Cappuccino Musings

I wasn’t looking to escape, not even in the brief moment it took to slurp down my cappuccino at Giovanni’s Café on Lafayette Street. Not escape exactly. A respite from the whirlwind of disasters that had plagued me for the past year was what I had in mind. Besides, how much escape could be found sitting in a stiff rod iron chair next to a plate glass window, on full display for every tourist rushing by? Maybe that was the point. Maybe I was looking for the anonymity only found in a crowd of strangers.

      The bell at the top of the door jangled, announcing the entrance of one of those strangers into the sanctity of my brooding corner. I glanced up, taking in the seersucker suit that screamed New Orleans local. I groaned aloud as he approached me, smiling and waving off a waitress with a “Nothing for me, doll,” with the easy, flirtatious smile and wink I’d come to dread.

He was the reason I needed an escape.

I drained the last of my coffee before shoving my computer into my bag. I would have to find somewhere else to go to avoid him and the trouble that came with him.

“Gina, what a stroke of luck. Here I was thinking of you and then I turn around and there you are. Amazing.”

     “That’s a word for it.”

      “Are you leaving? Not because of me I hope.”

       I tried to plaster a smile on my face, but the image reflected in the window showed a lopsided grimace. “Why are you here, Jack? Are you stalking me now?”

        His eyes widened, somehow making the deep blue of his irises twinkle a little brighter in the light streaming through the window. I held up a hand.

“Sorry, that was uncalled for. I just needed some time for myself.”

     He stuck his hands in his pockets and rocked back slightly in his Italian leather Oxford shoes. He was waiting for me to invite him to sit or for me to scurry past him. It was hard to say which was more tempting. The manners ingrained in me by the nuns won out and I gestured to the seat across from me. He folded his lanky form onto the small chair, designed for genteel ladies of the last century and I allowed myself a moment of glee at his discomfort.

     “I know it’s hard to let the place go.”

     My nostrils flared and my lips tightened, but I held my anger in check. Jack had been the only one who had tried to save my childhood home, devastated by Katrina, almost lost in the housing crisis of 2008, and then heavily mortgaged to pay for my mom’s cancer treatment. But all the rational bits left inside me had crumbled like the foundation of our 19^th century Greek Revival house that would go up on auction in two weeks. Jack represented the sledgehammer that would clear out the rest.

     “I thought there’d be more time.” I swiped my nose with my stained napkin. Why did my nose always run like a fountain when other women’s eyes leaked their dainty tears? I blamed the nuns. There was no crying at Ursuline Academy.

     “I wish I had better news. But I can’t hold back the bank any longer.”

“It’s not your fault,” I said grudgingly. It would have been so much easier if it had been - if I could lay all the pain of the last year at his doorstep.

He thrummed his fingers on the porcelain tabletop and looked around the place as if he had never been in an Italian pastry shop before. Some places have neighborhood bars, we had neighborhood coffee shops that served gelato, sfogliatella, and cannoli. I drowned my sorrows in sugar and caffeine.

“Your dad was my mentor. He took me on when no one else would.” Jack’s dark hair fell forward as he looked down at the table, at the dusting of sugar, evidence of my earlier indulgence. He brushed his hair back in a gesture that had become all too familiar in the past weeks.

    “I didn’t know that.”

    He showed me a glimpse of a dimple as he smiled. “Yeah. I graduated from Loyola Law School three years ago, but times were bad, and I didn’t have…”

    “Didn’t have what?” I leaned forward. I knew my dad liked him, admired him even. He had talked of him often enough as he regaled my mom and me with stories of the attorneys at the firm, the court cases and various petty crimes and disputes people got caught up in. I hadn’t paid attention. And now Dad was gone; he didn’t last six months after my mom succumbed to the disease that had ravaged her body for most of my life. She would go as long as two years without a tumor before one would inevitably appear on a scan and our family would be back at Ochsner Hospital, desperate for one last, final treatment.

    “Connections, family, money, you know all the things that matter.” His words dragged me back from my memory, from my guilt.

    “That didn’t matter to him.”

    He chuckled, then sniffed. “You’re right. He didn’t care about any of that. He made me feel like I could do anything, even be a judge one day.”

“Tell me about him, about his work.” My dad had wanted me to follow in his footsteps, but the idea of sitting in an office or worse yet a court room filled me with dread. We fought. I left. He died.

“He was brilliant. He could debate with the best of them. Obviously, that’s what we do. Argue for a living and all that.”

“Yeah, he tried to convince our neighbor, Mr. Babineau -” Jack nodded, everyone had heard of Mr. Babineau - “Dad told him that there was a famous man from New Iberia named Louis Frontage that they named all the feeder roads along the highway ‘Frontage Road’ after. Dad had him going for a while, spinning tales of Louis Frontage’s escapades during the war of 1812, how Andrew Jackson had relied on him and the pirate Jean Lafitte to roust the British.”

“That sounds like your dad.” Jack let out a laugh and the muscles in his shoulders relaxed. “He had the gift of the gab, but that wasn’t why I admired him.”

“Really?”

“Sure, I loved his stories. He’d have the room in stitches within minutes of walking in the door. But what I remember most, and what I’ll miss about him, is how he treated people like family, maybe even to the detriment of his own.” He fixed his gaze on mine and a lump formed in my throat.

“What do you mean, to the detriment of his own?”

“He only charged people what he thought they could pay. If he could keep them out of court, settle things between parties with a handshake, he did. I didn’t question him, I just assumed that y’all were ok. Financially, I mean. Even if the firm was in the red.”

“Huh.” I reached for my cup, but it was empty. Before I could say anything, Jack motioned to the server to bring us more coffee. “So, you’re saying he got us into all this debt intentionally?”

“Not exactly.” He stared down at the terrazzo floor beneath his feet while he gathered his thoughts. I was on the edge of my seat. I didn’t think I could take any more bad news. Those people that say that God only gives you what you can handle, they’re lying.

“Honestly, I don’t know. If you want, I can go back and try to collect payment, but the books are a bit of a shamble, and I’m not sure where to even start looking for past-due billings,” Jack said.

“Yeah, my mom took care of all that and when she got sick last year…”

He didn’t speak while I gained my composure and I was grateful for the silence, for the time.

“There’s some assets at the firm we could try to sell – furniture, computers, that type of thing.”

I nodded, absentmindedly dumping packets of sugar into my fresh cup of cappuccino. I hadn’t noticed the waitress removing my empty cup or placing the fresh one in its place.

“He was a good man,” Jack said.

“I know. I mean, I guess I’m not surprised that the firm is in trouble too. He was always bad with money, giving away everything he ever had. But if I’d known about the mortgage, the debt, how desperate the situation was, I never would have gone to Berklee.”

“He wanted the best for you. He told me you had a voice that would make the angels weep.”

I blinked rapidly and took a swig of my coffee then set it down with a thump. How much sugar had I put in?

“You’re lucky, you know. My dad took off when I was seven, left my mom to raise my brothers and me on a nurse’s salary. I don’t know how she did it. She was always running around after us, trying to keep us out of trouble, out of the hospital. You have no idea how many times one of us did something stupid on a bike or a skateboard.”

“She sounds like a wonderful woman.”

“She is and I tell her how grateful I am every day. But I never had any sort of male role model in my life, no one to teach me how an engine works, or show me how to change a tire, how to treat a woman. And then your dad came along, and saw something in me, something I didn’t see in myself. He took me under his wing, and he taught me how to be a man.” He drained his coffee, and I could see a wet sheen in his eyes. “I loved him. Not like you - I don’t mean to say that…”

    I touched his hand lightly and when he didn’t pull away, I wrapped my fingers around his.

    “I’m glad you knew him and that he was good to you. He was a great dad, although he never could change a tire. We’ve had Triple A my whole life.”

He smiled and squeezed my hand. A tingle shot up my arm.

“I’m a mess,” he said as a tear ran down his cheek.

“Good.” The word came out of my mouth before I could stop it. I looked up at him, my eyes wide. “God, that sounds awful. Am I a horrible person to want someone else to hurt the way that I do?”

    “Misery loves company.”

    I laughed and the rumble in my chest broke something loose. The tightness that had gripped me for the past two months eased in that moment and I felt for the first time that maybe I could move on, that I would survive this.

    “Do you need me to sign something for the house, do anything about the bankruptcy?”

    He shook his head and laced his fingers into mine, intertwining my story, my grief with his.

    “Not today. We can deal with all of that later.”

    “Thank you.” My voice cracked and I looked out the window at the passersby, ambling up and down the streets, pointing out the architecture, admiring the view. They were here for the history of this place – for the heroes and villains of many a war, for the Voodoo legend of Marie Laveau, for the birthplace of Jazz and the many artists that it had inspired.

I’d had enough of history. I was ready for the future.