They Gave Me a Check at Twelfth Night, So I Took Their Mardi Gras novel · Chapter 12 of 32
Chapter 12: The Night Before
I picked up the check, folded it in half, and held it out across the tablecloth to Blythe.
"For the nursery," I said. "Get a good crib."
Her smile slipped.
She had expected me to tear it, or cry.
"I don't want your money," she said.
"No. You want mine."
Auguste had gone the color of the napkin.
I laid the check by her plate, stood, and walked through Arnaud's with my back straight and my bag on my arm.
At the bar, Gaspard put down a glass of club soda he had not touched.
"Take me to the boat," I said.
"Clem, your mother..."
"Not Mama's. The boat. Please."
He did not ask me why.
The Marie Odile lay at the Bywater landing under a string of lights, a restored steel tug thirty years older than I was, painted dark green with a white wheelhouse.
A Villere Marine notice was taped to the gangway.
I read it and looked at him.
"It's nothing," he said.
"Gaspard."
"It's a contract. It'll come right."
He pulled the paper off the rail and crushed it in his fist.
He had lied to me, and he did it badly.
I let it lie for the moment, because I was shaking.
Inside, the cabin was one warm room of brass and teak, with a galley at one end and a bunk at the other.
A woodstove that he lit with a match and two sticks.
He gave me a wool blanket.
He gave me a glass of bourbon in a jelly jar.
He sat on the other side of the table, the whole breadth of it between us, with his elbows on his knees.
The stove ticked.
Water slapped the hull.
"You can say it," he said. "Whatever it is. I'll stay put."
I drank the bourbon.
It went down hot and clean.
"You didn't come," I said.
He did not move.
"The night before the wedding you told me they'd use me up."
"I called you jealous."
"That was cruel and I knew it."
"And you didn't come to the church."
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