Restoration Read Free Page B

by Whole Foods Market on Esplanade Avenue. And I knew the place well because I ran in front of it every afternoon on my jog along the bayou. After learning that a vast collection of Drysdales resided there, I made a point of stopping each day and looking up past the trees. I ran in place and studied the windows, but I never saw a thing—never a painting, let alone a human face. Then the day came when something at the house did engage my eye: a High Life Realty sign hanging on the fence.
    I’d endured so much change recently that a move didn’t seem like a bad thing. Dad was dead, I’d quit my job, and the latest girlfriend had decided I wasn’t her soulmate. Others might’ve been paralyzed by so much upheaval, but I was beginning to find adventure and romance in challenging the bounds of my own comfort. How much could one retired newspaperman take? Welcoming the opportunity to find out, I sprinted home and called High Life as soon as I got in the door.

    Patrick was famous around town for his dinner parties, or so he told me just minutes after I arrived at his apartment. “They don’t call meHurricane Patch for nothing,” he said. “We’ll eat and drink and then, for your added viewing pleasure, I’ll tear the place apart.”
    He lived in a big Queen Anne Victorian at Coliseum Square in the Lower Garden District: the Loeber Mansion, architectural historians call the place. Patrick prepared the meal himself, and his longtime girlfriend, Elsa Dodd, a CPA from a nearby town, poured the drinks. There were twelve of us—not counting Boots, Patrick’s cat—and everyone crowded in the kitchen and watched as Mr. High Life himself cooked on his old red Chambers. Tonight’s menu included fried hush puppies and sweet potato wedges, fried shrimp, fried oysters, and fried soft-shell crabs covered with lump crabmeat. “Dessert won’t be fried, too, will it, Patrick?” Elsa said.
    “Since when you got something against fried?”
    Rather than a Jell-O salad, I’d brought a bottle of Jägermeister, the same stuff Patrick and I had enjoyed a few days before. “Oh, man,” Patrick said as he inspected the gift. “Hurricane Patch has now officially been promoted to a Category Five. It won’t be only my apartment that gets flattened tonight. Elsa, go warn the neighbors, sweetheart.”
    As was his custom, he didn’t start cooking until each of his guests had consumed a few cocktails, and by the time he finished, everyone was so miserable with hunger it didn’t matter that half of his dishes were either burned, undercooked or unrecognizable.
    “God, Patrick, it’s so good I could cry,” I stated in too large a voice, after biting into one of his fat, crusty oysters.
    I’d been drinking Scotch from a plastic go cup emblazoned with a picture of a Carnival parade float, and it was only the first of many declarations I would make this night. One couldn’t overstate the amount of pride Patrick took in his cooking. His eyes watered as he thanked me for the compliment, then he bounced to his feet, retrieved my plate and stumbled into the kitchen for another large helping.
    “Jack, better be stingy with the praise, my friend,” Elsa said. “If you’re not careful, he’ll have you over tomorrow night, too.”
    “Dinner on Saturday, as well?”
    “Yes, and like tonight every bit of it fried on the Chambers. For the continued good health of your heart you would be well advised to keep your enthusiasm in check.”
    It was a struggle to consume the second serving, though not because the quality of the food had slipped. I found that I couldn’t stop looking at the woman seated directly across the table from me. I’d hardly paid attention to her earlier when we were introduced, and I couldn’t recall her name. But now candles were burning in the space between us, and I was having a devil of a time resisting an urge to reach between the flames and place my hand on her lovely, golden face.
    I leaned forward, my shirt