Queen Of Hearts

Hair like flames.  You can’t help burning for her.  Channeling Billy Holiday.  Torch songs.

The piano player is drinking whiskey between sets and I’m buying all the rounds.  Bad craziness on Bourbon Street the next block over.  Saturday night.  Valentine’s Day.  Everyone asking everyone, “Will you be?”

I’ve been and always will be holding my wife’s hand.  Fine dinner at Emeril’s on Tchoupitoulas Street, fine walk beside the river.  Now fine whiskey in a fine cut crystal glass in one of the finer watering holes on Rue Royale. 

The singer in a long black dress.  Very cool.  I’m channeling The Hollies and happy enough to burst into song myself.  Just sober enough to know my limitations.  My pretty wife, always sober, always knows my predilections and she squeezes my hand hard.  I sit back and let the singer do her job.

This is a great city for lovers.  Intimate streets, small cafes and bars, music everywhere.  Voodoo charms to draw love in if your true love is drawn away.  Mule drawn carriages.  A streetcar named desire.

The singer is working the tables now, moving through what hardly constitutes a crowd, more  a gathering of friends.  She’s singing Stormy Weather.  Our eyes meet and she runs her slender hand up my arm.

Later, walking back to the hotel, I’ll spring towards a lamp post, swing around in my worst imitation of Mr. Fred Astaire, kneel on damp cobblestones and offer my red haired wife my hand.  A silver fleur-de-leis  necklace purchased a month in advance.  I’ll mangle a proposal in French-Creole, resort to my native tongue, Pig-latin.  Declare my undying love.

Her funny valentine.

Dave/NOLA

Valentine

~ by oldmanhawk on February 15, 2009.