“I haven’t finished any of the new ones.” Which she already knows. I’m still a no-name and all I can get for my work ispeanuts. I know my work is worth more and some day I’ll get more, but I haven’t had the time or the money to work on my art for a while. It’s sort of a vicious circle. Canvases are expensive. So are good brushes. So are paints, and my style requires a lot of it.
Sadie kisses my cheek. “At least think seriously about it. Forrealthis time. You’ve got forty-eight hours left to jump ship and come with me. What happened to the hotel is water under the bridge at this point, Ami. You can’t change it. Take a leap. Try something new. Youneedit, girl, trust your best friend. I think you’ll be surprised at how the world would open up for you. Please, Amelie. Take a chance with me.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“You better.” She glances at the little clock that sits on the bar. “Oh shit, it’s after eight. I have to run.” She heads for the door. “Bye, Jimmy.”
“See you, Sadie.”
“Not if I see you first.”
Jimmy watches her go. As do all the other men in the bar. When you’re wearing—or not wearing—as much as Sadie is, that tends to happen.
It’s water under the bridge. You can’t change it.
I sigh. I know I can’t.
I try not to think too hard about how things used to be. Or about all the mistakes that were made. By me, but mainly by my father, God rest his soul.
My father, Theodore Thibodeaux III, dropped dead of a sudden, massive heart attack right here in the middle of the bar where he’d spent most of his life. He’d inherited this hotel fromhis father, who inherited it from his father, my great-grandfather, who built it from the ground up with his bare hands. My great-grandfather was a talented craftsman. But it was his son, my grandfather, Theodore Thibodeaux II, who turned this place into the best little hotel on Bourbon Street.
In its heyday, the Hotel Thibodeaux was a destination, with five stars and a restaurant that once earned itself a Michelin star.
Unfortunately, a flair for hospitality and an admirable work ethic weren’t the only things that ran in my family. A great fondness for good-timing and a hearty thirst for bourbon also ran deep. My great-grandfather, my grandfather and then my father imbibed like it was squarely up to the Thibodeauxes to keep our place name on the map. As though they feared someone might change the name to Boringly Sober Street if they didn’t uphold their part of the bargain with as much dedication as they were capable of.
The good-timing meant their wives didn’t stick around all that long (in my father’s case it was a different kind of tragedy). And hard drinking has a way of chipping away at all the stuff you work so diligently for, especially when you own a bar and have access to as much of the devil’s poison as you can get your hands on.
All three Theodore Thibodeauxes ended up dying young because, no matter how much talent they might have had or how hard they might have worked, they just couldn’t kick the habit.
I make sure I never touch the stuff.
Of course I knew we were having a few money issues. Wecouldn’t afford to refurbish the place like we needed to and our decor slowly devolved from chic into something closer to what might generously be described as shabby chic. The curtains started to look a little dustier. The rugs never really got cleaned. The paint job needed redoing. But this is New Orleans, after all. Romantic decay is part of the fabric of this place and part of its charm.
Apparently, some people didn’t find the decaythatcharming though, because we started getting some less-than-stellar reviews.
Reality really started sinking in when we lost one of our stars. I was twelve and it felt like the end of the world at the time.
That was the same year the hotel next door, the White Swan (I always thought the name was pretentious-sounding, but whatever), got a major upgrade and they began to poach a lot of our business.
On my sixteenth birthday, we lost another half star. I cried about it, but crying didn’t help one bit.
It happened over time, but eventually it became clear that the Hotel Thibodeaux was no longer a destination of the well-connected Southern glitterati. We were attracting a different kind of clientele. Families on a budget. Low level corporate types in bad suits who couldn’t afford the Sheraton for whatever conference they were here for. Hard-partying frat boys whose only goal for the weekend was to get as inebriated as possible.
By then, my father seemed to share a similar goal.
I tried to save him, I really did. I made him doctor’s appointmentshe never went to. I got him an AA brochure and tried to talk him into going to a few meetings. I hid the bourbon. But we literally live in a bar so of course he always found it. The good-timing family streak ran strong in Theodore Thibodeaux III. He also smoked, which didn’t help matters, and exercise was practically a dirty word. It was bad enough, he said, that he had to climb up and down the rickety stairs multiple times a day.
And one Tuesday evening it all caught up with him. The ambulance driver told me he was probably dead before he even hit the floor. Come to think of it, I’m not sure why you’d mention a detail like that to a newly dead man’s only daughter. Either way, it’s stuck with me.
Very soon after that, I found out my daddy had a penchant for gambling as well as drinking. Much more than a penchant, in fact. A full-blown addiction.
I knew he enjoyed the casino every now and then, but I had no idea how bad it was. Turned out my daddy gambled away all the wealth of three generations.
I really don’t know how he could have done that to me, but I try not to dwell on it. He loved me and I adored him right back. I try my best to leave it there.
But it’s true I sometimes feel a little bit dark about the whole thing. And I’m not a dark person. I’m an always-look-on-the-bright-side person.
Something in me broke that day I watched the ambulance pull away, not to take my father to the hospital, but to the morgue.
