weren’t messing with me? You sing professionally?”
“I did an ad on TV in Lafayette. I sang on TV once with Bonsoir Catin, too.” Then she blinked as though remembering he had not answered her question.
“You’re putting me on,” he said.
Her gaze was fixed on the way the orange and purple floodlights on the bandstand lit the haze that floated above the dance floor. She watched the musicians taking the stage. Her mouth was parted slightly, as though she were transfixed by the moment and the promise of the evening and the glitter on the cowboy costumes worn by the zydeco men. She swallowed drily.
Weingart motioned to the waitress. “What are you having?” he said to Tee Jolie.
“Whatever you are.”
“Can your bartender mix a Manhattan?” he said to the waitress.
The waitress looked at the bar and back at Weingart. “I can ax.”
“Can he handle two Diet Cokes?”
“That’s all?” the waitress said.
“Put some lime slices in them. Bring us some of that gumbo, too.”
“I don’t t’ink we have limes,” the waitress said.
“Don’t worry about it. The Cokes are fine,” he said.
Tee Jolie rested her chin on the heels of her hands. “Blue said you was nice.”
“Don’t believe everything you hear,” he said.
“The gumbo is made from robins. It’s illegal to do that. But we eat them anyways.”
“A couple of movies got made around here. Nobody asked you to try out for a part?”
She shook her head, smiling coyly. “Why you ax that?”
“Because you’re photogenic.”
She looked sideways, then back at him. “I don’t know what that means.”
He pointed at her. “That expression right there. Your face is an artwork. No matter when the camera freezes, the frame tells a story. Robert De Niro and Meryl Streep are like that. Your face has the same quality. It’s called photogenic. No one has ever told you that?”
“Not recently.”
“Look, this is a nice part of the country. I love the weather and the accents and the food and the music and all that stuff. But maybe you ought to think about expanding your horizons a little bit.”
She was smiling at him, more tolerant than flattered, interested perhaps more in the manner of his presentation than its substance. “I’m gonna be a movie star?”
“A writer doesn’t have a lot of influence in Hollywood. But I have friends in both the music and film industry who trust my instincts, God only knows why. I also know people who run an acting school, one that gives scholarships. I can make a couple of inquiries. It’s like prayer. What’s to lose?”
The waitress returned with their gumbo and drinks. “I had him put candied cherries in the Cokes. He was gonna put some old lemons in there. I tole him not to do that,” she said.
“Appreciate it,” Weingart said, nodding profoundly. He waited with his hands in his lap while the waitress seemed to take forever placing the bowls and glasses and paper napkins and plastic spoons on the table. “We all finished here now?”
“That’s sixteen dol’ars,” she said.
He counted out twenty-five dollars on her tray, putting the denominations in separate piles so the amount of his tip was obvious to anyone watching.
“T’ank you,” the waitress said.
Tee Jolie dipped her plastic spoon into the gumbo and placed it gingerly in her mouth. “You gonna ax me if I want an audition now?”
“I’m not sure that’s what you want. I think you’re a woman who goes her own way in her own time.”
“But you’re fixing to leave, aren’t you?”
“Why do you think that?”
“’Cause don’t nobody in a club give a big tip till he’s fixing to leave. I used to work in a restaurant.”
“You’re pretty smart. I’ve got a key to a sound studio in Lafayette. We’ll be there in thirty minutes.”
“You didn’t try to kiss Blue in your li’l car?”
“She told you that?”
“No.”
“She didn’t say that?”
“I was testing you. She didn’t say that at all. She said you was nice.”
He wiped his mouth with his paper napkin and pushed his bowl of gumbo away. He seemed to study the zydeco men on the bandstand without actually seeing them. The lead player, a gargantuan black man, had an accordion that rippled like purple ivory. His fingers were as big as sausages, but they danced across the keys and buttons as delicately as starfish. He had gone into Clifton Chenier’s signature song, “Hey, Tite F’ee,” rocking back and forth, his voice a flood of rust into the microphone. In the background, the rub-board man whipped the thimbles on his fingers up and down on the corrugated sheet of aluminum strapped to his chest.
“I’d like to do something for you, if you’d let me. But it’s up to you,” Weingart said.
“Do what for me?”
“Give you some exposure. Improve your life. Introduce others to your talent. What do you think we’ve been talking about, girl?” He paused. “I wrote novels and short stories for years. Nobody would touch them. I was dirt in the eyes of other people. Then I found somebody who believed in me.”
“Who?”
“Kermit Abelard.” He waited. “You don’t know who he is?”
“No.”
Weingart smiled. “Wonderful.”
“Why?”
“Nothing. Kermit needs a little humility once in a while. You’re something else. Want to take a ride?”
She smiled and shrugged. “You giving me a ride in the rain? ’Cause if you are, it’s not raining.”
“Girl, if you don’t have a career waiting for you, I’ll swallow a thumbtack. Cross my heart.”
She picked up her purse and looked at the bandstand as though saying either good-bye or hello to it. Weingart pressed his palm into the small of her back and walked outside with her under a blanket of stars that perhaps the girl believed had been created especially for her.
IN THE SHADOWS on the edge of the parking lot, a St. Martin Parish deputy sheriff was smoking a cigarette. She was short and slightly overweight and had gold hair, and her lipstick was thick enough to leave smears on the filter tip of her cigarette. The night was warm, and she wore a short-sleeved blue shirt turned up at the cuffs, exposing the plumpness of her upper arms. On nights when a band played at the club, she was one of several deputies who took turns doing security by the front door, primarily as a visual discouragement to parolees who could be violated back to Angola for drinking alcohol or keeping bad company. The job was boring, but the pay wasn’t bad, and it was also under the table.
One of the bartenders at the club was an elderly black twelve-string guitarist by the name of Hogman Patin. Both of his forearms were wrapped with scar tissue like flattened gray worms from knife beefs in Angola, where he had done time as a big stripe under the gun almost sixty years ago. He bore no animus toward whites or the system, and did not argue with others regarding his view of the world, namely that there was no difference between human beings except the presence or absence of money in their lives. But he had an animus, and it was one that went deep into his viscera. Hogman gave short shrift to those who exploited the innocent and the weak.
He wasn’t sure who Robert Weingart was and in fact could see only the clean lines of his profile and the shine of the tonic on his hair, but while Hogman poured the Diet Cokes and filled the bowls of gumbo Weingart had ordered, he studied Tee Jolie Melton and the glow on her face. It was the look of a girl who knew she was loved and beautiful and desired. Her eyes were bright, as though she was amused by the flattery she was hearing, as though the words of the well-dressed white man did not cause flowers to bloom in her cheeks. Hogman asked the waitress who the white man was.
