Blue Bayou

by JoAnn Ross

  “I do?” Dani gave him huge points for not squirming.

  “Oui. You'll break more than a few girls' hearts, you. Why, I bet you already have yourself a special girlfriend.”

  A flush as bright as the fighting cartoon crawfish rose in his face. He rubbed the darkening red spot where she'd pinched him. “Not really.”

  “Well, isn't there plenty of time for that? Anyway, it's best to play the field at your age. Besides, now I won't have to worry 'bout female competition while you're living with me.”

  “Living with you?” He shot Dani a confused look.

  “Oh, Orèlia, as much as I appreciate the offer—”

  “Now, Danielle, darlin', there's no point in arguing. Besides, I've just been rattlin' around in that big house since my Leon passed on. It'll be good to have some company.” She chucked Matt beneath his chin. “Follow me home, and I'll feed this man of yours.”

  “I really don't want to impose—”

  “Stop talking foolishness,” the older woman cut her off again. “You need a place to stay and your boy needs food.” The gregarious redhead had morphed into the bustling office nurse who'd jabbed more than a few needles into patients' bare butts over a forty-year career. “At least for tonight, then we can talk about your future in the morning, when things are lookin' brighter.”

  The orange birdnest teetered a bit as she tilted her head and studied Matt. “You look like a chicken-fried-steak man to me. That sound good?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Of course it does. Nobody in this parish makes a better-chicken fried steak than Orèlia. We'll get you some dirty rice and buttered snap beans, too.”

  “Dirty rice?”

  “Oh, it's wonderful, darlin'. You'll love it. I can't believe your maman's never cooked it for you.”

  Deciding this was not the time to try to explain that the only time Lowell had wanted any reminders of his Louisiana constituents, whom he'd always considered beneath him, was when he was hosting his annual Mardi Gras fund-raising party for well-heeled lobbyists and wealthy corporate types, Dani didn't respond to the friendly gibe.

  “And some hot-milk cake for dessert,” Orèlia decided. “I'll bet you like that good enough.”

  “I don't know. I've never had it.”

  “You haven't?” A beringed hand flew to her breast. “Bon Dieu! What on earth happened to your maman while she was away living with the Americans?”

  Knowing that old time Cajuns considered the rest of the country as something apart from themselves, Dani didn't bother to point out that Blue Bayou was technically as American as Virginia.

  Orèlia flicked a measuring gaze over Dani. “Your handsome boy isn't the only one who needs supper. Don't they feed you good in the city, chère? You're nothin' but skin and bones. But don't you worry, Orèlia will take care of getting you some curves.”

  She wagged her hand toward the station wagon. “Now shoo. I'll meet you at the house and flirt with Matty and fix him some supper while you and Nate take care of business.”

  Events decided, at least in her own mind, she swept back through the crowd like a ship steaming out of harbor to the Caddy.

  “The sign says No Parking,” Matt pointed out.

  “She was probably in such a hurry she didn't notice it.” Dani ignored Nate's smothered laugh. They both knew that Orèlia was no fan of rules.

  “Are we really going to live with her?” Matt asked.

  Dani watched the steam rising from the charred building that was to have been her new home, considered her options, and reluctantly decided that she didn't have all that many.

  “Just for a little while,” she decided. “Until we can get the apartment repaired.”

  Fortunately, the lower floors didn't look as if they'd been too badly damaged. She hoped the books would be salvageable.

  “When the apartment's fixed up, it'll be better than new,” she said optimistically. “I'll start looking for carpenters first thing in the morning.”

  Already forming her plan to literally rise from the ashes, Dani didn't notice Nate wince.

  The dying sun bled red in the water as Jack poled the pirouge up to the dock. The No Name wasn't a place where you could take a pretty girl dancing on Saturday night, or where a family might show up for dinner after Sunday mass.

  Neither was it known for its rustic charms, a waterfront tavern where you'd romance a woman over glasses of wine, or where a guy could play a few convivial rounds of pool with pals, listen to some zydeco on the juke, and shoot the bull.

  The No Name—the original name had been forgotten after the sign had blown down in a hurricane in the 1940s—was a specialty shop: a bar where you could feed the spiders crawling around in your head and get quickly, ruthlessly, and efficiently drunk enough that you could no longer remember anything about your life. Not even your own name.

  And Jack had a shitload of stuff he wanted—needed—to forget.

  The thick plank front door had been painted a bright lipstick red by a previous owner, but had faded over the decades to a dirty rust. There were a few muttered complaints from the shadows when he opened the door and let in the bleeding red light. Jack figured the growled curses were probably the most words any of the regulars had managed to string together all day.

  The interior was even worse than the outside. It was dark and cheerless, smelling of sawdust and despair. It suited his mood perfectly.

  “Give me a double Jack Black, straight up, no water on the side,” he said as he slid onto a barstool. There were bowls of sliced lemons, limes, and cherries on the bar and behind it, dark bottles, dim lamps, and dusty bottles of wine.

  The bartender, a tall, whippet-lean man with the look of a long-distance runner, which he'd been in high school, splashed the Jack Daniel's into a short glass. “Bad day at Black Rock?”

  “You could say that.” Jack tossed down the whiskey, enjoying the burn down the length of his throat as it seared its way to his gut and sent smoke upward into his brain.

  He shoved the empty glass back toward the bartender, who arched a black brow but refilled it without a word.

  Alcèe Bonaparte was in his early thirties, same as Jack. They'd gone to school together, and both their mothers had worked for the Dupree family—Marie Callahan as a housekeeper, Dora Bonaparte as a cook—and they'd grown up together. Despite the fact that Alcèe was African-American and Jack was white, they'd been as close as brothers, with Alcèe playing the role of the good twin, Jack the bad.

  Whenever Jack filched beer from the back of the Dixie delivery truck, often as not it was Alcèe who left behind the change to cover the theft.

  When Jack got drunk, went on a tear, and bashed in mailboxes with a baseball bat not unlike the Louisville Slugger currently hanging on the wall beneath the bottles, it had been Alcèe who'd convinced him to confess to the judge, who'd sentenced Jack to replacing every one of the vandalized boxes, and working off the cost cutting cane on the Dupree farm.

  What the judge never knew, and they sure as hell didn't tell him, was that not only had Alcèe dug the posts for the new mailboxes, he'd passed up a long awaited church trip to the New Orleans cemeteries to labor besides his best friend in the staggering, breath-stealing heat of the cane fields.

  With the easy understanding of lifelong friends, neither man spoke. Alcèe continued to pour drinks, washed glasses in the metal sink, and wiped off the bar that was permanently stained, pale white circles left by wet glasses telling the years like the rings of ancient trees.

  After ten minutes he disappeared through the swinging doors into the back, returning with a huge po'boy, which he stuck in front of Jack.

  “I don't remember ordering that.” Unfortunately, Jack could still remember more than he wanted.

  “You need somet'ing in your stomach besides whiskey, you. Befo' you go fallin' off that there stool and break your stiff coon-ass neck.”

  “Don't give me that bayou black boy jive. I happen to know you received a Jesuit education.”
>
  Alcèe folded his arms across the front of the gaudy blue-and-white flowered Hawaiian shirt.

  “You so smart, you should also know that the Jesuits are Catholicism's kick-butt hardasses. So why don't you eat that sandwich before I have to, in the name of Christian charity, stuff it down your throat.”

  Jack's curse was short and pungent and bounced right off Alcèe like BBs off a Kevlar vest. Knowing from experience that arguing was useless, he bit into the dripping sandwich and nearly moaned as the flavors of shrimp and sauce piquante exploded on his tongue.

  “So,” Alcèe asked casually as he took away the empty highball glass and, without being asked, spritzed Coke into a new, taller one filled with ice, “do I owe this visit to the fact that a certain jolie blonde is coming back to town?” He tossed some cherries into the Coke and placed the glass down in front of Jack.

  “I don't know what you're talking about.” Jack took a long swallow, feeling the sugar hit like a firecracker in his head, which he would have preferred muddied.

  Alcèe looked inclined to argue when he noticed a grizzled old guy get up from a table in the far corner. He was out from around the bar and as Jack watched, he bent down and talked quietly but intensely to the man who'd opened his mouth to argue, then obviously realized the futility and sagged back down onto the chair. Alcèe sat down at the table and continued to talk to him.

  It was common knowledge in Blue Bayou that Alcèe was a former priest who'd temporarily lost his faith and his bearings in a fog of alcoholism. One fateful night on the way back to his New Orleans rectory after a drinking binge in a blues club with an alkie pal, who'd just happened to be a monsignor, he'd driven off the road into the river. He'd survived—just barely—and, after countless dives, had managed to get his passenger out of the car.

  Unfortunately, the other man, whose blood later tested at a level nearly three times the legal limit, hadn't been wearing his seat belt. He'd spent a month in a coma and another two years in rehab before being spirited away by the Church to wherever they put their problem clergymen.

  Alcèe didn't even try to fight the drunk-driving and reckless-endangerment charges. He dried out and did both his time and his penance while running a prison ministry. When he was released, he left the priesthood and returned home to the bayou. Now the No Name was his parish, the hard-core drunks and strung-out druggies who frequented it, his flock.

  Last New Year's Eve he'd gotten himself engaged to a nurse in the maternity ward at St. Mary's hospital, a former beauty queen from Mississippi who was every bit as warm-hearted as Alcèe himself was. Jack had agreed to be best man at their wedding next month, something he was looking forward to, even though he felt that in the case of him and Alcèe the title was definitely a misnomer.

  The fact was, Jack owed Alcèe Bonaparte big time. He'd been on a fast slide right into hell and might not have lived long enough to see his old friend get married if Alcèe hadn't shown up at the camp that day and convinced him to send his manuscript to a lit grad who'd spent a year in the same seminary Alcèe had attended. The guy had subsequently decided he wasn't cut out for a life of celibacy and had gone on to become a New York literary agent, but he and Alcèe had kept in touch over the years.

  The door opened onto a gathering well of darkness. Heads swiveled toward the woman backlit by the neon blue parking-lot light. Even the old drunk seemed to sit up a little straighter as Desiree Champagne glided across the sawdust-covered floor. Her hair was a riot of dark gypsy curls, her eyes the color of wood smoke in autumn. She was wearing a red silk dress slashed nearly to the navel that hugged her curves like a lover's caress and spindly heels so high Jack marveled that she could walk without breaking both ankles.

  When Alcèe started to get up from the table, she waved him off, a diamond the size of Texas flashing like lasers in the smoky light.

  “You stay where you are, hon,” she said in a throaty voice designed to tug masculine chords. “I can get my own drink.” She went around the bar and began mixing a martini. “Hey, Jack.” Every male eye in the place was riveted on her as she shook the drink, poured it into a glass, and added a trio of olives. “What are you drinking, darlin'?”

  Jack heard Alcèe clear his throat. Ignoring the veiled warning, he answered, “Jack Black.”

  She poured a shot of whiskey into a glass and held it out to him. Come and get it, those flashing dark eyes were saying. Come and get me.

  After he'd taken the drink, and thanked her for it, she came around the bar, perched on the stool next to him, and crossed her legs, revealing a mouthwatering length of thigh. “It's been a long time.” Her lips curved into a sultry seductive smile. Even knowing it was practiced, did not lessen its appeal. “I've missed you.”

  “I've missed you, too.”

  It was true enough, Jack decided. He might not have thought about her during the weeks he'd been working on Beau Soleil and slogging away on his book, but a part of him would probably always miss their easy camaraderie dating back to the days when two outsiders found a bit of escape and comfort in each other's arms.

  “Did you hear Dani's coming back?” She plucked the olive from the plastic pick with full, glossy lips.

  “Nate mentioned it.”

  “I wonder why.”

  He shrugged. “I guess 'cause her husband died, so she's coming home.”

  “The only trouble with that scenario is that you're in her home.”

  He didn't respond, since that thought had been going round and round in his mind ever since Nate had dropped his little bombshell this morning.

  The scarlet silk slid off one shoulder when she shrugged. “I guess she'll have to find herself another one.”

  “No offense, sugar. But I really don't feel much like conversation tonight.”

  “Fine.” She crossed her legs again with a seductive swish of silk. “Then we won't.” She sipped the martini, eyeing him over the rim of the glass. “I can't stay long, anyway. Since I think I'm expecting company tonight.”

  “You don't know?”

  “I'm not quite sure.” Her fingers stroked the thin stem of the glass in a blatantly erotic way. “Yet.”

  The gilt-rimmed feminine invitation was lingering in the smoke-filled bar between them. Jack polished off the whiskey and threw a twenty-dollar bill on the bar. “Let's go.”

  She smiled. “I thought you'd never ask.” She blew a kiss toward Alcèe, who was on the black pay phone. Jack knew, from having watched similar discussions over the past months, that he was probably arranging for someone to drive the old guy home.

  As he left with Desiree, he waved goodbye to his old friend, who waved back. But there was no mistaking the concern in Alcèe's Bambi-brown eyes.

  “Alcèe doesn't approve,” Desiree said.

  “Once a priest always a priest,” Jack muttered as they went out into the steamy night.

  “He thinks I'm not good enough for you.”

  “Alcèe's never been one to judge. Even when he was wearing the collar.”

  “Perhaps.” She thought about that as they made their way across the parking lot, her arm around his waist, his hand on her hip. “I suppose he's used to hookers. Even his old boss forgave Mary Magdalene.”

  “You're not a hooker.”

  “Not anymore.” She leaned against the shiny red fender of a late model Porsche and looked up at him. “But even if I was, chère, you wouldn't be having to pay. Not with our history.” She'd been the first girl he'd ever had sex with, and they'd passed some good times in the backseat of his candy-apple red GTO back in high school. She dangled the keys in front of him the same way he supposed Eve had offered that shiny red apple to Adam. “Why don't you drive?”

  He hesitated just a moment too long.

  “Hey, darlin', if you don't want to, it's no big deal.”

  He saw the flash of hurt in her eyes. “Sure I want to. It's just that I've got this damn dog.”

  “A dog?”

  “Tied up over by the pirogue.”


  “I don't believe it.” She stared at him as if he'd just told her that he'd returned from a little jaunt to Mars.

  “Something wrong with a guy getting himself a dog?”

  “Nothing at all.” She patted his cheek and with hips swaying, walked over to where he'd left the mutt, who began wildly wagging her tail.

  “Oh, she's darling!”

  “She's a mess, is what she is.” Desiree bent down to pat the dog, giving Jack an appealing view of her shapely ass. “She just needs a bath. Don't you, darlin'?”

  The dog, thrilled to pieces to be noticed, did what Jack figured just about every guy in the No Name would give his left nut to do: She licked the lush swell of her fragrant breasts.

  Desiree laughed merrily, scratched the mutt's ears and, if the wild metronome swing of the dog's tail was any indication, sent her into ecstasy. Desiree kissed the end of the brown nose, then turned back to Jack. “What's her name?” she asked as she returned to the Porsche with the dog.

  “I haven't a clue. And I'm not about to give her one 'cause she isn't going to be staying with me.”

  “Sure, darlin'. That's why you're taking her for boat rides.”

  “I was gonna take her to the shelter, but got caught up with work and didn't get into town in time to drop her off 'fore it closed.”

  “Whatever you say.” She patted his cheek. “You know, it's good you found her. After all, a dog's supposed to be a man's best friend.”

  “I'm not in the market for any new friends.”

  She shook her head. “You can pretend all you want, Jack, but we go back too far for you to be fooling me with that heart-of-stone bullshit.” She clicked the remote, standing back as Jack opened her door. “You rescued that dog the same way you rescued me from my son-of-a-bitch stepdaddy back when I was still a girl.”

  She slid into the driver's seat, turned the key, and brought the powerful engine to roaring life. “Climb on in, darlin'. There's not a lot of room, but your doggie can squeeze in back.”

  She was speeding out of the lot before Jack had a chance to tell her yet again that the mudball mutt was not his dog.