God Ain't Blind (15 page)

Louis startled the waiter by cutting him off in midsentence.

“Hey, Pisan! If the lady says all she wants is a salad, that’s all she wants.

Now will you please do your job?” Louis smiled as he addressed Carlo, but Carlo got the message. He gave Louis a dirty look before he left our table in a flash. Then Louis turned to me. “Are you sure that a Caesar salad is all you want to eat?” he asked again, looking at me with his brows furrowed.

I nodded and let out an impatient sigh. “I’m sure.” I thought he got the message when I concluded with a sharp roll of my eyes.

We occupied a booth facing the bar, but I didn’t have to worry about anybody I knew seeing me. For one thing, most of the people I knew didn’t want to pay the high prices that Antonosanti’s charged, and that kept them away. Secondly, my mother’s restaurant, the Buttercup, was one of Antonosanti’s biggest competitors.

The black folks in Richland felt obligated to support her. But she didn’t attract just the black folks with her sweet potato pies, neck-bone casseroles, barbecued gizzards, and chicken dipped in butter-milk and flour and then deep-fried in butter. More than half of the people who patronized the Buttercup were white. As a matter of GOD AIN’ T BLIND

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fact, the entire Antonosanti family often dined at the Buttercup.

And that tickled my mother to death.

The service was always good at Antonosanti’s. Even on a busy day like today, I expected our orders to arrive within fifteen minutes. It was a long fifteen minutes, and I didn’t know what to talk about with Louis. I encouraged him to do most of the talking, which he seemed to enjoy doing. He revealed some interesting details about his background.

“I came up here in March from Greensboro, North Carolina, where I was born and raised, to visit my last living uncle. I hadn’t seen him since I was twenty-six, and I wanted to check out the new restaurant he’d just opened.”

“And you liked Richland so much you decided to stay?”

“Something like that.” Louis blinked hard a few times and took a deep breath. “Three days after I got here, my uncle had a stroke.

It was pretty bad. He couldn’t talk much, and there was some paral-ysis on both sides. His right arm became completely useless.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know. If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine.”

“I want to talk about it. This is the first time I’ve done so, and I do need to get it out of my system. Anyway, I decided to stay so I could help him out. He didn’t have any kids, and his wife died four years ago. He had a lady friend, but as soon as he had the stroke and needed to wear diapers, she took off. He was a veteran, and he’d always had tons of insurance. Thanks to that, I had no problem hiring a full-time nurse to help me look after him. There was no way I could leave him. Besides, I’d been laid off from my job back home, so there was nothing for me to rush home to.”

“You didn’t have any females waiting for you back in North Carolina?” I asked.

“Other than my grandma and the three aunties who helped raise me after my mama and daddy died in a boating accident, no.”

I looked at Louis in disbelief. “That’s so hard to believe. You’re very handsome,” I told him, with a demure chuckle.

“Oh, I wasn’t completely derelict in that department. I’m sorry I made it sound that way.” He paused and stared into my eyes for a few seconds. I had no idea why, so I motioned with my hand for 110

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him to continue talking. He cleared this throat and blinked. “I had a lady friend or three back there, but nothing serious enough for me to go back to.”

I was glad to hear that. “How is your uncle doing now, Louis?”

He bowed his head for a moment before he looked back at me.

“He never recovered. He died a month after his stroke.”

“I am so sorry,” I said, patting his hand. “So is that why you took over his restaurant?”

Louis nodded. “It was a hard decision to make, but I couldn’t turn down my uncle’s deathbed request.” His voice cracked. I patted his hand some more. “I kept his employees and took a brief business course at night school. Now, if I am lucky, I’ll turn Off the Hook into the success my uncle wanted and deserved. He worked hard, and he was a good man. It didn’t seem fair for him to end up like he did.”

I realized from the tears in Louis’s eyes that his late uncle was a hard subject for him to discuss. I decided to steer the conversation in a more positive direction. “I will do all I can to help you succeed.”

“So you can squeeze us into your budget?” Louis seemed as eager as a little boy on Christmas morning now. He sniffed and looked at me with renewed interest.

“We’ll have to see,” I said. The last thing I wanted to do was lock myself into a commitment that was so firm, I’d have trouble getting out of it, if I needed to.

“You won’t regret it,” Louis vowed. “I promise you that.”

C H A P T E R 2 3

I was thoroughly enjoying myself. Louis was good company and one of the most interesting individuals I’d ever met. He told me how he had learned his cooking skills from his grandmother. She had cooked for some fussy old millionaire for three years. After that, she’d cooked for one of the wealthiest white families in the state for ten years. He had no siblings and had received a lot of attention growing up with nothing but females. He didn’t seem to be spoiled, but I could tell that he liked to have his way. When the waiter brought the wrong wine and insisted that we try it, Louis firmly ordered him to bring us the selection that we had requested.

“I can’t believe the way some waiters behave!” he hollered, looking at me with his face screwed up like a can opener. “He wouldn’t last a day if he worked for me. I’d fire his ass so fast, his head would spin. It was bad enough when he gave you a hard time about ordering just a salad.”

“You did, too,” I reminded him in a gentle voice, punching the side of his arm.

Louis looked embarrassed, then amused. “That was different.

I’m not a waiter.” He sniffed. “Then the dude brings us wine we didn’t order! Oooh, there’s a two-cent tip coming his way.”

I gave Louis one of my most thoughtful looks. “Can I share something with you?” I asked.

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“Please do,” he said with a shrug. There was an apprehensive look on his face.

I cleared my throat and assumed an authoritative demeanor, hoping it didn’t make me seem too matronly. “Louis, I’m a, uh, little older than you. Therefore, I’ve seen and experienced more, so I don’t want you to take this the wrong way or think that I’m preaching.”

“Annette, where is this conversation going?” he asked, with a puzzled look on his face that made him look five years younger.

“I’m getting there,” I told him, my hand in the air. “My mama cooked for a lot of people when I was growing up. Some of them were not nice to her. But because she did all the cooking, she had ways of getting back at the people who mistreated her.” I paused and gave Louis a knowing look.

“So she spit in their food,” he said, with another shrug. “So what? That’s very common in restaurants.”

I gasped. “No. My mother would never do anything like that.” I paused again and considered my words carefully. “I know we are about to eat, so I will say this as delicately as I can. Are you familiar with something called juju juice?”

“Isn’t that some kind of potion that the witch doctors and voodoo folks use to get revenge on their enemies?”

“It probably is, but it’s also the name of this stuff that the old slave masters had their slaves cook up to use as a laxative for the mules and horses.”

Louis blinked. “Oh shit,” he mouthed, squirming in his seat like he had ants in his pants.

“Shit is right. Big-time. You couldn’t taste or smell the juice, and it was so potent, it took effect within an hour after it was injected.”

“Injected?”

“That’s how they got it into the horses’ or mules’ systems. During a job in Miami, my mama’s boss slapped her because she’d made his coffee too weak one morning. When he made her make another pot, she stirred in enough juju juice to teach him a lesson he’d never forget.” Louis looked like he wanted to faint, but I kept talking. “Without going into too much detail, that old man was sitting in the back of his limo when the laxative started to work on him—in his designer underwear and designer suit. His driver rushed GOD AIN’ T BLIND

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him back home and literally carried him into the house, straight to the bathroom, with him dripping all the way.”

Louis gave me an incredulous look and shook his head before he laughed long and hard. “Did my man ever find out what your mama did?”

I shook my head. “But he told her that she and I had to wash his underwear and detail the back of that limo. Mama told that old goat that she was quitting that damn job,” I reported, my tone bitter. “That whole family had always treated us like crap. They had a house with three bedrooms that nobody used, but they made my mother and me sleep on pallets in their basement.” A wicked smile crossed my face.

I continued. “Before we left that house the next day, my mother fixed breakfast for the family and she stirred juju into their grits.

Enough to completely empty the bowels of every horse and mule in the county. The two girls, who had always called me Cheetah, after that monkey in the Tarzan movies, they had to go to their fancy private school right after breakfast. And that bitch of a wife, she was going to have tea with the mayor’s wife later that morning.

The old man had a meeting scheduled with his lawyer. The whole family was going to be in the back of one of their other limos right after breakfast.” I stopped because judging from the look on Louis’s face, he’d heard enough.

“Whew. Thanks for sharing that. But what was the point?”

“The point is, you don’t want to make the people who prepare your food mad.”

“Damn good point,” Louis agreed with a vigorous nod.

I was glad when our orders arrived. I began to sip my wine right away. We ate in silence for a couple of minutes, but I was glad when Louis spoke again.

“Annette, I’d feel so much better if you’d at least add a bowl of soup to go with that salad,” he insisted.

“I usually don’t eat that much for lunch. I get lazy and sleepy if I overdo it. Dinner is my biggest meal.”

“I hope I get to know you well enough to have dinner with you, too.”

Our booth was large enough for six people. But if Louis had sat any closer to me, he would have been in my lap.

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“How’s your lasagna?” I asked, taking a mighty sip from my wineglass. I already had a mild buzz, and it was so smooth, my head was swimming, but the rest of my body felt like it was floating on a magic carpet.

“Not as good as mine,” he quipped.

“You’re not shy when it comes to promoting yourself or standing up for yourself. I never could have stood up to Carlo the way you did. I like that. You’re a very confident man.”

Louis stopped eating for a few moments and held his fork in midair. “Annette, is your husband good to you?”

I wondered where that question had come from, but I didn’t ask. I just nodded and took another sip of my wine.

“So there is no chance that you and I could ever be anything more than business acquaintances, huh?”

“We can be friends, Louis.”

“I’ve got more friends than I need now. I need a woman in my life. A beautiful, strong sister like yourself.”

“Louis, we just met. I barely know you, and you barely know me,”

I said, with a chuckle and a dumbfounded look. “You might not even like me after you get to know what I’m really like,” I advised him, scooting a few inches away.

“I know all I need to know. Now answer my question. Can we ever be more than business acquaintances and friends?”

“I’ve never cheated on my husband, if that’s what you mean,” I told him, trying to sound firm. “And we’ve been married for ten years.”

“What you mean is he’s never given you a reason to cheat. He must put some serious loving on you if you and . . . what’s wrong?

You suddenly look like you want to cry.”

It took me a full minute to respond. All during that minute, Louis was patting my shoulder with one hand and squeezing my hand with the other. “My husband no longer makes love to me. My marriage is a sham,” I whimpered.

“Oh.” He had such a strange look on his face, I couldn’t figure out if my news made him angry or happy. “That’s his loss,” he said gruffly. “Do you want to talk about it?”

I didn’t really want to discuss my marital problems with him yet, but I did. I needed all the sympathy I could get. “I’ve known him GOD AIN’ T BLIND

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since we were thirteen, and I always knew that eventually he’d lose interest in me. I just never thought it would happen this soon. By the way, I’m forty-six.” I held my breath and looked at Louis out of the corner of my eye, hoping his reaction wouldn’t disappoint me.

“You could have fooled me. You don’t look a day over thirty-five.”

“Thank you.”

What he did next was such a profound surprise, I almost rolled to the floor. I didn’t even see it coming. He removed my glass from my hand and hauled off and kissed me. His lips were the softest and sweetest that had ever touched mine. When he parted my lips with his tongue and then stuck it into my mouth, I almost swallowed him whole.

“Don’t fight it, Annette. Let nature take its course,” he said as soon as he pulled away. “Your eyes give you away. You want me as much as I want you, don’t you?”

“Do I?” I said, my lips tingling. I started to blink my eyes like a puppet. I held my breath, hoping that it would delay the burps threatening to pop out of my mouth.

“You do! Say it, and say it right now.”

I gasped and reared back in my seat. His arm went around my shoulder and pulled me closer to him. His face was so close to mine, his hot breath almost melted my mascara.

“I . . . do,” I admitted. “But—”

“Don’t say it. I don’t want to hear about you being married, because I don’t care. That sucker! He doesn’t deserve you.”

By now I was panting like a wolf. “I should get back to work, Louis.”