Читать книгу Three Deuces Down - Keith Donnelly - Страница 12

Sandy and I were on a Monday afternoon flight to New Orleans, and she was asleep with a book in her lap, while I revisited Sunday’s sports pages. We had spent much of the weekend together at the lake house. Dinner at Big Bob’s Friday night had been a welcome relief from the emptiness I was feeling about Sandy’s impending departure. Sylvia, Big Bob’s wife, had fixed a huge pot roast with new potatoes, carrots, and delicious brown gravy, baked apples, and homemade yeast rolls. Big Bob and I ate to the point of gluttony and then sat on the front porch with our feet up sipping after-dinner drinks and discussing the upcoming football game between Tennessee and Georgia that we were attending Saturday.

We drove down in Big Bob’s marked Chief of Police car, which gained us access to parking next to the stadium—professional courtesy and all that. Big Bob knew a few Athens policemen and Georgia state troopers, which led to more introductions and a lot of good-natured kidding. All the Georgians were positive this was going to be their day. I was introduced as a detective on the Mountain Center force. PIs were not necessarily held in high esteem.

Our box seats were in the loge level of Sanford Stadium. The tickets had been sent to me by an Atlanta publisher whose IRA account I was still handling as a favor, and my reward was Tennessee-Georgia tickets every other year.

Big Bob and I were both nervous about Tennessee’s chances but as game time grew near I was feeling an unexplainable sense of calm. Seconds before kickoff I turned to Big Bob and asked, “What do you think?”

“The Georgia fans are entirely too cocky,” he said. “I think it filters down to the team. I believe we will kick butt.”

“You may be right,” I responded. Kick butt we did. Tennessee dominated from start to finish in a rout that could have been worse. Reading about it now as we winged to New Orleans was just as sweet as it had been on the ride home from the game with Big Bob.

I looked at Sandy and wondered what life was going to be like after she left for Atlanta. There was only one way I could keep her from leaving and I was not ready to make that commitment. Absence makes the heart grow fonder or out of sight out of mind? Very soon I was going to find out.

I rented a car at the airport and we drove into the city. I took the Poydras Street exit and cut over to the Residence Inn on St. Joseph in the warehouse district right next to the French Quarter. We unpacked and settled into our suite by opening a bottle of KJ and sharing it in our kitchen that overlooked the courtyard. When the wine was gone we checked out the four-poster bed.

Later Sandy and I had dinner at a corner table of Mike Anderson’s Seafood Restaurant on Bourbon Street. We arrived late and the dinner crowd was thinning out, which let us dine in relative quiet. We talked about everything except her move, but the essence of it hung in the air creating a subtle tension that had not previously existed between us. Our parting was not going to be easy.