The Casquette Girls (8 page)

“Ana and Morgan have a daughter about your age.”

“Désirée. We met. She’s
delightful
.”

He laughed. “Well, I’m sure she’s grown up wanting for nothing.”

“That’s an understatement.”

“Let me guess, the Storm went easy on their shop?”

“To quote Désirée, the Borges ‘don’t have problems with Storms.’ Oh, I have some more sage if you want to bring a bundle to the bar.”

He gave me a funny look.

“You know, for the rank smell?” I looked down at my watch. “Whoa, where have you been all night, Dad? It’s after midnight.”

“I told you, at the bar—”

“But what about the curfew?”

“It’s not like I was out loitering or looting, Adele.
People have lives; people have to work. Damn curfew.”

“Jeez, sorry I asked.”

“And that doesn’t give you permission to be out past curfew.”

“All right.”

“We should go to bed. It’s late.”

“I took an epic nap, so I’m not really tired.”

He moved to the window and pushed it shut.

I sighed, switched off the light, and followed him down the stairs to my bedroom door.

“Try to sleep. It’s the only way you’ll get back on Central Time.” He kissed my cheek. “Goodnight.”

“G’night.”

I kicked off my flip-flops, playing back our conversation in my head. Something about the casual way he had mentioned Ana Marie struck me as odd.

October 11
th

With the curtains open, I sat at the antique vanity, under the natural light. I leaned so close to the mirror, my nose nearly touched it. The advantage to listening to my father and not staying up all night was that the signs of life were slowly coming back to my face: the puffy dark circles from switching time zones had mostly faded, and the crow wound was slowly starting to scab over.
Gross. But at least now I could lose the giant bandag
e
.

I slathered on an assortment of fancy Frenc
h
crème
s
my mother had stocked my dorm room with.
She must be doing something right, to stay so young-lookin
g
.
As I breathed in the lavender moisturizer, I wondered if she used the same scent. Too lazy to do much else, I ripped a comb through my tangles, spritzed in some product, and hoped my mop of brown waves would dry in a decent manner.

Black leggings. Grey T-shirt. Shit-kickers.

It was unsettling that my old routine felt only vaguely familiar.
When would things start to feel normal again?

I reached for my chain on the vanity and also found the silver medallion from the disintegrating lace. I moved cl
oser to the window and held it under the morning light – there was something underneath the burned star. Initials. I breathed heavily on it and rubbed it with my towel, vowing to clean it properly later, in my father’s studio. The letters were difficult to make out at first, but then became clearer: A.S.G., etched in sweeping calligraphy. I flipped it over to see if I had missed anything else last night. There was nothing special on the other side – just the ornate borde
r
.

Something about the medallion felt old, and I found myself slipping it onto the
silver chain next to the sun charm my father had made.

I looped the long,
thin necklace over my head. My collar slouched off one shoulder, revealing th
e
gris-gri
s
ribbon
.
Who was A.S.
G
.?

* * *

I brought my second
café a
u
(powdered)
lait
with me into my father’s room. He looked depressed, blindly dumping stuff into a large garbage can. I wondered if I should stay and help him.

“Morning,” I said and decided that having to unexpectedly throw away piles of your own work was something an artist would want to do alone. “I’m gonna go for a walk, check out the grocery situation, and swing by Café Orléans.”

“All right, let’s go for a run when you get back, before it gets too hot?”

“Ugh, sure.” It had been months since I had done any real physical activity.

“That’s the spirit, honey.”

I smiled and left the coffee for him on his workbench.

On the way to the front door, I grabbed my bag and reached for my keys. They shot up into my palm.

I stopped short.

Quickly, I looked around to see if anyone else had just witnessed the strange occurrence, knowing full well that no one was there. My fingers tightened around the keys into a fist.

Breath
e
.

The metal felt warm, and my fingers began to tingle
.
My heart started skipping as I racked my brain for a reasonable explanation, but nothing came to mind. I felt strangely at odds, like my subconscious was trying to fight back – fighting the part of me that was desperately trying to suppress yesterday’s memories as if they were a bad dream.

Trying not to go into a full-on panic attack, I dropped the keys into my bag and did what any reasonable person would do: ignored it and hustled out the door.

My nervousness transferred from my shoulders down to my feet, which carried me down the block at a non-Southern pace. I misjudged the hop onto the curb and stumbled, but caught myself before falling.

“Adele? You okay?” Felix Palermo yelled,
witnessing my spastic moment. He sure had good eyesight for someone pushing eighty. The old man was hunched over a broom, next to a large pile of window shards. I hurried across the street, eager for the distraction.

“Hi, Mr. Felix!”

“If it isn’t little Miss Adele.”

Behind him, a couple of younger guys I didn’t recognize exited Palermo’s deli, carrying a moldy refrigerator. The little corner store was not in good shape, but I tried not to let the shock show on my face. Palermo’s was one of the many Italian delicatessens that had opened after a huge influx of Southern Italians migrated to the city in the late nineteenth century. They have mountains and the Mediterranean, and we have marshes and the Mississippi – I’m not sure I see the appeal – the climate’s similar, I suppose.

The guys dropped the fridge near the curb and quickly retreated back into the deli.

“When did you and Mrs. Rosaria get back?” I asked, giving the old man a hug.

“We snuck back a few days ago, but it wasn’t ’til yesterday that I found a couple of boys to help us start haulin’ the trash out. They’re staying in the top-floor apartment, trading rent for labor. If ya ask me, I’m getting the better end of the deal – the apartment doesn’t even have electricity. But they’re over from the motherland, lookin’ for some missing relatives, so they’ve got bigger problems.”

“We’re running a generator,” I said. “I don’t think anyone in the Quarter has electricity, yet.”

“We got a few feet of water. It poured in the storefront window where an old Chevy had pushed through. The boys managed to get the car out last night, and we were still mopping water out this morning. Looters trashed the place.” He sighed. “I suppose I can’t really blame them. People need to eat. This hurricane, Addie, I don’t know. I’ve been through Betsy and Camille and at least a couple dozen more, but something’s just not right about this one.”

I didn’t know why, but I understood what he meant. Something just felt off. I had tried to convince myself that the feeling was just due to being away for so long, combined with the shock at the level of destruction, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something else was different. That something had changed.

He gestured to the store. “You go in there and take anything you and your pop need. That is, if there’s anything left.”

“I’m not taking anything from you without paying—”

“Adele, you go salvage anything you can. And don’t you worry about it; I’m filin’ an insurance claim tomorrow.
Capisc
e
?
” He gave me an exaggerated wink.

“
Capisce
.” I smiled and walked towards the entrance.

“And be careful in there, Adele! It’s a goddamn mess.”

I yelled, “Okay,” over my shoulder and stopped in the entrance. The store’s enormous retro sign had been split in half. The half with “PAL” still seemed secure, but the “ERMO’S” half now hung at a dangerous ninety-degree angle. I hurried underneath to enter the store. The whole city was starting to feel like one giant booby-trapped obstacle course.

* * *

Flies buzzed around mounds of brown-colored mush that used to be fruit but now reeked like rotten grass. I covered my nose and mouth to mask the smell, attempting to control my jerking stomach muscles, and then hurried to the other side of the store, being extra careful not to step on anything that would require a tetanus shot after.

Sauntering down the remaining aisles, I assessed my options, scared of anything not preserved in glass, aluminum, or a vacuum-sealed bag. Most of the nonperishables had already been cleared out. I grabbed a can of steel-cut oats as if it was gold, and then a couple sacks of red beans and rice.
Would bigger supermarket chains look like this too – empty shelves with a rotting inventory? Would we have to ration these oats? Surely the government would intervene if it came to that… right?

I quickly scooped up two cans of tomato soup, and, through the empty space they opened up, got a view to the other side of the room, where Mr. Felix’s two workers were ripping the commercial freezers from the wall. Neither seemed to be breaking a sweat.

Impressive.

One had light-blond hair, and the other’s was nearly black, but there was something very similar about them.
They must be brothers
, I thought, watching them from betwee
n
jars of pepper jelly and dusty cans of New England clam chowder
.
Even their movements were synced; each carried out the manual labor with a strange amount of grace. Mr. Felix had said they were from the motherland; he must have meant Italy; their slickly styled hair seemed very Italian to me. Flashbacks to my European days suddenly made me feel very underdressed.

The dark-haired guy was closest to me, but all I could see was the back of his head. He wore dark jeans and a black leather jacket, and even from behind, seemed more focused on the task at hand than the blond, who appeared bored, his thin lips in a near pout.

The blond looked to be in his mid-twenties. The cuffs of his pale-blue denim jeans were turned up, and his suspenders hung lose at his sides. He had the most perfect skin I had ever seen, but his aquiline features combined with his lackadaisical demeanor made him come across as some kind of naughty prince.

“How long do we have to do this, brother?” he asked.

“Until we’ve acclimated. Or until everyone is reunited, I suppose.” His English had only a hint of foreign accent, while the blond’s was much thicker.

“I assumed finding everyone would require some brute force, but this wasn’t exactly what I had in mind,” the blond said as he jerked the refrigeration system from the wall.

“Stop whining. Like you couldn’t do this in your sleep.”

“Don’t mention sleep around me,” said the blond. His brother softly chuckled.

My chest stung. The Storm had turned so many people into insomniacs.
How could you sleep if you were missing loved ones?

Out of nowhere, the cans of chowder betrayed me by flying off the shelf and onto the floor in a series of loud crashes. I watched in horror as one rolled all the way over to the boot of the blond.

“Well, whom do we have here?” he asked, overjoyed to have a distraction from the labor.

I was mortified, caught spying on a private conversation. And not just any conversation but one between two hot guys. I suddenly wished I had taken the time to put on makeup, but what were the odds of meeting two beautiful foreigners at Palermo’s? I tried to walk casually to the other side of the shelf, as if I was just doing the daily shopping.

“Hi, I’m Adele. I live around the corner.”

“Adele?” He
looked at me with an eagerness that made me slightly uncomfortable.

“Yeah, Adele Le Moyne.”
My attempt to offer a hand failed because I was holding too many things, so I resorted to a half-nod, half-curtsey. Blood rose in my cheeks.

“
Buongiorno
, Adele. I am Gabe.” The blond’s light-green eyes sparkled against the grim backdrop of the store. “And this is my younger brother, Niccolò.”

Niccolò nodded at me and then casually leaned against the wall with one foot up, his hands stuffed deep into his pockets.

“Nice to meet you both.
Bienvenue
?”
Is welcoming appropriate under these circumstance
s
?