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    The Katrina Blues
    The Katrina Blues
    The Katrina Blues
    Ebook122 pages1 hour

    The Katrina Blues

    By Maxine Thompson

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Betrayal       Loss         Redemption Love

    Meet Deni Richards, a Los Angeles attorney, who appears to have everything. She has an expensive Mercedes, a condo in an exclusive neighborhood, and a job at  The Los Angeles Children’s Court. But after a public disgrace at the altar, she is left heartbroken, bereft, and lonely. Her professional titles and material possessions do little to heal her heart.

    In the ninth Ward of New Orleans, a talented Jazz saxophonist, Coleman Blue, is getting his heart smashed in one of the most unspeakable betrayals a man can imagine.

    Fast-forward one year later, on August 29,  2005, when Hurricane Katrina hits New Orleans, it affects people throughout the United States.

    Follow the journey of two unlikely people who meet, and, although they are complete opposites, tragedy brings them together in a common ground of love.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMaxine Thompson
    Release dateMay 11, 2016
    ISBN9781533754257
    The Katrina Blues
    Author

    Maxine Thompson

    About the Author Maxine E. Thompson was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, but has resided in Los Angeles, California since 1981. After graduating from Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, she worked as a Child Protective Services social worker for twenty-three years, first in Detroit, then later in Los Angeles. Ms. Thompson attempted her first novel, The Hidden Sword, at the age of 16, when she was the first black student to integrate St. Francis High, an all-white school, in Traverse City, Michigan in 1967. In 1989, Ms. Thompson became a recipient of an honorable mention in Ebony’s first writing contest for her short story, “Valley of the Shadow.” In 1994, she won an award for her short story, “The Rainbow,” through the International Black Writers’ Association (IBWA). She won a PEN Award for her first novel, The Ebony Tree. She has had poems, short stories and articles published in e-zines, national magazines, such as The Writer and Final Call, and anthologies such as Proverbs for the People. She has written three self-publishing columns on the Internet found at http://www.careermag.com, http://www.bwip.org, and http://www.blackmarket.com. She is the author of five novels, The Ebony Tree, No Pockets in a Shroud, (Hostage of Lies), LA Blues, LA Blues 2, and LA Blues 3, a contributor to 5 anthologies, an author of novella, Capri’s Second Chance, How-to-Write, Publish, and Market Ebooks (2000). She has written She began hosting internet radio on March 5, 2002 at VoiceAmerica.com, and continues to this day on Artistfirst.com, where she started on March 4, 2004 and still interviews authors, and keeps abreast of the news in the publishing industry. Ms. Thompson is also the founder of Black Butterfly Press, which created an e-zine for new and self-published writers called On The Same Page,(www.maxinethompson.com), and later created a blog, at Maxinethompsonbooks.com. Dr. Maxine Thompson is the owner of Maxine Thompson’s Literary Agency and Maxine Thompson’s Literary Services where she acts as a literary agent, a ghostwriter, a book doctor, and a developmental editor.  Email maxtho@aol.com.

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      Book preview

      The Katrina Blues - Maxine Thompson

      Prologue

      Coleman Blue

      Lower Ninth Ward,

      New Orleans, Louisiana,

      August 25, 2004

      When a Man Loves a Woman

      Blue’ll kill ya about his wife, Cantrella, his mother-in-law, an avowed alcoholic, would spout out in her slurred Gullah speech whenever she was having a drunken brawl with her boyfriend, Tank. I’m a tell a him you was talkin’ about Mellon.

      You a lie and the truth ain’t in ya, Tank would retort back, throwing a beer bottle at Cantrella. This was the rhythm

      of all their Fridays from as far back as Coleman had known the family. He just took it that Tank was talking about Mellon; nothing with an ounce of truth to it. That was just drunk talk.

      Now he hated to think back to that moment—to the very millimeter of a second of a heartbeat before something terrible

      Happened. Something irreversible and unthinkable. If only he hadn’t gone home early that night....

      Perhaps it was because of the full moon, perhaps because he’d just come off the road about a week ago and it had been a while, but for some reason, that Friday night Coleman was looking forward to going home and making love to Mellon, his wife of eight years. It was if her raven-colored body and her exotic, slate-gray eyes were calling him. He felt his member rising just thinking of her.

      That night, after he finished his gig at the Moonlight Jazz Chateau, he absently whistled Love Jones. Striking up a blunt, he hurled his saxophone into his case, grabbed his gear, and was ready to get home to his wife.

      Leaving early tonight? Malik, the drummer, who used to be his best friend, called out. Usually, after a set, Coleman hung around the club, riffing, messing around with new tunes, sometimes until five in the morning. Sometimes, he’d get home just as the sun was coming up. Even though he stayed out all night, other than a few lapses, he basically didn’t cheat on 

      Mellon, in his mind. At least, he didn’t cheat with his heart.

      Mellon just did it for him. She was all the woman he wanted and needed, other than now and then when a groupie could talk him into a one-night stand that his male ego couldn’t turn away.

      Coleman looked at him and paused. Good night. He was in a good mood. He could even forget the beef he’d had with Malik for saying that Mellon was no good for him. He loved Mellon and he didn’t care what anyone else said. He could already see himself pumping his way into that pyramid V between Mellon’s legs. The girl’s loving was so good it needed to be bottled and sold. And she was born with it. She’d had the same musky sensuality since she was a young girl. The first time Coleman went sniffing around her.

      It was love at first sight for Coleman when he saw Mellon. He was sixteen and she was a gum-popping, sassy girl of thirteen. It was her Creole accent that he’d fallen in love with. Although she was a project girl, and his mother had warned him against her, he didn’t mind. Truth be told, he was a project child himself—that is, before his father died and his mother, accompanied by her insurance money, bought their two-bedroom bungalow outside the projects. In 1997, when he returned home from the army where he’d served a tour of duty in Bosnia, Coleman married Mellon.

      When he turned the corner at the far end of his street, because of the full moon, Coleman noticed but didn’t pay attention to a familiar-looking Escalade parked under his neighbor Mrs. Wall’s cottonwood tree. Still whistling, he cut off the radio when he pulled into his driveway.

      Suddenly an electrical charge coursed through his body. Coleman felt his pulse start to race. Why was the house dark? Generally, Mellon left the living room light on, as well as the porch light.

      A twinge of danger ran up his back like a sour note in jazz. Heart trotting, fear propelled him up the stairs, foot sinking into the carpet, hand reaching over hand, he heard them. The love noises, the bed squeaking. Crack, crack, squeak, squeak. Worse, he smelled them—the love funk.

      As if in a trance, he followed the dim candlelight cast from under the doorway into the hallway. Stealthily, he opened the door; they were going at it like two dogs, oblivious to anything or anyone, but that moment. That image, frozen like some grotesque octopus in a piece of amber, would forever remain emblazoned in his psyche.

      Methodically, Coleman stepped back out the room, reached in his linen closet next to the bedroom door where he kept his Glock and pulled it out. Only the shock of recognition kept him surprisingly calm. He had killed before over in the war. But those were total strangers, and he had killed for his country. Now he knew where he’d seen that Escalade.  It not only belonged to his quartet’s piano player, its owner was his first cousin, Luke. Yes, Luke, in bed with his wife. Luke who had called in sick tonight.

      With a flick of the wrist, Coleman cut on the light. The coupling ended abruptly; Mellon scrambled for the blanket to cover her nakedness. However, Luke was unable to hide the evidence of his transgression. His jones was still erect and slick with Mellon’s oils. Damn! Hadn’t even used a condom. This negro had run up in his wife raw. Aw, hell naw!

      Blue, dawg, Luke stammered.

      Blue, it’s not what it look like.... Mellon began crying.

      Luke, naw, man, was all Coleman could utter. His voice sounded far away like a shell-shocked man.

      Dazed, Coleman cocked his gun.

      Chapter 1

      Deni

      Los Angeles, California

      August 25, 2005

      Category One Storm

      Hurricane Katrina had just become a Category One hurricane when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this image on August 25, 2005, at 12:30 P.M. Eastern Daylight Savings Time.

      Girl, are you pregnant again?

      Covering the phone’s receiver, Deni ogled the watermelon bulge under her cousin Shana’s caftan, and couldn’t help from blurting out her naked thoughts. As she stood in the hallway, the old-fashioned black phone’s receiver balanced on her neck like a snake handler, she didn’t know if she was more shocked at Shana’s pregnancy, as by her cousin’s nonchalant attitude. The only thing which reeled her back, was the male voice on the other end of the line.

      Miss, are you still there?

      Wiping her brow, Deni code switched back into her professional voice. Sir, I’m checking on a Shawn George Lockwood, date of birth 10-15-73.

      May I have his inmate number? She turned and whispered to her little second cousin, Unique. Cut the TV down, so I can put the number in my Blackberry.

      The room was filled with the blare of some upcoming hurricane called Katrina and Deni could hardly hear the inmate clerk’s voice on the other end of the phone.

      The eleven-year-old scrambled to lower the dial on the old-fashioned floor model television plopped dead center in the cramped living room, pushed up against the wall.

      Meantime, Deni blew her bangs out of her eyes and fanned her perspiring face. She sure missed her air-conditioning from her near-beachfront condo in Santa Monica. She punched the number into her Blackberry.

      Although her mouth voiced words, her mind was on her cousin, Shana, who already had six children, a boisterous brood of BeBe’s kids, ranging in ages from eleven to two, one Afro-puff behind another cornrowed head, and outlandish Afrocentric names, which would plague them the rest of their lives, as far as Deni was concerned.

      Girl, you crazy. Shana threw back her head and gave a full-throated laugh at Deni’s outburst. Her face was as clear and simple as a raindrop on a palmetto leaf—everything reflected beneath came to the surface.

      What you see is what you get, Deni mused. It doesn’t seem

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