Now Let's Talk of Graves

by Sarah Shankman

  Harry clicked off another couple of shots of the sashaying Miss Chéri. Yep, Uncle Tench—who never paid a dime to anyone unless they could prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that their claim was purdee, absolute, no question about it, watertight, not even to a pretty woman, yeah—Uncle Tench was gonna be right proud of this boy. Correction, young man.

  *

  Out past the automatic sliding doors Sam and Kitty and Joey the Horse and Chéri all sort of banged together—everybody except Harry, who’d faded off to one side, not wanting to be seen.

  “Excuse me,” said Joey the Horse, bowing a little at the waist, always the Old World gentleman around the ladies. Sam smiled.

  Kitty smiled.

  Harry smiled too—at the back of the cab dispatcher, who just then glided by where he was standing hunkered down behind a luggage cart.

  Which is why he didn’t see what happened next. Sam did though. Eagle-eyed reporter never missed a trick.

  What happened was this: A little guy—young, light hair, slight build, snub-nosed cute, the Michael J. Fox type, and about that size, smaller maybe, five-four or -five—started walking through the crosswalk over to the sidewalk where Sam et al were standing, when just about the same time a gigantic white stretch limo belonging to none other than Joey the Horse started to pull in curbside.

  The little guy, still on the other side of the car from Sam, yelled something. She didn’t quite catch it, but she could fill in the blanks. Then the little guy slapped his hand up against the driver’s window, which began to power down. Slow.

  Real slow.

  Then the door whapped open. Hard. Knocked the little guy down. A huge black driver looking like a Sub-Zero refrigerator-freezer in a powder-blue suit was standing there, looking sub-zero cool behind his shades, staring down.

  Then, as if in slomo, Sam watched the little guy reach into his jacket. Uh-oh. She’d been witness to this kind of scenario several times in a professional capacity, but this was vacation, thank you very much. She grabbed Kitty’s arm, jerked open the door of a cab waiting at the curb, pushed Kitty inside, and fell atop her, head down.

  “Drive,” she said.

  “Lady, I have to wait till my dispatcher—”

  There were popping sounds outside now, like a car backfiring. Three times.

  “Drive, dammit! I’ll make it worth your while.”

  He drove fast—just like in the movies—and for a good long time before he asked, Where to?

  “Bourbon Street.” Sam sat up off the grumbling Kitty when the coast looked clear, ran a hand through her curls, and said, “I didn’t come all this way to spend my afternoon as a material witness to one goddamn more shooting when I could be eating oysters at Galatoire’s.”

  Two

  THE TOURISTS ON Bourbon Street were waiting in a long line. Galatoire’s takes no reservations—except the walk-to-the-front-of-the-line-if-they-know-you kind.

  “Miss Lee,” the man at the door had said, and, smiling, had passed them right on in. Sam had to admit she liked that.

  It wasn’t until they were at a table in the middle of the one bright, high-ceilinged dining room, waiting for a glass of white wine and Sam’s Perrier, that Kitty came to.

  “I left my car in the goddamn parking lot.”

  “Oh, my God!”

  They laughed like young girls, heads back, mouths open wide. Well-tailored businessmen at neighboring tables smiled at them. Bons temps rouler. Why not? It was New Orleans. Carnival time. Anytime.

  “So later we’ll go back. Maybe we’ll run into G.T., you remember her, Aunt Ida’s granddaughter. Wait, great-granddaughter. She’s over to the house a lot, and maybe she’ll give us a ride back out. Got herself a job as an ambulance driver.” Then Kitty looked up at their waiter, who hadn’t bothered them with a menu. “Gerard, I’ll start with the shrimp remoulade, then the trout meunière.”

  Sam ordered oysters en brochette and trout Marguéry. She’d been dreaming for weeks about the battered and fried oysters with bacon and lemon on toast. And the Marguéry sauce: a thick yellow roux chock-full of shrimp and mushrooms.

  “Soufflé potatoes and green salads,” the waiter suggested. “And share plates?”

  Sam nodded. Here was a man after her own heart. She sipped her water and looked around. “Kitty, you remember that time we were here with—what was his name? Chauncey? Boisvert? Duplessy? Trey? One of your fancy New Orleans monikers, but I know it ended in a Jones.”

  “Well, I guaran-damn-tee you he’s never forgotten your name, sugar pie. Not even after twenty years. Every once in a while at a party, real late, this dreamy look comes over Boley Jones’s face and he says, ‘Kitty, do you know that time in Galatoire’s your friend Sam from Atlanta took all her clothes off and—’”

  Sam was somewhere between flattered and embarrassed. “Well, hell, you can’t let every little old thing that ever happened when you were on the booze keep you out of places. Hell, I’d have nowhere fun left to go. You either.”

  “Why, what on earth do you mean?”

  As if she didn’t know. Kitty had always been one to kick up her heels. Had even turned her high spirits, her way with people into her very own, very profitable public relations company.

  Now Sam watched Kitty reach into a pocket of her sea-foam-green silk blazer and pull out a silver lighter and a pack of Picayunes, a local brand. She lit one of the forty-plus cigarettes she would smoke that day, sucked the smoke down, and exhaled hard.

  The cigarette’s funky aroma took Sam right back. She closed her eyes, remembering how the Quarter used to smell on steamy days when she was visiting Kitty from school, before the Jax Brewery over by the river became a bunch of boutiques. The smell of Picayunes was rich, yeasty, always bespoke New Orleans.

  Kitty.

  And Eddie Simms.

  For it was that same smell which lingered in the still, quiet San Francisco bedrooms where Eddie, a Southern boy who smoked Picayunes while he worked, had left the carved and cross-hatched bodies of women he’d come calling on with a Buck knife and a bouquet of snow-white roses. Sam’s series about him on the front page of the Chronicle had earned her prizes as well as several job offers, including the one from the Constitution that had taken her home to Atlanta a couple of years earlier.

  Now she was telling Kitty how that move was looking like a less than judicious one, as the then-newly-serious Constitution had run aground.

  “So what’s happening now? Sounds like you’re up to your ass in rattlesnakes, that piece I read about the newspaper in Vanity Fair.”

  “Just about. Pit vipers. We should have known Kovach, the editor, wouldn’t last. It’s been a mess since the suits with the calculators ran him off. Should have known they weren’t going to let the man run the newspaper as if folks were literate. Wanted to read the news, for chrissakes. Graphics, the suits say. Give ’em color pictures, like on TV.”

  “Doesn’t sound good.”

  “Excuse me, ladies.” Gerard was back with their food.

  “It ain’t, sweetcakes. But let’s don’t let it ruin a perfectly good shrimp remoulade.” Sam reached over to Kitty’s plate and speared a bite of the cold shrimp smothered in creole mustard sauce. “Ummmmm. Maybe I’ll find work in New Orleans. Lunch here every day. The Bon Ton. The Bistro.”

  “Wait a minute, before you get me deep into lunch, I just want to know, you gonna fish or cut bait on the paper? Or do you have a choice?”

  Sam shook her head, her mouth full of shrimp. Then: “They’re not firing people, if that’s what you mean. Folks are just disappearing. Going off on vacations that are really job interviews. Hell, we lost our Pulitzer-winning political cartoonist, turned around, and stole yours.” She pointed with her fork. “The Times-Picayune’s.”

  “Et tu?”

  “I’ve had offers. It’s that I feel like I only got back to Atlanta. I’m just getting used to it again, speaking Southern, getting the freeways down.”

  “Any other game in town if you want to stic
k around?”

  “Certainly no other newspapering. And the great old days of magazining there are long gone.”

  “So?”

  “Right now I’m planning on eating shrimp and oysters till I pop.” She caught the waiter’s eye and pointed for more of both. “Hoke—that’s my managing editor—keeps trying to tell me things are gonna turn around. He’s wrong. The only thing’s gonna turn is me. Turn forty.”

  “Isn’t that a shame?”

  “You too, toots.”

  “Yeah, but you go first. You’ll be sure and let me know how it feels?”

  “Probably about like a swift kick in the tuckus.”

  “You know,” Kitty said, leaning back in her chair a little. “I’ve been giving this matter a lot of serious consideration, and I’ve decided Perrier makes you mean.”

  Sam laughed. “You could be right. But the tradeoff with bourbon is that at least I have all my shoes now.”

  “Oh, yeah. You and your Ferragamos. Dropping ’em all over the Bay Area.” She leaned back even farther in her bentwood chair.

  “You know you look just like an old man chomping on a cigar when you do that?”

  Ignoring her, Kitty continued. “Tossing your tennyrunners in the gutter ’cause they pinched.”

  Sam couldn’t resist joining in, poking fun at her former self. “Spending half my days buying new ones and every night getting rid of them ’cause I never broke ’em in before I was wasted again. There must have been a trail over half of northern California of my eight and a half double A’s.”

  “To the old days.” Kitty raised her glass.

  “And the new, improved ones.” Sam paused. “The nineties an improvement? I can’t believe I said that. Drunk or sober, I miss the hell out of the sixties, don’t you?”

  “You better know it.” Then Kitty got serious. “The drinking here gonna bother you? You know what Carnival is.”

  Sam shook her head. “Amateur night. Give me some interesting folks, something worthwhile going on, the alcohol’s no problem. Not that boozers are exactly the crowd I hang with these days.”

  “Except for me.”

  “Except for you.” That was a joke. Kitty drank, but hardly kept pace with most New Orleanians. “So, listen, about Carnival, I didn’t get a chance to ask you what’s this business with the callouts—those things that came along with the invite? And just by the way, sending it registered mail was cute but unnecessary.”

  “Why, honey, we have to make sure invitations don’t get in the mitts of the hoi polloi who are lying in wait for them. We’re talking about the Mystick Krewe of Comus here. We’re talking tradition back to 1851. We’re not talking fly-by-night.”

  “What I really don’t understand is how on earth do such fine folks put up with your mouth?”

  “No choice. Whole thing’s hereditary. ’Course, I’m not a member anyway. Comus is an old boys’ club. Brother Church belongs. Daddy did. I get it from both sides, actually. My mama’s daddy was Comus too.” Kitty waved an imaginary fan. “We ladies just come along with our gent’-men, like any other property—cattle, cotton. ’Course, I was a Queen of Comus. Third straight generation. My mama, Estelle, God rest her soul. Grandmama, Ma Elise. This year Church’s Zoe makes it an uninterrupted fourth.”

  “I know you’ve explained all this rigamarole to me a million times. But—you know I’ve never been except when I was a kid.”

  Kitty nodded. “In the street with all the other riffraff. That’s the public Carnival. Krewes put those on for everybody. The balls are another matter. ’Course, even some of them are public. But not Comus. God, taste this trout.”

  “Eat half and we’ll swap plates.”

  “When did you turn into such a gourmand? Not that you weren’t always a healthy eater, but—”

  “Gourmet, my dear. You know how we recovering drunks are. Got to have something to obsess about. Food’s my latest. I’ve even become a rather spectacular cook since Peaches is never in our kitchen at Uncle George’s. She’s too busy teaching all of Atlanta how to read with her literacy campaign.”

  “Well, you’ve definitely come to the right place. In this town we’ve always talked restaurants before sex or politics. Even beats football.”

  “You think I could get the recipe for this sauce?”

  “We’ll ask Gerard. Now, is there anything you want to know about the ball tomorrow night?”

  Sam whispered, “Maybe we shouldn’t even be talking about it here—it being so secretive and all.”

  “Secretive?” Kitty hooted. “Darlin’, you don’t even know the meaning of the word. Exclusive is what we’re talking here. You’ve got your attitude on crooked. Why, there are still geezers grousing about having had the Duke and Duchess of Windsor as guests of honor forty years ago. What with her past. And poor old Huey Long never got an invite to anything. Made him so mad he tried to ban Carnival. Might as well have tried to close the river down.”

  “No wonder most people just drink in the street.”

  “Great. Great. That’s the thanks I get for breaking my butt to get you in. I had to put your name in to the invitation committee months ago to get you certified.”

  “Come on.” Sam laughed.

  “I’m not kidding. You think the Piedmont Driving Club over in Atlanta is something? They are nouveaux upstarts compared to us. I want to tell you your pedigree barely got you in.”

  “Yeah, well, you know how seriously I take all that bull.”

  “Oh, my, yes. You always were so proud of trading in your debut for that little green Triumph you had at school. You’re the biggest reverse snob I’ve ever known, Miz Adams. But your uncle George still flies the flag, doesn’t he?”

  “Belongs to the Driving Club? Sure, for business. But since his retirement he never goes. Now, lay off my grand egalitarianism, and quit changing the subject, and answer my question about this callout business. I didn’t come all the way over here not to know what’s going on, make a fool of myself.”

  “They don’t call them reporters for nothing, do they?” Kitty rolled her eyes up at the ceiling. “Okay, okay, callouts are dance cards—of which I wangled you two. Your name gets called out loud when it’s your turn to dance with the gentlemen who have sent you the callouts.”

  “And the rest of the time I boogie with whoever I want?”

  “It’s more like a waltz than the boogie, and the rest of the time you sit. There are only about six tunes, and the members first have to make sure they’ve taken care of their own women. So two puts you in the Ms. Popularity stakes. With none you’d sit up in the balcony and watch with the other biddies who’ll be checking you out through their mother-of-pearl binocs. Who’s she? they’ll say.”

  “You think I’d come all the way from Atlanta to watch?”

  Kitty sighed. “There are local women who have never done anything but watch. You don’t understand how exclusive this all is. How important to us. Why, there have been threats over callouts not forthcoming. Acts of vengeance over queenships. Suicides.”

  “Why don’t those who are snubbed just move to another town?”

  “Because—”

  And then Kitty realized that Sam was putting her on. No matter that Sam had chosen to skip her debut in Atlanta, that she had lived for many years in California, or that she had a liberal education and an even more leftish turn of mind. Once a belle, always a belle with those Deep South sensibilities—even if they were well hidden most of the time.

  “Quit wasting my breath with your bullshit, woman,” Kitty said.

  “You’re absolutely right. We have more important things to worry about. Like does Galatoire’s still make jelly crepes for dessert? And where’s our coffee?”

  Three

  IN THE CRESCENT City, drinking in a neighborhood bar is a legitimate and time-honored avocation that has nothing to do with which side of the blanket a man was born on or the amount of cash in his pocket. Such bars are egalitarian clubs where Uptown and Downtown mingle, where on
e sees old and new friends and neighbors, exchanges gossip, bets on sporting events. The clientele is mostly male, though not exclusively, New Orleans being an equal opportunity drinking town.

  The Pelican on Magazine was such a bar, a few blocks downtown and riverward from the house in the Garden District that Kitty Lee shared with her grandmother, Ma Elise. In fact, the Pelican was the very spot where Kitty’s husband, Lester, the well-bred prize who had come her way after she was Comus queen as easily as if he popped out of a Cracker Jack box, had literally lost his mind. On the eve of their first wedding anniversary, Lester Lee, Kitty’s second cousin as well as her husband, had pulled a .38 out of his jacket and splattered said mind all over the Pelican’s well-oiled mahogany. Right now, at just about that very spot, sat the red-haired Chéri whom Harry Zack had followed.

  It had been easy to tail the big white limo from the airport to Chéri’s house on the very private Audubon Place—a location so private, in fact, Harry had had to park his car outside the gate and do an end run around the guard on foot. He’d strolled by Chéri’s great cream-colored Victorian extravaganza just in time to see the lady jump out of the big car, pop in her front door. No sooner had the white limo pulled out of sight than she’d popped out again. While Harry watched from across the street, she backed out of her driveway in a blue Mercedes coupe, a twin, except for the color, to the one she’d cracked up. Probably a loaner—or, who knew, maybe the lady had a spare. Then she wheeled over to the Pelican, a place Harry knew but didn’t frequent, tending to do his hanging out in the Quarter near where he lived.

  As Harry had sauntered in, about ten beats after Chéri, the barman had stopped polishing glasses to greet her. She’d leaned across the bar for the big buss, working that pretty neck again, and kissed him on both cheeks.