Drive

by Stephanie Fournet

  Pal chewed on his smile and kept his eyes narrowed so he wouldn’t look too pleased. Jacques knew this. This was the way they operated. He’d oversleep. Pal would get cranky. Jacques wouldn’t exactly apologize, but he’d give his grandfather his due, and nothing more needed to be said.

  “Don’t mine if ah do,” Pal grumbled.

  So he made a fresh pot, drank two cups with Pal, and told him about the show. His grandfather couldn’t really appreciate it, but he pulled up the YouTube video someone had posted of “Lazarus Night” and showed him how it already had more than four hundred views.

  After coffee and a shower, the video had more than seven hundred views. Kate had added him as an administrator on the band’s Facebook page, and the comment feed from her post the night before stretched to two hundred.

  And while Rainey hadn’t texted him back yet, all of the girls in the band were blowing up his phone. He sat on the edge of his bed, read their messages, responded, and then called Rainey.

  Her phone went to voicemail, so he hung up. She’d see that he’d called. He didn’t need to make her listen to him talk like an idiot.

  As soon as he hung up, his phone rang, and the instant before he saw the ID, he figured it had to be Rainey.

  But it was Kate.

  “Hey,” he answered.

  “Oh my fucking God!” she roared. “You are NOT going to believe this!”

  He could hear screaming in the background. The girly kind.

  “What?” he asked, both laughing and wincing at their noise.

  “THEY WANT US TO PLAY FESTIVAL!”

  Jacques shot off his bed. “What!” Festival International de Louisiane was the premier music and culture festival in Southwest Louisiana. It brought in more than four-hundred-thousand attendees — many from the far reaches of the globe. And it was in two weeks. “What do you mean? That’s impossible?”

  Bands couldn’t just sign up to play. They had to submit an application months in advance, and they had to meet specific cultural criterion. Local musicians were featured, of course, but priority was given to those with “Francophone emphasis.” Jacques knew this because he’d tried to secure a spot for Epoch the last three years.

  And Heroine did not have Francophone emphasis.

  “The director for Scène Fais Do Do was at the show last night.”

  Jacques sucked in a breath. Scène Fais Do Do was one of the five stages scattered around Downtown Lafayette, the setting for the festival.

  “He saw us, and he wants to add us to the lineup for the Courir du Festival 5k,” Kate said, her own voice going breathy with wonder.

  “You’re fucking kidding me.” The festival ran from Wednesday through Sunday on the last weekend of April. The Courir 5k was early in the morning on the Saturday before the rest of the stages got rolling at 10:00 a.m. The crowd of runners wasn’t huge.

  But the radio coverage was.

  Radio Canada, TV5Monde, Radio France, and Afropop Worldwide all covered the festival. Not to mention KRVS, the local public radio station. And since no other performances would be ongoing, Scène Fais Do Do would be the only lineup to cover. The exposure was staggering.

  “Not kidding, man,” Kate said, her voice a happy growl. “We rock. We’re Cajun famous.”

  Disbelief finally fell away, and Jacques boomed. “Yeah! Hell, yes!” His feet left the ground, and his bed and dresser rattled as they struck the floor three times.

  “Ma goddamn!” Pal bellowed from the foot of the stairs. “What’s goin’ on up dere?”

  Jacques pulled the phone away from his ear. “Hang on, Pal,” he called, his voice cracking — actually cracking — with the excitement. “I’ll come tell you in a sec.”

  “You killed you a rat up dere?” his grandfather asked, and Jacques dissolved in fits of laughter. He could hear Kate laughing too, and Kate’s laugh, as singular as she, sounded like a car with a bad starter.

  “Non, attendez, s’il vous plait,” he called down, relying again on his French to placate his grandfather.

  “You speak French?” Kate croaked, still snickering.

  “Just enough to satisfy my granddad.”

  “Hmm… we might have to take advantage of that. You’ll definitely need to brush up for Festival.”

  A jolt went through him at her words. “Holy shit. This is real, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, man. Really fuckin’ awesome.”

  Jacques let that sink in a minute. And then, “We need more songs.”

  He heard Kate sniff. “You’re not lying.”

  Over the next ten minutes, they specced out a rehearsal schedule and built in some time to compose together. Jacques also needed to drive, and he wanted to keep some of his time for Rainey. In short, he knew he was about to be seriously busy.

  But he was happier than he’d been in years.

  After he hung up with Kate and rejoined Pal in the kitchen to tell him the good news, Pal made them celebrate with music. He pulled Jacques out onto the back porch, Pal with the accordion and Jacques with his guitar, and they played Zachary Richard and Lost Bayou Ramblers until Floyd came in through the back gate.

  “Mais, what’s all dis? It not even noon, and you’s goin’ ta town,” he said as he hiked his way up the porch steps. “Now wait, me.”

  His wrinkles shuttered his eyes as he squinted at Jacques. “Scène, songs, and silence.”

  Jacques grinned. “You’re already right, Floyd. My band is playing at Scène Fais Do Do.”

  The wrinkles stretched open enough for the whites of Floyd’s eyes to peek through. “Mon Dieu. No wonder y’all is howlin’ at da moon when de ain’t no moon.”

  They played two more songs together with Floyd clapping time, and then Pal took his friend inside to start lunch, leaving Jacques to the quiet of the back porch. He wasted no time in pulling out his phone.

  Rainey hadn’t called or texted, but this time, Jacques didn’t hesitate to call again. He frowned when he got her voicemail a second time, hoping she was all right and her sister was all right, but this time he left a message.

  “Good morning, beautiful. I hope you’re feeling okay today. I just got some news I want to share with you. I…” He paused to gather his thoughts. “Playing with Heroine last night felt amazing, but what I keep thinking about is your kiss. And I’m hoping you’re gonna call me back in like two minutes. Bye, Rainey.”

  He sat down on the porch steps, willing her to call him before he walked back inside. The day was mild, but the cloudless sky promised a warmer afternoon. A mockingbird in Pal’s pecan tree trilled an impressive aria in the hopes of attracting a mate. Jacques eyes found him bobbing and dancing at the end of a branch, making a spectacle of himself.

  “I think I can relate,” he muttered.

  Rainey didn’t call him back that morning. Or that afternoon. Or the following day.

  And while Jacques was busting his ass writing songs and practicing with the band, he’d still catch himself checking his phone a couple of times an hour, feeling like a fool every time. To his shame, he’d texted and called again that first night, unable to reconcile her silence with the time they’d shared. The following day, he resisted the urge to call or text yet again because as far as he was concerned, only assholes did that, and he’d always tried his best not to be an asshole. There were already too many of them in the world.

  But confusion and anger singed him deep in his gut when he thought of her ghosting him. She’d been in that courtyard. She’d kissed him right back. And she’d given as good as she’d gotten on her front porch. And at dinner with him three nights before. Rainey knew what they could be. She knew.

  Didn’t she?

  Because if she knew — like he did — what they felt like together, then why the hell didn’t she want that again?

  Why?

  And if she didn’t know? If she didn’t feel what he felt when they were together, how had he gotten it wrong?

  After his mind would take him down this low and shadowed road,
he’d second guess himself. Maybe she really was sick, and while he was nursing his wounded pride, she’d caught pneumonia from her sister and had no one to take care of her. And then he would feel a tug of urgency to drive over to her house and make sure she was okay.

  But even someone with pneumonia could respond to a text, right?

  So, he’d go from worry back to anger again, and then he’d want to drive over to her house to yell at her or silence them both with a kiss; he never knew which.

  And then he’d think of his father.

  Xand Gilchrist had made a fool of himself over Jacques’s mother long before he’d climbed drunk behind the wheel of his Tacoma and plowed through two people. He’d chased her years before she actually ran. Because she was never really there to begin with. Jacques’s earliest memories were of his dad bending over backward for her. Writing songs to vie for her attention. Buying flowers on a Tuesday to keep her from feeling bored. Cleaning the house and doing the laundry so she wouldn’t cry about being chained down.

  But she’d ignored him. And she had gotten bored. And she’d cried anyway.

  When she finally left, Jacques had felt scared and sad and angry at first. But then he’d felt relieved. He’d grown up waiting for the other shoe to drop — fearing it silently as he read the tense and watchful look that never left his father’s eyes — so when she was gone and life carried on, he didn’t have to fear her leaving anymore. Losing his mother, he’d quickly learned, was not the worst thing in the world.

  The worst thing in the world was watching his father ruin lives because of it.

  Jacques had never completely forgiven him for that. So as much as he wanted to go to Rainey, he would not allow himself the lapse in control. Instead, he wrote songs.

  He wrote songs about a girl with rain in her name. He wrote songs about picking over his father’s vinyl stash. He wrote songs about kissing in a courtyard.

  Because Rainey Reeves wouldn’t call him back, Heroine’s repertoire doubled in the span of a week.

  Chapter 12

  Heroine was playing Festival.

  Rainey knew this because she’d started following the band on Facebook and Instagram two days after their show at Artmosphere. She’d started following them because she couldn’t return Jacques’s calls, but she needed to hear about him.

  That first day after she’d left the show, Rainey had stuck to her guns and hidden her phone in the drawer of her nightstand. She could almost sense it as an omniscient presence in the house as she’d moved around and did chores all day. It was taunting her, waiting until she had to look at it.

  Her stomach had seized, and her skin prickled that night when she finally saw the three missed calls and four texts he’d left her. He wanted to talk to her. He wanted to be with her, and she’d behaved like it didn’t matter.

  But it did.

  So, she read every one of his texts and listened to both of his voicemails. More than once.

  And she could hear the frustration in his voice and read the worry in his messages, and both left her scalded in shame, but she still didn’t respond. What would she have said? “I don’t want to see you again?” That wasn’t true. She did want to see him. Again and again. And that was part of the problem.

  She also couldn’t tell him the truth. “One day, soon, you’ll leave, and that’ll hurt like hell.” Saying that would either freak him out — because why was she thinking so far ahead when they’d only just met — or force him to give her false assurances. No, it was better just to go dark. Rainey had known he’d eventually stop reaching out, and he did.

  But he’d told her enough in his messages to let her know that something special was happening for Heroine. No surprise. The YouTube video — which she’d watched seven times — had gone viral. Every post on their social media pages earned hundreds of likes, and the buzz about their upcoming spot at Festival was reaching a fever pitch.

  The week of Festival, Rainey had every intention of going to Heroine’s show. She wasn’t planning to let Jacques know, of course, but the crowd would be big enough for her to blend in and see him in action again.

  But the day before the Festival Courir, Holi spiked a fever again. This time it was strep. With her white blood cell count so low, her immune system was almost nonexistent, and the most common infections became deadly. Even though she’d taken a medical leave of absence from work to seek treatment and avoid exposure to germs, nothing so far had proven to boost her blood cell count levels, and she was still getting sick. Even before this latest illness, Holi’s doctor had wanted to start looking at stem cell treatment, and they’d tested Rainey days earlier to see if she was a match, but the results weren’t back yet.

  So, Saturday morning, while Jacques was playing to a crowd that likely numbered in the thousands, Rainey was sitting in a hospital room with her sister. But she tuned into the KRVS live feed of the Festival and waited for the band to start.

  Holi slept beside her, the IV drip of antibiotics her second dose that month. The hematologist was due to come on rounds soon, and they’d talk about what would come next, but for a few minutes, Rainey welcomed the escape her ear buds offered her as she listened to the opening of their set.

  “Happy Festival, y’all!” A raspy female voice called to the crowd. This must have been Kate, the short, sultry-voiced alto in the band. Cheers followed her greeting. “Thanks for coming out here to see us this early on a Saturday. Since we’re here for the Courir, let’s open with something new. It’s called ‘Run.’”

  The band broke into a high energy rhythm, and the lyrics started on the eight-count.

  Why did you open for me

  Only to close?

  Why did you let me in

  Just to have me lose my way?

  Why did you tell me all your stories?

  Color all my memories?

  Move into my head?

  If you weren’t gonna stay?

  Rainey swallowed as she listened. Kate sang, so she could absorb the words without feeling them slice into her. But then Jacques joined in on the refrain, their voices mingling in a chilling harmony, and his words invaded her like a rebel army.

  And now there’s nothing I can say to you.

  You won’t hear me.

  You won’t let me have my say.

  You won’t talk to me.

  You just chose to run away.

  Rainey squeezed her eyes shut. Kate had introduced the song as new. Jacques was a songwriter. A good one. Had he written it recently? Rainey wasn’t about to flatter herself with the thought that the song was about her, but such denial didn’t keep a mantle of guilt from weighing her down. He really deserved better than to be coldly ignored. Would it have been so bad to tell him that she loved spending time with him, but that they’d never work out?

  It would feel good to apologize to him, she realized. Then she wouldn’t have to carry the guilt of wronging him. All she’d have left to bear would be the loss of him. Of course, in her life, the loss of someone who liked her when he didn’t have to, who wanted to be with her, who drew her out of herself, and who could stop her breath with his kiss was no small loss. Apologizing wouldn’t make everything better, but it would help.

  She’d almost summoned the courage to send him a text when the song ended. The crowd came over the radio with cheers and applause, and then Jacques’s lone voice filled her ears.

  “Thanks, everyone. Happy Festival! Let’s hear it for all those runners!”

  A roaring crowd swallowed his words.

  “We’d like to thank y’all for coming out here to support our runners and to support Festival International. We’d also like to give a shout out to our Scène Fais Do Do sponsors. You help keep Festival free.”

  Rainey smiled as she listened. Jacques’s showmanship was second nature. The best part about it was how genuine and at ease he was with the crowd. He never stumbled. He sounded overjoyed, and she could almost see him smiling, completely at home in his element. Anyone watching Heroine for t
he first time today would walk away a fan.

  “In case this is the first time you’ve seen us, I’m Jacques. That’s Kate on guitar, Des on bass, and Kara on the keyboard, and we’re Heroine. Kara, take it away.”

  Seven notes on the piano opened the song and told a story before guitars folded in, and the overture replayed. Rainey listened, leaning into the beautiful sound, picturing the band on stage just off Jefferson Street. And then Jacques ripped her open.

  “I didn’t take your picture… It’s something that I still regret,” he sang with the seven-note movement. “I guess it doesn’t matter. ‘Cause there’s no way I could forget… The fall of your hair… The smile on your face… The way your eyes are like lightnin’ in a bottle. How could I forget… the girl with rain in her name?”

  “Oh my God!” she gasped aloud. Beside her, Holi rolled over in her sleep, but Rainey couldn’t help herself as Jacques’s voice became a fist around her heart.

  “Girl, I don’t even know you… And still your voice it speaks to me… I see your skin in moonlight… I taste your lips in memories…”

  Tears blurred her vision as she listened, so she closed her eyes and felt Jacques’s mouth on hers, the way it made her feel claimed and wanted and beautiful all at once.

  “That time you beat North… I felt like a king… I knew you’d be with me tomorrow…” As he sang, he drew out the line like a vow. “Who made me a fool? The girl with rain in her name.”

  Rainey covered her face and broke open, sobbing freely. How could she have thought a text could absolve her? She’d made him feel like fool. So much so, he’d written a song about it!

  Mercifully, the band moved the song through an instrumental bridge while Rainey mopped her face and got her breathing under control, but her composure didn’t last long.

  “And, so, where does this leave me?... My arms have never felt so bare… Hell, you won’t even see me… And, yet, somehow I think you care.”