A Ghost of a Chance

by Cherie Claire

  “For a woman who routinely left me places as a child because she was too busy practicing speeches for her TV appearances, I doubt she’s worried.”

  “You should give her a break,” TB says. “Tulane hasn’t asked her back.”

  I’m sorry my mother is out of a job, really, but whose side is she on? She hates TB, convinced I had married beneath me, which is probably true. Now, he’s her best friend?

  I nod at the mail in his hands. “The insurance check is on top.”

  “I finished the second floor. You’ll hardly recognize it.”

  “Uh, huh.” I turn back toward the street and the creepy old man has reappeared on the porch next door. I can’t get to my car, out of the Katrina zone and to the airport fast enough.

  “Don’t you want to even look?”

  “Nope.” I head to the front gate but I can tell TB is hot on my heels.

  “What are you doing again?”

  “I told you, a travel writing thing,” I shout out without turning around. I can’t bear seeing that man again, or pondering how a man his age moved so fast. “Like the ones I used to do on the side, although this one is an organized press trip.”

  “Where are you staying?”

  “The Crescent Hotel.” Crap. I feel like Homer Simpson after he says something truly stupid. Why did I just tell TB that? I make it to the driver’s side and gaze up at him over the hood. He stands there like a puppy dog wanting a bone.

  “Can I come?”

  Travel writers on press trips receive everything complimentary — accommodations, food, plane tickets. Guests are not allowed. Usually, the tourist bureaus foot the bill and they are not about to spend valuable dollars on people who won’t write about the place. I’ve heard about husbands or wives posing as photographers but that’s about the extent of it. TB had accompanied me once on a trip I arranged on my own, and I hated every minute. I wanted to explore, he wanted to drink and sit by the pool. I wanted to enjoy a nice meal and examine the place on my own, he blurted out to everyone that I was there on assignment so every member of the restaurant visited our table. The next time I arranged an excursion I conveniently planned it over a weekend during football season, knowing well TB wouldn’t give up valuable couch time.

  “No, you can’t come,” I tell him tersely.

  “I could stay in the room, not bother you....”

  “No.”

  “I could just hang by the pool....”

  I hate to do it but the look on TB’s face, the putrid smell of mildew and decay and that horrid man’s stare make me slip in my car and drive off without another word. I have a plane to catch and nothing is getting me down today, I practically yell inside my head. The guilt is eating me alive and it takes everything not to gaze in the rearview mirror.

  “Call your mom,” I hear TB shout out, as I turn the corner and head back to the interstate.

  I’m late getting to the airport, mainly because my mother called twice and I fumbled with my purse trying to silence the damn cell phone. The distraction made me miss my exit and I ended up circling Kenner needlessly.

  When I finally park, get through security and make it to my gate, I have minutes to spare. I drop my bag at my feet, fall into the chair and breathe deeply, startling the well-dressed man across from me whose right eyebrow raises without him looking up from his laptop.

  “Finally,” I say to no one and the man shifts in his chair. Am I bothering him? Doesn’t matter. I’m free of my ex-husband, my overbearing family, my well-meaning friends pushing psychoanalysis, and the putrid wrath that was Katrina and on my way to a new adventure and career.

  And that’s when she started singing.

  Chapter Two

  A woman about my age, soaking wet, stands dripping in the aisle outside my gate, belting out You Are My Sunshine at the top of her lungs. She looks me straight in the eyes, water leaking off the ends of her stringy black hair, puddles appearing at her bare feet, and explains how I make her happy when skies are gray.

  I look around to see if anyone else is watching this woman sing the Louisiana state song written by a former governor, her arms outstretched for emphasis when she hits “You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you,” but no one seems to notice her. A mother and daughter play with an American Girl doll to my right, a businessman devours a biscuit and sausage to my left and Mr. Fancy Pants continues reading his laptop.

  Usually I ignore the crazies in New Orleans, too, especially in Louis Armstrong Airport where half of the tourists are glazed and hung over and the other still fresh and slobbering from a night on Bourbon Street. The ones arriving have that get-me-a-drink look and who knows what for a motive so their focus is elsewhere. But this woman is soaked head to toe, looking positively frightened or agitated or both and singing as if her life depends on it.

  I lean over to search the airport corridors and two cops are laughing over coffee around Gate Number Four. Esther Williams is still singing and neither one looks in her direction. Weird. The gate agents are busy sliding boarding passes into the machine and a security guard drives up in one of those pseudo golf carts but no one even glances in this poor lady’s direction.

  Just when I am about to get up and see if I can be of assistance, Mr. Fancy Pants across from me, his head still bent toward his laptop in engrossed concentration, lifts his right hand and snaps his fingers. One simple gesture, and the singing stops.

  The woman appears as if she’s been slapped, her eyes registering intense pain. She bows her head in failure and moves away, her feet leaving prints as she meanders down the aisle.

  I glance back at Fancy Pants, whose hand has returned to his side, his gaze never leaving the screen, until they call Zone Three. He closes his laptop and rises, never glancing in my direction, heading to the ticket agent as if nothing had happened.

  When I check back on the wet opera singer, she’s gone. Vanished.

  Maybe my family and friends are right, I think, wondering where I put that card Mary Jo gave me, the one for the counselor specializing in post traumatic stress disorder. But that woman was standing in the aisle in front of me, singing to the heavens. I know what I saw. And if I’m not totally nuts Mr. Fancy Pants heard her too.

  I’m so confused and, like a good journalist, totally curious, but it’s time to get on the plane and start my new career. I sneak one last look down the airport corridor, even check for footprints, shake my head and hand the gate attendant my boarding pass.

  Once aboard, I have other things to worry about. I end up lodged between an overweight man hogging the armrest and an elderly woman knitting. I practically wrap my elbows around my chest like a true crazy person and attempt to read my “S” book, something light and funny with cartoon women on the cover with words like “sassy,” “seductive” and “scandalizing” among the back cover’s description. S books make me happy, take me away from waterlines and levee breaches and I’m not going to apologize for it like most women I know and call it “trash.” Right now these books are better than Prosac.

  I’m so enraptured in the hunk who runs the town newspaper and his fight with the spirited yet intelligent heroine of the mayor’s office that we land in the Northwest Arkansas airport in no time at all, a good-sized facility in a rural area near Bentonville and Rogers, places most people have never heard of unless they work for Walmart. Bentonville was home to entrepreneur Sam Walton who started the multi-national chain and thus the town became the operational hub of the megastores. Because Walton insisted companies move to the area if they wanted to be part of his dream, and all these new businesses plus Walmart need transportation services, the lovely new airport was built.

  Too bad New Orleans never had such pull, I think, as I head down impeccable marble aisles toward the baggage claim. The Crescent City had long outgrown its airport and progressive politicians had suggested a larger international airport almost halfway between Baton Rouge and New Orleans with a light rail in between but the idea never took. As usual not enough money.
Or forward thinking. Plus, there was that time after Katrina when the airport became a hospital and morgue so right now all everyone’s thinking about is getting it back to normal.

  I wasn’t going to think about New Orleans on this trip, or my flooded home, lack of a steady job and the fact that my electricity would get cut off if my FEMA check didn’t arrive soon. Tonight I would sleep between layers of multi-thread linens and indulge in fine cuisine while PR people drive me around, line up interviews and pay for everything. Only in America could writers straddling the poverty line be wined and dined at posh hotels and four-star restaurants in fun destinations.

  “It doesn’t get better than this,” I whisper to myself.

  Travel writing was my dream in college, a career I wanted to start the moment that journalism diploma hit my greedy little hands. But it’s not something you major in, interview for and start the next day. You could nab a similar position at a magazine or become a newspaper travel editor, and lord knows I tried getting on at Southern Living and the Times-Picayune travel section for years. Or you could do what I did and cover the cops beat in St. Bernard Parish for the New Orleans Post while writing travel on the side for the Sunday edition and a few other small magazines and newspapers.

  That’s how I met Henry Torrington Wallace. I had driven to Birmingham for a journalism conference and took some side trips to compile into a feature for the Martin Luther King Jr. birthday weekend. The travel piece garnered a Louisiana Press Award and Henry called to ask if I wanted to join his agency’s press trip to Nashville. I wasn’t able to accept free trips at the time — against newspaper policy — but I kept his card just in case.

  Needless to say, my cops job in St. Bernard Parish washed away, pun so very much intended. Good riddance. Once I got established in Lafayette, Henry was the first person I rang.

  “I’m freelancing now for the chain in southwest Louisiana and a few magazines,” I told him. “Got any trips in the Deep South?”

  Did he ever. I was in business before you can say, “Your hotel room is complimentary.”

  I grab my polka dot bag and do as instructed, travel to the baggage claim and look for signs from Henry’s PR agency, the Wallace Group. As expected, Henry is waiting at the bottom of the escalator, his arms full of press packets. He tilts his chin up at me and I smile, tingling with excitement. I can feel those silky-smooth sheets already, after which I will relax in a bathtub full of free upscale products. For not the first time I wonder if the other journalists — those working at travel writing longer than me or who live in equally nice residences — feel the same rush when they exit the plane knowing what’s coming.

  “How’ve you been, Viola?” Henry asks me after an obligatory hug. His agency hails from Tennessee, so he’s Southern to the core. He also pronounces my name correctly: VIE-O-LA, although I think Shakespeare rolled it off the tongue in a more proper English way.

  “I’m great, Henry.” If only he knew just how, staring down at a press kit announcing “Heaven in the Ozarks!”

  “Is this it?” He grabs the handle of the polka dot bag and heads toward the exit.

  “I always travel light,” I say apologetically. Do other journalists bring more? What’s funny is that practically everything I own is in that bag. You know I’m not kidding.

  “Am I the only pick-up?”

  As soon as I ask, I realize two other travel writers are waiting by the door, a dark-haired woman dressed in a Talbots-style outfit complete with high heels and several layers of gold necklaces, intent on text messaging on what looks like a Blackberry (I honestly don’t know, never had the money to buy one), and an older man in jeans and a Lacosse shirt scoping out the local newspaper container. I smooth down the designer linen shirt I found at Goodwill, sorry for my choice since traveling between those two armrest hogs has rendered it a massive wave of wrinkles. I also worry about my tried and true Converse sneakers my mother calls adolescent. These days, I don’t care what my mother calls my clothes but I’m self-conscious around these people.

  “Small news hole,” the tall guy says without looking up.

  I extend my hand. “Viola Valentine.”

  Tall guy ignores me. “I hate it when they put ads on the front page.”

  “Richard Cambry,” Henry explains, then nods his head toward texting queen. “And Irene Fisher.”

  “Nice to meet you,” I say, but only Irene responds, without looking up.

  Ah, a nice polite bunch. We make our way to the van, one Henry has rented for the trip, and the Friendlys deposit their bags at the back while Richard talks about his newspaper days and grabs the front seat. Irene sighs and mutters something under her breath.

  “Do you need help?” I ask Henry, who gives me a sweet “Are you kidding, get in the van” look. He opens my door and I do the obligatory Southern conversation, asking about his wife, his job and Henry gives me a quick roundup with a smile.

  “Don’t we have to be there by four,” Richard asks from inside the van. “I don’t know, just saying. It has four on the schedule.”

  Henry smiles politely as only PR people can do; it’s an amazing talent they own, being able to offer impeccable customer service in the presence of assholes.

  “Be right back,” Henry says and heads back inside the airport.

  You’d think plum assignments such as these would render people gracious and thankful, but there are jerks in the best of professions, and plenty of folks who need bibs and bottles. Now realize, we must have credentials and extensive work experiences to be asked on press trips, not to mention there is an art to this craft most people don’t understand. No, it’s not about writing what you did on vacation. But come on, folks. When someone’s paying the bill, lining up interviews and driving you around in a van where you don’t even have to wear a seatbelt, the least you can do is be polite and grateful. Leave your whining at home.

  I enter the van and park next to Irene, who finishes her text and looks up. “Irene Fisher,” she announces, holding out her hand. I skip the reminder that we’ve already met and shake her hand, but dear old Richard doesn’t miss a thing.

  “We had introductions in the airport, Irene. If you weren’t so busy on that cell phone….”

  Richard must be around sixty or seventy with a head full of white hair to back up that statement and he launches into a tirade about young people and cell phones, using a woman not paying attention while driving as an example. From the way he describes this female, I pick up chauvinistic sentiments, not to mention arrogance and conceit. I didn’t like him back at the newspaper. Now I really don’t.

  Irene tunes him out but he keeps shifting in his seat to look at me. Just for fun, I ask if he’s married.

  “Who knows?” he answers, leaving this balloon of a thought floating above us. As if synchronized, Irene and I gaze at each other and silently vote not to pop that bubble. The pause we offer makes Richard uncomfortable so he launches into a lengthy explanation, mostly about how difficult women are to live with and how his wife is at fault for everything. Irene begins texting again and I stare out the window, noticing how rural the surrounding area is, when who should saunter by but Mr. Fancy Pants. He pauses at the van door with his laptop and garment bag — do people use those anymore? — and leans his head in to greet us.

  It’s the first time I get a good look at his face, which is handsome with sleek, sculptured lines, a no-nonsense countenance although I detect a slyness lurking beneath. His salt and pepper hair is perfectly combed back, a bit of a white streak happening around one temple but this guy plays it up, embracing what I suspect is early middle age. His green-gray eyes match the whole ensemble, as if he did it on purpose. My gay-dar is beeping rapidly.

  “You all remember Carmine Kelsey,” Henry says, adding for me, “and this is Viola Valentine. The Arkansas trip is her first with us.”

  Carmine looks me in the eye for the first time, albeit briefly, raising one eyebrow. The atmosphere feels uncomfortable. I’m not sure if it’s because eve
ryone now knows I’m a newbie to this business or Carmine had witnessed the wet opera singer. I realize someone must move to the back row to accommodate Carmine, so I take the opportunity to break gaze, stumbling into the back, the pieces of my press packet flying all over the floor.

  “Nice to meet you too,” he says, which garners a laugh from Richard and Irene, and I immediately dislike the man.

  As I rearrange my belongings and attempt to tame my now horribly wrinkled shirt, Henry jumps in the front and off we go. Richard begins a long discourse on the state of travel writing today and Henry politely listens while Irene and Carmine take to their electronics. I want desperately to ask Carmine about the wet apparition in the airport, but on the flip side, from his haughty demeanor and sarcastic snide, I want to cross him off my list with the rest of the van’s occupants.

  Instead, I enjoy the rolling countryside of northwest Arkansas with the budding sycamore and maple trees, fields full of rolled hay and nonchalant cows and little rolling streams crossing the highway. We pass lovely farmhouses where people reside with all their belongings, photos carefully preserved in family albums. We pass a small town and I envy the smiling faces of the children riding the streets in their Schwinns. A man pumps gas at a self-service, a canoe propped up in the cab of his truck. Two businessmen stand in a parking lot laughing about something. Butterflies flit past enjoying roadside flowers.

  Suddenly a malaise so deep and powerful consumes me, knowing normalcy exists outside the borders of my disaster zone. I don’t know why I should be shocked that the rest of the country lives on, but I feel betrayed. I want to be these people. I want to wake up in a bed where all my belongings exist where I put them the night before.

  I close my eyes, remembering why I am here. “This is what you wanted and Katrina gave it to you,” I tell myself.

  But I can’t help wanting more, and that black hole that took the place of my heart years ago when Lillye died opens up once more, swallowing me whole.