GW Robichaux

"Hey batter batter batter," GW muttered to himself. He knew it was a useless exercise as the baseball player was a thousand miles away and couldn't hear him, but he said it anyway. The Astros had been his favorite team growing up, mainly due to the fact that Houston was the closest city with a major league team, and he'd kept a fondness for the ballclub into adulthood.

The Cajun took a sip of his beer and watched the television from his seat at the bar of his neighborhood watering hole. His team was up 5-3 in the bottom of the 8th Inning, but the Diamondbacks had two men on base and no outs.

"They better get movin', you bet." he mused before taking a bite of his cheese fries.

Sarita hadn't intended to go into the little bar near her apartment complex, but she'd returned from a walk to the grocery store to find herself locked out, so she trudged inside with her two bags to wait for her roommate to pull into the parking lot. At least she didn't have milk or something else that needed refrigerating with her.

The place wasn't very crowded, and she decided to get one beer, something inexpensive just to cool off, while she loitered around waiting on Katrina's big butt to come home. Only a couple of days until payday, thank God. The tips had been a little better this week, mostly married couples coming in with their kids. No need to indulge the creeps who wanted to put their hands up her skirt.

It was almost time for her to write a letter home. A letter that would doubtless come back unopened, but she kept hoping that her mother would soften and start talking to her again. As long as she only tried every few months or so, it didn't hurt too much when the envelopes came back untouched. But maybe one day she'd actually get an answer.

That, of course, would probably happen just as easily as her winning a Grammy award for songwriting.


"No! No! No! Merde!" GW swore loudly as the bat connected with the ball and sent it sailing up into the upper deck in right field. He took a deep sip of his beer and watched glumly as the player made a victory lap around the ball diamond, high fiving the other base runners.

The Cajun had been afraid of that. The Astros pitcher was a high priced flop that was eating up payroll space that could be better spent on other talent, and the Diamondbacks had some of the best hitters in the Western Division. It was an uneven matchup at best.

"Th' manager, he needs t' go."

"That's what happens when you spend money like water," Sarita remarked, lifting her own bottle to her mouth. "They've been wasting cash on marquee names when what they ought to be doing is scoping the minor leagues for somebody with a solid record for pitching and a better arm. Too bad steroids are such a big no-no, they might actually help in that case."

She rolled her eyes good-naturedly, swiped the pretzel bowl on her right to pull it closer to her. It was hard not to pay attention to sports in a place like this, where everyone gambled on everything. Once they'd had a betting pool at work about how many drunk driving accidents there would be after a catered event the restaurant had held. Which was really kind of morbid, but she'd won four hundred dollars.

"You're a little far from home, aren't ya?" she asked rhetorically, having already picked up on the guy's accent. "Don't tell me, you're here for the baseball."

"Non," GW responded easily, having caught her accent as well. To someone not from the gulf coast region she would be pegged just as a Texan, which was a large amount of real estate. But to someone from his neck of the woods it was easy to spot the subtleties in her accent that identified her loud and clear as someone from the Houston/Galveston area.

"I've been livin' in Vegas for more than a year now, th' money's good and there's plenty o' gigs for a Cajun band. Lots o' folks settled 'round here after Rita blew through the bayou back in '05, every now and again they like th' sound of home."

He took a bite of his cheese fries and eyed the brunette curiously. She hadn't been here before, or at least he hadn't been here when she had patronized the bar. "You're a fair bit away too, you bet," he told her after chasing down the fries with a sip of his beer. "Get tired o' th' Hurricanes or somethin' else blow you up this way?"

The Cajun extended a hand. "GW Robichaux."

"Sarita Torres. Nice to meet you." God, if he tried to pick her up, she was going to pour her beer over his head. But the handshake came and went and she decided he wasn't that sort. He looked too clean-cut for it, for one thing. His mother probably still baked cookies for him and sent them in carefully wrapped packages in the mail.

"I'm not that much of a sports fan, it's just that you kind of can't escape from it out here. Superbowl time is the worst, because then all the gamblers crawl out of their holes with more money than brains. They do tip well, though, gotta give 'em that."

Her curiosity piqued, she continued, "You're in a band? Do I need to ask for your autograph?"

"Heh, it ain't worth all that much." GW shrugged and kept one eye on the screen behind her, and winced as the Diamondbacks got another run in. It was going to be a quiet night in the Astros locker room, he could tell.

"Th' band is called th' Cajun Devildogs. We mostly play Cajun style and some Bluegrass tunes, along with th' more traditional country styles." He was proud of his band and wasn't afraid to hide it. It had been a lifelong ambition to run his own successful band, and GW had worked his ass off to get it to this point.

"So you work in th' casinos then?" He asked her curiously. It had to be more interesting than the game, which was going down in flames unless the Astros pulled their heads out of their rears. At least the Saints looked to be good this year.

"I wish. I'm a waitress, over at Toretto's, just across from the Luxor Hotel? Well, I'm currently a waitress pretending to be a songwriter. The second part's not working out so well." Sarita smiled self-deprecatingly, her dimples becoming more pronounced. "It turns out you need a little more than nerve to get your foot in the door around here.

Not that she hadn't tried, because she had. But everyone she'd talked to thus far wanted a 'name', or at least some kind of known representation. But she didn't have the money lying around to hire an agent, and somehow she'd gotten the stubborn idea that she could do this on her own if someone would just give her a chance. So far, though, there had been no joy.

"I've probably seen your flyers here and there, depending on where you've been putting them up. Are you getting a lot of good buzz from the locals?"

"What's your genre? It can be tough, getting your foot in the door in this business." GW sympathised. So far he had kept their songs completely in house, there hadn't been any reason to go looking elsewhere for material. Along with that he had his education in composition and experience to draw on when he had roadblocks.

"We've been getting pretty good buzz, yeah. I've had to work my tail off to generate it though, being th' manager, fiddler and lead singer." He finished off his beer and signaled the bartender for another. It wasn't like he had to drive home and there were no rehearsal sessions or gigs until the day after tomorrow.

"There's a regular gig at th' Orleans, we play there once a month. Been doing a lot of road shows in the region too."

"Its not really a genre so much as it is a combination of different stuff," the waitress answered, offering a one-shouldered shrug. "Kind of like Lucinda Williams meets Tori Amos I've put together a few things that I think are really good, but the problem is I'm the only one who seems to think so."

She seemed to have eaten over half of the pretzels in the bowl without quite realizing it, and she pushed the bowl away from her with a bit of embarrassment. Too much fat and salt would go straight to her ass and decide to bring friends when it moved in. Thank God for the fitness room where she lived. "Have you been in any of the local trade rags?" she asked GW. "I don't get to clubs as often as I'd like because I usually work nights, but I do try to keep up with the local scene."

The bartender set down a fresh beer in front of GW, who nodded in understanding at Sarita and took a sip of his beer while he thought it over. Lucinda Williams meets Tori Amos wasn't exactly the sort of sound the Devildogs aspired to, especially considering they were an all-male band. Still, if Johnny Cash could take a Trent Reznor tune ostensibly about heroin and turn it into something that sounded like a gospel song, then Sarita might be able to write something that they could use.

"We were profiled in th' paper 'bout six months ago, and had write ups in th' local rags here an' there since we showed up in Vegas."

The Cajun put another forkful of cheese fries into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully, wondering if he should make the offer or not. He chased down the fries with a swallow of beer. "When was th' last time y' wrote somethin?"

Sarita thought about it, tracking backwards over the last few months. It was nearing the end of summer, and she'd last hauled out her notebook in... "June," she said aloud. "I broke up with my ex...again...and wrote a couple of things about it. They aren't that great, though, but I've got other stuff that's better."

She paused, looked at the dwindling contents of her bottle. "Do you write the songs for your group too, or do you have enough on your to-do list for that already?"

"It's a collaborative effort," GW told her. "Everyone contributes songs, though most o' the work is done by me or Henri, the other fiddler in the group. We've both been playin' in honkytonks an' bars since we were kids, and I went t' school for music on the GI Bill after I got out o' th' service."

He sipped his beer. "It keeps us busy an' out o' trouble."

"Oh, you were in the Army before?" He was probably older than her, in that case. Really cute, though. It was probably just as well he hadn't tried to pick her up, because the whole beer-over-the-head thing would just have been rude. And she so did not need a boyfriend right now. "My step-dad's career Air Force," she added with a slight wrinkle of her nose. "Nice uniforms, but not a lot of fun at parties."

"I've thought about going back to school, do some actual studying of music, but there's no money for it since I'm on my own. I've always been more of a self-starter, anyway." Her beer was finally finished, and she set the bottle down on the paper coaster before eating a few more pretzels.

"Ugh, I need to stop eating these, I'm gonna wreck my diet."

"Marine Corps," GW corrected without rancor. "Seven years. I've known a few wing wipers when I was in th' service. Career types tended t' be kinda boring, so I can't say I'm surprised about yer stepdad. If yer serious 'bout goin' to school y' could always join th' guard or reserves t' pay for it. Iraq's windin' down so it isn't like they'd send y' straight t' th' firing line."

He chuckled about her comment on the pretzels. "Beer an' cheese fries ain't doin' mine any favors neither, but exercise will burn th' calories off, sure thing."

The Cajun set down his beer and looked at her with a serious expression. "If you're serious 'bout tryin' t' make a livin' off your songs, why don't you put some stuff together an' meet me at th' Panera Bread shop down by the supermarket on Saturday morning? I'll take a look, offer some suggestions an maybe take a few to see if th' rest o' th' band would be interested in playin' any." At her uncertain look he raised a hand and shook his head. "I'm not interested in hanky panky, I've got a girl already."

Not that he'd seen much of her lately, Meredith seemed to have fallen off the face of the Earth. If not for her karmic abilities he'd start getting worried, but she was a big girl who could take care of herself. It didn't mean he would wait forever, but he would wait a while longer.

Oh, God, was she talking to an actual nice guy? The last year or so had made her a little cynical about men in general, despite how young she was, and she directed her gaze to the television screen and the end of the miserable ballgame. Yeah, it hadn't gotten any better for the Astros.

"I'm on a break from relationships," she said, giving GW an odd sort of smile. "When my stupid ex-boyfriend left this last time, I decided that all drama all the time was over-rated. If I wanted to hear yelling and slamming doors, I'd still be living with my mother."

At least this meant she wouldn't have to explain the other thing, her 'second job'. It wasn't exactly something she went around bragging about. But if she could really interest the Cajun in some of the things she'd written, maybe she could start keeping her legs closed after work unless she felt like doing otherwise.

A girl could dream, right?

"But yeah, I could do that. I actually live nearby, in an apartment complex, but I got locked out. The perils of forgetting your keys, y'know?"

"Been there, done that." GW smiled sympathetically. He'd done it a few times over the years, and experience had taught him to keep a backup set in a location only he would know about.

The last thing he wanted to do was talk about relationships to someone barely out of her teens, so GW simply nodded at her comments about the drama but said nothing.

"Sounds like we got ourselves a business meeting then," GW dug out his wallet and signaled the bartender that he was ready to pay up. He handed the bartender a twenty and Sarita a business card. "Y' can get hold o' me that way. Unless I hear otherwise I'll see you at the bagel shop at ten a.m. on Saturday."

"Thanks." Sarita tucked the little card into her jeans pocket, glanced at her watch. Katrina had been job hunting today, but she should be back any time now. "Its been really nice talking with you, GW. We used to get kids from Louisiana who'd drive in for our football games. I miss the accent."

She put her own slightly more crumpled bills on the bar, turned to face the street so she could catch sight of her roommate's car. At least there'd be some good news tonight, and maybe more once she talked to the Cajun again. She'd have to go through her notebooks tonight, see what she thought was her best work.

Sometimes there were benefits to getting locked out of your house.

The NPC of Sarita was written by Stargazer