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I dived out the way, just as a woman landed on the ground in an unceremonious heap and groaned. Dark waving locks were heaped up into a sloppy bun with plenty of tendrils hanging loose.
“What…?” she started as she pushed up and looked around in a daze. “What just happened?”
Here we went, I realized. Time to play emissary for another world.
Epilogue
Dori
EARTH 2020
“Leeva,” I called from the wrought-iron balcony as I pulled my unruly mop of hair up into a quick knot and watched a busker down on the street below set up shop at the corner. “I’m outtie.”
He was the first street performer I’d spotted on our block since the world had gone crazy. Seeing him now brought on a sense of energy and hope that expanded in my chest, making me realize I had missed my daily dose of happy vibes from the sidewalk crowds.
The twang of his saxophone warming up caused my lips to quirk and hips to shift with the melody as I grabbed my watering can from the tiny terrace table and gave my canisters full of planted vegetables and blooming flowers a quick bath. One of my tomatoes looked like it might be ripe for the picking soon.
Also uplifting news.
I set the watering can aside and reentered the apartment through the French door, where I grabbed my purse and mask hanging off the back of one of the chairs at the kitchen bar and swung the purse strap over my shoulder.
My roommate stumbled into the front room just as I reached the exit. “Where the hell are you going at this time of day?” she mumbled on a yawn as she scratched at the silk scarf she had wrapped around her head.
“Work,” I answered perkily, motioning to the white button-up blouse I wore with the black bow tie and black mini skirt over matching leggings. If that didn’t scream waitress loud enough, then the pristine white sneakers and gray half bistro apron certainly did. “Some of us still have to work for a living.”
“Damn essential employees,” Leeva teased on a yawn. “You know, if you found a sugar daddy even half as generous as mine, you wouldn’t have to do so much of that working nonsense.”
“Don’t I know it,” I answered back on a grin as I opened my arms to her. “Now give me some sweet lovings goodbye so I can go.”
As she grumbled over the contact but shuffled forward to hug me anyway, I folded her into my arms tight and sighed happily, still feeling strangely lifted from the sight of that one busker outside. Things were about to get better. I could just feel it.
“I’ll be back by early afternoon,” I reported, pulling away. “You got any plans for today?”
“Oh…” flinging herself up onto a chair at the bar, she reached for a beignet I’d gone out earlier to scrounge up for breakfast. “I’m not sure yet.” Closing her eyes, she moaned and chewed before brushing powdered sugar from her lips and saying with a full mouth, “I might hit up a protest I heard the others were going to start on Royal a little later.”
“Just be careful,” I told her, pointing a stern finger.
A few marches not so far from us had gotten a little violent recently. I didn’t want Leeva caught up in any kind of danger.
“Always am, ma chérie.” She tapped her fingers to her lips and blew a kiss at me. “Now get that adorable little butt to your boring-ass job and serve some lame tables already. Maybe a customer in your section will end up being a handsome and available millionaire on the lookout for an independent-minded half-Creole girl with a quirky set of values.”
“I don’t have a quirky set of values,” I pouted as I opened the door.
“You really do,” she countered, winking at me. “But I love you anyway. Now scoot.”
“Well, if that isn’t a grand dismissal.” I rolled my eyes only to laugh and blow a kiss right back at her. “Bye. Love you too.”
But as I swept into the hallway of our third-floor walk-up apartment and shut the door behind me, I said to myself, “I like my values.”
Leeva was all about the pampered life, but I enjoyed earning my income and making my own way. My maw-maw had instilled a serious work ethic in me that made me feel pride and accomplishment for a job well done. It made me one of the best damn waitresses my café had ever seen too, if I did say so myself. So if that made me quirky, I figured so be it. Quirky was cool in my book.
Humming to the tune the busker was playing on the corner as I pushed from the front exit of the building on the ground floor, I hooked my mask into place and started down the street.
It’d been forever since I’d heard anyone play “Singin’ in the Rain,” and the saxophone rendered it perfectly. Made me want to click into a golden oldies station when I got home from work and see if I could watch a Gene Kelly movie.
I tossed some money into the instrument case as I passed, and the player winked at me in gratitude.
With the pandemic going on, the streets were fairly quiet. A few food trucks were unloading their wares in alleyways, and the rare couple walked past hand in hand for a morning stroll. Some were out walking dogs. But even the lone water truck on Bourbon looked like it was struggling to find something on the street to clean.
