly lit bar and rimmed with dark lashes.
Damn.
There’s a depth to him I don’t see around here all that often.
You can almost tell just by looking at him that he’s level-headed, in control, and that he knows stuff other people never will.
But also that he’s got a dark side. Not evil dark.
More like he knows what he wants and he’ll go to any lengths to get it.
And if you’re wondering how I know all this from one brief encounter, it’s because I’ve spent my entire life waitressing and tending bar, even when I was technically too young to be doing it legally.
My dad didn’t really care about details like that.
I could have a PhD in Reading People’s Personalities In A Single Glance by now.
Anyway, the whole cocktail of Mr. Dark and Gorgeous is kind of blowing my mind a little.
I have no idea why. His whole vibe is giving hot, untouchable apex alpha.
And, yes, I realize how that sounds but there it is.
“I’ll have a Dos Equis, if you’ve got it.”
Not even with a chaser, which means he’s probably not a desperado, and he sure doesn’t look like one. “I’ve got it. You want lime?”
“Sure.”
He’s watching me with a slow, quiet fascination that matches my own and somehow mingles with it, touching it in a way that feels intimate.
Like there’s no one else in this bar except me and him.
His voice is deep with the slightest rough husk to it that gives me tiny goosebumps and sends a crazy thought through my head that I have no idea where the hell it comes from.
What I’m thinking is, if this one asked me to go down to the Town Hall, I’d be tempted to follow him anywhere.