by Julie Smith
The bribe consisted of only a couple of drinks, but it did mean Lemon’s self-important company for half an hour. Lucy was going to owe her.
Lemon began the evening with his customary greeting, so well known to the habitués that they shouted it with him. “How y’all tonight?”
And then everybody shouted and high-fived, leaving Lemon to inquire loudly if they were making fun of him, which caused even more hilarity and a mock attempt on Lemon’s part to leave the stage, which meant he had to be shouted back, however insincerely. Lemon had a reputation for loving the sound of his own voice.
So they endured a good ten minutes of inane patter before he even condescended to announce the first poet, also a young white girl—though considerably older than Lucy. She had written a love poem, which contained words that neither Raisa nor Lucy (with any luck at all) had ever heard. Throughout the recitation, Darryl squirmed like a kid who had to pee. Not wanting Lucy to have to follow that, Talba had a whispered conversation with Lemon—switching the Princess to third place—and causing him to do what he always did when he was a little confused, or at a loss for words or just lonesome for his own voice. Once again, he shouted out, “How y’all tonight?” and over the ensuing uproar, Talba could hear Raisa whispering to Darryl, “Daddy, what’s ‘come juice’?”, which Lucy caught on tape. Talba could only pray the tape never fell into the hands of the dread Kimmie.
The next poet was a house favorite (though not the house star, who was the Baroness de Pontalba). Serenity Prayer Jones was renowned for his alcohol consumption, known as “Prayer” to his many friends and drinking buddies, and well known for his doggerel about the joys of being an unrepentant reprobate. Tonight’s poem, entitled, “Lounge Lizard,” was about himself and was mercifully short.
Lounge Lizard
I slither to the corners of the bar,
Drinkin’ everything that ain’t nailed down.
They say I don’t work,
But shirk’s its own form of work.
Know what it takes to charm
A hundred people a night,
And get me sailin’ like a kite?
I ain’ no use, I ain’ no help.
Got no beauty, got no brains.
All I got’s a few refrains—
“How y’all tonight?”
Folks like me ’cause I ain’t
The mayor
And I ain’t Rumsfeld
And I ain’t the emcee—
“How y’all tonight?”
And I ain’t the poor
And I ain’t the rich.
I’m just a broken down
Son of a bitch.
When Lucy mouthed that line along with him, sure of what was coming next, Talba knew everything would be fine. And then when everyone shouted the last line together—“How y’all tonight?”—the kid whispered, “I can do a lot better than that,” which Raisa caught on tape.
Lemon came back on, with a hearty, “How y’all tonight?” and introduced Talba for about a year and a half, after which Her Grace took the stage, to foot-stomping and shouts of “Baroness! Baroness!”
She quieted them down with what they recognized as her usual exit line, “The Baroness myself thanks you.”
“But I’m not going to read tonight,” she continued. “Instead I’ve discovered a great young talent—a very young talent, folks—only fourteen years old. A young talent who’s making her debut tonight. She’s going to read two poems for you, so join me in welcoming another member of my royal family, Princess Lucy of the House of Champagne!”
Because of the “family” remark, everyone, of course, was expecting another black poet, and so all was silence till Lucy shouted, “How y’all tonight?” And the audience was hers.
Sensing it, she took over the stage like a pro. “Debut,” she said.
Debut
No long and glittering gown for me,
Nor social pedigree,
No silver spoon,
No mother.
And no hope.
A lovely life for a cockroach.
I lived so quietly before!
As simple social insect
And household pest,
Foraging for crumbs
In a kitchen of dissension.
And then my father died.
And so begins the moment
Of my reinvention.
My body is a carapace that cracks
And spews upon the pantry floor,
And my soul scuttles into darkness,
And an animal eats it.
I am dead.
But I am sticking to its ribs!
I am clotting,
I am holding.
I can feel that I am staying,
Cleaving, clinging,
My carapace in tatters,
My entrails scattered.
But I am sticking,
I am holding!
I am making my debut
As part of something other,
Something different,
Something innocent
And insignificant,
Yet bigger and more solid—
My own tears the glue.
The crowd, which had gasped when she got to the part about her father, and had held its collective breath ever since, was utterly silent until Lucy bowed and said, “The Princess myself thanks you,” and then wild applause erupted. The audience was cheering for her, pulling for her—maybe not so much for her career as a great young talent, but for a kid in a bad place, struggling to stick, to cling. She had done what Talba had seen few poets do—she had touched them.
Lucy’s face turned as red as her hair, but she was undaunted, fine to keep going. When she read her “Crow” poem, it was safe to say there wasn’t a dry eye, certainly not Raisa’s—or Darryl’s. Again, the Princess thanked her subjects. Again, applause, at first somber, cautious, and then building, becoming ever more confident. Standing behind her, Talba held her hands palms up, and raised them slowly, but there was no need—half the audience was already on its feet.
Lucy was crying, really bawling, but she managed to get it together to thank her subjects once again, and Talba stepped forward to ask the audience, “Didn’t I tell you?” which started the whole thing all over again. And then the foot-stomping began anew, with loud shouts of “Baroness, Baroness! Come on, Your Grace, poem, poem!”
Talba refused and left the stage, but they wouldn’t stop till she came back, Raisa capturing the whole thing. She read “Calamari,” the poem she had written that afternoon. It was inspired by something she’d seen at the aquarium about the largest animal in the world, a monster bigger than a whale, with an eye as large as your head—the giant squid. The poem had images about tentacles and darkness and deepness, and barbs about scientists not being able to go deep enough in their own planet to study it, though they could send a spacecraft to Mars, and then it riffed on Martians and foreignness for awhile, rather cleverly, she thought. It was a lighthearted poem, a funny poem, and the perfect foil for Lucy’s gloom and doom and crazy hope.
“They love you!” Raisa said later, amazed. And then to Lucy, “And I knew they’d love you. Can we go get some ice cream?”
“Sure.” Darryl was in a hell of a mood.
And so they went for ice cream, during the consumption of which Raisa asked Lucy if the animal that ate her was the crow. “No,” said Lucy, surprised. “It was Rikki.”
“Who’s Rikki?” the kid asked, causing Talba to get a great idea, which she bounced around her brain while Lucy explained.
“Hey,” she said. “Can we voice-edit that tape?”
“Sure.”
“Let’s do this: Take out the place where Lucy says the title of ‘Debut’ and put in another word: ‘Rikki’! And show Adele that version.”
Lucy got it instantly. “Oh. My. God.” was all she said.
Chapter 20
Fame, Talba thought, every now and then lived up to its press. All day Sunday Raisa hung on her like an acolyte, her sta
tus having magically changed from pariah to hero. But it wasn’t the poetry—it was pure Stardust. Those other people couldn’t be wrong. Could they? She and Darryl took Raisa for a walk, then to a friend’s house for a barbecue, where Raisa kept introducing her as “my friend, The Baroness—you know, the famous poet?” which was puzzling but cute to those unaware of her noble status.
Talba even got the kid to look at her Web site, which duly impressed her, and they held a viewing of the tape, everyone agreeing to edit out the poet with the bad words so Raisa could show it to her mom.
And then came Lucy’s phone call: “They said I can keep Rikki! I showed the tape and everybody cried—even me! That is, everyone but Suzanne, and when they said, ‘Who’s Rikki?’ I brought her out and Royce nearly fainted. You’re right—he loves her. Suzanne pitched a fit, but I knew what to say, because you told me, and she stalked off. Mommo was laughing so hard! Swear to God. Laughing. And I gave her the book—I mean, Life of Pi—and now she’s reading it and everything.”
But still, Talba spent Monday in a fairly depressed state. She didn’t have a clue what to do next, except talk to the big guy.
***
“Hey, Eddie. Nice weekend?” Could have been better, he thought. “Well, we didn’t go to Biloxi, if that’s what you mean. What color are my bags?”
“Tan. You look rested.”
“Too damn rested.” Audrey had wanted to work in the garden and then she had been too tired for what he was in the mood for. “Angie came over. Everything’s fine with her case—the DA dismissed the charges. By the way, this Champagne thing is taking up too much time. Weren’t you supposed to renegotiate after ten or twelve hours? Ya musta put in thirty by now.”
Ms. Wallis snapped her fingers. “Oh, darn. It slipped my mind.”
“Could ya be serious for once?”
“Well, it did come up, but Kristin said to keep on it.”
“Well, ya can’t work it forever—it ain’t ethical. There comes a time when ya’ve gone far enough. And we just got a pile of employment checks from a shipping company. And two new insurance cases. One’s a black guy—I’m gon’ need ya on that one.” Before Ms. Wallis, he’d done it all alone. But a white guy in a black neighborhood was conspicuous even without a camera.
“Okay.” She nodded shortly, not even interested. “I think I’ve got to admit defeat.” She went through her LaGarde family adventures, which led off a long pier to nowhere—unless you really needed to know how crazy they all were. But so far as Eddie was concerned, for all they knew after all this work, Buddy could be the victim of a random killer.
“They’re all whack jobs,” he said. “Too much information and not enough goddam conclusions.”
“’Scuse your French,” Ms. Wallis said. He was getting so he hardly even bothered anymore.
“Look, why don’t ya take some time, write the client report, and I’ll look it over and see if I can think of anything else we can do. If we can’t”—he sighed—“we gotta just tell Miss LaGarde we can’t help her.”
It occurred to him she was conferring with him a lot more than usual on this one—that wasn’t like Ms. Wallis. She was usually Miss Piss and Vinegar.
***
Write the client report. She wondered how she was going to explain the hours she’d spent interviewing the client’s ex-husband and her parents. Finally, she put it under “research.”
She wrote and then rewrote the damn report, gave it to Eddie, did about twenty employee checks, and went home to her mama.
She was at lunch on Tuesday—egg salad on wheat—when she got the call from Lucy. The girl was crying.
“Baby, what is it? Why aren’t you in school?”
“Royce came and got me. Something happened to Suzanne, but I don’t know what. Oh, God, I wish I were dead. Talba, they won’t tell me what happened!”
What did you say to a fourteen-year-old who was dealing with a family catastrophe for the third time in a month? Her voice was shaky. “Suzanne?”
“Mommo’s in her room, crying; and Royce went out. Oh, God, Talba, I think she’s dead. Can’t you find out what’s going on? They won’t tell me anything.”
Dead. The word fell like a black glove on Talba’s ears. How could Suzanne be dead? She was a young healthy woman.
“Did Royce say where he was going? Did he go to the hospital?”
“He didn’t say anything. He just said there was a family emergency and brought me home, and he wouldn’t say a word the whole way home. And Mommo came out and hugged me, and started crying so hard she couldn’t talk. She just went back in her room and closed the door. By then Royce was gone.”
“What’s Royce’s cell phone number?”
Lucy reeled it off to her.
“Okay. Do you have Brad Leitner’s?”
“Just a minute.”
Talba sat composing herself for a few minutes, trying to decide whom to call. She decided on Leitner.
“Brad, it’s Talba Wallis. Lucy’s hysterical and nobody’s with her. What’s happened?”
For once he was civil. “Omigod, that poor kid. Suzanne got killed. Royce went over to the funeral home.”
Talba matched her voice to his: calm, polite. “What do you mean she got killed?”
“She was mugged on her way back to her car after her yoga class. Royce is a zombie.”
“What happened, Brad?”
“Nobody knows. The police just showed up with the bad news. Her purse was gone and she was shot in the head.”
“Oh, Jesus.”
“Look, I’ll go over to the house.”
“What’s your relationship with Lucy like?”
“It’s good. Royce is crazy about her, so we’ve done lots of stuff together, just the three of us. I like the kid.”
“Brad, somebody’s got to tell her what happened. She says Adele’s in her room crying. Can you do it?”
“Hell!” And then, “All right. It’s the least I can do for Royce.”
“I’ll come when I can.” At least she didn’t have to tell the kid herself.
But she was shaking nonetheless. Eddie would kill her for getting this involved in a case; she had to pull it together.
Finally, she went back in his office. “Eddie, there’s been a development. We’ve lost another member of the Champagne family.”
“Ya kiddin’me!”
“Suzanne got shot during a mugging.”
“Who the devil’s Suzanne?”
“The daughter-in-law—Royce’s wife. I don’t know what the hell to think.”
Eddie’s bags jiggled. “Pretty damn coincidental.”
“Yeah.” Talba chewed a cuticle, thinking. “Listen, I’ve got to go see Lucy. Nobody’s with her. At least nobody who’s compes mentes.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. I don’t know what the hell that is, but take the rest of the day off. Do what ya have to do.” Not a word about getting too involved.
But what to do once she got there? Talba called her mama and asked her for advice. “You get on over to that house right now and read the Bible with that girl.”
“I can’t. Lucy’s a pagan.”
“Sandra Wallis, you wash your mouth out with soap! She’s just a kid. All kids are little heathens. Don’t mean nothin’. You get on over there and read her the Twenty-third Psalm.”
“Okay, Mama. You’re right.” She assumed the word “pagan” had a different resonance with Miz Clara than it did with Lucy. But her mama, as usual, had set her on the right path, however unwittingly. She got on over there.
Brad was there, and he’d broken the news. He’d also done something very smart—he’d called Kristin. And also Alberta, who was rocking Lucy in a grandmother’s arms when Talba arrived. But the girl broke loose and turned to Talba, who took over babysitting duties. Kristin, for once, seemed withdrawn, though not hysterical—unlike Adele, she hadn’t fallen apart. She’d assumed a grim, silent, can-do manner, efficient, though a little robotic. “I thought I could make some call
s,” she said, “since Adele can’t function yet.”
“She’s still in her room?” Talba, holding Lucy, was talking over the girl’s shoulder.
“Yes.”
“Think we should call a doctor for her?”
“No. I’m fine.” It was Adele herself, having come down the stairs in slippers, which seemed incongruous with her black dress. “I’ll make the calls myself. Kristin, you order food and make tea.” Kristin was out of there, Alberta on her heels. Adele held out a hand to Lucy. “Baby. Come here.”
And the girl finally got to cry on her own grandmother’s breast.
After a while, Talba said, “Luce? You okay for now?”
Lucy nodded, then burrowed deeper into Adele’s skinny bosom.
“I’ll be back,” she promised, glad to be out of there. She went to police headquarters, where she found Skip Langdon on the phone at her desk. She held up a finger for Talba to wait, and when she’d finished her call, she said, “Your Grace. What can I do for you?” She sounded uncharacteristically tired, and she was even more untidy than usual.
The detective was six feet tall, blessed—or cursed—with hair so curly Talba could have been related to her, and she was maybe the world’s worst dresser, partly because she could never seem to find pants long enough for her. She had on a white long-sleeved top—something between a sweater and a T-shirt—with brown pants that probably weren’t meant to hit her at the ankle, but did. Her white top had a spot of coffee on it. Her hair looked as if she’d been caught in a windstorm.
“I just heard Judge Champagne’s daughter-in-law got killed. You know anything about it?” Without being asked, she sat in Langdon’s interview chair.
“Yeah. Terrible—two in one family.”
“Is it your case?”
