When Frank Met Rosie
by Suzanne Brockmann
Part One
November 25, 1999
New Orleans,
Louisiana
The music made
him stop and turn around.
It was just a
solo voice – a man singing the richest, bluesiest version of Silent Night that
Frank O’Leary had ever heard. It
drew him closer when he should have headed away from the French Quarter and back
toward his hotel.
Where his damn
fool of a half-brother was no doubt still holding court in the lobby bar.
Lord Jesus save him from imbeciles. Of
course, he himself could be included in that subset, considering he’d agreed
to come to New Orleans for the holiday.
It was their
mother who’d been the glue that kept them connected, Frank and Casey.
Her constant smile and teasing words lightened the years of bad feelings
between brothers who'd been born more than a decade apart.
Now, though, they had less than nothing in common.
And yet Frank
had come all the way from California on one of the busiest travel days of the
year at Casey’s request.
Because he’d
thought she would’ve wanted him to. Because
she’d valued her precious family -- her two such different sons -- so highly.
Despite being
just a few blocks down from the whore-house-on-heavy-stun dementia of
past-midnight Bourbon Street, this narrow road was deserted.
A right turn revealed a street just as empty of tourists, but it
definitely brought him closer to that angelic voice.
Not like Frank
was in any danger from the flash and blood demons who crept out of the rotting
woodwork of this city at night, no sir.
With his
thrice-broke nose, his hair grown out from his usual no-frills tight and square
cut, and his PT-hardened body, he knew he looked like the type most folks
crossed the street to avoid.
He looked -- as
Casey had so often scornfully told him throughout his teenaged years – as if
he had barely a dime in his jeans pocket. Like
a drifter. Like lowlife loser scum.
Like
his father, who’d cleaned out their mother’s bank account when he’d left,
back when Frank was nine and Casey was twenty.
The joke was
that Casey had asked Frank to Thanksgiving dinner to borrow money.
He’d lost nearly everything in bad investments.
And since he knew that Frank still had his share from the recent sale of
their mother’s house…
And here he’d
thought Casey’d wanted his company during this difficult holiday season, the
first since their mother had passed.
Happy fucking
Thanksgiving to you, too, bro.
Yeah, the real
joke here was that Frank had left his real brothers behind in San Diego.
His SEAL teammate Sam Starrett had hosted a dinner in the apartment he
shared with Johnny Nilsson. He’d
even roasted a turkey. Nils and the
Card were in charge of the vegetables. Jenkins
was in charge of dessert. Everyone
else brought beer.
Instead of
settling in for a day of food, friends and football, Frank had shared a grim
meal with Casey and his current wife (was Loreen number three or four?) up in
their hotel suite. He’d escaped as
quickly as possible after letting Casey know he’d already earmarked their
mama’s money -- all of it -- for something special.
A down-payment on a condo or maybe even a boat.
Still,
it didn’t take Casey long to join him in the bar.
Could Frank maybe co-sign a loan? Or
let him borrow just a bit off that down-payment...?
No, no, no, don’t answer right away, bro.
Just think about it...
Fifteen minutes
of listening to his brother regaling the waitresses with tales of his own
magnificence was all he could endure, and Frank escaped from the hotel bar as
well.
But wandering
Bourbon Street had only been mildly amusing for a very short time.
Preservation Hall was already closed up tight and silent, and the bands
playing in the various bars were entertaining only to inebriated ears.
Watching grown men acting like frat boys drinking in the street and
gazing with calf eyes at the teenage whores was flatout creepy.
And then there was that old woman -- probably just an actress wrapped in
rags and wearing stage-makeup warts – who’d first enticed Frank closer,
offering to read his palm, and then, after only one brief look, had bluntly
refused.
She’d shaken
her head at him, backing away in alarm.
Which didn’t
mean a goddamn thing.
Like anyone
with eyes in their head and a lick of sense couldn’t tell from looking at him
that he lived a dangerous life…?
Frank glanced
at his watch. If he knew Sam
Starrett, the meal would have long since been replaced by a deck of cards and a
pile of poker chips. There’d be
plenty more beer, lots of laughter, and music on the boom box -- although
nothing that could compare to this solo voice -- the owner of which still eluded him.
Silent Night
segued into an Ave Maria as sung by an angel who’d done his share
of hard time on this earth.
Frank rounded
the corner, and there the street singer stood.
He was a wiry black man in his late fifties, although he might’ve been
younger. Hard living could’ve
given him that antique veneer a decade or two early.
He was standing in a store front, the pane glass windows creating a
makeshift acoustical shell that amplified his magical, youthful voice.
Only a few
people had gathered to listen to him sing. A
group of older folks -- three sets of couples -- clearly tourists, laden with
Mardi Gras beads, used their cameras to snap his picture.
A bedraggled young woman stood slightly apart from them, in a sequin top
and tight-fitting black pants, looking like sex for sale.
The singer’s
voice faltered, and Frank slowed his steps, shortening his stride as all eight
of them turned almost at once to look at him.
They shrank away as if they all were fortune-tellers and knew that an
anvil was on the verge of falling on top of him, out of the clear blue sky.
Cloudy sky,
actually. It was definitely going to
rain again tonight.
And not all of
them shrank from him. The girl --
she didn’t look more than seventeen -- didn’t seem too afraid.
Probably because she hadn’t yet met her pimp’s quota for the night,
and saw him as a potential john.
She had to be
relatively new to the city, new at her distasteful job.
She was still pretty, with long, dark hair, and deep brown eyes.
Her skin hadn’t yet acquired that unmistakable gray pallor caused by
substance abuse and nocturnal living. She
gave her top a hike northwards as she met his gaze and smiled a greeting.
The Red Hat
Club and their spouses weren’t quite as friendly.
They quickly scurried off down the street.
“Sorry,
man,” Frank told the singer, taking out his wallet and extracting a twenty.
“Didn’t mean to chase ‘em away.”
He dropped the
bill in the cardboard shoebox being used in lieu of a hat.
The man clearly couldn’t afford headwear, dressed as he was in
Salvation Army cast-offs, T-shirt dirty and torn, feet shoved into sneakers with
the toes cut off.
“S’okay,”
the singer said, still eyeing him warily. “They were twenty-five cent-ers.
It’s been that kind of night. Aside
from your twenty, I ain’t got mor’n a buck seventy-five.”
Did he really
think...? “I ain’t gon’ rob
you, man,” Frank said slipping easily into the molasses thick accent of his
childhood.
The singer
nodded, but didn’t seem convinced. “If
you did, you wouldn’t be the first. Like
I said, it’s been that kind of night.”
“You take
requests?” Frank asked.
“For twenty
bucks?” The man’s lips twisted in what might’ve passed for a smile.
“Son, I’ll perform unnatural acts.”
Jesus, he
wasn’t kidding. “Amazing
Grace,” Frank said, “is what I’m hoping for.”
The singer’s
eyes were dark with understanding as he looked up from his crouch beside his
box. His hands were shaking as he
slipped the twenty beneath the newspaper that lined the bottom of his container,
and Frank knew the man wasn’t going to spend that cash on either food or
shelter, and wasn’t that a crying shame?
“I guess we
all need savin’ at some point or ‘nother,” the singer said, straightening
back up.
“Yes, sir,”
Frank agreed. Some more than most.
The man closed
his eyes, took a deep breath and started to sing.
It was strange
hearing that rich voice coming out of that scrawny, dried up husk of a body.
Clearly the Lord worked in mysterious ways.
Frank closed
his eyes, too, letting the familiar words wash over him, the melody soaring and
dipping, carrying out into the unnaturally warm Louisiana night.
He sensed more
than heard the girl as she moved to stand beside him, and he mentally
inventoried his valuables. Wallet
was in his front jeans pocket. It
wasn’t getting picked without him noticing, that was for damn sure.
He wore his dive watch on his left wrist.
His hotel keycard was in his back pocket -- easy to lose, but not a
problem if it got taken. What was
she gonna do? Go into the Sheraton
and try every room on every floor, looking for the lock it opened?
Security would escort her out the back door within thirty seconds.
She shifted
slightly, and Frank caught a whiff of her perfume.
She actually smelled nice -- like vanilla.
Mixed, of course, with whiskey. He
opened his eyes and as he turned to look down at her – she was about an entire
foot shorter than he was – she smiled again.
“He’s
incredible, huh?” she whispered.
Frank nodded.
Up close, she was even prettier than he’d first thought, with clear,
perfect skin and lively eyes in a heart-shaped face.
She opened her
mouth to speak again, but he spoke first. “Ain’t
lookin’ to get hoovered, Sugar, even by a mouth as pretty as yours.
Don’t waste your time on me.”
She blinked at
him, clearly confused. “I’m
sorry, I didn’t... You said,
you’re not looking to get…?”
Ah, shit.
Her accent and words were pure well-educated Northerner.
Her voice wasn’t that of a seventeen year old, either.
She was closer to ten years older. And
Frank could see now that her bedraggled state was merely from being caught in
the rain that had poured down a few hours earlier, as if someone had pulled the
plug in heaven.
“Sorry,” he
said quickly. “I thought… I
was wrong.”
Just his luck,
she wasn’t drunk enough to let it slide. He
could see her replaying the words he’d said, trying to figure out the ones
she’d missed -- or misunderstood.
“Hoovered,”
she said with a laugh, comprehension dawning.
“As in... Right.
Okay.” She quickly turned
back to stare, as if fascinated, at the singer, color tingeing her cheeks.
“I’m feeling pretty friendly tonight, but not that friendly.
Wow.”
Shit, now he
was blushing, too. Great.
“Sorry,” he said again.
She turned to
look at him again. “You really
thought I was…?” Amazingly, she
wasn’t offended, just curious. Interested
even.
Frank tried to
explain. “Most women... out alone,
this time of night…” He
shrugged.
She nodded,
accepting the misunderstanding as an honest mistake.
And if he weren't mistaken, she was more than a little thrilled to have
been taken for a prostitute. Go
figure.
They stood
there then, just listening to the music, to the timeless words.
I once was lost but now I’m
found,
Was blind but now I see...
When
Frank Met Rosie
By Suzanne Brockmann
© 2006 by Suzanne Brockmann