Chapter 3
“Have a drink with me, Amelie.”
As if.
Jimmy Beausoleil comes into the bar at least three times a week.
He always sits on the same bar stool and orders a beer, which he drinks fast, and a Southern Comfort on ice, which he drinks slow.
Then he orders a second one. He always asks me out and I always give him the same answer. “You know I can’t, Jimmy. I’m working.”
It’s a good excuse and I use it every time.
“After work, then,” he says. “I’m going to see a band up Frenchman Street. My buddy plays saxophone with them every now and then and they’re good.”
“I don’t finish until late.”
“Didn’t you ever hear that all work and no play makes people dull, Amelie?”
This makes me smile as I polish a clean glass and slide it back into the overhead rack. I’m a lot of things but I’m pretty sure dull isn’t one of them. “I have heard that somewhere, come to think of it.”
“Everyone needs time off now and then.”
I’m sure it’s true and one day I hope that very thing will apply to me. For now, it’s not really an option.
I have no idea what Jimmy does for a living.
I never asked. I make sure I don’t get too personal with the regulars.
I always keep our conversations breezy and light.
Jimmy doesn’t know I work two other jobs besides this one.
Or that the last thing I would spend my money on—if I had some—would be drinking at some bar with Jimmy Beausoleil, or any of the other barflies who ask me out every day of the week.
We have a lot of regulars that come in and a lot of tourists.
A pretty good percentage of them ask me out.
And I always give them the same answer. Behind the bar, which acts as my forcefield, I can keep busy.
It’s my job to talk to everyone, which makes it easier to brush off their interest and get on with my evening.
“Jimmy, stop bothering Amelie,” says a familiar voice. “I’d go with you, but I’m also working tonight. My last shift, if you can believe it.”
Sadie. My best friend and if there’s such a thing as a platonic soulmate I think she might be mine.
“Don’t remind me, Sade,” I tell her. “I can’t believe you’re leaving me.”
Sadie and I met on our first day of high school. We both went to NOCCA, which is a school of the arts here in New Orleans.
I got in with my art portfolio and Sadie got in with a dance audition they still talk about.
Her mother died young and her father had a fondness for women and whiskey, so we had a lot in common.
We used art as our escapism from the not-so-great details going on in the backgrounds of our lives.
We had big dreams, me and Sadie. But, like me, Sadie’s life hasn’t always gone according to the sort of plan you hope for.
She’s made a living for the past few years as an “exotic” dancer instead of the other kind of professional dancer. Because we all need to eat.
And I’ve made my living tending bar, waitressing and housekeeping.
As big as our dreams might have been in high school, mine got swept away by the loss of my hotel.
Sadie, for all her talent, kept getting derailed by her own wild side.
Sadie’s got too much New Orleans in her, she says.
She can’t do eating disorders. She’s not a perfect size two.
Which is apparently what the big dance companies require.
Either way, the metaphorical starving artist trope is real, for both of us.
Sadie grabs an olive from the condiments tray on the bar and pops it into her mouth. “You’re coming to New York with me, girl. I’m not taking no for an answer. I already told you, my sister has a couch that pulls out into a double bed.”
“With what? All thirty of the dollars I have in my bank account?”
“Sell some of those paintings you’ve got hidden in your broom closet.”
“I haven’t finished any of the new ones.
” Which she already knows. I’m still a no-name and all I can get for my work is peanuts.
I know my work is worth more and some day I’ll get more, but I haven’t had the time or the money to work on my art for a while.
It’s sort of a vicious circle. Canvases are expensive.
So are good brushes. So are paints, and my style requires a lot of it.
Sadie kisses my cheek. “At least think seriously about it. For real this time. You’ve got forty-eight hours left to jump ship and come with me.
What happened to the hotel is water under the bridge at this point, Ami.
You can’t change it. Take a leap. Try something new.
You need it, girl, trust your best friend.
I think you’ll be surprised at how the world would open up for you. Please, Amelie. Take a chance with me.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“You better.” She glances at the little clock that sits on the bar. “Oh shit, it’s after eight. I have to run.” She heads for the door. “Bye, Jimmy.”
“See you, Sadie.”
“Not if I see you first.”
Jimmy watches her go. As do all the other men in the bar. When you’re wearing—or not wearing—as much as Sadie is, that tends to happen.
It’s water under the bridge. You can’t change it.
I sigh. I know I can’t.
I try not to think too hard about how things used to be. Or about all the mistakes that were made. By me, but mainly by my father, God rest his soul.
My father, Theodore Thibodeaux III, dropped dead of a sudden, massive heart attack right here in the middle of the bar where he’d spent most of his life.
He’d inherited this hotel from his father, who inherited it from his father, my great-grandfather, who built it from the ground up with his bare hands.
My great-grandfather was a talented craftsman.
But it was his son, my grandfather, Theodore Thibodeaux II, who turned this place into the best little hotel on Bourbon Street.
In its heyday, the Hotel Thibodeaux was a destination, with five stars and a restaurant that once earned itself a Michelin star.
Unfortunately, a flair for hospitality and an admirable work ethic weren’t the only things that ran in my family.
A great fondness for good-timing and a hearty thirst for bourbon also ran deep.
My great-grandfather, my grandfather and then my father imbibed like it was squarely up to the Thibodeauxes to keep our place name on the map.
As though they feared someone might change the name to Boringly Sober Street if they didn’t uphold their part of the bargain with as much dedication as they were capable of.
The good-timing meant their wives didn’t stick around all that long (in my father’s case it was a different kind of tragedy).
And hard drinking has a way of chipping away at all the stuff you work so diligently for, especially when you own a bar and have access to as much of the devil’s poison as you can get your hands on.
All three Theodore Thibodeauxes ended up dying young because, no matter how much talent they might have had or how hard they might have worked, they just couldn’t kick the habit.
I make sure I never touch the stuff.
Of course I knew we were having a few money issues.
We couldn’t afford to refurbish the place like we needed to and our decor slowly devolved from chic into something closer to what might generously be described as shabby chic.
The curtains started to look a little dustier.
The rugs never really got cleaned. The paint job needed redoing.
But this is New Orleans, after all. Romantic decay is part of the fabric of this place and part of its charm.
Apparently, some people didn’t find the decay that charming though, because we started getting some less-than-stellar reviews.
Reality really started sinking in when we lost one of our stars. I was twelve and it felt like the end of the world at the time.
That was the same year the hotel next door, the White Swan (I always thought the name was pretentious-sounding, but whatever), got a major upgrade and they began to poach a lot of our business.
On my sixteenth birthday, we lost another half star. I cried about it, but crying didn’t help one bit.
It happened over time, but eventually it became clear that the Hotel Thibodeaux was no longer a destination of the well-connected Southern glitterati.
We were attracting a different kind of clientele.
Families on a budget. Low level corporate types in bad suits who couldn’t afford the Sheraton for whatever conference they were here for.
Hard-partying frat boys whose only goal for the weekend was to get as inebriated as possible.
By then, my father seemed to share a similar goal.
I tried to save him, I really did. I made him doctor’s appointments he never went to.
I got him an AA brochure and tried to talk him into going to a few meetings.
I hid the bourbon. But we literally live in a bar so of course he always found it.
The good-timing family streak ran strong in Theodore Thibodeaux III.
He also smoked, which didn’t help matters, and exercise was practically a dirty word.
It was bad enough, he said, that he had to climb up and down the rickety stairs multiple times a day.
And one Tuesday evening it all caught up with him. The ambulance driver told me he was probably dead before he even hit the floor. Come to think of it, I’m not sure why you’d mention a detail like that to a newly dead man’s only daughter. Either way, it’s stuck with me.
Very soon after that, I found out my daddy had a penchant for gambling as well as drinking. Much more than a penchant, in fact. A full-blown addiction.
I knew he enjoyed the casino every now and then, but I had no idea how bad it was. Turned out my daddy gambled away all the wealth of three generations.
I really don’t know how he could have done that to me, but I try not to dwell on it. He loved me and I adored him right back. I try my best to leave it there.
But it’s true I sometimes feel a little bit dark about the whole thing. And I’m not a dark person. I’m an always-look-on-the-bright-side person.
Something in me broke that day I watched the ambulance pull away, not to take my father to the hospital, but to the morgue.
Something else in me broke the day the auctioneer sold off all my family’s possessions, one by one. Including all the paintings of mine that my daddy had been so proud of.
The whole thing shook my faith in humanity in general.
If my own father could betray me like that, maybe everyone will. Maybe that’s just what people do.
If I’m being honest, that’s the detail that pisses me off more than anything else: I have a dark little pissed off ember lodged in my soul now that wasn’t there before and I hate having it there.
I can feel it there, glowing bright red.
If I could dig it out with my bare hands, I would.
I’d throw it as far out as I could into the big old muddy Mississippi and get on with my life.
I’ve had to get on with my life anyway, with or without the ember, and it’s exactly what I plan on continuing to do.
Maybe I should go to New York with Sadie.
Maybe I could sleep on her sister’s couch.
The problem is, to me, New Orleans feels like my earthly body and I’m her beating heart.
Then again, my hotel felt that way to me too and look how that turned out.