The Beau & the Belle
Page 21

“BOOOOO,” Rose interrupts. She was planning to get her palm read after mine, but instead she grabs my hand and pulls me away into the square.
“She didn’t know what she was talking about!” she insists. We’re heading toward Canal Street to catch the streetcar and I have to race to keep up with her. The crowds are out in full force.
When I catch up, I link our elbows so I don’t lose her again. “I don’t know, Rose. She had gold hoop earrings and everything—and did you see that crystal ball on her table? You can’t just buy those things from Spencer’s.”
She aims another sneer in my direction. “Listen, the night before I met Jeremy, I had a psychic tell me I was about to meet the love of my life.”
“Okay, but didn’t Jeremy leave you for a guy?”
“That’s not the point!”
I’m confused.
“So the love of your life is a gay guy?”
“No, he sucks, but what matters is I met him the very next day.”
Well I’m convinced.
We continue walking arm in arm as she tries to explain it to me, but I only half-listen, lost in the noise around us. It hasn’t quite sunk in that I’m back living in New Orleans. It’s been so long since I’ve called the Crescent City my home—ten years. God, I was different back then, so wide-eyed and unsure of myself, a baby. After boarding school, Rose and I both went to Wellesley for college, just like my parents wanted. They thought I should study art history and business in the hopes that I would come home and immerse myself in the New Orleans art scene. For a while I put up a good fight, dabbling in literature, but in the end, I couldn’t read another fucking sonnet. At what point can we all stop sucking Shakespeare’s dick? (Strike me down, thespians.) And worse, I loved art as much as my parents wanted me to love art, which was very annoying for the rebel inside of me.
After college, I worked at Sotheby’s in New York for four years in their contemporary art department. I started out as a lowly intern, schlepping coffee around the office for all of the top directors, brokers, and sales staff. Eventually, I was asked to start assisting with the acquisitions team and by the time I left, I was a senior specialist focused on contemporary North American paintings from the 1900s to the early 2000s. Andy Warhol, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko—when one of their works came into Sotheby’s, I helped facilitate the appraisal and sale. It was exciting and fast-paced, just like the city. New York isn’t for the faint of anything, with its long days, long nights, smoke and grit, a subway system that somehow runs most of the time. I went days without seeing the sun during the winter months, and dating? You can forget about it. There was never time. My boss was a lonely jerk, and I swear she had IT hack into my Google calendar just so she could sabotage any hope I had at a social life.
I don’t regret it though. New York gave me a thick skin. Part of me feels like if I can survive there, I can do anything, which is why I’m back in New Orleans. I’m going to open up my own gallery in the French Quarter. I know, not exactly groundbreaking, considering there are about a million of them between Bourbon Street and the Mississippi, but I’m creating something different—a destination not just for art lovers, but for every tourist trying to snap an Instagrammable moment in the city. I worked with a team of designers to create a space that is part coffee shop, part art gallery. Our lattes will come in delicate pink cups. Our food will be delicious and adorable—avocado toast and pastries and artisanal cheese. There will be exposed brick, original hardwood floors, and enough natural light to make a teenage girl drool. Better yet, I’ve commissioned a pink neon sign that will hang outside on the white brick facade. It’s the name of the gallery: NOLA. Simple. Meta. My marketing team nearly had a collective brain aneurism trying to explain to me how difficult the name will make SEO, but social media finds a way. It’s too good to pass up. I’m going to make a killing, and I’m going to use the venue to gain exposure for local artists like my mother. Her abstract paintings are perfect for the space—large swaths of bright blues and pinks and yellows that people fawn over. She’s always made good money from her art, but there’s room to grow and I’m going to use what I learned at Sotheby’s to help her do so.
Rose and I are on the St. Charles line heading toward my parents’ house in the Garden District. It’s so packed on the streetcar that we weren’t able to find seats, so we stand in the center aisle, shifting our weight from one foot to the other to keep from falling over. It reminds me of the subways back in New York, except the streetcars are louder. They chug along above ground, the low rumble punctuated by metallic clangs loud enough to make you go deaf. They dot the New Orleans landscape with their cute, old-world charm, but they are slow as shit. Most locals don’t take them, opting instead for a car or taxi, but I couldn’t resist today.
Rose begins to speak behind me, but the loud metallic CLANG blocks out most of her words.
I smile. “What was that?”
“I SAID,” she shouts, “are you sure you want to use the money from your trust to start a business?”
I laugh. “Oh, you mean the business that’s like two months away from opening? That business?”
She rolls her eyes. “Yes. It’s not too late to back out now.”
“It’s a little late for the doubt bomb. I’ve already hired two baristas.”
“Fire them.”
“I’ve already spent a fortune renovating the building. It’s perfect.”
“I’m just not sure you’re fully prepared for this.”
I narrow my eyes, focusing on her concern. “Where is this coming from? We were just at the space and you said you loved it.”
Her face breaks out in a grin and she holds up her hand for me to high-five. “Congratulations, you’ve passed the test.”
I leave her hanging. “What test?”
She waves her hand, but I continue to ignore it. “I just wanted to make sure you’re really committed.”
“I should have you committed for almost giving me a heart attack.”
She is unperturbed. “That’s what good friends are for. Oh! Here’s our stop.”
She tugs the line to stop the streetcar and we follow a mob of tourists out onto St. Charles Avenue. It’s early January, days away from the start of Carnival, and there’s an excitement hanging in the air—or maybe that’s just the smell of king cakes baking throughout the city. Either way, I like it.
“Oh, look at the beads hanging in the trees!” one tourist shouts beside us. “How cute!”
Rose rolls her eyes and tugs me forward, anxious to break away from the crowd.
“That’s the last time I let you talk me into taking the streetcar.”
I pinch her side. “C’mon! It’s fun! You’ll sit for a psychic but you won’t tolerate a few tourists? Where is your southern hospitality?”
She strikes a dramatic pose and assumes the voice of a dainty southern belle. “Just because they’re in N’awlins doesn’t mean they can depend on the kindness of strangers.”
After another two blocks of near sprinting, we’re finally on our own, walking along the broken sidewalks and mansions I missed over the years I was away. I smile as we pass a house clinging to the past as much as possible. Out front there are black iron hitching posts with horse heads sculpted out of iron. A hundred years ago, they were used to tie up horses. Today, they’re status symbols.
I find it all charming and adorable. Rose finds the large, worn stepping stones and broken sidewalks “barely tolerable”. She’s only in town for a few weeks and then she’s headed back to Boston. After college, we’d commute back and forth to visit every few weeks, suffering through the dreary winters together. I think she’s still a little annoyed with me for moving back here, but I have zero regrets. It’s the dead of winter and I’m wearing a jean jacket and thin scarf. There’s no snow on the ground, no sludge to wade through on my way to and from the office, no email from my boss explaining that I’ll need to cancel my date and work late again. Life is glorious.