The Queen of Dauphine Street

by Thea de Salle

  Darren’s stomach grumbled. He was hungry, but Alex was still at it, so he fidgeted in his seat and waited, though his eyes strayed Maddy’s way. She wasn’t doing the God thing, either. Instead, she was looking at her phone, so he felt less like a dirty heathen. One Catholic friend doing their Catholic routine was one thing. Two and you were compelled to do whatever they were doing to be part of the cool kids club. Maddy wasn’t exactly a friend yet, but she was a friend of a friend, and that counted.

  I think.

  Alex crossed himself and retrieved his fork, angling it above a veggie omelet with egg whites, heavy on the broccoli. Darren eyed Alex’s food choice and then his own double-stacked sausage, egg, and cheese on a bagel. It looked like a carbohydrate and grease nightmare, which meant it would be delicious, because all sandwiches were delicious. There was something beautiful about the simplicity of meat stuffed between two slabs of bread.

  “Why so healthy, Alex? Why? Do you not like delicious food? Have you not met our lord and savior, cased meat?” Darren waved his sandwich in Alex’s direction.

  Alex grunted and continued eating. “That’s blasphemy.”

  “No, darling. That’s breakfast. What I did this morning with Carmine was probably blasphemy, though,” Maddy quipped. Alex groaned like she’d pained him, which was her intent if her grin was any indication. She nibbled on the corner of her pastry and a flake fell onto the ample curve of exposed chest above her red dress. Darren followed its trajectory, a little jealous that something as stupid as croissant flakes got to nest on top of those beauties.

  She is hot, I’ll give her that.

  . . . and stacked. And I think she’s flirting with me.

  “Is Carmine your significant other?” he asked between bites, trying to do his mama proud by remembering his manners. He dabbed his face with his napkin to degrease himself, and never, not once, talked with his mouth full. Considering he spent 90 percent of his time with construction workers, this was a feat. The boys got gross when they were hanging out doing their no-girls-allowed thing, which wasn’t really no girls allowed; he just hadn’t met many female construction workers in Dallas.

  “Hardly. I met her last night and we went for a spin. I’d provide details but I don’t want to give Alex a coronary.” She winked at him and doctored her coffee—extra light, no sugar. Darren smiled back mostly because he didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t a casual spin kind of guy—in fact, Alex had once labeled him a serial monogamer, which wasn’t even a real word as far as Darren knew, but it sounded good so he went with it. Darren dated a single girl for a long stretch, and when that was over, went to a new girl, whom he’d date for a long stretch in hopes that one day they’d settle down and squirt out a couple of kids. It hadn’t happened yet, mostly because he . . .

  Well. Okay, if he was being perfectly honest, he had terrible taste in women.

  Just look at Kelly.

  Thinking her name made him wince, and he reached for his black coffee in hopes that the bitterness would purge her from his mouth, his brain, his everything. Kelly had been the pièce de résistance in a long line of not-good girlfriends. She was a drunk, which he didn’t fault her for because it’s a disease, but she got violent when she got drunk and never made it through any of the programs despite her promises. He’d stuck around for a few years hoping it’d turn around, that maybe with enough love and support, she’d get better. She’d had a rough start in life with an abusive family that put her in the system at eleven, and she became a runaway at seventeen. Then came a string of jobs she hated because she wasn’t good with the general public. He’d met her at one of those jobs, waitressing at a barbecue restaurant downtown, and he knew right away she hadn’t had it easy. She wore her damage on her sleeve, but after he managed to make her laugh when she delivered his pulled pork sandwich, he felt like a million bucks.

  Let’s give her a chance. She’s a pretty girl, and smart, and when she’s funny, she’s really funny. Sardonic wit is an underrated art form, he’d thought.

  Scratches, black eyes—his, not hers, because he’d never laid a hand on her—one-sided screaming fights, and a few late-night drunken bailouts from jail eventually wore him down. He’d broken it off only to have her start showing up at his work sites, his gym, the door of his apartment drunk and hostile at four in the morning. Kelly became a nightmare that wouldn’t end, so he’d taken out a restraining order and gotten into therapy. Only on his psychologist’s tufted leather couch did he figure out that the draw of the relationship hadn’t been the woman herself, but the notion of saving her. Being a big damned hero—a white knight—had appealed to him, so he had made her his project.

  Darren liked to think he was a good guy, so having to see his part in their destructive relationship was tough, but he’d learned from it. People aren’t challenges. They aren’t broken toys to be fixed. Loving someone means loving their flaws, not loving the idea of trying to change them.

  Why am I thinking about this when I’m staring at a beautiful woman?

  Oh right. Because Kelly haunts me like a ghost.

  He grimaced. Maddy either didn’t notice or she was polite enough not to comment on it, because she turned all zillion watts of her attention Alex’s way. “How are you, dove? I haven’t seen you since . . . my goodness. Three years? No, two. Two years, at your mother’s Easter brunch. I’ve been lazing about on my floaty boat outside New Orleans. I thought maybe you’d drop by to meet Sol’s new cupcake, but here you are wasting away in your shiny citadel.” Maddy popped the last of the first croissant into her mouth and started on the second.

  “The Barrington girl? He sounds serious about someone for once, which is nice.” Alex paused and cleared his throat. “Not to say he wasn’t serious about you . . .”

  “Ha! He was as serious about me as I was about him, meaning he wasn’t. Not really.” Maddy smirked and tilted her head at Darren so she could explain. “Sol and I married less than a week after meeting. We had a few years of fun before things went south, and now we are the best of friends. Divorced best friends, but still. He’s taken up with Rain Barrington. Nice girl. Huge ass. I want to play it like a bongo but he won’t let me.”

  Darren laughed, because what else do you do with that mental image? He’d seen pictures of Arianna Barrington. She was short and blond and blue eyed and very . . . bouncy. Was that the word? She was round all over. Roly-poly.

  She’s fat. It’s not bad to say fat. Rain’s fat. And beautiful. And she does have a big fat ass so I guess if you’re going to play anyone’s butt like a drum . . .

  Maddy must have read his mind, because she nodded at him sagely, like they shared some great secret. “Right? She’s so very, dove. Just so very, mmm?”

  Darren grinned and started on breakfast sandwich number two.

  It was strange to think that a man could go from Madeline Roussoux to Arianna Barrington. They were both lovely, but they occupied opposite ends of the spectrum. One looked like a movie star from the forties complete with black sunglasses and a big floppy hat. Maddy was Jackie O meets Audrey Hepburn with a porn star body. Rain presented more American pie; she was wholesome looking, like a shrinky-dinked pageant beauty who’d eaten a couple of extra donuts. Alex had said a lot about his brother, most of it not particularly flattering, but he’d never quite touched on the women in his life, both of whom were impressive.

  “I think I’d like to meet the man who can wrangle not one but two heiresses,” Darren said. “There’s got to be a medal for that somewhere.”

  “My brother’s an asshole.” Alex pushed his empty plate away and reached for his herbal tea. “A charming asshole, but an asshole all the same. Pardon the language.”

  “He is, but he’s also . . . how to say?” Maddy whirled her hand around, an elegant gesture that made the bejeweled bangles around her wrist jingle. “Sol can look at a girl and make her think that she’s his sun. That he exists to love
her. There’s something to be said for such raw devotion. Rain’s a lucky girl. Hopefully he won’t fuck up with her the way he fucked up with me. I think he learned, though.” Alex’s brow furrowed, and he looked like he wanted to say something, but Maddy reached out to tap him on the nose, wagging her finger at him like she would an errant child. “And before you start asking if I’m still in love with him, no, I’m not. He’s a dear friend, but that ship sailed a long time ago, mmm? I’m the one who drove it out of port.”

  “I know.” Alex’s worry remained in full attendance, but Maddy patted his cheek fondly and it smoothed.

  “Stop fretting. I’m fine. Sol’s fine. Our souls are a little tattered, but you’ll say a prayer for us won’t you? Honestly, Alex, I think he’s better than he’s ever been—yes, even with the divorce. I talked to him this morning. He asked me about little hands and carat sizes that wouldn’t look ridiculous on them. That’s a good sign, and it’s not nearly as rushed as we were.”

  “Well, no, but it’s only been a few months.” Alex sat up straighter in his seat, his fingers splayed out on the fine linen of the restaurant table, the vein in his temple starting to pulse too hard. “He needs to take it slow. Be sure. It’s a sacrament, marriage. Maybe I should go down th—” He was cut off by his cell phone ringing, and he put up a finger to excuse himself before taking the call, half turning in his seat to have his conversation.

  Darren was glad for the interruption. Preaching about the sacrament of marriage to his brother’s ex-wife was a very Alex thing to do, but it wasn’t exactly sensitive or appropriate. He meant well, but he was so severe, so very sure of his own moral core, that serious conversations with him felt like you were being called on the carpet in front of your dad.

  At least, that was Darren’s take, and as Darren hated his own father, that was never a good feeling.

  He swallowed the last of his breakfast and nodded at Maddy, who was busy reapplying her lipstick in a compact mirror. When he spoke again, he whispered so as not to interfere with Alex’s call. “What do you get hanging off banana trees?”

  “Bananas?”

  “Sore arms.”

  “Oh, that’s terrible,” Maddy said, and it was, but that didn’t stop her from laughing too loudly, just like she had at every other joke. Alex shot them both dirty looks before standing from the table and making his way to the window some fifteen feet away. Darren viewed it as a challenge, because obviously, whatever call Alex was on would be made better by Maddy Roussoux’s laughter.

  Sure, be grouchy, Alex. See where that gets you.

  “What do you call a deer with no eyes?”

  Maddy sat up in her chair, so eager for the punch line, so happy and amused, it was glorious to behold. She was a glimmering, effervescent thing with her pink-flushed cheeks and perfectly waxed brows lifted tall in expectancy.

  And all because of my crappy jokes.

  I could get used to this.

  “No i-dear!” he practically shouted.

  Her delight was contagious, and he found himself laughing right along with her. Alex rolled his eyes and walked out of the restaurant, abandoning both of them to the remains of breakfast. His disgust made it all the funnier, and they both chuckled and finished their coffee, shaking their heads at the ridiculousness of G-rated jokes you’d find in a bubble gum wrapper.

  “Uh-oh. I think we’ve annoyed him,” Maddy said. “I mean, I do that all the time. It’s my nature, but I hope he’s not actually cross.”

  “Alex breathes annoyance like oxygen. He’ll get over it.”

  Darren stood from the table to reach for his wallet, but the waitress waved them off. It was Alex’s hotel, after all, but it always made Darren feel awkward that he wasn’t allowed to pay for things, so he laid out two twenties on the table as a tip for the waitress instead.

  Maddy tsked. “Take one of those back. I’ll split it with you.”

  “No ma’am. Can’t allow that.”

  “Oh good. Chivalry. I think I remember that. Is this the part where you go and kill a bear and give me its pelt? I’ll wear it Wilma Flintstone style.”

  “Well, that depends.” Darren didn’t actually know where he was going when he stood. He’d only gotten as far as “out of the restaurant so they could seat other people,” which proved problematic when Maddy grabbed her purse and followed him. Back to Alex’s office? No, that’s probably where he was taking his call. The foyer was loud and busy, so he went through the rotating doors of the hotel and outside, into the blazing Dallas heat. The Diamond was situated between a movie theater and a popular Italian restaurant, but past the restaurant was a pretty park with a water fountain at the center and a lush canopy of trees casting thick shade over the benches.

  Maddy fell into step beside him on the sidewalk, reaching into her purse to pull out what he thought was a pen. When she slipped it between her lips, the tube portion black, the end adorned with decorative silver filigree, he realized it was an e-cigarette fashioned to look like the cigarette holders of yore. His impression that she was a forties actress gone digital was more cemented than ever.

  “Do you mind?” she asked.

  “Not at all.”

  “Good. So about that bear pelt. Depends on what? I have minks, though I probably shouldn’t say that too loud or PETA will spray-paint me orange.”

  Darren paused at a frozen lemonade stand at the entrance to the park and bought two slushies in paper cups. If she didn’t want hers, he’d eat it, but she accepted it, her scarlet lips tipped into a gamine grin around her vaporizer. They chose the bench behind the fountain, which meant they were staring at Davy Crockett’s enshrined-in-stone ass while water looped over his head in dueling arcs.

  “If I can find any Texas bears. We’re short on them. You want to know something funny?” He dug into his lemonade and pointed at the statue before them. “He wasn’t even Texan. He got so disgusted with Andrew Jackson’s shitty politics, he left Tennessee and came out here so he could die at the Alamo.”

  Maddy tilted her head thoughtfully. “I certainly hope that when someone immortalizes me one day, it’s for a better reason than how I died. Like, maybe for my tiger. Or my room of dicks.”

  He nearly spit out his lemonade. “What now?”

  She threw her head back and laughed. “On which?”

  “Both.”

  “Ahhh. Well, there’s Capulet, my tiger. She was a gift from my parents. I have a retired zookeeper on board who’s versed in big cats so I don’t get eaten. Not that she’s ever tried. Richter’s a dollface.”

  “On board? Like, on your boat?”

  “Yes. It’s where I spend most of my time. I prefer it.” She smiled at him. “Something about the freedom of the seas and the ability to get away from it all. I have a cavalier spirit.”

  “I buy that. And the room of dicks?”

  “Ha!”

  She returned her e-cigarette to her purse and dove into the frozen treat, her lips closing around the white spoon and smearing red lipstick on the plastic. “It’s a collection, I suppose. It started as a joke about ten years ago. Get a vibrator, throw it in the drawer, do it again. Soon I had too many vibrators so I used the closet in the guest room and lined them up so I could see them. And then I bought some display pieces and that filled up. I have some really beautiful ones—marbled glass, stone, polished wood—so I had a room on the ship converted for display purposes. There’s a platinum dick, a gold dick. I even have one from the 1600s that’s encrusted with jewels. My big-ticket item is a chair reputed to be from Catherine the Great’s personal collection. It has dicks all over the chair legs. I paid good money for that at auction.”

  “You’re an aficionado. How the hell do you use them all?” The question was out of his mouth before he could think to put on the brakes. Immediately his face felt hot—that wasn’t his business, she was making conversation. Why did he have to put
his huge foot in his mouth? Size fourteens were not easy to swallow. “Sorry, I . . . hell. I didn’t mean—”

  Maddy did not care, not one iota. If anything, her grin grew wider, which he didn’t think was possible, but there it was, her smile practically reaching her earlobes. “I don’t. The ones in the room are display only. The personal ones are in the playroom.”

  . . . Playroom.

  A whole room for . . . holy hell.

  He peered at her, but she just devil-woman smiled down at her frozen lemonade, looking mighty content with herself.

  Darren shoveled more slushy into his face.

  Oh, son. You are in way over your head.

  THREE

  MADDY SAT IN the park with Darren, laughing, talking about the wedding that brought her to Dallas for the week. One of her company’s vice presidents had married for the third time, and what was awkward about the event was that his half of the guest list had been the same for his previous marriages, so it was something of a reunion every time he rode the marriage carousel.

  “I went to his first wedding with my parents when I was fourteen, his second when I was twenty-seven, and now this one. His mother remembers me. We talked about the Riviera for an hour and drank horrible wine together at this one, which I don’t appreciate, by the by. I pay my employees far too well to suffer cheap pinot. Next time, I’m writing him a check and staying home.”

  “Damn. Three times?” Darren snagged Maddy’s empty lemonade cup and tossed it in the garbage bin basketball style, his arms shooting up to the sky in victory when he made the basket. “Can’t imagine that. I want to be a one-and-done myself.”

  Maddy ran a hand over her dress, smoothing the wrinkles at her torso. “I hope for your sake that happens, dove. If I do it again, and that’s a big if, it’ll be my fourth. I’m tired of the rigmarole.”

  Darren either couldn’t quite hide his surprise or didn’t bother trying. Nevertheless, she liked his lack of guile. Between big-dollar business and Hollywood social circles, she was usually mired in a sea of artifice and bullshit. By comparison, he was a breath of fresh air. “Three already? You’re so young. Not judging you, just surprised, I guess.”