Countdown to

Into the Storm

8/2/06

14 days (and counting to Into the Storm, in stores on August 15th)

Note from Suz: Welcome to day number two of the Countdown!

Today I'm giving you the first installment of a short story called When Frank Met Rosie. This is a never-before-published story that I wrote specifically for this very countdown.

It was originally my intention to write a whole bunch of extremely short, light-hearted pieces, featuring characters who have long been reader favorites. Kenny (aka WildCard). Stan and Teri. Jules Cassidy. I've even had requests from readers who were interested in checking in on Mary Lou and Ihbraham!

So what do I do?

I sit down and start writing about a character, Navy SEAL Chief Frank O'Leary, that virtually NO ONE asks about. As Frank might say, "Go figure."

I'm going to go into more detail about why I wanted to write this story AFTER you've had the chance to read the whole thing. I'm going to be serializing it here, in three installments, starting today.

Without further ado, here's part one of When Frank Met Rosie.

When Frank Met Rosie

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...

(To be continued tomorrow...)

That's all for now! Be sure to come back for tomorrow's installment in the Countdown to INTO THE STORM!

(Note from Suz: I'm going to try to post each new day's countdown page before noon eastern time. Please be patient if I'm a little late...)

See you tomorrow!

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