Madeleine's Ghost by Robert Girardi

Author:Robert Girardi
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Ghost, Ghost Stories, New Orleans (La.), New York (N.Y.), General, Detective and Mystery Stories, Fiction, Love Stories
ISBN: 9780385316361
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 1995-01-02T06:00:00+00:00

3

THE CAR is new and impressive, a red convertible Saab Turbo with brushed aluminum alloys and an interior of white Italian leather. Antoinette kicks off her shoes and drives the thing barefoot, carelessly, as if she were driving a battered old pickup truck. There is already a ding or two in the bright enamel. We’re dodging in and out of traffic on the Airline Highway, headed toward the city in the light flow of Saturday traffic.

“Nice car,” I shout over the rush of hot wind.

“I guess so, if you like your cars all modern,” she shouts back. “Papa got it for me last year. I didn’t want the car, really. I wanted a big old 1959 pink Cadillac convertible, and I had one lined up for ten thousand dollars—this old boy I knew who used to work with Dothan at Spanish Town. But Papa said he didn’t feel comfortable with me driving around in a thirty-year-old car no matter how big it was, and he goes out and buys me this thing. Didn’t even ask me. I hate it, if you want the truth. Makes me feel like a sorority girl just out of Ole Miss. Need a bow in my hair to drive this thing.”

Now the clouds seen earlier from the window of the plane break with a crack of thunder, and it begins to rain. Antoinette’s got the top down. Raindrops hit the windshield, but because of the rake of the car, we stay dry. I’ve never driven with her before, and it’s a frightening experience. Her idea of driving seems to involve the quickest way of getting from point A to point B, and damn all the niceties in between. She looks over at me, teeth clenched in the front seat, and laughs.

“Hey, haven’t lost a passenger yet,” she says. When the rain picks up and I begin to feel a few drops, she fishes up an LSU hat from the junk in the backseat and tosses it my way. “Put this on if you don’t want to get wet,” she says, and she bears down on the accelerator and we go barreling in and out of traffic till downtown rises, a gray and green swath, through the windshield. She’s got the radio on now, a station that plays country oldies. She sings along with this, a song full of slide guitar and broken hearts, as we intersect with the Pontchartrain Expressway. The streaked metal walls of the Superdome glint dull and ugly just ahead, like the walls of a futuristic prison.

“How do you feel about a beer?” Antoinette puts a gruff fist on my knee. I am hunkered down in the seat like a ten-year-old.

“I’m game,” I say.

“But just one. Because we need to stop by the store so I can borrow some money from myself; then we’ve got to hit the road. The whole family’s waiting for us. O.K.?”

“Sure.”

We exit the freeway at Dryades and head over to Perdido. Antoinette leaves the Saab parked at the corner of Perdido and Carondolet right beside a fire hydrant.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.