Chapter Three

Why I picked the Coeur de Vie, I couldn’t possibly have said, but it was the first good thing that had happened to me all day.

I had a miserable night’s sleep, but honestly? I don’t think anyone was expecting any different, given the circumstances. Letting Lauren talk me out of my sadness had worked for all of ten minutes once we hung up. Once the kitchen was cleaned (Check… not that it seemed to matter anymore) and I’d nibbled absentmindedly at half a bowl of cold pasta for an hour and a half, I’d decided to go to bed. A lonely evening of watching Netflix just hadn’t seemed appealing for some reason, but in the darkness my brain circled back around to just what Carter had said.

This just isn’t working.

It was never going to work out.

Never.

Never, never, never.

It was a two-syllable punch to the gut, repeated over and over until I finally managed to pass out, just about three hours before I needed to wake up to catch my flight.

The airport was awful, as airports always are. Whether it was normal practice for a flight from O’Hare to New Orleans, I couldn’t have said, but both the terminal and the flight seemed to be filled with happy families and couples holding hands, all of them smiling and all of them utterly in love. No one seemed to have a care in the world except me, even though we were all about to find ourselves cold and cramped and further from the ground than human beings had any scientific right to be. I had never been a big fan of flying, but it was always easier with Carter next to me. Having him there always managed to soothe my anxiety a little, even though he had managed to sleep through every plane journey we’d ever taken together, from wheels-up to the bumpy landing. The flight was far from smooth to begin with, but with my nerves shredded even through my exhaustion I ended up bouncing my leg so hard I can’t be sure that at least some of the turbulence wasn’t caused by me.

By the time I got off the plane and found my way into the main body of the airport, I was a wreck. I checked my phone the second I was in the terminal, hoping against hope that when I looked down I’d have a missed call or a text from him telling me that he was sorry and that he’d had a momentary lapse of brain function, had made a terrible mistake, wished that we could start all over again.

There wasn’t one.

There wasn’t one by the time the cab driver had dropped me off at the hotel either, and as I sidled up to the front desk I almost relished the temporary distraction. For a little while I considered trying to get a refund on the additional charge I had paid to have Carter stay with me, but I didn’t feel like I had the fight in me – and besides, I didn’t want to risk him changing his mind. It was easier just to keep things as they were. All I wanted to do was get to my room, unpack my things, and take an hour or so to myself before facing Lauren. I knew I should have gone down to hunt her out right away, but…

But I wasn’t ready for that. I needed some time to get my shit together, especially if the rest of Lauren’s bridal party was going to be around.

The room wasn’t the place for me to do it, that was for sure. In an effort to appeal to the wedding guests, no doubt, the whole damn place looked as though the hotel had hired Cupid as an interior decorator. From the fresh cut flowers in a vase on the dresser to the twin paintings bookending the windows – one, a portrait of lovers kissing in front of the Eiffel Tower; the other, two swans with their necks curled towards each other in the shape of a heart – it was a monument to kitsch romance, tacky at the best of times but absolutely unbearable now.

A box of chocolates with a note attached to it had been placed on the bed. From one happy couple to another, complements of the Hotel Belle View, the card said. We hope you enjoy your stay.

Well, there wasn’t much chance of that. I gritted my teeth, picked up my purse, and practically ran out into the hallway and out onto the street. My first thought was just to take a moment and get a little fresh air, but a sea of pedestrians threatened to trample me if I stayed still for too long and so I found myself letting them carry me off down the sidewalk. The air was thick with conversation, a buzzing wall of noise and chatter and laughter that was impossible to break through; everyone seemed to be having a great time, but to my ears it all blurred into one unbearable cacophony. Above me on the balconies overlooking the street, drunken tourists threw down strings of beads despite the fact that Mardi Gras was still over a month away. Some of my fellow walkers grinned up and whooped appreciatively, but I just cast them a stern glare. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest, that same tension from the flight building up inside me again, quickening my pulse and setting me on edge.

I wish Carter were here, I thought. He’d help me. He’d calm me down.

The very idea made things so much worse, and I struggled to pull myself out of the crowd, to get some breathing room. Even in February, the temperature in New Orleans was markedly different to the snow that had been threatened all winter back in Chicago, and between that and the stress of the situation it didn’t take long before I could feel a clammy wetness spreading across my forehead like the first stages of a fever. I could probably have gone back to the hotel, but I didn’t want anyone to see me in what might well have been the early stages of a panic attack, and so I kept on walking, turning left and then right and then left again down street after street, trying my best to get away from the crowds of drunken revellers who had already turned up in party mode despite the fact that it was still practically the afternoon. The air was stagnant, like breathing swamp water, and the lights of the bars disorienting.

I had been in New Orleans for less than an hour, and I’d hated every second of it.

Maybe a drink will calm my nerves a little, I thought. Just something to take the edge off.

It certainly couldn’t hurt. I began scanning around, looking for somewhere I could get a quick, quiet drink among the throngs of tourists. A woman who must have been over forty stood in the doorway of a place that didn’t even have enough delusions of class to call itself a Gentleman’s Club, flirting with the crowd in an effort to entice them to watch her strip. Her eyes met mine and I just lowered my gaze, scuttling along down the block until she was safely behind me.

And so I had walked on, waiting for something to catch my eye. In the end, it caught my ear first.

Over the corralled chaos of the French Quarter, I heard the high notes of a trumpet coming from one of the doors. A hand-painted wooden sign above the door announced it as the Coeur de Vie Jazz Club, complete with live music. Unlike most of the other bars I had passed, this one seemed to have mostly been passed over by the tourist crowd.

What are you waiting for, an invitation? I chided myself. My feet were heavy, and seemingly stuck to the sidewalk; the dark entrance to the Coeur de Vie wasn’t as enticing as the other clubs on the street, the staircase down to the basement room seeming almost menacing by comparison to their bright lights and friendly attitude. I must have passed a dozen shops filled with voodoo trinkets since I began my walk, but none of them felt like more than a tourist gimmick – a show for the out-of-towners. Something about this place sent a shiver down my spine, though, like the old wives’ tales about what happens when someone walks over your grave.

Don’t be ridiculous, I told myself again. Old wives’ tales are all they are. It’s a jazz club, not a mausoleum. Besides, no matter how it might have seemed on the outside, it was a thousand times more inviting than my stupid hotel room.

I took a deep breath of the stagnant New Orleans air, pushed aside the bead curtain that marked the club’s entrance, and headed downwards out of the light.