Relatively Risky

by Pauline Baird Jones

  “I’m going to bed.” He was not going on a freaking double date with his dad. He stomped down the hallway to the bedroom, stripped off his shoes, and sank onto the bed. He hurt all over and his stomach was pissed off, but it would have to wait. He was too tired to care. The sun poked through the blinds in several places, just in case his brain didn’t know it was day. He buried his face in the pillow, but that just shut off his air, not his thoughts. How could he be this tired and not be asleep? He finally rolled over to stare at a ceiling still sporting damage from the time he and his brothers tried to play circus.

  The muse. Eleanor Whitby must be an artist. They littered the Quarter, hawking their wares to eke out a living. Only the little crap perp had heard of her. He gave a shudder. Last thing he wanted was to get mixed up with a woman who had anything to do with kids, even if she did have nice eyes and a mouth that looked—he dropped the card, rolled over and punched the pillow. She was a witness. End of story.

  Gave her chops for not looking the other way, even if she should have. He’d have taken the perp down, of course, but it might have been a bit messier. The kid had definitely pissed him off. She might have saved him face time with IAD was his last thought as he finally drifted off to sleep.

  2

  It took a couple of blocks for the post-traumatic shock to hit. Had she left her brain at home this morning? She was too old to be riding to the rescue of a seriously cute, not to mention obviously capable cop. Of course, no man was truly capable or they wouldn’t need wives, girlfriends and secretaries—did he have a wife or girlfriend? The television cops didn’t have secretaries—

  Not her business, she reminded herself with some firmness. For a moment there it had seemed—but cute guys, even recently rescued ones, didn’t have “moments” with her, not even teeny weeny ones. That didn’t stop Nell from thinking about him as she pedaled her way through the early morning traffic. It was spring in New Orleans, the perfect time for a woman to think about a man, even if she was plain as the first Jane. And it wasn’t like there was much else she could do, other than try not to get killed. Besides, she was an artist. Faces were her business. Okay, her business was mostly cartoons, which he wasn’t. And, she conceded a bit ruefully, she hadn’t been thinking just about his face.

  He’s what old Mrs. Higgins would have called a fine figure of a man. Outdated phrase, but Mrs. Higgins had been a bit outdated. Didn’t make her wrong.

  Nor did it seem to matter that every finely formed inch of him had vibrated with annoyed. Broad shoulders had hunched. Short, impatient steps had started from narrow hips, which she might have accidentally noticed when he bent over to pick up her bike. He had the height and build to inspire confidence in a gal, despite the fact that her first sighting was him with his hands in the air looking down the barrel of a gun wielded by a kid. As an artist, she enjoyed a good contrast, especially the ludicrous ones. They were grist for her sketch mill. That scene would end up as a sketch, even if it was too violent for an Alphonse story. Alphonse needed fun vegetables, not awesome butts—

  Her bike wobbled a bit and she decided she’d better redirect her thoughts higher before she ended up a statistic. Her cycling skills weren’t great even when she wasn’t distracted. Faces, she reminded herself. He had a nice one. The jawline had been strong with a whole lotta stubborn in there, but Nell didn’t see that as a downside. Helped that the stubborn chin needed a shave. His upper face had brooding, blue-enough-to-dog-paddle-in eyes, though they were a bit on the cynical side. She’d rather liked the touches of silver in the close-cropped, brown hair. He was taller than she was, which was a nice change.

  She could have been bitter that God had made her tall and undeniably ordinary, but she could reach the high shelf and, for the most part, see where she was going. She sighed. Not like her to look at a guy and ponder kissing him on the mouth, except…it had looked like that mouth could go from cuss to kiss in a heartbeat. Too bad…her bike wobbled again, worse this time, so she searched for something less…volatile to think about.

  Like teeth. He had nice ones. Lined up like proper soldiers, pristine white, top and bottom. She tended to notice teeth. She used them a lot in her drawings. Nothing personalizes a carrot like a good set of choppers.

  She had good teeth, too, though no one noticed except her dentist, and he tended to see them as a personal affront, as if she kept them cavity-free on purpose. She rather thought he—the cop, not her dentist—had almost grinned at her at one point. He’d had the air of a man accustomed to getting what—and who—he wanted. A pity he hadn’t wanted to kiss her. Sad as it was, she’d have let him. Hey, if she weren’t a believer in expanding her experience, she’d still be in Wyoming checking out books to bitter teens.

  Being ordinary had kept her from expanding her kissing experience too much. Because Nell took after her mom, she didn’t mind. Not even when that enormous—from her child perspective—lady called her homely outside the Wal-Mart.

  “What’s homely?” she’d asked.

  Before her mom could come up with something soothing, the lady had said, “It means plain, dear. Not pretty.”

  “Neither are you.” Plain hadn’t left her free of the devastating honesty of being four. Her mom had stuffed her in the car, where Nell had picked up a pencil and her pad and drawn her first vegetable person. The lady made a great eggplant. Mom and Dad had laughed, and Dad taped it to the refrigerator door—her first, and still her favorite, showing. She wasn’t sure why her brain turned people into vegetables and she’d not considered it a marketable skill. It was more an aberration. Besides, her parents had been into “real” jobs, so she trained to be a “real” librarian and kept her doodling to her off hours. She’d still be conducting story hours and cataloging books if fate hadn’t stepped on her life with both its big feet.

  Nell pushed those clouds away, focusing instead on the silver lining that was her best friend. Without Sarah, well, Nell wasn’t sure where she’d be, at least, she knew she wouldn’t be living in New Orleans, for sure wouldn’t be a published author of an actual book, and wouldn’t be following the muse to the French Quarter for a morning of sketching. It was a fortunate side benefit of having a muse that it often summoned her to the French Quarter. Selling sketches supplemented the modest salary from Sarah’s fledgling catering business. Sarah had gotten some nice contracts in the last few months, a couple from the socially important people with deep pockets, but the competition was keen, and the lagging economy kept the business teetering on the knife edge of disaster—though Sarah seemed to like dancing on the knife edge.

  Nell grinned as she turned onto Decatur Street, dodging cars and carriages. The smells got richer and the sounds got more complex, despite the early hour. Traffic sounds, both car and pedestrian, blended into those from the street performers, and there was always the calliope from the Natchez warming up the pipes. And if the sights and sounds weren’t enough of a kaleidoscope, there were those smells. Car fumes, hot sauce, a mix of flower scents that she was still trying to learn, river musty, food cooking, and her personal favorite: the bakery smells. French bread, pastries and Café du Monde. She couldn’t always afford a beignet, but there was no law against inhaling their sweet scent as she pedaled past.

  Nell had a little money in her pocket today, so she locked up her bike, extracted her portfolio with her sketching supplies from the attached basket, and got in line at the Café. When her turn came, she exchanged some bills for a fragrant bag of three fresh-from-the-hot-oil beignets and headed for the Moon Walk. Her spirits rose as she climbed the ramp up the first flood wall, then down across the railroad tracks. The steps to the Moon Walk weren’t busy yet, though she did have to dodge one set of eager tourists before topping the levee.

  She paused a moment to let the barely cool, deeply humid air flow soft as silk across her arms and face. When she first moved to New Orleans, it had felt as if the air was mostly water, but her lungs had eventually adjusted and her skin lapped up the moisture like a kitten
over a bowl of milk.

  People who haven’t been raised inland didn’t, maybe couldn’t, appreciate the appeal of water to those who’d grown up landlocked. Wyoming was known for many things, but water wasn’t one of them. The thick, silver expanse flowing past almost at her feet both soothed the spirit and enticed her to take the roads not traveled, looking for the sights not seen. There was something about stepping outside the safe and familiar into the unknown that altered not just her view of the world, but the essential her.

  She was still Nell, but when she walked into a French Quarter shop and the mysterious, spicy smells closed around her, she became “baby”, “sugar,” and sometimes “cher” to the store clerks. She’d been raised to be uptight, but with each day in New Orleans, her insides relaxed more and more, mellowing into something more in keeping with the Big Easy that wrapped a body into its warm, wet embrace.

  After a short debate with herself, she turned in the direction of the Natchez steamboat. She liked being alone with her sketch pad, but she needed the money—always did—and was more likely to make some where the tourists gathered to board the paddle-wheeled ship.

  She settled on an empty bench and opened the bag. She’d need to eat fast. It never took long for children to collect around her like ants around a crumb. She didn’t know why. Maybe she had more in common with kids. The world of adults perplexed her as much now as it had when she was short. Real grownups always seemed to know exactly what to do, whereas she felt like she groped her way through her life.

  Nell scarfed her beignets, enjoying the way the powdered sugar formed a small, puffy cloud in the air around her head before settling onto her clothes. When she’d emptied the bag, she pulled out a wet wipe—it paid to know her personal weaknesses and prepare for them—cleaned the sticky from her hands, and then flipped open her sketch book and stared at the river.

  “You got a blood.”

  Nell pulled her gaze from the long to the short view and found a little girl studying her. She’d pulled her thumb out of her mouth just long enough to point out Nell’s “blood,” then put it back. She was cute and chubby and looked like a sunflower. Despite a certain grubbiness, Nell could tell she had a fond mama picking her clothes. They matched, right down to the socks and shoes. Nell hadn’t added flowers to her repertoire, but maybe she should. While she mulled the merits of flowers as characters, she did a mental sort through her various bumps and bangs from her fall until she identified a particularly insistent stinging sensation on her elbow. A quick examination did indeed reveal a “blood.”

  The kid and Nell studied it together for several seconds. She suspected the kid was studying it because kids just liked to look at other people’s “bloods.” They also liked to look at their own. And pick their scabs. Nell didn’t admit it socially, but she liked to pick her scabs, too. She didn’t, of course. She knew about scarring, but the temptation was always there.

  It looked like there was a bit of gravel mixed into the blood clot that had formed over her “blood,” so she pulled out another wet wipe and applied it gingerly to her wound. It stung fiercely, but she felt a responsibility not to wince in front of the kid. The “blood” cleaned up, Nell looked up to find her audience of one had expanded to six. All were in the six-to-ten age range.

  Kids made great veggies. Their bodies were always trying to burst their seams and full of interesting angles and curves. For the most part, their parents liked her sketches, too, a happy accident since many were willing to cough up cash to get one of their particular darling. She’d picked up enough of this unofficial income to almost close the gap between what she needed to survive and what Sarah was able to pay her. The release of her first Alphonse book had been moderately successful, according to her publisher. The Alphonse the Artichoke tee-shirts had received an unexpected boost from some of the tween set, for reasons neither of them could figure out. Nell didn’t expect it to last, so it was a good thing her art was a labor of love, rather than her only income.

  The blood dealt with, Nell studied her sunflower girl, then, in a few swift strokes, captured her personality—and her semi-toothy grin on paper. She showed it to her—making sure the semi-hovering mama saw it, too. After that, time passed quickly until the Natchez called all her customers and their parents for their journey down the river. She packed up her gear, did a surreptitious assessment of her take—because getting mugged was clearly a dangerous possibility—and headed back along the Moon Walk toward the stairs.

  She’d made enough to feel comfortable about grabbing herself a shrimp po’boy or maybe a plate of catfish and fries for lunch, before heading home. She caught the scent of sugar in the languid air and decided she’d have to detour past one of her favorite pastry shops, too. Been at least two hours, maybe more, since the beignets. The Natchez's whistle announced its imminent departure and she stopped to watch the colorful scene, a breeze off the river easing the heat of the sun. The shifting combinations of people, the interesting faces and colors became snapshots in her head that she’d try out for book three, while she waited for her second book to release.

  With a sigh she turned from the bright scene and checked her watch. She had to cover the phone for Sarah, so if she wanted lunch and a treat, she’d need to pick up the pace. Her thoughts on food and time tables, she didn’t see him until it was too late to change direction.

  Today he sat on the bench closest to the stairs she needed to descend, his gnarled hands resting on his cane. As was his custom, at least the few times she’d noticed him, he had a stone-faced, scary-looking bodyguard standing behind him. Different guy from last time—both faces difficult to erase from a memory geared to storing faces. This was the third, maybe the fourth time she’d seen him up here, though he usually sat further along, away from the stairs, more toward the end of the Walk, where it tended to be less crowded. She’d noticed that the crow-like figure contrasted sharply with the bright bustle around him. Been surprised—and not in a good way—when she realized he’d noticed her back. Unless she was sketching, people usually didn’t, and even then it was the drawings they remembered more than her.

  He’d met her look, then smiled at her. Wasn’t a nice smile, but her mom had taught her to be respectful toward the elderly, so she’d smiled back, and gave him a wide berth just in case. Her Mom also told her not to talk to strangers. This was her first time to see him since the day of the creepy smile. And now he was in her path to lunch. Great.

  It was possible he was a nice man who just didn’t look like one, but she couldn’t quite sell her instincts on that one. His clothes were understated, even tasteful, but still made him look like a bad guy for some reason. Today he had on what she was sure was an expensive gray suit. Sometimes it was black. Never warm brown, though it could have been a good color for him. Warmer would have been less creepy. There was something not quite real about him, as if he were a caricature from The Sopranos. She didn’t know he was a wise guy, of course, but she didn’t know he wasn’t. Despite his age and slight figure, he bothered her. Age had not carved kind into his face, and his brown eyes were as chilly as his suit. Even in the light suit, he was a dark spot in the cheerful scene, and she wished she had the nerve to stop and sketch him. Contrast interested her, even when it probably shouldn’t. It wasn’t just that she didn’t have time that kept her moving. He didn’t look like someone who would be happy to be portrayed as a villainous bok choy in a children’s book.

  Too late to change course, she pressed on, debating which side of the bench to pass on. He didn’t seem to have seen her yet. If she went behind, there was the bodyguard creating a different kind of menace. Her fingers twitched, and she was glad her portfolio was under her arm and somewhat out of reach. Her stomach rumbled and her mental clock ticked against the insistence of the muse, helping to boost her resolve not to piss off the scary guys.

  The old man didn’t move or look at her, as she closed on him. She pretended to look at the river as she drew level, sensed the moment the bodyguard noticed
her. Felt the chill from his gaze riding beads of sweat down her back. She angled her head a bit more, her sight and sound heightening, as she drew level with the pair. There was a scraping sound against the path’s surface and then her shins connected with something hard and narrow. No time to wonder how anything came to be in her way. She was going down again.

  Portfolio flew one way.

  Her feet went the other.

  Her tush made painful contact with turf for second time in not enough hours. Should have been a Monday. Some stars did a little dance before eyes before fading out of view.

  “I am sorry.”

  He didn’t sound sorry, and how had his cane—only hard, narrow thing around—got in her way? Chill of eyes extended to his voice. Cliché, bad guy voice. He could have air conditioned a room just by talking. She accidentally looked up, met the gaze. Oh yeah, he was worse up close. Felt her eyeballs dry as they did deer-in-headlights. It had never been a good look for her.

  “Are you all right?”

  He almost sounded anxious. Or like someone trying to sound anxious. He needed more practice, but she gave him a point for trying, then took it back for sucking at it.

  “I’m fine.”

  A large, beautifully manicured hand entered her sightline. A big, gold ring winked at her, but she didn’t follow it up to the face. Bodyguard gave off a worse vibe than the old man—

  Bodyguard must have lost patience. The big hand grabbed hers and she was yanked upright hard enough to almost send her staggering into a powerful chest wrapped in cliché black on black. Cloying scent made her eyes water. Would have slammed into his chest if he hadn’t been strong enough to halt the collision he’d almost caused. In the yin-yang moment, she accidentally caught a glimpse of his hard face. Probably be some nightmares in her future. If they didn’t kill her for tripping over the cane and forcing the creep to help her up. His grip eased when she steadied, though her heart thumped like she’d been chest to chest with a killer.