Chapter Twenty-eight
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Luc
Running away from your problems is a race you’ll never win.
Still, sometimes the only thing you can think to do is beat feet and avoid your issues altogether.
Since I have no idea what to say to Cash about today’s doctor’s visit, and since I’m of two minds when it comes to his grand plan concerning Maggie, I dodge both subjects and instead touch on something that’s been bugging me since the night of Jelly Bean Jenkins’s second line.
“I lied to Maggie May.”
We’re on Cash’s stoop, and a cool breeze rushes past us, shaking the palmetto tree in the courtyard next door. Music echoes from Bourbon Street. The melody and lyrics are new to me, but the rhythm is ancient. (Rhythms are always ancient.) And the smell of frying andouille sausage drifts through the open front door of the house across the street, filling the air with its unmistakable spice.
Cash’s face is limned in the golden glow of the streetlights. Instead of addressing my admission, he glances up as if searching for something.
“What?” I tilt my head back, scanning the star-studded sky. “What d’ya see?”
“Nothing yet. But pigs are bound to fly by any second now. Next, the salmon will sing in the streets. And finally, hell will freeze over.”
“Oh, ha-ha.” I nudge him. “Smart-ass.”
“That’s me.” He snaps me a sarcastic salute. “Add it to my long list of sins.”
“Can’t. That list is already full.”
He grins, and for a moment I see a hint of the man I knew from before the bombing. “Okay,” he says, “I’ll bite. What did you lie to Maggie about?”
“Why I never got married.”
He frowns. “What’d you tell her?”
“I gave her this lame-ass explanation about how tough the military is on relationships. Said I’d watched our teammates couple up and flame out. Claimed that since I only aimed to get married once, I reckoned I better wait until my loyalties weren’t split between family and country.”
“That’s not true?” His eyebrows arch.
“It’s a partial truth. But it’s not thewholetruth.”
“So what’s thewholetruth?”
I shrug and shake my head. “That’s the thing. I don’t rightly know. It can’t be ’cause I never met any nice women. I’ve met plenty. And it’s not ’cause, as you say, I was too busy practicing procreation to ever get around to actually doing it. I’d love to have had a rug rat or two. But there was always something holding me back from making a commitment.” I lift a hand and let it fall. “Why didn’tyouever try to settle down?”
He stares out at the street, absently fingering the scar on his head. “I guess I don’t really know either. Maybe it was Maggie. I had this image of her, you know? The perfect woman. No one else could measure up.”
Maybe that’s what it’s always been for me too. Although, I don’t plan on admitting it to him anytime soon. Confirming his suspicions about my feelings for her won’t do either of us any good. As my daddy used to say, it’s best to let sleeping dogs lie.
A hobo with a set of close-set raisins for eyes accompanied by a scruffy dog wearing a lopsided bandanna walks up to us. Cash pulls out his wallet, hands the man a five-spot, and gets a hat tip in thanks for his generosity. Across the way, a trio of men are headed up the block toward Bourbon Street, arms slung around each, drunkenly singing Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies.” And jogging around the corner in a three-piece suit is a musician on his way to or from a gig. His trombone case swings jauntily from his hand.
Good ol’ New Orleans…
This city is America epitomized. A hodge-podge of classes and cultures. Like any good seafood gumbo, the magic is in the mix.
“When it comes to the end or the means, which do you think is more important?” Cash asks after a bit.
I eye him. “Is this the portion of the programming where we dispense with the bullshit?”
“Maybe.” He hitches a shoulder. “It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. If you do something bad, but it’s for a good cause, does that make it okay?”
