Devil's Food at Dusk

by Anna Martin

  Remy laughed. Smart question to ask. Especially with his typical schedule.

  Six?

  Remy could nearly hear Joe’s groan through the phone. He laughed again.

  Fine. I’ll be there. Meet at the restaurant?

  He’d done the cooking seduction scene, he’d done the actual seducing; it was time to make Joe fall in love with the city and the culture, get snared by whatever intangible hold his neighborhood had on people. Not exactly a short order.

  Yes. That’s perfect.

  * * *

  It was weird, Joe thought. How Remy had gone from being hot and cold—well, mostly cold—to this friendly guy who texted him, laughed with him, and even cooked him food. They’d gone to the farmers’ market, Remy’s favorite coffee shop, the place where he bought the chocolate that he used in his drunken devil cake. Even back to the bar where they’d met. It was as though Remy had flipped some switch. The suddenly hot routine confused Joe. He was used to being maneuvered—it wasn’t uncommon in his life—but Remy seemed sincere about at least some of it. The kisses were real, the way he shivered at Joe’s touch, how eagerly he showed off the parts of his city that he loved. Maybe it was an act, in part. But he was either an Oscar-caliber actor or else he was really… starting to like Joe.

  And Joe was definitely starting to like him right back.

  Joe had been at Lumiere more times that week than he felt comfortable thinking about. He told himself he was “doing research,” but anyone would be able to tell that the cafe had quickly become his favorite place in the city. He’d spent hours in the dim, comfortable dining room, answering e-mails about previous acquisitions and working the remodel on the building they’d purchased for the Mobile Pineapple Joe’s. Nobody in Mobile seemed to know how to do their job right, including the foreman of that site. Joe hadn’t liked Alabama very much. Or anywhere he’d been since Pineapple Joe’s started expanding in the South. Charleston would’ve been pleasant if he hadn’t been there in July. He was ready to go back to California. Or maybe a location on Waikiki. Either of those would be a welcome change.

  He tapped on his keyboard and listened to the sounds from the kitchen. Remy and Andre were arguing as usual, but Joe had learned they weren’t really angry, at least not most of the time; that was just the way they communicated. They had an interesting relationship. Andre was so brash and loud, putting his entire heart out there for everyone to see, and Remy…. Joe wasn’t sure he had a handle on Remy just yet. In a way he was just like Andre, so involved with the people and things he loved, so passionate about food and his home and his family. But there was something about him that wasn’t all out in the open. Joe felt walls, as though maybe Remy was holding parts of himself back. As though he was wary of letting anyone or anything else into his heart.

  Joe was rarely wrong about people. He might not actually care what their motivations and problems were, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t see right past their bullshit. He wouldn’t be as good at his job if he couldn’t.

  His phone buzzed. Howard. Joe cringed. He’d already avoided a few of Howard’s calls. He had to pick up.

  “Howard. Hello,” he said quietly.

  “What’s your status, Fitz?” Howard asked without preamble. “It never takes you this long to close on a location.”

  “This one is touchy,” Joe answered. He tried to whisper.

  “Where are you? Speak up.” Howard’s voice wavered between impatient and annoyed. Not that it didn’t usually, but even more than typical.

  “I’m in the restaurant. Doing a little hand-holding with the owners.” Joe cringed at the phrase. If only Howard knew just how accurate that was. “I’m working on one of the brothers. It’ll happen, okay? Just give me a bit of time on this one.”

  “Joe—”

  Just then the kitchen door swung open, and a little fluff ball of white dress, big eyes, and dark hair came flying out, giggling.

  “I gotta go, Howard. I’ll call you later.” He ended the call and put his phone on the table.

  “Hello. Who are you? I’m Stella.” The little girl was adorable, even Joe had to admit, but kids had always made him nervous. They were messy and loud and could break things in mere seconds.

  “Um. I’m Joe.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  Why am I Joe? He had no idea how to answer that question, so he didn’t.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Some work on my computer.” He suppressed the urge to cover his laptop up and guard it from her sticky little fingers.

  “I like computers.” Stella didn’t wait for an invitation, just climbed up onto the bench next to Joe. She cuddled close, as if she was waiting for him to wrap an arm around her chubby middle and hold. He saved his document and closed it. Just in case. Her hands didn’t look that dirty. He supposed there wasn’t much harm.

  Stella reached out and wrapped her fist around his index finger. “You have big hands. Just like Uncle Remy.”

  Joe got a momentary shiver at the thought of Remy’s hands and exactly what they were capable of. Not in front of the kid. As if she could hear his thoughts or something. “I’m really tall. That’s why my hands are big,” he said.

  “Oh.” With that, Stella lifted his arm and crawled under it and onto his lap. “Hello.”

  “H-hi.” Joe had never held a toddler before. He’d never been around many children at all.

  “Guess what I have in my pocket?” she asked.

  Joe was ready for something slimy that crawled. Or even worse. He was relieved when Stella produced a handful of stubby crayons.

  “Do you like to draw?” he asked.

  “Mmm-hmmm.” Stella was busy lining her crayons up on the shiny surface of the booth’s table, right along the edge of his laptop. Purple, then blue, then red and the tiny chunk of yellow. She needed some new crayons, that was for sure.

  He reached down and took a piece of paper from his laptop bag. “Here, I remember how much I liked a brand-new sheet of blank paper when I was a kid.”

  Joe used to draw a lot. And play baseball and the guitar. He hadn’t done any of those things in years. Stella beamed up at him.

  “Thank you.”

  She went to work, scribbling nonsensical little-girl shapes, her bottom lip between her teeth. She didn’t seem to notice or care that she was still in what was essentially a stranger’s lap. Joe wondered what it felt like being that trusting, that innocent. She had a whole corner of the paper filled when the door to the kitchen opened again.

  A woman came through, tiny and dark-haired just like Stella. She also looked flustered and worried. She must be the tenant. “I was about to have a heart attack. Baby, you can’t just come down here whenever you want. I told you to stay in your room and play with your dolls while I folded the laundry.”

  “I’m drawing a picture, Momma.” Stella pointed down at the paper covered in colorful scribbles. “Joe gave me paper.”

  “I’m sure Joe has other things he’d like to do.” She gave him a long, measuring look. “I’m Magnolia.”

  So she knows who I am and why I’m here. Fantastic. Joe probably wouldn’t like someone who was threatening to force him out of his very cheap home, either.

  “She’s not causing any harm,” he said. He tried to sound friendly and nonthreatening.

  “We need to get back upstairs for lunch.”

  Stella squealed. “Asparagus? With sauce?”

  Magnolia nodded. Joe couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a kid excited about vegetables. “Your uncle Andre made us shrimp too.”

  Uncle Andre. Uncle Remy. Hmmm.

  The whole tenant situation was obviously just as bad as he’d thought. Probably worse.

  * * *

  “Afternoon, Joe.” Sal. Joe had known it was him before he picked up his phone, of course, but there was something about his voice that grated on Joe’s nerves.

  “Hi, Sal.” Joe tried to keep his tone light. Noncommittal. But the whole scenario was giving hi
m stress attacks—from Remy and their nights together to the little girl who’d crawled onto his lap and pretty much stabbed him in the heart, Joe didn’t know what to think anymore. He also knew that Howard and the home office were breathing down his neck to get this deal finished and get the remodel on the road. They might as well pack it in if they weren’t ready to open for Mardi Gras. Joe knew it. Everyone knew it. They needed that boost to get over the buyout and remodel costs.

  “Listen, I want to meet up tonight and go over some numbers with you. I think we’ve got a sweet spot that will work for everyone.”

  Joe’s heartbeat picked up a little bit. Great. Fantastic. Get the show on the road. “Where and what time?”

  “How ’bout Charlie’s down on the Riverwalk at seven. Can you do that?”

  Joe still didn’t know his way around much farther than the few blocks of the French Quarter that he’d gotten to know, but he was perfectly capable of calling a taxi. “I’ll be there.”

  * * *

  Three hours later Joe got out of his taxi in front of Charlie’s Restaurant. Already he could tell it was a completely different scene than Lumiere. The place was teeming with tourists, packed with businesspeople in suits and loosened ties. It was dark, like Lumiere, but lit up with big flat-screen televisions playing football instead of garlands of floaty lights. The whole place rocked with cheers whenever the team on the screens scored. It was loud, it smelled like beer and middle-class complacency, and Joe, ironically enough, couldn’t stand it. There was no atmosphere, no personality. It was just… a place. He wondered if Remy was rubbing off on him. He hadn’t spent a lot of time caring about things like that before.

  He saw Sal, and only Sal, sitting in a corner booth on the opposite side of the restaurant from the sports bar area where he’d said they would be. Joe wove his way through the tables until he reached Sal. He’d assumed that Tom would be with him, or maybe Remy. Sal all alone was a bit disconcerting.

  “Why are you alone?” he asked. Joe never liked the smell of sketchy in the water, and a meeting with only Sal seemed a little too cloak-and-dagger for his liking.

  “I thought it was better to keep Dad out of it until we hammer out specifics. It’s better to have something concrete to show him than just some ideas.”

  Joe honestly didn’t like it. He hadn’t liked it since the moment Sal called him to set up the meeting. “What is this place?”

  Sal smiled. “This place is filled with your clientele. At least your future clientele. Welcome.”

  Joe sat, warily, and glanced at the papers Sal slid onto the table. He had a feeling it was a bad idea to be there. But he also had a deadline to keep.

  Chapter Six

  What the hell am I doing? Joe knocked lightly on the door to the Babineaux house. Music floated through the open window that looked out over the neat courtyard at the front, and no one seemed in a rush to answer his knock.

  He did it again, louder the second time.

  Thundering footsteps down the stairs made Joe think he was about to come face to face with either Remy or one of his brothers, but the door was opened by a teenage girl with a sulky expression.

  “Uh, hi,” Joe said. “I’m Joe.”

  Grace’s eyes narrowed, then she spotted the bottle of wine in his hand. “Thanks,” she said. She took it from him and skipped off toward the kitchen.

  No one else was around, though the sounds of family drifted through from the kitchen he guessed was at the rear of the house. Joe pushed the front door closed and took a deep breath, steeling himself.

  Since all the activity seemed to be coming from the kitchen, Joe made his way back there, cursing his lack of foresight in not calling ahead to Remy. When he walked through the open doorway, conversation stopped, and five pairs of eyes turned to look at him.

  Joe had never felt so uncomfortable in his entire life. “Um, hello,” he said.

  The Babineaux matriarch looked at him. “Mr. Fitzgerald,” she said, her voice neutral.

  A warm hand clapped his shoulder and squeezed, and Joe felt his spine melt with relief when Remy nudged around him, letting his hand linger on Joe’s arm a little longer than what was necessary.

  “It’s Joe, please,” he said.

  “Joe,” she repeated dutifully. “Remy, would you like to show our guest through to the dining room? The food’s nearly ready.”

  “Come on,” Remy said and grabbed his hand.

  Joe wasn’t used to having his hand held, not by anyone, definitely not by Remy. Still, it felt nice. Remy’s hand was large and had several burns, one on the wrist, another on his thumb. There were hard calluses too, telling Joe that he burned himself on a regular basis. One of the risks that came with the job, he supposed.

  “You’re going to have to introduce me to everyone,” Joe said. “I’m afraid I don’t know all their names.”

  “Not a problem. Sit here, next to me.”

  Joe dutifully took a seat at the huge dining table. It seemed like they were going to be slightly squeezed in, despite the enormous table.

  “I know you met my dad already, and Andre. This is Sal.”

  “Yes,” Joe said. “Hi.”

  “And there’s my younger sister, Grace—”

  “I met her at the door.”

  “Right. Then my mom—Sophie—and Estelle is my grandmother.” Remy leaned back in his chair, pushing it up onto its back two legs. “Then Magnolia and her daughter will be here too. You met them the other day.”

  “Got it. Magnolia is your tenant. She’s not actually related to you, is she?”

  Remy laughed. “No, she’s not family. Well, not by blood anyway. Didn’t I already tell you all this?”

  “Not really,” Joe answered. “Just that she rented from you and that your family took care of her and Stella.” He looked over at the door to the dining room. There seemed to be an argument going on in the kitchen, and no one was making any moves toward the dining room. He let the chair fall back to all four legs with a thunk.

  “She was in a pretty bad way when she got here,” Remy continued, lowering his voice. “I mean, Magnolia is a strong woman. But at the time she was very fragile…. She’d just left her boyfriend, who was getting increasingly abusive toward her, and she was about to pop with Stella. It had been pouring that night, one of the biggest storms we’d had in years. Andre and I were in the back trying to keep the kitchen window from leaking; the front room was deserted. Magnolia had run out of gas and money, she didn’t have any food, and she just came into Lumiere to try to get some work so she could buy gas and keep moving.”

  “And she… stayed and moved into the building? Just like that?” Joe couldn’t imagine taking in stray pregnant women out of the blue, just because they showed up in the middle of a storm. He knew they were charging her less to live there than he’d spent on some restaurant tips. There was usually a reason why businesses didn’t do well. Lumiere wasn’t an exception.

  “Actually, for a while she came to live with us here, then moved into the apartment over Lumiere when Stella was a few months old. It took us that long to fix it up. Before Magnolia, I don’t think anyone had lived there since I was a little kid.”

  “So you sort of adopted her, then?”

  Remy laughed. “Yeah, you could say that. She adopted us too. Stella is named after the restaurant. Magnolia said Grams saved her life that night.”

  “Wow. And she’s with your brother now? Andre.” Joe wasn’t sure about that, but the two of them looked at each other sometimes, soft and slow, and he was so sweet around her. A fuckload sweeter than he’d ever been to Joe, for sure.

  Remy laughed loudly and rubbed his hands over his face, as though he was exasperated or something. “Lord only knows, Joe. I can’t believe you can see it too. ’Course, everyone can, so why couldn’t you as well?”

  “What?”

  “The way he looks at her. No, they’re not together. Not even close.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “No
pe. Andre would prefer to gaze at her adoringly from afar than man up and ask her out.”

  “Is it like an honor thing? Because of Stella?”

  “I don’t have a clue. Mostly, I think it’s because he’s a moron.”

  * * *

  Joe was starting to get an idea of how this family operated. It wasn’t like anything he’d experienced before. For one, three generations lived in one house, and no one seemed to think there was anything unusual about it at all. For another, apparently they up and adopted pregnant runaways off the street. To think of his own mother doing something like that… no, it would never happen, Joe decided. His mom might give the woman a phone number or directions to the local women’s shelter. But never take her in—no way. She’d also been politely happy for him to move out when he was eighteen and about to start at UCLA. He hadn’t ever gone back for more than a day here and there around the holidays.

  Just as he was about to make another comment, Sophie walked into the room with an enormous platter of roast chicken. She was wearing a long, floaty olive-green skirt and a cream blouse. Her dark hair was a riot of waves, and a few locks were stuck to her face.

  “Sorry about the delay,” she said, setting the platter down on the table and pushing her hair back from her face. “Tom and Andre were arguing about the best way to carve a chicken.”

  “Again?” Remy asked.

  “Sadly.”

  “Do you need any help, Mrs. Babineaux?” Joe asked, making a move to stand.

  “No, no,” she said, waving away his offer. “Get comfortable. Pour yourself a glass of wine. Pour me one while you’re at it. I’ll just go call Stella and Magnolia in. They’re playing in the garden.”

  In the next few minutes, Joe did his best smile-and-nod routine as people poured in and out of the room bringing dishes loaded with sides: croissants, green beans, slaw, broccoli slathered in butter and herbs, baked sweet potatoes split open and steaming, and grilled slices of eggplant and zucchini.