Chapter 37
CHAPTER
THIRTY-SEVEN
RICH
Jazzy’s looks different, but feels exactly the same as it did when I walked through its doors ten years ago. The inside still smells like years of stale cigarette smoke, and somehow, during the time I’ve been away, the bar stools got smaller.
I shift around on the hard stool, glancing down at my feet touching the floor.
Thursdays ain’t never been a money-making day for the old bar, so all the TVs play different things—NFL highlights, Channel 13 News, and the Lockwood boys’ first basketball game of the season.
Blues plays at a pitch that’s loud enough for me to still hear the lyrics but low enough to hear the crack of thunder clapping outside from the rain that’s been falling since yesterday.
“You good?” the bartender asks, glancing at me over her shoulder while drying a glass.
“I’m good, Mel.”
She gives me a close-lipped smile and sets the glass next to the last six she dried since I’ve been here.
She told me her name was Melanie…or Melody. I can’t remember. The only part that stuck in my brain was “Mel,” but she didn’t mind because she already knew who I was as soon as I gave her my card to open a tab.
“My daddy hangs out at Lucky’s. He talks about you all the time,” she said, setting a coaster in front of me and smiling at my empty ring finger. “He says I need to bring home a good son-in-law like you.”
I take a swig of the Jack she poured me while avoiding her gaze as she turns around to wave at her co-worker walking past the bar.
My dick wouldn’t even twitch while she gaited back and forth in front of me in a cropped Lockwood Lions shirt and jean shorts that cuffed the bottom of her brown ass because she ain’t wearing a pair of bougie heels I can’t pronounce the name of, or some dainty dress I can sneak my hands under.
And the vanilla scent in her long braids just makes me crave lavender.
So, I’m just waiting for it to pass like Senior said—the cravings, the night sweats, the stomachaches, and the low murmurs of Slim’s voice in my head throughout the day.
I’m waiting to grow the pair of nuts that’ll help me relock that part of my brain she picked open.
I’m waiting for the ball of fire in my stomach to fizzle out, but it rages on, burning my insides and making me down anything I can to stop it.
“You want another?” Mel asks, pointing to my glass.
I glance at it.
I don’t even remember downing the rest of my drink.
She tosses her towel down, walking my way and leaning over the bar. That vanilla scent lingers between us, and I squint at her face, searching for a pair of deep dimples in her cheeks, but there ain’t any.
She smiles bigger at me.
Her teeth are fake. There’s no gap to give them character, and she bleached their natural color away.
“You okay?” she asks. “I would threaten to cut you off, but you don’t talk enough for me to know if you’re actually drunk or not.”
I swallow a hiccup. “You know how to make a French 75?”
“A French 75?” Her tiny nose wrinkles. “You expecting somebody?”
I reach into my pocket, pull out a crumpled hundred-dollar bill, and push it toward her.
She glances at it. “You already have a tab open…and it’s only fifteen dollars.”
“Consider it a tip. You know how to make it or what?”
She huffs out a laugh and slaps her hand over the money, balling it in her hand. “Yeah. I do.”
“Well, show me how you make it.”
She stuffs the money into her back pocket and turns around, grabbing a bottle off the shelf behind the bar.
“It’s made with gin.” She turns back, slamming the bottle of Beefeater on the counter. “You a gin drinker?”
“It’s only two folks in this world I trust with my life, and Jack is one of ‘em. I ain’t never fucked him over for gin.”
She chuckles, grabbing an empty cocktail shaker and scooping a handful of ice into it. Afterward, she drops her chin to her chest and scans the area under the bar.
“I used to work at a bar off Westheimer in Uptown—a few blocks from the Galleria and right across the street from some fancy office building. All the girls would come in for happy hour after work—Louis Vuitton sales associates and big-time lawyers. They always ordered French 75s.” She pours a splash of the Beefeater in the cocktail shaker and glances at me.
“I’ve never made one for a man—let alone a person who doesn’t even drink gin. ”
“Well, today’s your lucky day, I guess.”
She smirks. “Yeah, I figured as much after I read your name on the credit card you gave me. After years of hearing about you, I can finally put a sexy face to a sexy name.”
I laugh, avoiding her gaze.
She’s easy. There’s no push and pull between us. She’s not smart-mouthed or throwing around words I’m never supposed to hear in my lifetime, nor is she overly nosy. She’s just another woman that’ll fall into that dark part of my brain after today.
“What’s next?” I ask.
“Lemon juice…” She grabs a bottle from under the bar and pours a splash in the same mixer. “And simple syrup.”
She puts the lemon juice back and grabs the simple syrup, pouring a dash inside the mixer too. Then she slams the top over the cocktail shaker and looks me in my eyes as she shakes it with so much force her titties bounce up and down in her low-cut shirt.
My eyes veer into her top, but my dick still won’t budge. It won’t even jump. If I ain’t know any better, I’d think it was heartbroken too.
She sets the shaker down and grabs a chilled champagne glass from the deep freezer behind her, keeping her eyes on me.
“You strain the mix in here,” she murmurs, blinking up at me through her fake lashes while grabbing a strainer from the sink and holding it over the glass.
The liquid drips into it in a slow dribble, and her tongue glides against her glossy lips. “Now we top it off with champagne.”
She tosses the strainer and cocktail shaker into the sink with the other dirty glasses and grabs an open bottle of champagne from under the bar, pouring it into the glass.
“You’re supposed to garnish it with a lemon twist, but this ain’t Uptown.
We don’t have shit like that here. We barely have champagne.
Folks around here prefer to celebrate with Hennessy. ”
She slides the cold glass toward me.
I stare at the drink as if I’ll find Slim in the yellow, bubbling liquid since she wasn’t in my whiskey yesterday or the day before.
“Taste it,” Mel says.
I pick up the cold glass with caution and put it to my lips.
“It’s the best French 75 you’ll ever have.”
I close my eyes and take a sip. The cold liquid flows down my throat and into my hot stomach.
Finally, I think I can taste Slim again.
The sour zing punches me in the gut like she knows I’m talking to another woman, and the sweetness rushes after it to soothe my insides. I think I even taste her tongue that I let run wild inside my mouth every time we kissed.
“So, what’s her name?” Mel asks.
My eyes pop open. “Huh?”
She grabs the empty glass my Jack was in. “I’ve spent the last seven years of my life bartending—the last three have been here at Jazzy’s. It’s only one dog everybody around here talks about—the big one.”
She stabs her long fingernail onto the hard surface of the bar. “And on a random Thursday night I finally get to see him in the flesh, but instead of telling me how he’s gonna fuck me when my shift is over, he’s asking me to make him the daintiest drink of all time. So again, what’s her name?”
My lips curve around the rim of the glass. “Baby…”
She snorts out a laugh and looks off to the side.
“Well, ‘Baby’ must be strict. She doesn’t even let you look?
She doesn’t know that it’s natural for a man like you to look?
You must got you one of those young bougie spoiled girls from the suburbs who doesn’t understand the nature of relationships with a man like you. ”
This time I laugh. “You really grew up around here? Or did you just visit when your daddy came to hang out at Lucky’s on Sundays?”
Her caramel cheeks turn red and she shrugs. “My daddy was raised here.”
“But you ain’t really from around here, are you?”
She pulls her towel from her back pocket, slapping it on the bar and buffing the spotless area between me and her. “I bounced back and forth between my mama and daddy. So that means I bounced back and forth between here and Richmond.”
“So you was one of them weekend babies that popped up in the Bottoms?”
She shrugs. “Weekends, holidays, birthdays—any day I could get over here. I was a daddy’s girl—always begging to run behind him any chance I got.”
“Hmm. I got you.” I nod. “Well, they always called my daddy the big dog around here—not me. I’m just Pup.”
I take another sip of my drink and savor it. Somehow I know it won’t be the best French 75 I ever had like she swore.
She rolls her eyes. “Let me guess, now you’re trying to school me on the neighborhood politics like the other dudes that come in here.”
“I don’t know nothing about that and even if I did, I wouldn’t talk about it with you. That’d be too ugly a topic for a pretty girl like you to hear. You a woman and I’m gon’ treat you as such.”
“Oh. Is that what you tell ‘Baby’, Pup?”
I tilt the glass and take the rest of the drink to the head before slamming it on the bar. “She calls me Rich.”
“Is Pup not sophisticated enough for her?”
“It ain’t even like that. I think she just met Rich before she ever met Pup. She from here too—right over off Chantilly.” I point behind me toward the entrance. “She went to Rhodes—the private school off Lafitte. Then she went to Lockwood.”
“So she’s a neighborhood girl, unlike me?”
“Yeah, but her people raised her up with some sense so she ain’t never been out in the streets pining over no dude that fight at Lucky’s.”
She scoffs. “If they raised her with so much sense, then how’d she end up with you?”
I laugh hard.
I think I get why Slim likes these soft ass drinks. They don’t make everything seem so bleak like Jack does. They leave a little space for hope…and humor.