Fluff, Promise, and Calamity

We fondly recall this as the No Good Very Bad Day.

Some days are just a train wreck. Things planned go sideways. Things unplanned make it worse. Escape hatches do not exist. There is nothing left but to smile and wave.

One such day on our Jean Laffite book tour dawned bright, sunny and warm. Birds chirped. Gorgeous white billowy clouds hovered over the Gulf Coast. They held no dark underbellies filled with rain - just fluff and promise. And we were on the road to our engagement with five extra hours to spare.

The plan was to arrive early and enjoy the seacoast town, grab a bite of dinner, then mosey over to our event venue, tell our story, sign a few books, and call it a day.

Fifteen minutes into the ride, Ashley’s phone rang. It was the event coordinator, and I use that phrase charitably because we were on the cusp of finding out that the woman could not have coordinated a trip to the toilet involving one person - herself - much less an event in a hall built to hold hundreds of people.

“Hi. Yes, I was just calling with a question. Where do I get the books for you to sell at the event?”

For context, the “event” had been on the schedule for two months. “Everything was on board”, she had said. “Great crowd expected.” “Can’t wait to see you.” “I’ll take care of stocking the books.”

Ashley had her on speaker. We both were incredulous. “Um, you don’t have the books for the event?”

“Well, I’m happy to get them, but it just dawned on me that I hadn’t done that yet. If you can tell me who to call, that’s all I need.”

“Actually, no”, said Ashley, with steam coming out of her ears. “What you need is books five hours from now, and no phone call in the world is going to make that happen.”

“Oh, dear…well…let’s see here…”

Ashley again: “Here’s what we can do. We have books that were allocated for other events. They are here with us in the car. We can use them. But we will need to be able to sell them for ourselves.”

“Well, see, that’s not going to work because we purchase all of our own stock here at the hall. We can’t just allow you to come in and…”

Ashley interrupted her. “Then what’s your suggestion?”

After a long pause, the answer: “Well, can we buy the books from you? We can’t pay you retail, of course.”

A few more exchanges produced a solution that made neither of us happy, but did allow the museum to purchase enough books from us for the event and provided us with a tiny bit of overhead for our trouble, so, onward we went. The billowy white clouds still held fluff and promise.

Then the interstate shut down. I do not mean “slowed down to a crawl”. I mean full-on stop the car, throw it in park, turn off the engine and settle in. We were in the left lane, completely hemmed in, no exits for miles in either direction, with a median that was impossible to cross due to terrain that would have caused us to nose-dive into a gully twenty feet deep trying to make it over. Obviously, and tragically (as we found out later) the reason for all of this was indeed a fatality that had occurred miles up ahead.

By the time we began rolling, the delay had consumed four of the five hours we had to spend. There was one hour left and the venue was an hour and a half away. Having been on the phone with The Queen of Coordination multiple times during the delay, we were assured by her that they would wait. And they did.

What she neglected to mention was that her top-notch marketing effort had produced five people for the event. And one of those was a TV reporter from the local news station, sent out to report on the remaining four people sitting in a large empty event hall listening to our story.

This was along about the time the wind began to blow for no apparent reason. There had been no hurricanes or tropical storms in the forecast, not even a mention by any weather source that gusts strong enough to peel the paint off of a car were coming our way, but here they came, providing us with the extra added benefit of great blasts that blew our hair sideways and backwards and every few seconds blew our skirts up over our heads.

Enter the reporter, who met us in the parking lot.

“Hi guys, I’m the beat reporter for local WOMG. Mind if I get a few words from you on camera before the thing starts?”

“Sure, we don’t mind at all. Do you want our skirts up over our heads or down? Only reason we ask, we aren’t sure which would look better on camera - our demolished heads of hair or our underwear. You decide.”

(And, no, we did not say that.)

Cutting to the chase, we sang our hearts out for those four people (who were really a great audience, by the way), following which we bid a terse farewell to our friend, Miss Can’t Find Her Way Out Of A Paper Bag. We tried to go in search of the dinner we had missed earlier, only to find everything shut down early due to extreme high wind warnings and surly seas.

Nothing left to do but turn back toward our hotel two hours away.

It would probably seem like a bridge too far if I mentioned that it was now past dark and the headlights went out on our car as we turned to make the drive back. But they did - and that’s another whole story.

As for this story, it was one for the record books. Some days there is nothing left to do but smile and wave.

Photo by Ashley Oliphant.

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