by D. M. Pratt
Eve ran twisting through the well manicured hedges that anchored the majestic garden. She turned what seemed to be a thousand corners until somehow she stumbled, still disoriented, out of the hedges and ran across the lawn to the house.
The party had long ended. The hosts of the annual Belles of Charity summer fundraising event had long gone. They had taken the music, tables, dishes, glasses and flowers with them, leaving the old estate neat and clean for the next event that would once again bring its silent walls to life.
Eve raced around the side porch and across the grassy lawn to her car. It sat alone in the gravel parking area just beyond the large horseshoe that welcomed visitors to the palatial estate. She refused to stop and put on her shoes willing her feet not to feel the tiny pebbles bite into the soles of her feet. She’d rather risk her feet than tear up the leather heels and ruin her stupidly expensive shoes. After all feet would heal, shoes would not.
Eve glanced back at the house. It stared down at her, silent and imposing, like an elegant old empress bathing in the warmth of the early morning light. It didn’t judge her actions, merely observed. She had loved this house for as long as she could remember. She had told her mother when she was only seven that someday, when she grew up and became very successful and very rich, she would buy Gregoire Manor and live there with her handsome husband and twelve brilliant children. But too many summers had come and gone and Eve was all grown up. She never got married nor did she ever have twelve brilliant children, not that any woman these days would really want twelve children she convinced herself, and the estate had never come up for sale.
Buying the Gregoire estate was the last thing on her mind this particular morning. Vanishing off the planet would have been nice about now. Eve got to her car.
She jumped behind the wheel of her Prius. Thank god she had left her purse and keys under the seat. As she dug through her little beaded bag, breathless, embarrassed and horribly confused, the full force of the night started to fill her mind. She had made love to a perfect stranger. She didn’t even ask his name. Shit she thought. She was Eve Elise Dowling, journalist for Southern Style, a small but respected fashion magazine in New Orleans, not some floozy without morals. What had she been thinking? It was obvious she had not been thinking. I made love with a perfect stranger, she thought, shaking her head as she ripped the little purse apart. She stopped. I think. I think I made love with a perfect stranger. Eve couldn’t remember a single detail past that first, amazing kiss.
Eve crammed the key into the ignition of her Prius and pushed the electric starter button… silence. The hybrid didn’t even give her the satisfaction of a loud roar or a screechy squeal that, by every movie law she could remember, when she peeled out, was suppose to churn up the gravel and leave a rooster tail of dust heralding her escape. But she had not escaped. She was leaving quietly, confused and totally embarrassed.
She sped through the twelve-foot high gates glimpsing in the rearview mirror the old stone lions that guarded the entrance to the estate. They had stood loyally for hundreds of years and watched people come and go keeping the secrets of the house as faithfully as a poodle allowed to stay in his mistress’ boudoir and watch. Now, they kept one more secret in their flat, stony eyes: whatever the hell happened last night. What had happened? She struggled, desperate to remember something, anything, about the night. But there were no memories, only thin snippets of images that flashed in her mind: his arms around her, their dance across the garden and into the maze of hedges, his eyes, his voice, the scent, the kiss that took her breath away, but nothing else.
Eve turned down the lonely road that led from the estate and drove with the urgency of someone about to lose their mind. She ignored the glorious amber sunlight that crept over the wide flat leaves of the banyan trees and turned the sky from pale peach and pink to blue. A flock of snowy egrets took to the sky filling the blue heavens with great moving clouds made of birds. She could see beads of moisture that had rolled into delicate balls of dew and caught the light turning each bead to liquid, honey colored droplets that painted the broad flat leaves in rainbows of morning light. Their brilliant green hues peeked between the lazy carpets of Spanish moss as it draped the branches like a million calico cats clustering together to stay safe in the arms of the massive oaks, bald cypress and magnolia trees that lined the empty road.
Who was he? She thought, suddenly able to taste his kiss on her lips. She brushed her hair from her eyes and caught his scent on her skin. She held her arm and breathed him in. It was as if she’d bathed in him. The car seemed to fill up with the strange fragrance that had been so much a part of him. It hung like incense, thick and sweet, that lingered in the air long after the embers had died and grown cold. She remembered the feel of his touch on her skin. But what the hell had happened!?
She felt insane. The lonely road flowed onto the highway which all too quickly filled up with a million cars. Behind each wheel sat expressionless people all focused on getting into the city to start the day. Up ahead, one by one, popping up on the horizon, she could see the skyscrapers that reached like jagged metal fingers into the sky and poked into the thick morning clouds that hung over the city. Eve drove across the Dewey Long Bridge that spanned the wide belly of the Mississippi below, rusty brown and choked with paddleboats, barges, and a dozen or so cruise ships. Her body was on autopilot as she took the turnoff that carried her into downtown New Orleans, but her mind was on the handsome stranger.
She’d call Cora. Certainly Cora, who had grown up in New Orleans, whose family had been one of the darlings of the New Orleans’ blue bloods since long before the Civil War, would know the name of this magnificent man. Her eyes still on the street, Eve dug in her purse, hunting for her cell phone. She found it, punched up Cora’s number and growled with every ring. Finally, Cora answered.
“Cora, where are you? We need to talk, NOW!”
CHAPTER THREE
Eve grabbed her gym bag from the trunk and slipped through the garage, up the stairs and into the employee’s bathroom. There, she changed into something more appropriate to face the glare of daylight and the critical eyes of her coworkers who were more than capable of rendering judgment faster than a speeding bullet at the sight of a woman still dressed in evening wear at ten in the morning. She headed up the back stairs to make a cursory visit to her office before rendezvousing with Cora. If one can consider a four-by-four felt lined, half-walled box an office. She ignored the faces of her co-workers and plopped into her cubical just long enough to write a sketchy but glowing review on the annual Belles of Charity fund-raising party. The words blurred under her fingers until she typed… an exciting and wonderful night and added her name. She felt as though she had literally vomited onto the page a plethora of semi-circumstantial facts that would have sent anyone who had actually attended the event pointing and screaming out the horrible truth that had she actually attended the affair, she did so as a blind woman without a cane. She could not deny the blatant reality that she was in fact unable to remember anything past her innocuous entrance.
Eve hit send to get the document off her screen and onto her editor’s desk figuring it would be returned with enough chicken scratch notes to put Colonel Sanders out of business. She grabbed her purse, tore down the neat rows of cubicles, descended the stairs and headed out of the building to meet Cora at the Café du Monde.
Cora was into a dialogue about her problems and woes even before Eve got her ass settled into the chair. Cora’s dramas never included money because she was a bona fide TFB (Trust Fund Baby) with a portfolio that would keep her blissfully unemployed for the rest of her life.
Eve waited patiently until Cora finished her tirade about her mother’s insistence that she spend the summer in France…AGAIN…then, she stopped. Eve stared at her, hanging on the edge of tears.
“Oh, sugar, good Lord, what happened?” Cora asked.
“Did you see me last night?” Eve asked.
“I saw you come in, you waved, and
by the way, you looked deliciously provocative in the blue I-might-as-well-be-naked dress. Oh…,” Cora said catching herself. “…new word for the day, provocative.”
She let it roll off her tongue and tumble out of her mouth as if she were trying to taste it. “Doesn’t that word just sound sexy? Anyway, I got called to the kitchen, since I am on the catering committee, and when I came back you were as gone as the morning mist on a hot southern day.”
Cora spoke with an accent so thick and sweet she should have come with a high sugar content warning label stamped across her ass. And, to make matters worse, she was writing her first novel so she had acquired the horrible habit of speaking in prose. Put all that on top of the butter-wouldn’t-melt-on-her high pitched, Barbie doll, southern belle drawl voice and Cora could be, at times, beyond irritating. Still, she was Eve’s very best friend in Louisiana and had been since their endless childhood summers at the lake.
“I made love in the topiary to a man! A stranger! A drop dead gorgeous God of love,” Eve said.
She unleashed every detail of wonder, divulging what she could remember about her mysterious man.
They talked and drank two pots of chicory coffee, so black and bitter even the powdered sugar that dusted the grease fried beignets wasn’t too sweet to bother them. They sat in the morning heat at a small table near the edge of Bourbon Street while Cora tried desperately to put a name with the incredible face of the handsome stranger. Eve knew most of the names Cora threw at her but no matter how she described him Cora couldn’t put a name on a face or body; she swore she never even saw him at the party.
In southern drawl slow motion, Cora gave Eve her version of the night. They talked, ignoring the constant stream of tired horses pulling tattered old carts over-loaded with garish tourists that passed by the dusty antique shops and charming restaurants that lay between the French Quarter and the lazy banks of the muddy Mississippi River. Eve glanced occasionally at the young boys who danced with bottle caps stuck onto the bottoms of their tennis shoes hoping for some small offering of change from the tourists and passersby. Their clicky-click rhythm that clattered against the cobblestone streets seemed to make some insistent clock inside Eve’s mind race all the faster.
Cora talked nonstop until the air filled with the scents of spices, meats, fish and bread so delectable that just walking through the old Quarter breathing the air would have easily added three pounds: gumbo, Jambalaya, Po-boy sandwiches made with fresh fried oysters and no meal would be complete without a slice of warm pecan pie or gooey bread pudding drenched in whiskey sauce. It was coming on lunch and Eve had been ravenous since she woke up but Cora would not relent, giving her list of eligible bachelors that claimed New Orleans as their home. Yet nothing in her monologue contained the mysterious stranger.
“This is insane. He was there. I had just arrived. He asked me to dance. We danced through the room and out the door into the garden. You had to have seen him!” Eve exclaimed, so frustrated she thought she would scream.
“No, I didn’t. And no matter how many times you ask me the answer is still no. Now I have been as patient as a cicada bug in December. Why don’t you tell me what happened! Did you, the ever prudish Eve Elise Dowling — make love to this mysterious Adonis or just fuck his brains out? Either action is acceptable because you haven’t been with a man since that prick from Boston, Drew Hollerman. And I want full disclosure in highly descriptive blow-by-blow, no pun intended, details, if you please.” Cora grinned like a Cheshire cat about to be spoon fed a rather large and sumptuous canary.
Eve looked at her with an expression so blank even Magellan wouldn’t know which way to go.
“I don’t know.” Eve sat while the frustration recreated itself inside the tears that filled her eyes.
Cora cocked her head like a curious puppy unable to understand her master’s words.
“You don’t know. Excuse me. That answer is unacceptable,” she replied.
“You are brilliant, Eve Dowling!” a male voice chimed into their conversation.
Eve turned to see Charles Delacroix staring at her and grinning like a lunatic.
Eve froze. He was Editor in Chief of the weekly city magazine she dedicated her life to and he hated her, which was okay because she hated him right back. He looked like a bug with his big eyes, receding hair and a shiny complexion that made him look greasy.
“I knew I would find you here,” he beamed at her.
“I… this is Cora Belle… Bouvier and…I’m doing an article on… her new book,” Eve lied, scrambling for some logical reason to be away from her felt-lined prison.
Cora glared at Charles, staring down her nose the way only one with affluence and privilege can when no one but the bank writes their checks. Cora knew all too well the adversarial relationship that festered between Eve and Charles. She had shared many tearful phone calls and after work cocktails listening to Eve’s countless stories of verbal abuse and lost career opportunities buried alive by his inner office politics. Cora straightened her back ready to attack.
Eve, on the other hand, sat hangdog, waiting for the barrage of insults that she actually felt she deserved for the garbage review disguised as journalism she had emailed him.
He grinned at Cora shaking her hand. “And you are Cora Belle Antoinette Bouvier. I would recognize New Orleans’ greatest young socialite and most charitable leader in our fair city in a heartbeat,” he said, then turned his gaze to Eve. “And you! Brilliant I tell you. This woman is a genius.”
Eve’s mouth dropped open void of any response. She was too stupefied to ascertain if he was being facetious or not.
Cora, who had been ready to castrate him, could not help but notice the expression on Charles’ face. It was akin to that of a love sick fan drooling at the feet of a super star as he waited with bated breath for her to acknowledge his existence.
“Uh…Thank you, Mr. Delacroix,” Eve blubbered out, still too shocked to be coherent.
“What a scathingly brilliant way of reviewing the night. It was as if I was at a totally different party; the way you described the place, the people, the passion of the cause…brilliant. Your words were a rally to each and every person to truly open their hearts and understand the art of philanthropy. And your description of Regina Menion’s speech, I swear Eve I never understood what great work the Belles of Charity have been doing until now,” Charles gushed at her almost on the verge of tears. “Charles, call me Charles.”
Eve sat blank faced. Cora kicked her under the table.
“Uh…Thanks, Charles,” Eve said then exchanged a desperate glance with Cora.
“I’m flying to Baton Rouge this afternoon for the Governor’s ball,” Charles blurted. “I want you there. You’ll leave at three. All the arrangements have been made.” He smiled at her like a proud father. “I knew you had it in you, Eve, I just didn’t know you had it all.” With that he turned on his heels and walked away.
“What the hell did that mean?” Cora asked.
“I …don’t know,” Eve mumbled.
“What the hell did you write?”
“I don’t remember.” Eve sat back in her chair. “I was so caught up in getting over here to talk to you I just wrote gobbledy goop. I was trying to remember what happened and all I could think about was…” Eve stopped.
“The hunky Houdini!” Cora squealed.
“This makes no sense. Charles Delacroix hates my writing. Hell, he hates me!” Eve was at a loss.
“Dear Lord, Eve did you see the way he was looking at you?” Cora asked.
“What?”
“The man’s enamored darlin’. That was the face of a man in love.” Cora giggled.
The bells from Saint Martin’s church began to chime. It was twelve o’clock. Eve had one hour and forty minutes to get home, pack and get to the airport.
“What are you going to wear?” Cora, always the fashion police, demanded.
“I have no idea. It’s a ball! A ball! Dear God, he’s throwing me to the
lions like a helpless Christian. I hate formal parties.”
“Come with me, suga. I have a diva Chinese red Ralph Lauren that is screaming your name,” Cora said.
“But what about…” Eve tried to interject.
“Stuff him. This is your career. Leave the invisible man to me. I’ll contact Carolyn Dupuy; if he was on the list she’ll know where he came from.” She grabbed Eve, dragging her out of her chair and down the street.
CHAPTER FOUR
The Governor of Louisiana’s mansion was steeped in so much southern tradition Scarlet O’Hara would have felt like she was walking into Tara. They even had peacocks with their long fan tails of emerald green, lapis blue and amber gold accented in black painted into their feathers. They called out their magnificence to anyone who could stand the sound of their caw. She exited from the car and stood at the graceful half moon entrance with its massive white wood columns which gave the feeling of old world, country grace and elegance. Fountains complete with naked children pouring urns of water sat playfully on either side of the entry walk. The smell of sassafras mingled with magnolias, gardenia and honeysuckle flowers created an olfactory cacophony of scented delight.
The driver closed the door to Eve’s car and Eve nodded a gracious thank you as she headed up the stairs. Charles, tight ass, penny pincher of the world, had sent a limo to pick her up from the hotel. He left her a note saying he was having drinks with the Governor and a few of the Louisiana politicos and would see her at the cocktail party. He also added he was her seat mate at dinner, a fact he was looking forward to with much anticipation. Eve’s stomach turned at the thought of spending an entire meal in his presence. He chewed with his mouth open and always had pieces of food caught in the corners of his lips. She slipped out of the car and straightened the one-sleeve diaphanous dress of inky red, silk crepe that Cora pulled from her two story closet and demanded she put on. Cora had then reached under her lingerie drawer and showed her a small golden card. She wore the most mischievous smile Eve had ever seen on her.
