Moses & Curio & the Table for Four pt 1

Moses and Curio and the Table for Four



 

The old Bronco came to a halt on a dark parking deck on Poydras Street.  The driver of the Bronco could not help but smile to himself as he turned the key to kill the motor.  It was the exact location where he parked the day he and his lady first met.  He thought all his life that such a notion of romantically sanctifying some trivial date or place was only a custom for teenaged girls.  Yet as he looked at the same view he had seen through the filter of the far different life of not even two years before, he knew he shared, if only for a childish instant, that wistful glee of young lovers who marked every significant location and time in their love’s beginnings.

Wondering suddenly if he was getting sentimental in his old age, he looked over at her as she drummed her fingers on the arm rest.  She was far from gleeful.  Reading her face even with her facing away from him, he sighed and remembered that the day he so blithely held in the giddy reverence had in fact led to the outright threat of sudden death toward which he and his beloved walked hand-in-hand.

Her black hair was worn long that month.  Her stylist Kyle folded in some diffused stripes of auburn into her tresses for the occasion of their trip to her hometown, the first in a long while.  Her hair was piled high in a coil.  Dressed to kill in a sleek, low-cut blood-red Valentino knock-off, she was chewing the ever-loving hell out of some Wrigley’s.  Her pout omnipresent, she only stared out the window, but he could not help but think she did so beautifully.

Their ride over from her cottage in Thibodaux was silent, save for the radio.  Normally effusive and bubbly when she rode together with him somewhere, she merely chewed her gum with her arms folded and stared as the rice fields of Hwy 90 rolled by and dissolved into the setting sun behind them.  When she did make a sound, it was the rustling of her purse as she repeatedly checked both her tiny .380 pistol and her composed face in a compact mirror.

            “Now look.  Everything’s going to be just fine.”  Moses Holliday lit a Winston and scratched his stubbly chin.

            “Who are you trying to convince?  Me or you?”  Sitting next to him, Curio Phelonie checked her face for the final time in the rearview mirror of his Bronco and etched her lips with a careful scrape of her fingernail.  “I ain’t nervous.”

            “Glad one of us ain’t then.”  He whispered and leaned forward to check the cylinder of the snub-nosed .357 he was wearing hidden, holstered in his old Justin boots. 

            “Jesus!  You bring a big enough gun?”  Curio asked.

            “Pete’s big ass rates something with some punch, I reckon.” He held up a halting hand as he saw her wide-eyed expression, "Not that I think it'll come down to that, mind you.  You know how I am about preparation."  Moses winked at her.  “It’s just a different situation this time for me and them.  Chance favors the prepared man, as the saying goes.”

            She looked at him a long time.  The normally unflappable Texan was gritting his teeth.  She could see the tightness in his jaw as he stared the rounds in the breech of the pistol.

“Shit,” she swallowed hard.  “Now, I’m nervous.”

            “I’m not that nervous.  I just don’t think a man should a-go to dinner with armed men without his own armament.  Even his running buddies when they’re the kinda’ runnin’ buddies I run with.”

            “You really think they would whack you and me sitting in the middle of Emeril’s?”

            “Nope.  I do not think they would whack you and me,” He closed the cylinder and seated the pistol in its holster, “sitting in the middle of Emeril’s.”  He fixed his pants leg over his boot and got out of the Bronco. 

“But I do think,” he adjusted the dagger hidden in the waistband of his pants beneath his shirt, “we would be shot before we made it from the door to the truck outside of Emeril's.”

            “Why go there then?” Curio glared at him.  “If this is so damned dangerous, why in the hell are we going there?  You put it that way, I say fuck this shit.  Fuck this shit right in its ass.  What the hell, Moses?  If they are that weird about you and me then I say blow 'em way the hell off and let's go get some damned Chinese.  Far off, like as in China.  I say let’s grab up some of those tidy little cash bundles you keep tellin’ me you got hid all over God's green acre and get the fuck outta’ Dodge.  This is crazy.”

            “Because I ain’t that nervous.  They are my friends, after all.”

            “You mean your gangster-ass friends.  The friends that might have us shot, Moses?  I mean, shit.  You got enough enemies with just the fuckin’ cops that are probably after us, you really need your friends doing you the same way?”

            “Relax.  We’re gonna’ sort it all out.  It won’t be a problem, I promise.”

“You promise.  They…they I ain’t so sure about.  I think it’s dumb.  I shoulda’ never went public with them like I did.  You was right.  I was a dumbass.”

“On the contrary, it may as well been for the best.  You handled it well and they weren’t in no position to do anything but go about their business.  It gave them time to chill out, get clear of the job, and it gave them time to reflect and for me to talk to them under better conditions.  I could kick you right in your cute ass for doing what you did, but it might’ve been the best play we had for when I told them aboutcha’.  And I woulda’ had to tell them about you at some point.  So it is what it is.  And what it is, is just fine.”

“Man, I’m way more nervous about meeting them than I ever was working for them like we was.  Dammit, man.  You sure about this for real?”

“I am.  You’ve been in on enough jobs to make them realize you’re okay.  The shit went down so fast that night you met ‘em, I ain’t have the time to explain about you to them in the detail that was probably needed.  But tonight, I’ma let them meet you under better circumstances and it'll be settled.”  He walked around and they met in front of the Bronco.

It’ll be settled alright… Curio thought dourly.  With us dumped in Barataria Bay all nice and quietly.

“Look at you.”  Moses clasped her by the arms and stood back to admire her.  Smiling, he pecked her softly on the forehead.  “Who couldn’t like you?”

            “Gangster sons of bitches who see hot women every day and could give a shit about one more.” She frowned and looked away.  “That’s who.”

            “You probably are correct ninety-nine percent of the time, baby.”  He held her hand and led her toward the exit of the parking deck.  “But, you are my lady and they’re a-gonna’ by goddamned get used to me having you around.”

            “Around is one thing,” Curio struggled into her heels as they exited the parking deck onto Poydras Street.  “What about me working with you?  They gonna’ be cool with me on that?”

            “Yes, they will.  You’re already in it all the way up to your rack.”  He waved down a taxi.  “Which looks great in that dress by the way.”

            “Behold the glory of the headlights.”  She muttered as he opened the door. 

Nothing about their walking into the clutches of two mobsters seemed rational to her.  For nearly two years, Moses kept her a secret from his employers.  Her rash decision to intercede in a job that the Fontenot brothers were personally involved alongside Moses put her squarely in the sight of the mobsters.  Their hurry to leave the scene of a multiple murder had probably saved her life and Moses’ as well.

Now she and Moses were being invited to share a dinner table with two extremely paranoid and violent men, if Moses’ description was to be believed.

            “They are glorious.”  Moses slid in beside her.  He took a look at the blank expression on the Haitian driver’s face.  “Emeril’s, please.”  The driver nodded with a smile and the cab rolled.

            Curio laid her head on his shoulder. “It’s been a while since we shared a cab in the French Quarter.”

            “Yeah, we got to stop meeting up this way.”

            “Good things happen when we meet this way, I thought.”

            “I wouldn’t argue against that.”

            “You better not.”  She lightly slapped his cheek and laughed.  “You better say every cab ride you take with me fuckin’ rocks.”

            “This one is starting on a better footing than that first one.”

            “But this one might end up with us in the morgue together.  The first one was destined for us to end up together in bed.”

            “You are oh so morbid, baby.  You’re definitely dressed for bed, not to die.”

            “Should we work out some kind of signal in case things go south?”

            “The only signal you’ll get is the one to run like hell after both of them are shot dead in front of you.  Not that that is going to happen.”

            “You would really do that for me?  Shoot your friends?”

            “You mean if it’s us or them?  That ain’t no choice, Curio.  Baby, I thought I made that clear before.  It’s always us.  I told them that at the time.  I’ve told them that since.  And I’m a-tellin’ them that tonight.”

            “That’s so sweet!  I love you!”

            “You better.  It ain’t every day a man might have to shoot the only friends he’s got.”  He kissed her mouth hard.  “I’m lookin’ forward to this actually.”  He yawned and stretched.  “I’m starvin’ and they’re buying.”