Daniel slid in next to her and spied the overnight bag. He said nothing but looked from the bag to Pamela with the silliest grin on his face.
“I, ah, just packed some casual clothes and a pair of tennis shoes for after the benefit. I thought I could change at your place and then I would be comfortable on the drive home later tonight. I don’t want to drive home dressed like this in your Jeep, right?”
Daniel said nothing and continued to grin at her.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she protested. “It’s nothing. Don’t read too much into it. It’s just a change of clothes—”
“And a pair of tennis shoes, so you said,” he interrupted. He laughed and then leaned over and tenderly kissed her cheek. “You look wonderful,” he whispered to her. “And don’t look so nervous. We are just two people going out for a pleasant evening in the city. What will be, will be.”
That was exactly what terrified Pamela. Because with every passing second in his company, she felt her body hoping for one outcome while her mind was clamoring for another.
* * * *
As the limousine swept past the Louisiana Superdome on its way down Poydras Avenue, Pamela felt as if she had come home. New Orleans had always been home to her. The seventeen years she had spent in the city had left an indelible mark on her soul. She loved coming back to take in the sweet sights, and smells, the Big Easy had to offer. She had gone to EMT school here. She had worked amidst the poorest and in the most dangerous sections of the city, taking people to the city’s hallmark of healthcare, Charity Hospital. She had married here, and suffered through the most painful experiences of her life here. Even after the ravages of Katrina had destroyed many of the places she had fondly remembered, the city still captivated her heart.
“I made reservations at Arnaud’s,” Daniel told her as he reached for her hand.
Pamela grinned at him. “What, no shrimp sandwiches and french fries?”
Daniel shook his head. “Not tonight.”
“You really have gone all out. A limo and dinner at Arnaud’s… I’m impressed.”
“The limo was a necessity. I didn’t see you riding around in a Jeep in that outfit. And the dinner is also a necessity. I have been to enough benefits to know that cheap hors d’oeuvres and finger food does not a meal make. I’m always starving halfway through those things and when I get hungry, I get grumpy.”
“Thanks for the warning.” She looked down at their intertwined hands. “Have you been to a lot of benefits?”
“When I was growing up in Connecticut, benefits and society parties were a staple affair on the weekends. My mother sat on a lot of committees, and my brother and I were forced to attend every single event she ever helped plan.”
“Were you close with your mother?”
He sat back in his seat and stretched his legs. “Pretty close, then she got sick. I couldn’t stand watching her fade away, so I pulled back.” He shook his head. “I’ve always regretted not being there for her.”
“What happened to her?”
“Pancreatitis. My mother loved two things in life, her children and her whiskey. After her third bout of pancreatitis, we weren’t too surprised when she started getting worse and not better. Today she would have been called an alcoholic; then she was just the life of the party.”
“I’m sorry.”
He squeezed her hand. “Hey, tonight is a happy occasion.” He smiled for her. “You’re going to walk into that benefit and wow them. Tonight you’re going to get every penny you need to keep your wildlife facility going forever.”
“I’d be happy with enough to just keep it going for the next year.”
“Think big, Pamela. And never expect less than what you desire.”
Pamela looked into his dark eyes and felt that unsettling twinge wrap around her insides. What she desired had nothing to do with her facility, but she figured she didn’t need to share that little tidbit of information with Daniel. Somehow, she suspected, he already knew.
* * * *
When they arrived at Arnaud’s Restaurant, the maitre d’ greeted Daniel by name and gave him a warm handshake. After introductions and pleasantries had been exchanged, a short, round waiter dressed in a red vest, black pants, and a white starched shirt was instructed by the maitre d’ to escort Daniel and Pamela to their table. They were taken off to the side of the main dining room to one of the smaller private dining rooms.
Once seated at their table, the waiter handed Daniel and Pamela their menus.
“I’ll just give you two a moment to go over the menu,” the waiter said and quickly departed the room.
Pamela took in the charming private dining room. Upon the walls was an extensive collection of pictures of Mardi Gras parades from the past. Some of the photos were old and faded while others looked more modern in origin. Intermixed with the pictures of carnival floats was a decorative collection of large old-fashioned brass keys. The keys shone brightly against the deep red wallpaper.
“How do you know the maitre d’?”
“Ed Rhymes,” he said, putting his menu to the side. “I worked here at the front bar when I first came to New Orleans. We used to hang out together after work until I got fired.”
“Why did you get fired?” Pamela asked as she put her menu down on the table.
He rubbed his chin. “I, ah, got into a heated discussion with the wine steward, Mike Allen. He complained to the manager and I was let go.”
She folded her arms across the table in front of her. “How many times have you been fired because of some fight or argument?” she asked, never taking her eyes off his. “Be honest, Daniel,” she added, her voice no higher than a whisper.
“Six, since I have been in New Orleans. You know about my past. When I’m tired or frustrated, which as a bartender comes with the territory, I get anxious. When I get anxious, I look for a fight.”
“Does the fighting help?”
He tilted his head slightly to the side. “I don’t understand. Help what, exactly?”
“Help you to feel better about yourself.” She paused and looked down at the white linen tablecloth before her. “A man who throws punches is either trying to make up for some shortcoming he feels he has, or he is trying to prove something to himself. Either way, it’s not the other person he has a problem with.”
“And what makes you such an expert on why men fight?”
Pamela played with a fork on the table. “I was married to one for eight years. Every time he fought someone he said it was for my honor, but it was really for his. His insecurities, more than our bad marriage, were the reasons behind his short fuse.”
Daniel sat back in his chair. “You weren’t happily married?”
She leaned in closer to the table. “In the beginning, I was. But about a year into it, I started to see a side of Bob that I didn’t see before our marriage. Once you lose respect for a man it’s not long after that your heart leaves him, too. I stayed in that marriage about seven years longer than I should have. I thought I was being a good wife, but in actuality I was just being foolish.”
“I watched my parent’s bad marriage rip my mother apart—probably the reason she drank. She stayed married to my father for my brother and me. At least you got out and found a life you love,” Daniel declared.
Pamela felt her worries come creeping back to the forefront of her thoughts. “But is it a life I can keep?”
The waiter returned to their private room.
“Are you ready to order?” he asked.
Daniel picked up his menu and grinned at Pamela. “Why don’t you allow me to order for the both of us?” he asked.
She nodded and then listened in amazement as Daniel ordered a varied selection of appetizers and entrees from the menu.
“And bring us a bottle of your best Pouilly-Fumé with our appetizers and after that we can move on to one of your better selections of a Bâtard-Montrachet Grand Cru with the meal.”
Pamela waited until the waiter had left the
room, carrying their menus underneath his arm, before she spoke to Daniel.
She reached for her glass of water. “Do all bartenders know so much about wine?” She took a sip of the cool water.
“I’ve worked in a lot of restaurants and I learned a thing or two about wine and food. I find it impresses the society types I sometimes come in contact with if I can tell the difference between a wine from the Burgundy region of France and one from the Loire Valley.”
She laughed slightly as she put her glass back down on the table. “Society types? I just can’t see you rubbing elbows with the social set.”
Daniel ran his fingers over the white china plate in front of him. “I sometimes moonlight organizing the bar at parties put on by a few of the socially prominent people in town. It pays well and the extra jobs fill in the time between bartending gigs.”
“You really do keep busy,” Pamela stated as she studied the man across from her. “What do you do when you’re not serving alcohol to half of the city?”
He reached across the table for her hand. “Right now, I’m helping this reclusive little old wildlife rehabber woman take care of her baby squirrels.”
Pamela smiled. “And before that?”
“I drank a good bit, worked sixty hours a week, got into a lot of fights, and was a general pain in the ass to everyone who knew me.”
“Perhaps all of that was your PTSD, and not the real you, coming through. You just couldn’t see it before now.”
He let go of her hand and sat back in his chair. “Or maybe I didn’t want to see it. I never considered myself to be a very patient man before I started working with you and your animals. Now I find my tolerance for everyone has greatly improved. I can’t explain it, but I guess I’m not angry anymore. I used to always be so angry, but I didn’t know why.” He shrugged. “I’ve learned to stop searching for the why’s in my life. Why did this happen to me? Why am I like this? I feel, for the first time in a long time, I can just be me and not wonder why anymore.”
Pamela nodded her head as she took in the room around them. “I understand. I used to ask why God gave me lupus, and then I started working with wildlife. As I watched animals carry on, despite their injury or infirmity, I realized we all have something we have to live with. Animals take their misfortune in stride. They never complain or ask for pity; they just go on with their lives. And that is what I decided to do.”
“I’m not quite where you are yet,” Daniel admitted. “But I’m working on it.”
She looked into his dark eyes and smiled. “You’ll get there, Daniel. I believe in you.”
He leaned in closer to the table. “I know you believe in me, but do you trust me, Pamela?”
Pamela never got a chance to answer him before the waiter returned with their wine. As Pamela watched Daniel inspect the cork and swirl the wine in his glass, she pondered his question about trust. Did she trust him? She desperately wished she knew the answer, but like most mysteries in life, she figured only time would reveal the correct response.
Soon a flurry of waiters brought dish after dish of the house specialties that Daniel had ordered. And with each new course came another glass of wine. Between the souflé potatoes, mushrooms Véronique, asparagus hollandaise, Brabant potatoes, crème brulée, and strawberries Arnaud, Pamela downed glass after glass of the wine. By the time the last plate had been cleared away from the table, her head was swimming.
“God, I think I’m tipsy,” she announced as she held her hand against her forehead.
“I told you to slow down during the appetizers,” he chided and then turned to the waiter. “Two coffees with chicory, black.”
The short, round man in the red vest nodded and quickly exited the private dining room.
“Can’t have you slurring your words when you are trying to win over potential sponsors,” Daniel reasoned.
Pamela rubbed her hands together. “I guess I’m just a little bit nervous about the party. I never did do well at big functions. Bob was always the one who would work the room and make connections. I would always smile, nod my head, and pray that the evening would soon end.”
“Did Bob drag you to a lot of parties?” he asked as he reached for his glass of wine.
“More than I care to remember,” she stated, cringing. “If there was an opportunity to meet the politically connected, or just rub elbows with the right people, Bob was there. After I got sick and stopped attending all the parties, people started to talk, and Bob became embarrassed. The last fight we had was on the night of some big party given by one of the maidens of the social set in the city. I was tired and told him I wasn’t going. He blew a fuse and told me he needed a wife who would put his interests above her illness. The next morning at breakfast he asked for a divorce.”
Daniel took a sip from his wine and then shook his head. “Well, be thankful that you are rid of him. I’ve met a lot of men like Bob in my life, and none of them are ever interested in helping anyone but themselves.”
“Sounds like you have a bit of experience with that sort of man,” she said, noting the sudden tension in his voice.
Daniel’s eyes focused on the crystal wine glass in his hand. “My father is one. He ignored his wife, his children—hell, everyone who should have mattered to him—all for the sake of his business.”
Pamela sat back in her chair as she observed his solemn face. “I understand, Daniel. I know how it feels to be cast aside.”
The waiter returned with two cups of coffee on a silver tray, along with the check.
Pamela eagerly grabbed for the coffee cup placed before her. She inwardly scolded herself for saying too much and blamed it on the excess alcohol. But she knew the alcohol was not completely to blame for her ramblings. She had wanted to get to know the handsome man across from her, and despite her growing apprehension about the evening ahead, she still hoped that maybe this time, she had finally found someone who wanted to get to know her, as well.
Chapter 9
The limousine made the six-block drive from Arnaud’s Restaurant to the Roosevelt Hotel. The Roosevelt Hotel occupied the building previously owned by the Fairmont Hotel on Baronne Street. Destroyed by the floodwaters of Katrina, the space had been taken over and renovated to look like the original Roosevelt Hotel that had operated in New Orleans in the early 1930s.
As Pamela stepped from the car and looked up at the hotel’s gray stone facade, she wondered what awaited her inside. She would have preferred an afternoon of general dentistry to an evening of rubbing elbows with the rich and obnoxious.
“We could have just walked from the restaurant,” she said to Daniel as they made their way up the front steps to the hotel entrance.
He placed his hand over hers. “It’s how you look getting there that matters, Pamela. And we have to look like we mean business.”
The benefit for the Gulf Oil Spill Relief Program was being held in one of the grand ballrooms of the hotel. Tickets were collected at the door, where Pamela stopped and checked her wrap and the small overnight bag Daniel had carried in from the limousine. Pamela gave her name to a young brown-eyed girl who was seated behind a table with a clipboard. She collected the two tickets waiting for her and then took Daniel’s arm as they made their way into the main ballroom.
Decorated in shades of gold with Greek Doric columns set against the walls, the ballroom had several multi-tiered crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, shining their light on the bright gold and cream-colored carpet below. Along the walls large portraits of wildlife and industries native to the Gulf Coast, and threatened by the oil spill, were hung. Shrimp trawlers and crab fishermen were intermingled among the brown pelican, raccoon, white tailed deer, oyster, and redfish prints. To the left of the entrance, a large buffet service was already in full swing with a long line of people waiting to be served. To the right, a bar built to look like a giant pirogue, complete with crab traps and nets, had another long line of people before it. Dozens of white linen-covered tables were positioned i
n the middle of the room for the guests to sit and dine. In the back of the room, a ten-piece band played softly in front of a small white dance floor that was cordoned off with gold rope.
Daniel leaned over to her. “See why I wanted to eat before we came,” he said as he nodded to the long buffet line.
Pamela scanned the room and tried to find a friendly face, or at least someone she had known from her days with Bob, but no one among the black tie crowd appeared familiar.
Daniel examined the throng of people surrounding them. “What should we do first, casually mingle or go after the first rich looking person we see?” He turned to her. “You brought your business cards, right?” he asked.
She nodded and grabbed at her small black beaded purse. “As many as I could shove into this thing.”
“Good,” he peered eagerly into the crowd. “Now just follow my lead.”
Daniel pulled her along until he stopped beside an older couple. They looked reserved, uptight, and, based on the amount of diamonds the woman displayed on her hands and neck, very wealthy.
“Excuse me, but are you Peter and Esther Robillard?” Daniel asked the couple as he stood before them.
“Why, yes,” the older man with a gray beard and dark blue eyes replied. “Have we met?” he asked, extending his hand to Daniel.
“I’m Daniel Phillips of the Arceneaux family from Audubon Trace. My family was in the sugar cane business—”
Esther Robillard’s gasp interrupted him. She placed her hand on Daniel’s arm. “I went to school with your mother! The last time I saw her was before she married that importer, Edward Phillips, and moved to Connecticut.” She clapped a diamond-clad hand to her chest. “My God, you’re Elizabeth’s boy. I can’t believe it.”
“I remember my mother mentioning you.” Daniel pulled Pamela alongside of him. “I’d like to introduce you to a very good friend, Pamela Wells. She runs a wildlife rehabilitation center outside of the city and has worked extensively in rescuing wildlife affected by the oil disaster.”
Esther and Peter Robillard shook their heads in unison.
Broken Wings Page 12