Fairbanks, Nancy

by Crime Brulee (lit)

  Miranda, his wife, who had once been slender, has grown stocky and developed a thriving practice in tax law. She let us know within two minutes of arrival that she was now billing $350 an hour. Can you imagine? She'd make almost as much in a day as I received as an advance for writing a whole book. Having come straight from taking depositions in a "very important" tax case, she was festively attired in what I took to be a power suit. The garment was so well cut that you could hardly tell she was overweight and so severe that no one could ever accuse her of attempting to make points with feminine wiles.

  I felt decidedly frivolous. I was wearing one of those new, almost full-length dresses whose straight-line tailoring belied the pretty flowers on the cream background. Mi­randa's hair is iron gray and cut very short. Mine, still blonde with the help of a biweekly rinse, is curly but rather carelessly tied back with a scarf whose color, that evening, matched the flowers on my dress.

  For all our differences, the conversation was amiable enough, the reminiscences pleasant. Then Julienne and Nils arrived, and suddenly the room hummed with the antago­nism that flowed between them. Jason shook hands with Nils, who towered over him. Nils is six three, while Jason is what I consider a perfect height, five seven. He sometimes teases that I chose him because his height gave me an excuse to eschew big hair and high heels, and I'd be the first to admit that such considerations certainly increased his husband-desirability quotient during our courtship. High heels, in my opinion, were designed by males to hobble fe­males who might desire to flee. Nils still had that Nordic blond hair, although thinner than it once was, and the Viking chin and body had softened with the years. He now seemed somewhat indecisive and sulky, while Julienne was as viva­cious as ever.

  She kissed Jason on the cheek and said, "How are you, you handsome thing?" to which Jason replied, "Never as gorgeous as you, Julienne." Nils scowled at them.

  Then Julienne turned to me, breaking into infectious laughter and hugging me. "You look wonderful, Carol" she exclaimed. "I'll bet if we took a vote, everyone would agree that you're the youngest-looking person here."

  "I am the youngest person here," I replied, "even younger than you by a month and a half."

  "Oh well, rub it in," said Julienne. She was wearing a dress that I'd never have dared to buy: bright red, sheer floating fabric, with one bared shoulder, one covered with a short, flared sleeve, and a low-cut, crisscross bodice with a full, layered skirt falling in an uneven handkerchief hem that flirted with her knees.

  "You look gorgeous, Julienne," I said admiringly. "What a wonderful dress."

  "Just what any high-priced call girl would wear for a spe­cial customer," muttered Nils.

  I couldn't believe my ears and didn't know what to say. Julienne, however, said quite clearly, "Screw you, Nils."

  Then she turned back to me, as if her husband had never made that ungentlemanly remark, and said, "I hope you're ready for the grand tour of New Orleans, Caro. First, we're going to meet every single morning for chicory coffee and beignets at Caf6 du Monde."

  "Wonderful!' I agreed, imagining the taste of delicious, deep-fried donut squares dusted with powered sugar, a New Orleans delicacy about which I'd read but had never experi­enced.

  "And we're going to the voodoo museum. You don't want to miss that."

  "I don't?"

  "You don't. And the swamp. We have to take a swamp tour, and don't give me that dubious look, Caro. You'll be perfectly safe. Daddy and Philippe and I went fishing in the swamp lots of times."

  Philippe was Julienne's older brother, who had, as older brothers are wont to do, pretty much ignored the two of us. I couldn't imagine the oh-so-serious Philippe fish­ing in a swamp with his little sister. Still, I didn't want to seem a complete coward. If Julienne could brave the swamp when she was just a tyke, surely I could face it on a tourist boat in her company. "All right," I agreed. "We'll visit the swamp."

  "And the French Market and Lafitte's Bar and the tacky clubs on Bourbon Street. You haven't lived until you've seen the tassel twirlers."

  She was bubbling with laughter, and I had to wonder what a tassel twirler was.

  "I'm sure, my dear wife, your department chair will ap­preciate your skipping sessions to watch a bunch of over-aged strippers," said Nils sarcastically.

  "And if no one else tells him, you will? Is that your plan, Nils?" she retorted. Nils flushed with anger while Julienne turned her back on him. "And Le Bistro for creme brule'e. That's a must, Caro. You and Jason and I can go for dinner one night. It's at Maison de Ville on Toulouse, very roman­tic. We won't invite Nils since he's being such a shit." She sent him an angry look.

  "Creme brulee sounds good," I agreed in a weak voice. Marital discord in public places always makes me uneasy.

  "Miranda! Lester!" Julienne hugged Miranda and patted the stolid Lester on the cheek. Jason, ever the diplomat and always ready to move the conversation into areas scientific, said to Nils, "If you don't mind my picking your brain, old friend, I have a couple of projects that need input from a mathematician."

  "Why not," Nils replied. He picked up a flute of cham­pagne from the tray a waiter was passing and tossed down half. "Ask away," he said. "It's common knowledge that chemists don't know dick about math."

  I was about to pass him the alligator puffs, but since he'd insulted both my husband and my best friend, I passed them to Lester, who had two, probably to make up for the fact that he'd refused alcohol. When Miranda explained that he was now in AA, Lester didn't look particularly pleased to be ex­posed as a reformed drunk. For a moment, I was afraid that they might embark on a quarrel, too, but Carlene McAvee breezed in at that moment with Broder plodding behind, looking anxious; no change there.

  What a surprise Carlene was: very California, with long, frizzy gray hair and a gauze skirt topped by a shirt that looked to have been made by Southwestern Indians who favor the colors black and turquoise. She radiated enthusi­asm. Broder wore a black suit and looked like the Calvinist theologian he was: serious, responsible, and weighted down with the consciousness of a sinful world. His hair had re­ceded, his middle thickened, and the creases deepened be­tween his eyebrows.

  Miranda was saying, "Lester Junior has his degree in law. Now he's going for a doctorate in chemistry."

  "Trying to please you both?" asked Julienne.

  Miranda ignored the question and continued with evident satisfaction, "Do you have any idea how much money he's going to make over a lifetime with those two degrees? Mil­lions!"

  Carlene laughed. "I'll bet Broder and I haven't produced a millionaire in the bunch."

  "What are your brood doing, Carlene?" Miranda asked. "If anyone had told me you'd have four children, and a full-time job, well, I—"

  "Nothing to it," said Carlene. "I've got energy to spare. Everyone pitches in on the boring domestic stuff, Broder keeps us all virtuous and out of jail, and I make the money and do the childbearing." She linked her arm through her husband's and squeezed affectionately. "Broder's a daddy in a million. Our oldest girl is in seminary."

  Lester looked astonished. "I'm not sure I approve of women pastors."

  "What are the rest of them doing, Carlene?" Julienne asked, laughing. "Any other shocking career choices?"

  'The eldest boy is in a Central American jungle doing a post doc in archaeology, and the two younger kids are study­ing microbiology. How far along are they, love?" she asked her husband. "Do I have to get them jobs yet?"

  Jason, what about your two?" Miranda asked, turning to us.

  "Undergraduates," he replied. "Gwen in drama, Chris in chemistry."

  "Drama!" Miranda exclaimed. "Good lord, you'd better hope she finds a wage-earning husband, or you'll be sup­porting her for the rest of her life."

  I felt rather resentful on Gwen's behalf. "She's already supporting herself, Miranda, and she's only a freshman," I said.

  Jason nodded. "Gwen never ceases to amaze us. She talked someone last summer into giving her a job computer programming.
She's been a trigonometry tutor and a—what else, Caro?"

  "Well, she directed a children's theater and served as an assistant to a muralist working in a downtown bank. She's very talented." I suppose, as a proud mother, I can be for­given for bragging a bit.

  "Takes after my mother in her politics," Jason added. "If she'd gone to school in the sixties, she'd have been out burning her bras."

  Jason's mother is a feminist critic and professor of women's studies at the University of Chicago. She finds me a most disappointing daughter-in-law. But Jason is wrong about Gwen and bra-burning. My daughter isn't loath to trade on her beauty, and she wouldn't think of going without a bra.

  "You've got a child don't you, Julienne?" said Broder.

  "And only one," Nils muttered.

  "Diane," Julienne replied, ignoring him. "She's in prep school in New Hampshire and doing very well."

  "Since her mother can't be bothered to keep her at home," said Nils.

  "Oh?" retorted Julie combatively. "You want to put a sen­sitive, intelligent girl into the public schools?"

  "Since we took her on—and God knows where she came from." Nils turned to the group at large, ignoring his wife.

  "Julie simply arrived with this baby one day and said she was going to adopt it."

  Julienne whirled on him in a flurry of red skirts, and I knew that trouble was imminent. "Well, you did want a child, Nils," she snapped.

  "Of our own," he retorted.

  "Of course. The child-of-my-loins syndrome. If you were so set on begetting your own—" Her voice dripped with sar­casm. "—maybe you should have gone to a doctor to find out why we weren't having any."

  'The problem was that you've always been more inter­ested in career than family, Julie. That's the problem." His eyes, usually so blue, seemed to bleach with malice.

  "Nils, you wouldn't know a problem if it bit you on the ass," she sneered. "The fact is, you don't want to hear about problems unless they're your own."

  "Case in point," he persisted as if she hadn't spoken, "you can't be bothered to keep Diane at home with us. You—"

  "That does it, Nils." Julie slammed her champagne glass down on the dinner table, splashing golden bubbles across an unoffending white linen napkin. "I've heard just about as many of your complaints as I can stomach." With red skirts whirling again, she announced that she was going to the ladies' room and stalked out.

  Conversation was somewhat stilted after her exit, and Nils said nothing. He was busy sulking over by the French doors.

  3

  For Lack of Seafood Gumbo

  Gumbo tells, in its ingredients, the tale of the many na­tional groups that immigrated to New Orleans and in­fluenced the city's cuisine. With the original French settlers (from aristocrats and soldiers to prostitutes and transported felons) came the recipe for roux, the neces­sary first step in the making of gumbo. The soup is thick­ened with file (powdered sassafras leaves introduced to the colony by the Indians) or okra, the seeds of which arrived in the New World in the hair and ears of slaves from Africa. The Spanish, who ruled for a short time and imposed their most lasting influence on the architecture of the Vieux Carre, provided the spice of peppers. Arca­dians (Cajuns), who were driven from Nova Scotia by the British, make the andouille sausage found in many gumbos, and Croatians farm the oysters, while the whole, whatever its ingredients, is served over rice grown in Louisiana fields by Chinese settlers.

  The gumbo at Etienne's in New Orleans is everything a good gumbo should be—with a thick, flavorful stock and enough rice and seafood to make it less a soup than a stew or dish with sauce. If you know a restaurant in your hometown that serves tasty gumbo, patronize it. Otherwise, it might go out of business and someone suggest that you make the gumbo yourself. Only a pro­fessional paid to do so should have to attempt the diffi­cult and time-consuming task of making the roux that is the basis of a good gumbo.

  Carolyn Blue, Eating Out in the Big Easy

  The alligator puffs disappeared as everyone pretended not to notice that Julienne had failed to return. Then, while wait­ing for the presentation of the gumbo (the gumbo that had dictated the choice of restaurant, recipe of the chef chosen by the very lady who was missing), I set off to find the rest room and retrieve my friend. If she couldn't face sitting be­side her husband, I'd simply change the place cards and move him to the other end of the table. Let Jason put up with him.

  But Julienne was not in the ladies' room. After calling her name several times without receiving a response, I peeked under the only closed door in case she was proving to be as sulky as her husband; Nils hadn't said a word to anyone, since she left the dining room. The door under which I peeked—and I just bent down to take a look at the shoes— burst open, nearly knocking me over, and an irate lady in flowered lavender silk stalked out and demanded to know what sort of pervert I was.

  "I'm looking for a friend," I stammered.

  "We in N' Awlins know all about folks who want to make friends with strangahs in public toilets," she retorted dis­dainfully, bringing home to me how much different indigna­tion sounded in a Southern drawl than in, say, the crisper accents of the Middle West.

  "I only wanted to look at your shoes," I responded.

  "Mah shoes! Well, Ah nevah! Ah'm goin' to report you to the maitre d'." She had been vigorously washing her hands during the conversation and left after making that threat, which, I have to admit, kept me from searching further for Julienne. Instead, I crept back to the dinner, where seven of us sat down to seafood gumbo.

  "She wasn't in the ladies'," I whispered to Jason before I took my seat at the other end of the table.

  Unfortunately, Nils heard me and said, "That's typical of Julie—inconsiderate to a fault."

  He sounded so self-satisfied that I switched his card with Broder's so that I wouldn't have to sit beside him and nei­ther would Julienne when she returned, which she would. I knew that she'd never miss the gumbo. Maybe she was mak­ing a phone call, perhaps reserving her own room. The Mag-nussens were staying at the same hotel in the French Quarter where we had reservations, although we hadn't seen them during the afternoon.

  As the waiter distributed our bowls, Broder told me how worried he was about his youngest children, who were away at university, no doubt being chased by drug dealers and re­ceiving sexual overtures from lechers with communicable diseases. Poor Broder! He's a dear, but he does fret about sin. I gave him a weak smile and looked down at my gumbo. Where were the crab claws, the sausage, the shrimp, and the oysters? And what were those chopped, hard-boiled eggs doing on top? I frowned, sniffed, then tasted. "Waiter!" I called. "What is this?"

  "It's the turtle soup, ma'am."

  "What turtle soup?"

  "Well, actually, ma'am, Ah believe the chef used alliga­tor insteada turtle, but that's by way of bein' a N'Awlins tradition, an' Ah know you're gonna find it's the best tur­tle—well, alligator—soup you ever did eat. Etienne is fa­mous fo' his—"

  Jason was chuckling and leaned forward to say, "Well, we have been calling this the alligator dinner, Caro, but I never realized you were this fond of reptile meat."

  "I ordered gumbo," I informed the waiter. "My friend in­sisted on this restaurant because of Etienne's reputation for wonderful gumbo."

  "Since the friend who insisted didn't even bother to show up for the course," said Nils, "it doesn't much matter, does it?" He looked smug while he ate his soup as rapidly as pos­sible, no doubt in order to prevent me from having it re­moved.

  "Etienne, he's even mo' famous fo' his turtle soup," said the waiter, who was clasping a tray in a white-knuckled grasp.

  "But turtle soup is not what I ordered, and this is not, by your own admission, turtle soup. I want to see the chef."

  "For heaven's sake, Carolyn," said Miranda. "This is de­licious. Don't make such a fuss."

  I gave the waiter what I hoped was a suitably steely and commanding glance, and he was soon back with Etienne himself, a short, round man, wearing a lu
dicrously tall chef's hat and glaring majestically.

  "Madame does not like my famous soup?" he demanded.

  "Madame ordered gumbo, as you very well know."

  He looked blank for a minute, then slapped his forehead with the palm of his hand. "But of course, Mme. Julienne, who loves my gumbo. How could this mistake have taken place? Discipline shall be meted out to where it is deserved. Bien? You will eat my ambrosial turtle soup—"

  "Alligator," I reminded him.

  He glared at the waiter. 'Turtle, alligator. It makes no dif­ference."

  "Broder, doesn't the Bible have prohibitions against eat­ing alligators?" asked Carlene, eyes twinkling.

  Broder looked thoughtful and admitted that there was a prohibition against eating crawling things, snakes for in­stance, and alligators might be included, although they did have feet. On the other hand, such dietary restrictions were practiced by Jews, not Christians, and in fact, he thought crocodiles were native to the Middle East, not alligators, so alligators wouldn't have come up, as such, in the Bible.

  "Madame will accept my most profound apologies," Eti­enne ordered, although Broder was still talking about dietary laws, "and enjoy her turtle soup, and tomorrow I will send to her hotel a container of my excellent gumbo. And one for Mme. Julienne as well." He bowed and left before I could protest.

  Well, what could I do? I ate the soup, and it was indeed delicious, flavored with sherry, chicken stock, herbs, chopped vegetables, and the meat. (I later discovered that not only could turtle meat be replaced by alligator but by ground veal, as well.) In fact, the next day when I returned from the less-than-exciting refreshments at the American Chemical Society welcome mixer, Etienne's gumbo awaited me, and it was as wonderful as Julienne had promised: spicy, rich, thick, and loaded with delectable crustaceans caught locally. I amused myself while eating it by imagining Eti-enne himself, chef's hat askew, apron bespattered, scram­bling down some muddy bank to harvest crabs.