Jesse didn’t know what to say. On some level she was right but, deep down, he knew she was wrong. “I love you more than anything. I’ll prove it to you. Let’s get married right now. Right here in the middle of the hurricane.”
Amy’s mouth dropped open like she couldn’t believe anyone would say something so thoughtless and insensitive. “You really know how to make a girl feel special, Jesse.”
She stomped away through the sand and past the club and into the parking lot. He started to follow her, then thought better of it when he saw her start running toward Harley, Jesse’s rusty Volkswagen. Amy had been reduced to driving the little wreck of a car when Jesse had the van on the road. He heard her grind Harley into reverse and grind it again into first gear. She shifted into the night until all he could see was two taillights fading away in the driving rain.
He watched until the lights disappeared. The stinging rain didn’t faze him. Watching Amy leave felt like the best part of his heart was being ripped out of his body. Amy deserved better, he realized. She would be crying all the way back to New Orleans and it was his fault. She’d come to help him celebrate on the beach and all he’d done was show her what a selfish fool he really was. She was right. One minute more and he would have been naked.
“Take a good look,” Jesse heard the voice say. It sounded like it was coming from the eye of the approaching hurricane.
“Take a good look at what?” Jesse screamed into the rain, never expecting the voice to answer him.
“Take a good look at what you’re throwing away,” the voice said.
“I’m not throwing anything away,” Jesse shouted. “She’s the one who’s running away.”
Jesse listened for a further response. This was the first time the voice had actually answered one of his questions. They were in dialogue with one another. He wondered if he was making progress or slipping into deeper trouble.
“What should I do?” he cried into the wind and rain. “Should I go after her?”
No answer.
He stared down the deserted, rain-swept road for some time, hoping Amy might return. After a few minutes, the rain began to feel like a waterfall. He became dejected, and decided to seek shelter in the Sea Shell.
“What happened to you?” Dale asked as Jesse stumbled into the bar like a wet dog.
“Amy caught me on the beach with Janet. We were just about to go skinny-dipping. Why didn’t you tell me she was here?”
“We had no idea where you were or what you were doing,” Dale said. “Who’s Janet?”
“She’s that babe who was dancing so crazy right in front of you.”
“Oh, shit, Amy caught you with her. Were you naked?” Dale asked.
“No, but she was, almost.”
“Oh, no. Where’s Amy now?”
“On her way back to New Orleans, I guess.”
“What’s up, Jesse?” Butch asked as he joined the conversation. “Why you all wet?”
“Amy just caught him skinny dipping with that crazy, hot, drunk babe who was dancing wild,” Dale said. “Now Amy’s driving back to New Orleans by herself.”
Butch shook his head and looked at Jesse. “That’s terrible. Way to go, Jesse. Way to break her little heart.”
Jesse tried to defend himself. “She’s the one breaking my heart. She shows up unannounced and then leaves in a huff before letting me explain.”
Butch wasn’t having any of it. “What were you going to tell her? You were on lifeguard duty?”
It’s time to go on,” Tim said. “The club owner is getting nervous. He wants us back onstage before the storm hits. He doesn’t want to lose his crowd.”
Jesse was wringing out salt water from his shirt. “What, so we can all die together?”
Dale tried to smooth things over. “Nobody’s going to die. It’s a hurricane party.”
“It’s not a hurricane party,” Jesse said. “It’s a hurricane.”
Rene noticed Jesse’s drenched clothing. “You better get some dry clothes on.”
“I’ll change in the van,” Jesse said as he headed for the door. “You guys stall for a minute. I’ll be right back.”
The band and the crowd were ready to go by the time Jesse came back and joined them onstage.
Dale handed him a bar towel. “Man, you’re as wet as you were before.”
Jesse was breathing hard from running through the storm. “You can’t believe it out there. It’s really getting scary.”
Rene kicked off the next set on his drums. Jesse was on bass, Butch on guitar and Tim on fiddle. Dale was singing lead. The first song was a souped-up version of “Robbin’ Banks” by the Holy Modal Rounders. The band sounded smooth and powerful. The crowd had never heard the song before, but they were soon singing along with the chorus, “Lord I love robbin’ banks.”
As the set progressed, Jesse couldn’t get Amy off his mind. He was worried about her driving in the storm, all wet and angry and sad.
The raucous crowd brought him back to the performance. No one drinks like the crowd at a hurricane party on the beach. People were dancing all over the club and not necessarily with each other. Anyone with a glass or a bottle in her hand seemed to be putting an individual twist on the proverbial rain dance. A window facing the beach blew out like someone fired a shotgun. People screamed and laughed at the same time, like they were inviting the storm to come in and join the party. Real danger was pounding on the door but everybody was too drunk to answer it.
Everybody, that is, except Butch and Jesse. Each of them was still sober enough to realize it might be time to stop the party and find shelter away from the beach.
“Does this place even have a basement?” Butch leaned over to ask Jesse as repairs were being made to the window.
Nick, the club owner, had two guys nailing up plywood on all the front windows, which were on the beach side. The massive oak bar was on the other side of the club, the side nearest the road. In between the bandstand and the bar, the crowd kept getting larger and more packed as new people piled into The Sea Shell to get out of the storm.
All the other clubs on the beach had closed. Kicked out patrons who didn’t want to stop partying found the lights of The Sea Shell most inviting. Jesse could see that no one was concerned about the powerful danger of the oncoming storm. Everybody was dancing and cheering.
The band kept playing with no break between sets. The crowd was rowdy and demanding.
Jesse wasn’t surprised when the power went out. He knew it would only be a matter of time. Everything went pitch black. The only sound coming from the bandstand was the muffled sound of Rene hitting drums with no working microphones.
Jesse had a Voodoo-cow-skull vision like the night at Fritzel’s when the lights went out. Once again, the skull flashed like a neon warning sign coming up from out of his subconscious mind. He expected the voice to come back to him since the band seemed, once again, in imminent danger.
The voice said nothing. The only warning it had given him all night was about losing Amy.
Before Jesse had time to wonder how to deal with the storm in the darkness, the power came back on as if by a miracle.
Nick jumped onstage to make an announcement. “Okay, people. We’re the only ones on the entire shore who have power. That’s because I’m the only club owner around with the foresight to buy a generator.”
The crowd cheered wildly as they surged toward the stage like Nick was some kind of new messiah.
“And, as you all know, my band is invincible.”
The crowd began stomping its collective feet. Jesse realized most of them had heard about “the Safari Club miracle,” as it was now referenced.
Nick pulled out five-hundred-dollar bills and ceremoniously handed them to Dale. “That’s hazardous duty pay for the band. And for all of you,” he said, pausing for dramatic effect, “next round is on the house.”
The crowd stormed the bar.
The Divebomberz kicked back into high gear with an original song, appro
priately titled, “Hurricane on the Bayou.” The band and the cheering crowd became one, riding out the storm in a fever pitch of rock and roll, tequila courage. Jesse was so exhausted he felt like falling down. He looked around and saw his fellow band members feeling the same way, grinning and bearing it. The only breaks they had were more like pauses to drink shots of tequila provided by members of the audience.
Torrential rain and thunder barrages could be heard even over the intense volume of the band. Jesse couldn’t see the magnificent lightning show because the windows were boarded. The club began to feel like a ship that had submerged.
Jesse got the crowd going with a sing-a-long version of “Yellow Submarine.” Every voice in the club was screaming the lyrics in joyful unison. It didn’t matter that the band didn’t know the chords to the song. Rene knew the drum beat and the mob choir did the rest. Try as he might, Jesse couldn’t get Amy out of his mind. “Yellow Submarine” was one of her favorite songs. He hoped she made it home safely. What if she’d finally had enough of him and the band? Could he live without her? Was his life going to come down to a choice between Amy and the band?
In his current state of fatigue and intoxication, Jesse realized for the first time that Amy would be the wise choice. He also realized she would never force that decision on him.
The party raged on until 4 a.m. when the storm began to ease up. The band had been playing encores for two hours. The bar was down to its last bottle of tequila. The place smelled like the inside of an alcoholic’s mouth. Marijuana and cigarette smoke filled the room. It was hard to take a breath without choking. Jesse knew the dance floor was slimy from the way the dancers were slipping and falling all over each other. From the stage, he could smell the funk of spilled beer, sweat-soaked clothing, and cigarette butts. The hurricane humidity was a hundred percent. Too many dancing bodies in such a small place turned the windowless room into a steam bath. Men and women greased each other up with sweaty, topless embraces. Jesse saw several couples shamelessly making love on tables and chairs at the edge of the club.
The hurricane party was about to go full orgy when the storm finally began to die down. Jesse could feel the pressure falling. In a break between songs, Dale announced that the rain and thunder had stopped. The announcement took the wind out of everybody’s sails. People stopped dancing and hugged each other.
Butch took off his guitar, set it down and stepped up to the microphone. “On behalf of the flight crew and the captain, we would like to thank each and every one of you for flying with The Divebomberz tonight. We did experience some turbulence and we thank you all for your patience. Please keep your seatbelts fastened as we taxi toward the gate. We hope you enjoy the rest of your trip, wherever your final destination might be.”
The highly intoxicated crowd screamed for more. A chant went up for “One more song.” They didn’t stop even when the band started packing up instruments, wrapping cords and beginning the tedious process of breaking down the gear. The band was done, fried, spent, and wasted. They couldn’t have continued playing even if they’d wanted to try.
The real work of loading equipment into vehicles was about to begin. Jesse knew they’d need a bit of a break and some sobering up before taking on that task. He also knew better than to let a bunch of drunks try to help.
People hung around the club, basking in the afterglow of the storm-survival party. A dazed woman in a topless bikini opened up the door to the beach. The first rays of dawn stabbed through the smoky bar, like crusading sabers come to decapitate the heathens. The band staggered out of the club and onto the sand to watch the sunrise. The world outside was shockingly bright as the sun illuminated the debris-strewn beach. A thirty-five-foot sailboat was wrecked and lying on its side not twenty feet from the club. The side of the club was smattered with debris.
The sunrise was so bright it made Jesse moan and cover his eyes. It took some time to adjust to daylight after a night in the party tomb.
Dale stripped naked and waded into the waves. “Come on in,” he called back. “The water’s really warm.”
Nobody made a move to join him.
Dale dove in anyway.
Jesse had a two-fold epiphany as he watched the sun rise in its orange glory through the broken cloud horizon. One, he had to get back to Amy and make things right. And, two, he had to get to Carmen to get to the bottom of his Voodoo voice.
Amy wasn’t home when Jesse finally made it back to their New Orleans apartment at 3 p.m. the day after the hurricane party. The band had slept most of the morning on the beach. He’d tried to call from the pay phone in the bar but there had been no answer. He looked around the apartment. There was no note from Amy. The place felt empty. His life was taking a terrible wrong turn. Amy had become the voice of his better angels. One whisper from her could get him back on track. Holding her hand and listening to her laugh made him happy. Could she be gone for good?
He checked the closet. Her clothes were hanging neatly on her side. He checked the dresser. Her socks and underwear were there. He checked the bathroom. Her make up and hair products and even her toothbrush were there. These were good signs. Maybe she was giving him a dose of his own medicine by making him wonder where she was and what she was doing?
All he could see in his mind’s eye was Amy’s taillights disappearing in the rain. He kept hearing the voice say, “Take a good look at what you’re throwing away.”
Jesse felt an unfamiliar emotion rising in his heart. At first, he couldn’t identify it. He had never felt it before. It was the fear of losing someone you love. Before he knew what was happening, he had gone from being a heart-breaker to having his own heart broken.
It was a jolting, unwelcome shift of conscience.
He never should have let her drive off alone in the rain. He had done something wrong and there was nothing he could do to make it right. His powers of self-forgiveness had always been truly awesome. Since when did guilt have a seat at his table?
He laid down on what served as their bed, a double mattress on the floor of the tiny bedroom. Two rectangular windows with a view of the Mississippi docks were at floor level. He looked down Tchoupitoulas Street, hoping to see Harley headed his way. No such luck. He was too tired to get up and go looking for her. The last thing he did before falling asleep was smell the delicious aroma of Amy’s herbal shampoo on her pillow. She really did deserve much better than he’d been giving her. At the very least, she should know how much he needed her in his life.
He fell asleep.
His dreams were troubled. He was lost in the French Quarter, looking for something but unable to remember what it was. He was staring into the windows of antique shops on Royal Street, and asking strangers for directions. People kept saying they couldn’t help him if he didn’t know what he was trying to find.
Ruthie the duck lady appeared in her trademark housecoat. She had one duck along on a string. “You’re not looking for some thing. You’re looking for some one.”
“Yes, yes, you’re right,” Jesse said. “Who is it? Do you know?”
Ruthie smiled her inscrutable smile, a cross between Mona Lisa and Yoko Ono. “You’ve already found her.”
“Where is she? Who is she?”
“She’s calling right now.”
A shrill ringing from the telephone awakened him. It was Amy and she sounded like she’d been drinking. He looked at the clock. It was 10:30 p.m. He’d slept the day away. Amy was slurring her words ever so slightly. “Sorry to wake you up after your big night. Did your naked little friend come back after I left?”
“Not after you nearly drowned her.”
“It’s you I should have drowned.”
“Come on, Amy, don’t be like that. Why don’t you come home so we can talk?”
“I think you’d better come see me. I don’t think I should be driving.”
Jesse thought about her demand for a moment. “Where are you?”
“I’m at Tortilla Flats.”
He heard her gi
ggling, like she was having fun with somebody at the bar. “I’ll be right there. Don’t go anywhere.”
Tortilla Flats had been the band hang out since their arrival in New Orleans. It was near the old U.S. Mint and close to the railroad tracks along the Mississippi River. Jesse drove the band van, still full of equipment, and got to the bar in a hurry. Amy was gone. The bartender said she had just left.
Jesse slapped both hands on the bar. Then he turned on the bartender. “I told her not to go anywhere.”
“Don’t look at me, man.” The bartender held up his hands in a mock surrender.
Jesse ran outside and headed for the river. He knew that’s where she would go. She loved the river walk. Sure enough, he caught a glimpse of her white shirt in the darkness. He took off after her. Amy was crossing the tracks and on her way to the riverfront docks when Jesse caught up with her.
He tried hard to hide the fact that he was out of breath. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“I’m going to catch a slow boat to China,” she said.
“Not on my watch, you’re not.” He realized she wasn’t about to let him swoop her into his arms and kiss her. “Let’s get married June sixteenth.”
“What makes you think I still want to marry you?”
Jesse looked her in the eyes and slowly moved his hands to her shoulders. “I need you to know I still want you to be my wife. I know I haven’t acted much like it lately, but it’s true. I love you with all my heart.”
Amy escaped his grasp, turned away and made him follow her up the concrete stairs to the river walk. Once they were both looking at the Mississippi River, shining like neon in the moonlight, she turned to him and lowered her voice. “Jesse, this band thing seems to be making you crazier and crazier. You’re trying so hard to be … I don’t know what. It’s like you’re trying too hard. And this voice you keep claiming to hear has me worried.”
“The voice saved us all from the Safari Club fire.”
“You saved us at the Safari. It was you who got us all kicking down the walls. There was no voice. You don’t need the voice. You’ve got it all. The voice is just you talking to yourself.”
Rock and Roll Voodoo Page 10