Two Bowls of Gumbo

Nikki has some gypsy in her. You can see it in her eyes that look sad and serious, even when she is laughing. She is from New Orleans, which she pronounces with only two syllables--N’or-lins. She talks about New Orleans as if it were a city she just barely escaped. A place that can grab you by the ankles and suck you under, like quicksand.

All her friends from college either fled to San Francisco, Boston or Los Angeles or gave in to shapeless lives of dissipation and were swallowed up by drugs, alcohol or lethargy--or some lethal combination of all three. Yet when she goes back, as she does at least once or twice a year, she is so blissful I wonder how she can stay in Southern California.

She goes to the jazz festival and falls in love with gospel music, telling me she might find religion just to enjoy the fervent hallelujahs. She dines with old friends and sends me postcards filled with exclamation points and crusted with stains from jambalaya or red beans and rice. Try to tell Nikki about some Cajun joint you like, and if it is in Southern California, she’ll just laugh you off. “Honey, that’s not Cajun food,” she’ll say, breaking into a little laugh.

So it’s a gamble to take her to the Memphis Cafe. Not that they claim to serve New Orleans-style anything here. This is a place for soul food--if you can call popcorn shrimp tacos soul food. Memphis, y’all understand, walks a delicate line between Southern epicurean kitsch (think Elvis’ beloved fried baloney sandwiches) and a regional cooking that is every bit as retro as the lava lamps, martini shakers and poodle sweater sets you can buy next door at the Lab.

The waiters wear pea-green shirts and geeky black frame glasses that scream Elvis Costello chic, and the whole place, which was once a blue-collar bar that smelled of stale beer and even staler smoke (I once had an office across the street and found the stares from the locals holding up the bar to be an advantageous ploy in getting clients in suits to quickly make up their minds about some contract we were negotiating), feels like someplace Jimmy Hoffa would have conducted bidnez with union chieftains back in the day. Only now the place is peopled by ad agency copywriters and marketing execs from Quiksilver.

We order a couple of beers while looking over the menu, and Nikki, who half-jokingly calls herself a freelance astrologer, tells me about the crystal ball she just bought. “First I bought this smaller one, but it wasn’t real crystal. So I took it back. The woman that owns the shop said she thinks I have some psychic abilities.”

The new crystal ball is beautiful, Nikki says. It sits on a little stand on a table in her living room.

“Have you tried it out?” I ask.

Nikki cackles. “Of course, honey.”

“What did you see?”

“Well, for one thing I saw you going to Al Green with us.” She laughs again.

Nikki has an extra ticket to the House of Blues tonight and has been trying to talk me into taking it off her hands. I am vacillating. Seeing Al Green sounds fine. But the little party Nikki has assembled for the evening is a tight band of old friends, for the most part, and I’m really not in the mood, on such short notice, to be thrown into someone else’s Rat Pack. If I’m going to play the role, I prefer to be Dino rather than Joey.

The service at Memphis is a tag team. The young man with spiked blond hair and heavy-rimmed glasses who took our beer order has been replaced by a quiet woman who brings us a plate of sweet corn bread, and she, in turn, hands us off to another waiter who brings us our gumbo and half sandwiches--pulled pork for me, a fried catfish po’boy for Nikki.

We ignore our sandwiches for the moment, stirring the thick, murky mixture of shrimp, chicken, sausage and okra into the mound of rice in the center of our bowls. It’s got a little heat to it, which Nikki appreciates.

“Honey, this is the best gumbo I’ve had west of the Mississippi,” she says, dipping her corn bread into the gelatinous mixture.

Then we go back to talking about the crystal ball. I tell her I’m thinking of getting one myself. She doesn’t come right out and say so, but I can tell she thinks this is a bad idea. “Looking into the future isn’t for everyone,” she says. “It can wear you out.”

Then she tells me that the reason she bought the crystal ball was because she has been offered a new job. In a new city. Which would mean leaving behind some old friends and her little California bungalow apartment with its arched doorways and stucco walls.

And what, exactly, would you do, I ask her.

Nikki drops her spoon, grips the table and leans close to me as if she were telling me a secret. “I don’t know,” she says, and then breaks into one of her uproarious laughs. “I’d be a project manager.”

“But you don’t know what the project would be?”

“Exactly.”

“Do they?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Does that scare you?”

She stares at her untouched catfish po’boy. “A little bit,” she says sincerely. “But I kind of like that. I think I’m ready to do something a little scary. Everyone should do something scary in their lives. At least once. Even you, honey.”

By the time we finish our meal, Memphis is all but deserted. The waiters and waitresses are sitting down for the first time all day, counting tips, closing out their cash drawers. Nikki decides to take the catfish po’boy home with her. We chat for a few minutes in the parking lot. She shows me a black wrap with feathers she has bought to wear to the concert tonight. “So what do you think about tonight?” she says. “Are you coming with us?”

“Let me think about it.”

“Honey, you’ve been thinking about it.”

“Why are you even asking me?” I say. “You’re the one with the crystal ball.”

She smiles at me with those sad, dark eyes. “Oh, I already know the answer,” she says. “But it won’t happen until you say it. That’s what makes looking into the future so exhausting. You can see it, but you can’t always make it happen.”

I sigh. “I’ll call you.”

Nikki shrugs. I sit in my car in the dusty parking lot thinking about it. But Nikki, who knows my answer, is already long gone.

Open 11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Monday-Friday; 10:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday brunch; 5 p.m.-10 p.m. Monday-Thursday; 5 p.m.-10:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday; 5 p.m.-9:30 p.m. Sunday. Extended hours begin in February.

David Lansing’s column is published on Fridays in Orange County Calendar. His e-mail address is occalendar@latimes.com.