Forever Friday Page 3

  Old Man Cecil, otherwise known as Cecil Laborde, had begun his career hawking fresh fish out of a rented grocer’s stall located inside Houston’s city hall on Market Square. After hoarding every penny, he and his wife, Norma, had bought and remodeled a ramshackle brick building two blocks north at the corner of Main and Commerce on Buffalo Bayou. It wasn’t long before Buffalo Bayou was dredged into the Houston Ship Channel and Cecil suddenly found his business thriving at the center of port activity. The old man put on a miserly front but was one of the most generous men Gabe knew. A portion of each week’s inventory was earmarked to be given away.

  Before climbing the stairs to his office, Gabe passed a stocky man heaving the last of a shipment of red snapper into a large walk-in cooler. It was Friday and Cecil liked to be well stocked for the Saturday morning rush.

  “Afternoon, Gabe.”

  “Hello, Charlie.” Gabe grinned. “Looks like the snapper are running.”

  “They’re running all right. Running me ragged.” He slammed the thick wooden door before mopping his face with a handkerchief. “Hauled more of them slippery rascals than’s healthy for a landlubber.”

  “Take a couple of fat ones home for dinner. On the house.”

  Charlie nodded thanks, then reached into his shirt pocket and offered Gabe a hand-rolled cigarette. “What are you so happy about?”

  Conversation paused as the men lit up and retreated outside to the loading platform. The honk and rattle of downtown automobiles blended with the nearby chug of ship channel tugboats. Gabe spoke into the cool March breeze. “Ever thought much about a woman’s smile, Charlie?”

  “Just her smile?”

  “That’s what I asked.”

  “Which woman?”

  “Any woman.” Gabe blew smoke, watching it spiral skyward.

  “Can’t say that I have … just her smile, that is.”

  “A woman’s smile is a gift, Charlie. The most beautiful gift a man can ever receive.”

  Charlie thought for a moment, then thumped ash from his cigarette. “Every time my wife smiles, she cooks me a big dinner and we have another kid.”

  Gabe chuckled softly. Charlie’s wife, Chloe, loved food and children, bearing a brood of husky curly-headed boys to show for it. The woman didn’t look normal unless she was pregnant. Cecil had employed both Gabe and Charlie as clerks when they were sixteen. Even though Charlie’s urban background was different from Gabe’s rural one, the two young men shared a similar work ethic and had become fast friends. Two years later America entered The Great War, and they’d fought side by side in the gas-filled trenches of France, with Charlie bringing home a French wife.

  Both men had decided to enlist after public outrage over the Zimmermann Telegram. By use of a coded telegram, Arthur Zimmermann, Germany’s secretary of foreign affairs, proposed that if America entered the war, Mexico should ally with the Germans and take back the southwestern U.S., including Texas. The message hit American newspapers after being decoded by the British and incited a quick U.S. response. Gabe’s maternal great-grandfather had sacrificed his life at the Alamo. Any army under the illusion of conquering the Lone Star State, or the rest of the forty-eight, could be accursed and march straight through the gates of hell. So while most eligible males in Texas had enlisted immediately, Gabe and Charlie had to wait over a year until they turned eighteen.

  After the war, Gabe returned to Cecil’s and advanced to bookkeeper. Charlie began driving for a wholesale fishery that delivered daily Gulf Coast catch. The two friends had been exchanging smokes and conversation for almost a decade.

  “So …?” Charlie asked. “Does Miss Any Woman have a name and number?”

  Gabe gazed skyward and breathed a final drag. “It’s Huck Huckabee,” he replied, her name flowing out effortlessly with the smoke. “I didn’t ask about a phone.”

  Charlie rolled his cigarette between his thumb and forefinger. “Unusual name for a woman. But I like it.”

  “Me too,” Gabe replied.

  “And just how long have you known Miss Huckabee?”

  “Met her about twenty minutes ago when she came in to buy oysters.” Gabe flicked the butt off the edge of the platform and faced his friend. “But I’ve known her my entire life.”

  “Knowing her phone number your entire life would be better.”

  Gabe pulled two smokes from his pack of Lucky Strike. “Remember how over in France I always knew we’d make it home?”

  Charlie nodded.

  “This is the same gut level instinct. I will see Huck Huckabee again … and soon.”

  “When you do, get her number.”

  The men lit their smokes and the topic changed to weather. Unless it was Prohibition scuttlebutt or an election year, their talk snuffed with the second cigarette. So after discussing the cooler than normal spring, Charlie grabbed his supper and drove away.

  Gabe climbed his office stairs to tally the day’s receipts. The small room was nothing fancy, just bare plaster walls surrounding two hard swivel chairs, some oak filing cabinets, and a hand-me-down desk. However, it did have a large window that overlooked the store below. A window he’d glanced through after checking his pocket watch at exactly 4:46 p.m., spying this remarkable woman perusing the aisles. That was when he’d leapt down the stairs and literally jerked the apron off poor startled Louie.

  When Gabe closed the store at six, it was his habit to eat supper at the café across the street, then catch a trolley for the two-mile trip home. Tonight, though, he wasn’t particularly hungry and decided the weather was more suited for walking than riding the crowded streetcar. Besides, he loved the pulse of city sidewalks and enjoyed window shopping.

  At the corner of Main and Franklin, he passed First National Bank. It had been there since he could remember and was where his parents borrowed against their “cattle dreams.” John and Maggie Alexander had operated a small ranch in Fort Bend County on the flat coastal plain just southwest of Houston. They’d envisioned buying several sections, building an enormous herd, and passing the wealth along to their only child. As a youngster, Gabe learned to rope, ride, and even cook chuck-wagon fare. From the first through eighth grades, he attended a one-room schoolhouse, excelling in writing and arithmetic. He strove to please his parents but found baby-sitting cows monotonous, being much more interested in poetry and numbers than sourdough and yearlings.

  When Gabe was fifteen, John was gored through his right lung by a surly bull. He never fully recovered and died the following winter from pneumonia. Fearing for the health of his exhausted mother, Gabe convinced her to lease the ranch and move to the city. He’d only been at Cecil’s Fish Market for a month when Maggie died. A few hours before her death, she’d removed her gold wedding band and placed it in her son’s hand. “Keep this in a pocket close to your heart,” she’d whispered, barely audible. “Give it to the girl of your dreams. The man of my dreams gave it to me.” Gabe had swallowed hard. He’d carried the ring each day since.

  Continuing his walk down Main Street, Gabe glimpsed a newsstand photo that shot an excited shiver the length of his spine. On the front page of the Houston Chronicle was a picture of a local female tennis champion. For an instant he thought it might be Huck, then realized it wasn’t.

  Their brief conversation had resembled a tennis match, he thought. When he’d served his oyster comment—which was almost out of bounds—she’d returned it without stammer or blush, pacing the volley of their conversation with her intelligent wit. Advantage—Huck. And just when he thought he’d charmed her out to dinner, she’d slammed him with an ace. Game—Set—Match. He chuckled. Tennis was the only game scored with “love.”

  In the distance, Gabe could see the enormous Rice Hotel. One sultry night, he’d taken a date to a dinner dance there because the Rice Café was the only air-conditioned public room in the city. When he proudly informed her that the hotel was built on the same exact spot as the historic capitol of the Texas Republic, she’d merely yawned and said, “Gabe
dear, our state capitol is in Austin,” then complained she was cold and asked him to collect her wrap. He didn’t bother to explain the difference between a republic and a state. He also didn’t bother to ask her for another date.

  A bit farther down Main, in the window at Foley Brothers department store, Gabe glimpsed several mannequins dressed in the latest flapper fashions. Houston was a city known for beautiful women, and at age twenty-six, he now preferred courting the marrying kind. Most of his female acquaintances were “surprises” initiated by well-meaning married friends. They’d invite him over for dinner, only to have Miss Available drop by with a dessert she’d expertly prepared from an old family recipe. Occasionally, one of these girls would attract his further attention, but it would never last. In the end, they all wanted the same thing. A family. And family meant children. He saw nothing wrong with populating the earth, but fatherhood was not a priority. At least not yet.

  Gabe leaned against a lamppost and watched a young couple stroll past. They paused in front of a bridal gown display and briefly kissed before moving on. He lit a Lucky. First and foremost, he sought lasting romance. The kind of sensuous in-love-ness lacking in most of the married couples he knew. Couples who began as intimate lovers, exploring every curve and valley on the great matrimonial highway, but after numerous detours of children and career, limped along as platonic road-weary travelers. It was a phenomenon he called “The Long Division.” In arithmetic, long division required many dutiful steps that continually divided and then multiplied further divisions into the lowest possible dividend. Likewise, far as he could tell, a marriage was filled with numerous obligations that divided time spent together. If over the years those divisions were allowed to multiply, then the once-shared passions slowly separated into single-minded interests.

  The Long Division.

  Gabe wasn’t quite sure how he would do it, but he refused to ever let this phenomenon happen to him. He’d rather not be married at all.

  At the next corner, he paused for a streetcar to pass. Painted on the side was Lucky Strike’s new ad campaign for women: “Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet.” He smiled. Cigarettes had never appealed to him until he’d stumbled into love with a woman who smoked. Amelia Addison was the reason he’d started, even adopting her brand. They’d met at the Iris Movie Theater two months before he shipped out for The Great War. It was a bitterly cold Saturday afternoon, unusual for Houston. He’d been running errands and slipped into the crowded theater to get out of the icy north wind. Showing was The Accidental Honeymoon, a romantic comedy he’d wanted to see. The suggestive plot entailed the chance meeting of a man and woman, perfect strangers who were mistaken as honeymooners, then forced by hilarious circumstance to spend the night together. After allowing his eyes to adjust, Gabe finally located an empty seat in the back row of the balcony in the smoking section. He barely noticed the girl sitting next to him, until she offered him a cigarette.

  “Want a Lucky?” she whispered.

  “No thank you.” He’d never seen a more attractive blonde and found himself wishing he smoked.

  “Love stories make me cry, even the funny ones. It’s embarrassing. Helps if I smoke. Sure you don’t want one?”

  “My hands are so cold, I’d probably drop it.”

  The woman laughed. “Bet I’ll change your mind before the movie gets to the sad part.”

  By the time the film ended, Gabe knew her name was Amelia, she was a legal secretary and five years older than he. He’d also tried his first cigarette, right after she’d warmed his hand underneath one of her shapely legs. Hot and nervous, he sweated and coughed through the sad part while Amelia cried. Then for the next eight weeks, Gabe and Amelia spent every nonworking hour involved in their own accidental plot: talking, smoking, kissing.

  When Gabe embarked for France, cigarettes kept neither of them from tears. The war days were hard, the frightening nights hellish. So he smoked to taste Amelia’s sweet lips, feel the fire of her soft caress. Tobacco was his sanity. When the doughboys returned home almost a year later, Cecil met him at the train station with a note. Amelia had married a lawyer from New York and wished Gabe the best.

  A screech of tires forced Gabe’s thoughts back to Main Street. “Hey, buddy!” yelled a motorist. “You gonna stand in the road or cross it?”

  Gabe waved an apology and shuffled to the curb. He sighed. The hurt over Amelia had long since passed, and he no longer missed her. But he still thought about her from time to time and wondered if he’d ever find another woman to love.

  Until today.

  His gut instinct about seeing Huck again was merely the next scene of a wonderful new story unfolding in his life. Gabe patted his shirt pocket, thankful he’d not given his mother’s ring to Amelia.

  He strolled another block and ducked into Benny’s Diner, a popular spot he normally frequented for breakfast. There were several empty booths, so he chose a clean one by the window. Most of the supper crowd had filled their bellies and parted. He lit another Lucky and plunked down a nickel for a cup of joe.

  “Special’s corned beef and cabbage,” said an unfamiliar waitress with red puffy eyes. “That’s about all that’s left.”

  “Just coffee, please.”

  “Got some brewing, so it will be a minute.”

  Gabe watched as the waitress worked. She was about his age, attractive, and seemed to have been crying. He wasn’t sure why, but his instinct was to rescue tearful women from whatever or whomever had wronged them. He’d attempted it twice, recently, and failed both times. The first girl wasn’t crying, just suffered from hay fever and produced more tears because he’d noticed. The second girl was crying. Worse, she was “expecting” and wailed even louder at Gabe’s generosity. After that, he’d sworn to mind his own business, if possible, and always check for a ring. The waitress wore a thin gold band. Huck Huckabee’s ring finger had been delightfully bare.

  The waitress returned with a strong cup and a weak smile. “Let me know if you change your mind about the special.”

  Gabe inhaled the rich steam. Before he was old enough to walk, he’d sucked thick cowboy coffee dribbled onto a teaspoon of sugar. One of his favorite boyhood memories was traveling with his parents to the Galveston wharves. If the wind was right, he could smell the grainy aroma of raw coffee beans before the trade ships docked. By the time his father died, he was downing several cups a day, roasting the beans to perfection in an iron skillet and grinding them one pot at a time. Long before cigarettes, coffee helped make life worth all the trouble. And today, he’d met a girl whose hair and eyes matched the brew’s exotic color.

  Taking a sip, he glanced out the window … almost dusk. Across the street he could see foundation work for the massive new Gulf Building. When complete, it would be an Art Deco masterpiece of castle-like Gothic design, boasting the tallest and most commanding skyscraper west of the Mississippi. Rumor was that Gulf Oil Corporation would be hiring a horde of entry-level bookkeepers. Since he’d advanced as far as possible at Cecil’s, he’d filled out an application. Working for a major oil company had never been his passion, but Gulf paid top dollar. Any sensible man should be willing to expand his financial future. Especially a man who wanted to provide nice things for a woman like Huck.

  “Gulf Building’s gonna be quite a spectacle, ain’t it,” croaked a voice that resembled a bullfrog with gravel stuck in its throat. A middle-aged potbellied cook plopped down opposite the table from Gabe. “Saw the architect’s drawing in yesterday’s Chronicle. Looked like some runaway medieval birthday cake.”

  “Have a seat, Benny.”

  “Already got one. Wish it was big enough to hold up my britches.” He laughed.

  A different waitress appeared, coffeepot in hand. “Ready for a warm-up?” Without waiting for a reply, she topped Gabe’s coffee, poured a cup for Benny, and disappeared.

  “See you’re still scaring off the ladies.” Benny pulled a half-smoked stogie from behind his ear and lit it. “Where you be
en, Gabe? Find a gal to cook breakfast for you?”

  “I’ve been working double duty. Cecil’s away in Dallas since last weekend. His grandson’s getting married.”

  Benny frowned. “Happens to the best of us … and the worst.”

  “Looks like you’ve hired some new girls. What happened to my first waitress?”

  “Got a picture postcard last week from her husband. Rascal up and dumped her after eight years. Ran off to the Caribbean with another woman.”

  Gabe nodded. “I thought she’d been crying.”

  “Wouldn’t you?” Benny slurped coffee with the cigar still clamped between his teeth. “Worked her first shift today. Kept staring at her wedding band. Wouldn’t take it off. Finally told her to go home early. Never worked outside the home till now and got three kids.”

  The second waitress returned. “A delivery boy is here with eggs for tomorrow. Where do you want them?”

  Benny stood and hiked his britches. “Where they won’t get cracked this time. All I get around here is busted eggs and broken hearts.” He shook Gabe’s hand. “Don’t be a stranger.”

  Outside Benny’s Diner, the Friday evening traffic was thickening. In another thirty minutes, Main Street would be an unbroken line of honking headlights looking for a parking space—cars plodding impatiently along like bawling cattle in search of bedding ground. Gabe finished his coffee and headed out the door. Potent exhaust fumes blended with the pungent odor of electric trolleys. Streetlamps glowed white beneath colorful restaurant signs and movie marquees. Stores stayed open late to accommodate the throng of money-spending Houstonians.

  Remembering he needed a new typewriter ribbon, Gabe entered a stationery shop. He preferred to type, although he’d been told more than once he had excellent handwriting. Passing a display of picture postcards, he recalled Benny’s comment about the waitress and her husband. Ending an eight-year marriage with a postcard was cruel. The man was a gutless coward. He’d probably mailed her a photo of some deserted beach to symbolize his own desertion. Odds were that their broken marriage was just another casualty of The Long Division.