Landweir House Chapter 7 - Tony Lane's Blog

Landweir House

Chapter 7

Love is in the Air

The Breen’s took great pleasure in watching their house come back to life and for the entirety of that first summer they were like kids on a honeymoon. Modern linoleum was put down overtop of the original entryway stone mosaic as well as in the kitchen. The old back porch, now rotted and falling down, was removed and replaced with a spacious concrete slab to act as a patio for the barbeque. It extended out into the yard and covered what was once a stately rose garden but as Jean would say, “He didn’t marry me for my domestic skills.” So there was no need of the garden. The kitchen was stripped of the old hickory cabinets and everything was replaced with nice clean looking white cabinets. This made the rest of the house look so dreary in Jean’s eyes that all of the woodwork in the house was painted white. The guest room that was closest to the Master bedroom was converted into a bathroom and closet for Jean’s ever expanding collection of clothes. That closet was the pride and joy of the lady of the house. It had cubbies for everything and a mirror so she could try on new outfits and jewelry as the mood struck her. Wall to wall carpet was installed to cover the old fashioned wood floors and modern plumbing was added throughout the house. It was becoming livable for the couple.

For a period of time the Hollywood elite would come and stay with the Breen’s. Landweir House became the “in” place to go and New Orleans enjoyed the company. But as the summer came to an end, Richard needed to get back to work and so he began shuttling between his New Orleans home and the studios in Hollywood where he was busily working on his next screenplay. As the time for deadline came closer, he began spending more and more time away from Jean. She had given up her acting career in order to marry Richard. Truth told it wasn’t that big of a sacrifice. She had never been taken seriously by film makers. She had plenty of looks and sex appeal but couldn’t pretend to be an actress. She saw that marrying the older, established writer was her best chance to be a part of the Hollywood scene. But now, as the visits by the guests became less frequent and Richard was gone more often, Jean was becoming bored and lonely. This was a bad combination with a girl like Jean whose attention span was that of a fruit fly’s and her morals were like those of an alley cat. Shopping just wasn’t scratching her itch anymore.

Jean decided to go out and get some dinner one night and while she was at it maybe take in a jazz club on Royal Street. She was in luck because Louis Armstrong and his All Star band were in town. That’s where she first laid her eyes on Sam Hart. He was a big strapping kid fresh from Mobile with ten cents in his pocket and a dream in his soul of playing jazz saxophone in New Orleans. But the Big Easy washed guys like him down into the gutters along with last night’s Mardis Gras beads. Sam had come to town looking for a break but Jean figured that he was the break that she had been looking for and so she made her move. It was hard to tell what drew him in the quickest, the curves, the bourbon or just the hot meal, but whatever it was he swallowed it hook, line and sinker. He was like a puppy dog who had just found someone to scratch him behind his ears. He wasn’t going to give this up anytime soon.

Jean was never known for her will power or sense of moderation and it seemed that for the first time since she had moved to New Orleans she had found a part that she could play to perfection. She was a tramp and a good one. Sure that egg-head that she had married paid the bills and gave her the life that she had always dreamed of but why couldn’t he be more like Sam? Sam could be moody, but what artist wasn’t? But when he went out to the patio and stood in the moonlight, silhouetted against a starry sky, her knees would turn to jelly when he took out his instrument. His rippling, tanned biceps exposed to her eyes against the whiteness of his tank t-shirt made her weak. His form was perfect, without flaw except for the birthmark on his right shoulder that was in the shape of a heart. Sam Hart literally wore his heart under his sleeve and even this imperfection became perfect for him. He was beautiful and she knew that she could never give herself again to Richard. A plan had to be made.

Together, the two of them came up with a plot to get Richard to take Jean into the Bayou to see the alligators. When she got him there, Sam would play the role of guide and strike up a conversation and offer to take them to where he knew there would be plenty of the beasts to look at. Jean would beg off claiming a headache but would insist that Richard go along. Once they got to a secluded place, Sam could hit Richard over the head and drop him into the Bayou to become gator feed. Jean would then claim to the authorities that her husband had insisted on going back into the Bayou alone even though she had begged him not to. If they found anything left of his body she would identify it as being that of her husband. Sam and Jean were not to see each other for three months so it would not seem improper for her to receive an old friend when Sam re-entered the picture. Jean thought that it sounded like a plot from one of Richard’s movie scripts and, therefore, a fitting demise for the writer husband of which she could no longer stand the sight.