One Night Only

“Louisiana! The sights, the sounds, the smells! –The food!” I narrate as I zoom in and out on my bowl of delightfully spicy gumbo.

New Orleans: Day Two; June 8th. Yesterday we practiced our two songs we’re going to perform a little on the bus after going to breakfast. Then we all decided to go to an eclectic music store in the French Quarter and jam out for a while checking out the local color. It was a fun time and Kyle quite enjoyed her multiple bongo solos and we all laughed when Jude was attempting falsetto and his voice cracked big time. Sam and I rocked out, back-to-back, on a coupla banjos and then we got kicked out for pretending to smash them on the ground. It was a good.

But now, perhaps with a little bit of prodding, Barney is going with us to check out the city in all its mystery, high crime rate, and delicious food.

Right now we’re at a place called Sleepy Jim’s and it’s anything but sleepy. The food is spicy as hell, especially if you add Auntie Jim’s special sauce—Oi!—but boy, is it tasty. And then I think we’re gonna move on to some other areas around the Quarter.

I pan over the table with my phone, recording it all: next to me is Jude, scratching his neck with the side of pencil and gnashing on his grilled cheese because he says spicy food gives him gas. “Whatcha workin’ on, June Bug?” I ask, slowly zooming in on the notebook in front of him.

“A song,” he mumbles, the eraser of the pencil back in his mouth.

I roll my eyes and move on to Barney who’s sucking on the heads of several crawfish. He looks up at my phone and smiles with the red shells still in his mouth. “How ya doin’, Barney?”

He gives me a thumbs up and I move on to Kyle and Sam who are fighting over the last beignet.

“You whore! Give it over!” Kyle shouts, reaching for the pastry that Sam has dangling in his hand just above her reach.

“Never!” Sam hollers and throws back his head, letting out a maniacal laugh.

Kyle throws herself at him, toppling them both over onto the floor, Sam still holding the beignet up.

A waitress comes by the table and clucks her tongue. “No playing with your food, children.” And she swipes the pastry from out of Sam’s hand and walks off.

“Did that really just happen?” I ask the other two at my table.

Jude hasn’t been paying attention and he just mumbles something with his mouth full of cheese.

Barney shakes his head as usual and moves on to his jambalaya with a hearty, rank-smelling belch.

I wave my hand in front of my face. “Christ, Barney. What just died?”

“You’re gross, Dom…” Jude deadpans, still scribbling on his notebook and Barney enthusiastically pounds on his chest with his fist, letting out another gas bomb.

Kyle and Sam sit back down in their chairs, looking like little kids in detention.

The waitress comes by again and drops off a plate of steaming hot beignets.

“Back off!” Kyle shouts, launching into action.

“No way!” Sam yells back and swats her hands away from the plate.

Here we go again.



Zeke’s Curio and Antique Shop is quite a place. Just inside the door there are shrunken heads on display and a cabinet full of ‘potions’. “This is awesome!” I gush.

The guy at the counter with dreadlocks who is reading a rather hefty book, shushes me and points to a sign reading: Quiet! Lest the spirits be awakened…

I stifle a laugh and then whisper, “This is awesome!”

After a bit of exploring around the Quarter, Barney said that he was going to go into a food-induced coma soon and told us to go on ahead without him while he took a nap in the bus. So, we wandered around a bit and found this place.

Kyle squeezes one of the shrunken heads and it lets out a little squeak—just like a squeaky toy. “How ‘bout this for Diva?” she nudges Jude.

He smiles and nudges her back.

I catch a glimpse of Sam rolling his eyes with a smirk.

What’s that about?

I shrug and begin to peruse the shop, checking out old records and religious books and freaky lookin’ jewelry that apparently wards off bad juju. Then I come upon a section where there are tons of old clothes: lacy wedding dresses that smell like moth balls, old tuxes that smell like moth balls, flapper dresses that smell like moth balls, moth balls that smell like moth balls…

“Guys!” I hiss over at the three of them who are trying to get the beastly old phonograph to work. Sam looks over at me and then gets the others’ attention.

“Look!” I jump up and down, pointing to racks upon racks of glorious, old clothes.

“Oh, no…”Kyle moans.

“Oh, yes,” I say, confirming her worst nightmares. This is a day for costume work!



“Y’know, this is kinda cool…” Jude says, tugging at his vest.

“Very cool,” I confirm. I figured that since we’re in New Orleans, we might as well have fun with some vintage-y costumes for our first show. Plus, presentation is one of the most important elements of a show. Now, we're dressed for success, if you'll pardon my cliché.

Jude has ended up in a mixture of the present and the 1930s in a vintage-y multicolored striped vest over a plain white t-shirt with a pair of black skinny jeans. And on the feet, to add to the Punky Brewster effect, my mom’s old Doc Martens that I was wearing today and had stuffed with socks so they would fit. And to top it all off, a quirky bowtie and a bowler hat that has seen better days. Somehow he reminds me of Mr. Bean.

Samuel has more of a 1940s thing going on. He’s got a white linen shirt, rolled up to the elbows, a pair of awesome suspenders that I wish fit me, and slim-fitting trousers (yes, trousers) that aren’t quite as skinny as Judifer’s. On his feet are his old Converse that I swear he wears everywhere. He’s also sporting a broken wristwatch. Overall, he looks like a shaggy Jack Dawson.

I am wearing a lovely ensemble of little black dress covered in sequins, a pair of bright red gloves that I intend to cut the fingers off of, a pair of platform tap shoes that light up when I walk, and a 20s headpiece. I also plan on accessorizing back at the bus.

And then we come to Kyle. She was awfully difficult and refused to wear a dress, so it took me a while to come up with something suitable. I finally did, though and she is wearing a flapper dress as a sort of tunic over a pair of dark red skinnies, black bowling shoes (personally, I think they’re cute), and a Victorian-esque black velvet vest.

Kyle sighs. “I guess this is okay…”

I grin and nudge her with my hip. “Told ya.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah…” she mumbles, smiling too.

So then we check out our new duds and everyone wants to head back to the bus but me. I want to check out this bookstore we saw across from the Curio Shop, but everyone else is too tired to go on. So, I tell Jude to take my stuff back to the bus and I’ll meet them there in about a half an hour.

We part ways and I make my way to the dusty shop called Liver Literature. I wonder if that’s a typo… When I come in, the door dings behind me, but the cashier doesn’t lift his from his book. He looks just as dusty as the store with his gray hair and gray beard and gray clothes.

I shrug and move to one of the huge wood shelves and squint at the titles on the spines of the books. There are books of poetry, books about wars, books about nothing, empty books, big books, small books, foreign books, illegible books. Lots of books.

I cross into another row of shelves and come across another customer. He’s about my age, black hair, aristocratic nose—he turns—and totally effing hot. I turn quickly and snag a book from the shelf, blindly reading the first page of it.

Holy Jesus, he’s cute. Like, seriously, majorly—shut up, Dom—cute.

Must focus… on reading…

The air shifts beside me and I think my bones have turned to some fuzzy, light substance. A little ‘zing’ tickles up my spine and I straighten up. Out of my peripheral vision I see him. Yes, that him. Right there. Next to me. Him. There. Me. Him.

“What’re you reading?” he asks in a voice that’s a little low, a little high, a little raspy.

Daaah. “A book,” I say, ignoring his eyes that are this dark, dark blue that I’ve never seen before. Because I’m sure if I looked at him, my mouth would tighten and slacken like a fish’s and I would look like a total idiot.

His mouth curves up into a smile and—Jesus! He has dimples! That is so cute—shut up, Dom. “No, really. What are you reading?” He has this kindness in his voice and is just so dang sexy and I could just die right here and now.

“Mmm…” I look at the spine and read it, then laugh a little nervously. “Ah, Electricity in Gynecology.” I finally look at him, a bit sheepishly, just to see how he reacts.

“Ah… Wow. Well, uh, good for you. That’s, ah… cool.” He scratches the back of his neck and smiles a little.

“Mm, well, I wasn’t actually… reading it,” I fumble over my words as I shove the book back onto the shelf.

“Hey, if you were, I won’t judge.” He smiles with his dimples and shrugs.

“Okay,” I say and nod. Because I’m an idiot. And he’s cute. And I’m an idiot. “I really wasn’t reading it, though…” I rock back on my heels and advert my eyes from side to side.

“So, hey. I… This is gonna sound weird. But, um, I think it’d be cool if you could… Uh, yeah. Forget it.” He kind turns to the side and shoves his hands into his pockets, ready to walk away.

“No, no. What?” What’s he doing? What is this?!

“Well, there’s this concert… And I’m in it and I think it’d be cool if you would… go to it. If you want to, that is.” He smiles.

“Um. Well. I. Uh. Yes?” You stuttering fool.

“Oh. Oh! Cool. Awesome. That’s really cool of you to say… yeah. Well, it’s this band, uh, battle of the bands thing called One Night Only and—“

“You’re shitting me!” I shout, a little too loud for both our comfort.

“Uh…” His eyes widen by a few inches. “What?”

“Uh-um. Yeah, sorry about that—I’m in it too!”

“Oh. Yeah?! Wow. We’re like, fraternizing with enemy right now then, huh?” He grins.

“Yeah, I guess.” I smile back.

“Wow. Well, we’re Adam and Evil. You?”

“We Have Eaten All the Cake.” I bob my head a little too enthusiastically.

“That’s cool,” he says and nods too. And then a vibrating sound comes from somewhere around him. He pats at his pants pocket and smiles apologetically at me. “Hey, I’m sorry. I gotta go. But I’ll be seeing you, yeah?” He holds out his hand.

I take it and we shake. His hands are way warmer than mine, he’s like a furnace. “Yeah. Sure thing.”

And then he turns and starts walking towards the door, tugging the phone out of his pocket. But then all of a sudden he turns on his heels and points his hand like a gun and me and says, “I didn’t catch your name.”

“Oh. Yeah. It’s Dom,” I say, bouncing on my toes, my hands in my back pockets.

He smiles. “Eli. It was nice meeting you.”

“Likewise.”

And then he’s gone.

Huh. Fraternizing with the enemy.