Rescued By A Kiss (The New Orleans Go Cup Chronicles Book 1) (2 page)

Before the last float approached, Julia and I left so we could make it to the Municipal Auditorium, where the parade would disband. Where the parade ends always looks like a scene right out of a Godzilla movie, with the Japanese fleeing the monster in mass hysteria. The traffic, people, animals, police cars, floats, bands, equipment and riders all scrambled. Everyone was pushing, shoving, and cursing to get to the next party, a carnival ball, or home. A free-for-all didn’t begin to describe it.

I found him. I found him right away. The necktie he wore with the tuxedo hung untied around his neck. He looked at me at the same time I spotted him and he broke into a heart-melting smile. He was even better looking when he smiled. I couldn’t stop the heat rising up my body to my face or the smile I felt spreading from ear to ear. He was walking away from me at a 45-degree angle, and without losing a beat to change direction his next step moved in the direction of my face. This was easier than I thought. It felt as if the cone of silence that enveloped us while kissing was going to work again.

Julia stood right next to me and pointed over my shoulder saying, “There he is!” She sounded as if she were off in the distance.

Our eyes remained glued on each other as he continued making his way toward me. Again, I didn’t need to push and shove. People just moved out of the path we made to each other. As we came face-to-face, we both reached out our hands to take the others. Just as we touched hands, and before I could even ask his name, or tell him mine, a shot was fired. The sound of the gun exploded next to my head.

Everyone went berserk, running into us from every direction. We never lost eye contact as he went down to the ground. When he pulled me to my knees along with him, I saw the blood all over his shirt. He pulled me in close to his face, squeezed my hands and gasped, “Please, help me. Please save Isabella.” Then he passed out.

The police were everywhere.

I
hadn’t expected
that night to spin out of control the way it did. It had started out like any other Friday after work. I planned a quick stop by the animal shelter to drop off some newspapers on my way home. Besides dropping off the papers, I made a pickup, which wasn’t uncommon for me. I couldn’t look the other way, especially for a sad dog no one wanted. Dealing with another dog was going to make me late to meet my friends for the parade and I had to sneak it past my mother.

“Shhhh. Stay quiet now,” I whispered to the little dog inside the pet carrier. The car door seemed a lot bigger when I put the dog crate in here at the shelter.

I was leaning into the car, struggling with the crate, when a man leaned over me and I felt his breath on my neck. “You should try to be more stealthy if you don’t want to get caught,” he said as he grabbed me around the waist.

I spun around ready to start punching when I realized who the voice belonged to. “Dante, you scared me, I almost screamed.” I never noticed his squad car parked there when I had pulled into our driveway. Dante’s stealthiness and equanimity came courtesy of U.S. Military training. If you asked him exactly what he did on his tour, he changed the subject or flat out ignored the question and then walked off.

“Do you want my mother to see me with another dog?” I started struggling with the dog crate again.

“Really, Brandy? She is going to see it and hear it,” he said. “You live in the same house.”

“Why are you home anyway? Did you lose your parade?” I asked, annoyed that he didn’t try to help me with the crate. He stood there and watched me wrestle it out of the car.

He waited until I gave him my undivided attention as we stood face to face with the dog crate between us. “We got a lunch break after ten hours of work and I’ll probably work another ten hours, so I came home to change into a clean uniform. I’ll see you at the parade in the usual spot, but come straight home after. I can’t meet you tonight. At roll call we were briefed to stay on another two hours after the parade. At roll call, the Lieutenant said they are expecting trouble and they want us on duty in case it goes down.”

His tired face leaned into mine and kissed me on the check. “You smell like King Cake,” he said. “Randazzo’s?”

“Yes, I passed it on the way home and have two in the front seat. Want some?”

“It only looks like one and a half King Cakes. You’ve been sampling?”

“Just doing a quality control check to make sure it meets my King Cake standards, and I gave some to Fido here to make friends. He was hungry.” I leaned in and broke off a chunk for him to take with him. When I came out of the car he was holding the crate, so I stuck the King Cake in his mouth and he transferred the carrier to me.

“I gotta run,” he said, chewing. “I’ll see you at the parade. Maybe tomorrow night we can grab a bite.” He walked off and got in his squad car. As he drove away, he leaned out the window, turned the police search light on me and announced over the loudspeaker, “Brandy Alexander go straight home. Remember what I told you.”

The entire neighborhood heard what my marching orders were. The back door to the house creaked and I couldn’t hold it open and get the crate in at the same time. I was struggling again when it flew open and there stood our housekeeper of the last umpteen years.

Woozie held the door with one hand, the other on her hip, pressing her back to the frame to allow me to squeeze past. “Oh Sweet Jesus, you done brought home another stinky dog. Your mama gonna pitch a conniption fit.”

“Shhh,” I was trying to keep Woozie quiet. “I’m trying to get this guy in and cleaned up before she sees it.”

“Brandy, your mama got eyes in the ceiling, and these walls are paper thin. Everybody hears everything about everybody else in this house. She already knows you got that dog. Thank Gawd I’m finished for today and needs to catch me the Magazine bus before all you crazy people going to the parade get streets shut down.” Woozie was a true ‘Yat’ and pronounced most words starting with ‘th’ with a ‘d’. This, that, these and those sounded like dis, dat, dese and dose.

“I’m supposed to go to the parade too, with Julia. I’m late ’cuz I had to go get this little guy.”

“Cuz you had to get another dog?” Woozie tipped her head side-to-side with every word mimicing me.

“He was left tied to the fence outside the shelter. I couldn’t leave him there or I’d have nightmares.”

“You gonna be living with the nightmare once your mama sees him.” She stood at the bottom step and nodded toward the living room where my mother was. Woozie blew me a kiss. “I read the cards for your mama and in there was one with your name on it. The Tarot said, ‘Brandy, stay home.’ You should stay home tonight or you might catch your death of cold. Good luck with that mutt.” She left with the big shopping bag she carried around with her like a purse. Woozie lugged it around with her everywhere she went. The only thing I ever saw her take in or out of the shopping bag was a deck of Tarot cards.

Woozie read the Tarot every time she came to clean. It seemed she made up the predictions depending on what was happening that day. If we doubted something in the cards, she pulled out a crystal on a silk cord and let it circle around a few times by way of confirming her reading. While none of us put any stock in Woozie’s superstitions, we minded not to tell her as much.

I hoped her comments about the dog were being drowned out by the ruckus at the front of the house. Someone was hammering away on the front door and it set the dogs off barking while I tried to sneak in the back. Maybe my mother hadn’t heard us. From the hall I could see the drama unfolding in the living room.

“Come in, it’s open,” Dad bellowed from his Lazy Boy command center over the yapping dogs.

Julia entered in broadcast mode and could be heard throughout our house. I stood in the hallway and tried to get Julia’s attention without alerting my mother. Julia fired off questions, asking how they were, were they going to the parade, was I home yet and was this all the dogs I had rescued? Her questions ran together like they were all somehow related. She asked the dogs questions, too, and didn’t wait for anyone to answer her. “Get back, you little wild Nicki Hokies. I’m not chasing you up the street in these four-inch heels. Gawd, it is cold tonight.” She stood five foot eleven inches before you added the four-inch heels and big hair.

Julia and I had worked together in sales at the phone company until a month ago when she was laid off. When I asked her what was a Nicki Hokie she responded it had to do with her Indian heritage and that was her tribe. Her outfits, too tight, too low cut, and too short for my mother’s approval, always met my dad’s. Tonight’s ensemble was a combination of animal prints. She looked like Peg Bundy slammed into Chris Owens on Bourbon Street. I tried to get Julia’s attention.

“If you covered your chest in clothes made for this weather you might not be so cold,” my mother admonished Julia. My mother expressed her dissatisfaction with a look that could cut through cinder block. Julia ignored her. Seeing them spar reminded me of lady wrestlers circling each other vying for the best position to strike.

“If I covered my assets, I wouldn’t catch any beads. Y’all going to the parade with us?” Julia asked my dad, as she glared at me standing in the hall holding the crate.

“Brandy parked in the back. I heard her sneaking in the back door with another dog when Woozie left,” my mother told her. Except for vital exchanges of information or a chance at a back-handed insult, my mother and Julia ignored each other.

Great, she knew. So much for the element of surprise, I thought.

“C’mon, I need to change before we leave,” I said to Julia. Dad got up and followed saying, “You two better step on it. I just saw the trouble truck through the front window go by right before you knocked.” Dad took his self-appointed job as parade monitor seriously. From his Lazy Boy Operations Post in front of the Camp Street window, he could see when the parade’s trouble truck passed. Spotting this truck allowed him to announce the parade’s estimated time of arrival. The trouble truck, outfitted with a pole indicating the tallest point of the parade, assessed overhead clearance for the floats to pass safely along under a tree, power line, or bridge. Once the truck passed, the parade was just minutes away. At any moment we would hear motorcycle sirens blasting, clearing people out of the street to make way for the beginning of the parade. We would have to hurry to get there for the start of it.

My apartment sat in back of the main house down the hall from the living room, and shared the side entrance. Julia said it was within “snooping distance” of my mother so she could hear me change my mind. Dad and Julia checked out the dog.

Julia gushed over the furry black ball while the dog wiggled in her arms. Then she held him out at arm’s length. “He kinda stinks,” she put the dog down and looked for somewhere to wash her hands. “His hair looks like dreadlocks. Why don’t you name him Bob Marley? Are you sure he is a Schnauzer?”

“Yes, he’s a Schnauzer and his name is . . . ,” I said trying to think of one.

“Go Cup,” my dad finished for me. “With a name like Go Cup your mother will think he won’t be here long. You girls get going to the parade. I’ll take care of this little guy.” He continued to give the dog a vigorous head petting. “Boy, you do stink but you can’t help it, can you? I’ll get you cleaned up.”

“Go Cup is all right, I guess, but spell it G-e-a-u-x instead of Go,” I said. “I’d planned to bathe him, but the parade traffic was awful. I found him tied to the fence outside the shelter.”

My calling to do animal rescue came from Dad. He was always bringing home strays. When I was in sixth grade, Dad brought home a little black Schnauzer mix I named Cricket Ann. She lived with me for fifteen years. When she went to the Big Milk Bone in heaven, I decided I wanted a dog as close to her size and personality as possible. At the shelter, there was a full-bred black Schnauzer that looked just like her. I named him Meaux Jeaux and he put paw prints on my heart the second I saw him. Meaux ruled over everyone in our house, even my mother who made overtures of disapproval when it came to the dogs. But I would see her sneak scraps to Meaux under the table during dinner.

“What are you wearing?” Julia asked, not waiting for me to answer my dad.

“I’ll groom him when I get home if you’ll bathe him,” I said to Dad. “I’m wearing this,” I said to Julia, stepping out the bathroom in a turtleneck and jeans.

“No, wear that scoop-neck sweater that shows some cleavage,” Julia said.

“You know we can’t keep another dog. Your mother . . .” Dad was trying to change the conversation back to the dog.

“I know. Four dogs are three over the limit.” Raising my right hand up and placing my left hand over my heart, I made the pledge. “I will go on record and say I plan to find this one a home.” To Julia I added, “I’m wearing parade colors,” as I pulled out a purple sweater and stepped back into my bathroom to change into it along with the matching lace bra and thong underwear as well. If someone was going to look down my sweater, I wanted them to know I had fashion sense. I put on a jacket and zipped it up to avoid my mother’s disapproving look on my way out the door.