“Always am, ma chérie.” She tapped her fingers to her lips and blew a kiss at me. “Now get that adorable little butt to your boring-ass job and serve some lame tables already. Maybe a customer in your section will end up being a handsome and available millionaire on the lookout for an independent-minded half-Creole girl with a quirky set of values.”
“I don’t have a quirky set of values,” I pouted as I opened the door.
“You really do,” she countered, winking at me. “But I love you anyway. Now scoot.”
“Well, if that isn’t a grand dismissal.” I rolled my eyes only to laugh and blow a kiss right back at her. “Bye. Love you too.”
But as I swept into the hallway of our third-floor walk-up apartment and shut the door behind me, I said to myself, “I like my values.”
Leeva was all about the pampered life, but I enjoyed earning my income and making my own way. My maw-maw had instilled a serious work ethic in me that made me feel pride and accomplishment for a job well done. It made me one of the best damn waitresses my café had ever seen too, if I did say so myself. So if that made me quirky, I figured so be it. Quirky was cool in my book.
Humming to the tune the busker was playing on the corner as I pushed from the front exit of the building on the ground floor, I hooked my mask into place and started down the street.
It’d been forever since I’d heard anyone play “Singin’ in the Rain,” and the saxophone rendered it perfectly. Made me want to click into a golden oldies station when I got home from work and see if I could watch a Gene Kelly movie.
I tossed some money into the instrument case as I passed, and the player winked at me in gratitude.
With the pandemic going on, the streets were fairly quiet. A few food trucks were unloading their wares in alleyways, and the rare couple walked past hand in hand for a morning stroll. Some were out walking dogs. But even the lone water truck on Bourbon looked like it was struggling to find something on the street to clean.
Work was only a few minutes away, in the heart of the French Quarter. I usually served the late crowd but I’d caught the midmorning shift this time around. Surprisingly, all the available tables were full by the time I entered through the front door, half of them purposely left empty for social distancing.
“Dori!” my coworker, Anthony, called as soon as he spotted me. His arms were full of plates loaded with pancakes, calas, grits, and sweet potatoes. “Thank God you’re here. We are hopping busy this morning. Whoa!”
One of the plates wobbled unsteadily in his arms, so I dived forward, calling, “Got it!” as I snagged it just before it toppled toward the floor.
Anthony froze a moment with his eyes closed before he blew out a breath and said, “Bless you, baby girl.”
“No problem,” I answered, relieving him of another plate. “This is what I do: serve meals and save the day.” Following him the rest of the way to his table, I assisted with distributing his load to bleary-eyed customers in dusty uniforms who looked as if they’d just gotten off a night shift.
“Enjoy your meal,” I told them with a smile, forgetting that they weren’t my customers.
One of the fellows perked up enough to give me a smile and a once-over, so I made sure to put a little extra bounce to my step when I turned away to stroll off.
It’d been almost a year since Alcée and I had split up. I needed to start putting myself out there as available again. The nights were starting to get lonely, and Leeva had her own life; she couldn’t be expected to keep me company as often as she did just because I was too gun-shy to trust myself with someone new.
“Dori!” the cook, Philippe, shouted from the back. “Are you on the clock?”
“Almost,” I called back and got my tush into gear, clocking in as quickly as possible, before adding, “Okay. Whatcha need?”
“Get some more rice from the supply room, will you, sweets?”
“On it.”
Time to save the day again. One bag of rice at a time.
I hurried to comply, then got to work, taking over for Babette, who was ready to go home.
Our café wasn’t one of the bigger-known establishments, but the locals were beginning to really enjoy what we had to offer. So I spent the next few hours on my feet, traveling from table to table, making sure everyone had what they needed.
It was satisfying work as long as the customers went away happy, so I usually made sure to shower them with the charm. The healthy tips told me I was doing a good job, aside from the few outliers that were impossible to please.
I was only about an hour away from the end of my shift when a commotion at the front drew my attention to a handful of people rushing through the entrance as if seeking a safe haven inside. More outside went flooding past on the sidewalk.
Pausing with a plate weighed down with a half-eaten meal, I asked, “What’s going on?”
“Riots,” one woman panted, out of breath as she clutched her diaphragm through each wheeze. “Over on Royal.”
Royal? Wasn’t that where Leeva said she’d be?
“No!” Setting the dirty plate on the side of a nearby table, I called to Anthony, “I’ll be right back!” And then I streaked toward the exit, chanting, “Please be safe, please be safe, please be safe.”
Most of the marches were peaceful, full of people with good intentions, but on those occasions that a bad seed entered the fray, they could turn scary and violent and life-threatening at the drop of a hat. I’d seen it happen. And I didn’t want my roommate anywhere near that.
Shouts and car horns sounded ahead as I raced down the sidewalk. My mask flew off as I sprinted, but I didn’t even pause to retrieve it. I had to find Leeva.
Flying around a corner, I skidded to a stop as I took in the chaos before me.
“No,” I breathed.
A mass of people surged one way, while another horde scattered, running in all different directions, protest signs waving madly in the air as they fled. Not far away, a car sat in flames, and glass broke in a nearby storefront as a brick sailed through it.
In the crux of it all, the police deployed smoke bombs and tear gas. I couldn’t say if the uproar had started because they had shown up, or they’d shown up because an uproar had begun. I guess it didn’t matter either way; this just needed to stop.
“Dori!” I heard a familiar shout.
Turning toward the call, I spotted my roommate rushing toward me, only half a block away, and relief flooded my veins.
I shouted back, crying her name just as something hit me on the side of the head.
It hurt. A lot.
I think I even blacked out for a bit because I felt myself falling but I don’t remember landing.
The next thing I recalled was this strange suction-type, flying sensation. Wind whipped at me as I flew—because I’m pretty sure I was flying, or maybe falling—at an incredible rate. When I managed to slit my eyes open, I saw darkness—like outer space kind of darkness—but there were also these crackling lights around me as if I were traveling through a tunnel of pure electricity.
It reminded me of the Bifrost bridge in the Marvel movies, except not quite as colorful. The electricity was mostly just a white-ish blue tint.
Tipping my head toward the warm wind rushing at me, I caught sight of the end of the tunnel approaching. It was full of blue sunlight, green vegetation, and a brown dirt road.