Shoot the Money

by Chris Wiltz

  Not that she particularly wanted to be here. She looked around the coffee shop—a seedy looking character, greasy hair, ripped khaki pants, his grimy fingers sunk into the cheese center of a Danish; a possible tourist couple, in shorts and new sneakers, but tourists were in short supply, one reason she couldn’t get a job.

  What could her mother have been talking about—such a glamorous city, so exciting, when she’d only been here as a child? Could the hurricane really have changed the city that much? She rested her chin in her palm, forgetting her muffin and coffee. Okay—she could imagine it being exciting, glamorous, just not in the present circumstances, the city’s or hers. Imagine—dressed up, on the arm of a man in a well-cut suit like she saw in the magazines, walking along the lamp-lit, European-looking streets, dining in a crowded, expensive French Quarter restaurant… No, that was not her vision; it was her mother’s.

  Maybe she didn’t want to be anywhere. Those months after her mother died, when she cried at night and asked, “How could you do this to me?” by which she meant leave her, only fourteen years old, to take care of two men who couldn’t do a thing for themselves in a house. She’d thought about Marilyn Monroe killing herself when it all got to be too much.

  Raynie’s vision as she sat in the coffee shop on Royal Street? Her own naked body sprawled on the bed in the lonely, dingy room on Esplanade, the sheets twisted around her.

  Raynie sighed. Death, especially suicide, was no more appealing to her now than it had been then. She had a zest for life she couldn’t deny. She finished her muffin, poured herself a cup of milk from the serve-yourself stand when the girl behind the counter wasn’t looking, and opened the Classifieds.

  The ad caught her eye immediately, hostess at a restaurant on St. Louis Street, Le Tripot, around the corner, no more than two blocks away. She’d passed it last night—not the kind of place to put a HELP WANTED sign in the window.

  APPLY IN PERSON, AFTER 2:00pm

  Raynie folded the paper. She checked her watch. Less than three hours to figure out how to land this job.

  ***

  Raynie’s eyes went out of focus, watching the Mississippi River from the Moon Walk. If she took it in from bank-to-bank, looked at it whole as it meandered its way along, pretty and tame as could be, a light lapping against the rocks under the boardwalk that went out over them. If she narrowed her gaze, she could see strange currents, some that seemed to go upstream, some that went down. They’d meet in a swift whirlpool that closed in on itself and disappeared. Treacherous water.

  For pity’s sake, what was she thinking? She had fifteen minutes before she walked over to Le Tripot. The only plan she’d come up with was to get there early. Beyond that, her brain refused to work. It drifted along with the river, random thoughts that disappeared like the whirlpools.

  Her moment of panic ebbed as she remembered something she’d read in an old magazine her mother had kept devoted to Marilyn Monroe on the twenty-fifth anniversary of her death, a reminiscence by one of Marilyn’s friends who called her Norma Jeane.

  Not long after The Seven Year Itch opened, the two women were walking along Fifth Avenue. Norma Jeane’s friend, amazed, said, “I can’t believe it—no one recognizes you!”

  “That’s because I’m not her,” Norma Jeane said. “Watch.”

  Before the woman’s eyes, Norma Jeane changed. “She became Marilyn. Her face got…soft, her eyes dreamy. She moved an entirely different way. We hadn’t gone ten steps when people started turning around, staring. Then they realized who she was, and I thought we were going to be mobbed. We escaped into Bergdorf Goodman’s.”

  Raynie sat up straight on the bench. What would happen if she tried that? She stood, smoothing her straight black skirt over her hips, stretching the ballet neck of her close-fitting sleeveless top wider across her shoulders. She wasn’t as voluptuous as Marilyn—she thought of herself as more cat-like than bombshell. Her hair wasn’t blond, but its dark brown made a nice contrast against her fair skin, and it fell in a wave above her blue eyes.

  She started walking to the restaurant. She put one foot directly in front of the other to give more movement to her hips but felt like a slouchy runway model, not a sex goddess. She tried a little hip swing, but that felt slutty and silly. She pulled her shoulders back. Her neck got long, her head lifted. That was more like it. Interesting—the shoulders seemed to make it all work. This felt saucy, sexy, but she had no idea if this was the walk that turned Norma Jeane into Marilyn. Maybe it was all in her head and she only looked ridiculous. She lengthened her stride a bit. People were beginning to look. Even a couple of women. They didn’t smile at her, but the men did. She tried a few variations—more hip, one shoulder raised, more bounce in her step, a toss of her hair as she looked left, then right at the intersection. Plenty of eyes on her. The hips, the shoulders, the hair—maybe none of that mattered. Maybe the only thing that mattered was in her head.

  ***

  Raynie breezed into the restaurant. The man behind a red buttoned leather, semi-circular counter just inside the door glanced up from the computer.

  “I’m Raynie Devereux,” she said, hearing her voice as a little breathy. Oddly, she didn’t think he heard it that way, yet the effect… She had his full attention and struggled for a moment to keep her eyes on him. “I’m here for the hostess job. I’m a little early.”

  “That’s fine,” he said. “Why don’t you sit over there?” He walked with her to a table for two in the front window, pulled out a chair for her. “Can I get you something to drink?”

  She asked for a Coke. He went to the bar on the other side of the door. Raynie was concentrating too hard on herself to notice the red velvet curtains at the windows, the miniature Tiffany-type lamp on the table, the nude paintings, or the shadow-boxed corsets that hung on the dark red velvet-flocked wall behind her. She did notice the man—good-looking, smooth, sophisticated, beautifully dressed in a suit and tie, the tie snug against his collar, not a visible wrinkle—and if she didn’t stop noticing she could end up tongue-tied. He was too old, anyway, a good fifteen years older than she was, maybe more. She adjusted her top over her shoulders, keeping that feeling in them even though she was seated, and took a deep steadying breath. She wasn’t leaving this restaurant without a job.

  The man slid the Coke in front of her and sat down opposite. He told her he was Pascal Legendre, the owner, and wanted to know if she was from New Orleans.

  “I am now.” Raynie told him how she’d always wanted to live here.

  He was amazed that she’d picked this moment in time, when the city was still on its knees from Katrina, to make the move.

  She put her elbows on the table, closer to him, and rested her chin on her clasped hands. “It doesn’t matter when I got here, I’m here for good,” she said. “I’m not just a good-times girl.”

  He smiled. Behind her the door to the restaurant opened. Mr. Legendre excused himself, and as he walked toward the door, Raynie turned to see two young women, one with long blond hair and a lot of makeup, wearing a very short, very low-cut dress. After her, the other couldn’t help looking a little frumpy in her flat shoes and below-the-knee skirt.

  The women were there about the job. Raynie turned back to face the interior of the restaurant. She was seriously sweating the blonde when she heard Mr. Legendre say, “Thanks for stopping by, ladies, but the position’s been filled.”

  ***

  Karen walked over to La Costa Brava just before five o’clock. A two-top and a four-top were occupied in the dining room. At the four-top were LaDonna and two men in business suits, drinks and papers in front of them. If LaDonna looked at her as she passed in front of the window, it was a mere glance, her attention back to the GQ type doing most of the talking. The other one reminded Karen of a thug, Solo-genus, his back beefy under his dark jacket, not much of a neck. He rivaled Solo for best dressed, worst looking. His pitted nose was a real honker, brow bone of a cave man, one little pig eye darkly glinting from under that
ledge.

  “Who’re the suits?” Karen asked Luc. She sat on the edge of a bar chair, liking the way he started making her a double cappuccino, her five o’clock habit, before she asked.

  “Don’t know. LaDonna’s been in a seriously foul mood since I got here. Then they walk in. I make them as developers. It’s just a matter of time before the Marigny goes the way of the Quarter—boutique hotels, condos, and theme cafés.”

  Karen shook her head. “Don’t even say it. Hotels on Esplanade, but not back here. I haven’t gotten the impression that LaDonna wants to sell. Did she say anything?”

  He steamed the milk and put the cappuccino in front of her. “No, but the way she’s been biting everyone’s head off, she’s acting like they might give her a cool million for the club if no one fucks up around here.” He folded his arms, putting a little more distance than just the bar between them. “Is that why you’re here? To make sure no one fucks up?”

  “Are we back on the hard-ass thing?”

  He unfolded his arms and leaned his hands on the bar. “Nobody really called you that.” He smiled.

  It was the first time they’d talked alone. Karen had watched him flirting with women all week. She wasn’t sure if he was flirting now, but she liked his smile, his confidence, and she could feel something give inside, soften for him. She didn’t like that. She was going with her first instinct: a good looking bastard.

  “And I’m not really here to see that no one fucks up.” She stood and finished off the cappuccino. “Fuck up all you want. For all we know, LaDonna’s selling the place.”

  She set the cup on its saucer and stood, hanging her bag over her shoulder.

  He pushed off the bar, arms folded again. “So what are you doing here?”

  “I’m on at six, in the dining room.”

  “I’m out of here at seven. Meet me for a drink when you get off.”

  She hadn’t expected that. “Where?” Then, “I might be tired. I’m not used to the routine yet.”

  He flipped open a La Costa matchbook and wrote inside the cover. “My cell number. You might need to wind down.” He pushed the matches across the bar, not handing them to her, but making it her choice. He kept his eyes on her, no smile, not at all flirty.

  She took a step back from the bar, pushed the chair in. As she turned away she reached back for the matches. “Don’t wait up or anything,” she said and pocketed them.

  ***

  Upstairs, Karen found the piles of paper on LaDonna’s desk much the same as she’d left them the day before, the stack of unpaid bills with Karen’s notes headlined URGENT on top. Some of the invoices were dated three months ago; most were to suppliers, the most alarming a few thousand to the liquor wholesaler.

  Karen threw her purse on the sofa and sat with her feet on the edge of the coffee table. She’d spent every day for a week since she got back from Florida sorting LaDonna’s papers, filing, looking at spreadsheets, and throwing out junk. Until LaDonna sat down with her, she couldn’t do much more. From what Luc had said about LaDonna’s mood, she was glad she’d been at her apartment, waiting for the moving van today. She hadn’t rushed to the club but unpacked some boxes and made up her bed.

  She called down to the dining room to see if the rest of the wait staff wanted to split her tables tonight. She needed a visible means of support, not to work herself to death, though the chances of that were slim if business stayed this slow. They wanted the tables, which they’d had before she came. LaDonna didn’t need extra help in the dining room. Karen wasn’t sure why she’d hired her.

  She heard LaDonna on the stairs, then going down the hall to the room she used as her bedroom, a storage room with boxes pushed out of the way to make room for a mattress. She came into the office, looking nice in her summer dress, but also tense and tired.

  “Girl, this has been a day,” she said. She threw some papers on the coffee table then fell on the sofa, kicked off her heels and stretched her feet across the table. Head back against the cushion, eyes closed, she said, “You on tonight?”

  “I gave my tables away.”

  LaDonna turned her head toward Karen to look at her.

  “You said it yourself. Business is slow. You don’t need me down there weeknights.”

  “I know, but I want you to work here, and eat and pay your rent.”

  Karen hesitated. “I think you have other things to worry about.”

  LaDonna turned away.

  Karen said, “I think you need to at least look at those bills.”

  “You’re right, honey. I’ll get to ’em tomorrow.” She closed her eyes again.

  Karen thought that was her cue to leave. When LaDonna called her honey instead of girl, a certain tone in her voice, she seemed to be putting age and distance between them, telling Karen she was too young to be her confidante. Karen sat there until she worked up her nerve to say, “You know, my name’s Honeycutt, not honey.” LaDonna opened her eyes, gave Karen a hard look. “What’s going on around here, LaDonna? Some of those bills are months old. You owe the supplier so much I’m surprised you have liquor down there.”

  “I changed wholesalers.”

  “Duck and run—yeah, that’ll work.”

  “I’m paying cash for everything now.”

  “Uhm.” Karen changed tactics. “You look nice in that dress. What’s the peplum—thirties, forties? Shows off the weight you’ve lost.”

  “Ramon bought me this dress. After the storm.”

  “For fucksake, Ramon?”

  “Yeah, Ramon…” LaDonna blinked rapidly. A solitary tear ran from her eye into her hair.

  “Shit, LaDonna, I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be—Honeycutt. Just give me those Kleenex.”

  Karen got the box from a shelf behind the desk. “No, really, LaDonna,” she said handing it to her, “I shouldn’t have said that. If I’d been thinking, I would have figured you have a man problem.”

  LaDonna wiped her eyes and blew her nose. “Not any more, I don’t. Son of a bitch been gone six months. What I got is a memory problem. I can’t forget. No age or memory jokes either. I’m in mid-life crisis. I’m sensitive at the moment.”

  “Does that mean he left you for a younger woman? Or was he younger than you?”

  LaDonna narrowed her eyes. “Both.”

  “How much younger?”

  “Twenty-two years.”

  “Whoa,” Karen said, rocking back into the sofa. “That explains the mid-life crisis but not the money crisis.” She sat up again. “Or does it?”

  “We had a goddamn hurricane.” LaDonna’s eyes filled, her voice wavered. “You get any smarter I’m gonna have to ask you to leave.”

  Karen put a hand on her arm. “You already decided you were going to tell me. Back when you asked me to do the office work. So tell me.”

  LaDonna wiped her eyes and laughed. “What? You grow balls while you were with Jack O’Leary?”

  “A man like Jack, a woman needs a couple.”

  Five

  Raynie walked down Decatur Street from the Canal Place Shopping Center, shoulders back, hips rocking and hair swinging. Inside the shopping bag she carried was a slinky calf-length black skirt slit to mid thigh and two halter tops, one a deep red, the other a leopard print, that she’d bought for her new job at Le Tripot. Mr. Legendre had told her the restaurant’s name meant bawdy house in French.

  She turned on St. Louis, heading for the Napoleon House down the street from Le Tripot. She’d have a drink to celebrate her new job then treat herself to dinner at the soul food restaurant around the corner from the rooming house.

  Not yet six o’clock and already there was a line outside Le Tripot. Mr. Legendre had told her she’d have to handle the people who tried to move to the head of the line by claiming they’d made a reservation. He said they could get loud and hostile. Raynie felt up to handling anything, anybody. She could see a younger man in shirt sleeves, a garter around his arm, behind the leather counter checking the reservat
ions list, a couple standing in front of him. He picked up two menus, and Raynie watched until he led the couple out of her line of vision before she crossed the street. She didn’t see the cowboy come out of the side door to the restaurant and follow her into the Napoleon House.

  He was on her heels when she stopped a couple of steps inside the door to let her eyes adjust to the shadowy world of the nineteenth century. All the tables were taken. Cocktail hour rowdiness bounced off the high ceiling and yellowed plaster walls. The best seat in the house was open, though, the chair at the end of the bar where she could sit up against the peeling wall and watch the crowd.

  Raynie put her shopping bag on the chair next to her, ordered a Pimm’s Cup and unzipped the little black purse she had slung diagonally across her chest. The cowboy strolled over, but there was too much noise for Raynie to hear his boot heels on the tile floor. He waited until she became aware of him.

  “Oh,” she said and moved the bag, putting it on the floor in front of her chair, glancing at him as he said, “Thanks—” lots of twang—but all she needed to see was the cowboy hat. Too much like home. She counted a few bills from her purse, zipped it and sat facing the bar.

  The bartender returned with Raynie’s drink, the cowboy ordered a Molson’s then asked her, “What’s that you’re drinkin there?”

  “Pimm’s Cup,” Raynie said without looking at him. She concentrated on getting a grip on the cucumber slice garnish.

  “What’s Pimm’s Cup?” he said managing to get two syllables out of Pimm’s.

  Raynie looked up from her drink. “You’re putting me on, right?”

  “No, ma’am. I never heard of Pimm’s Cup before.”

  “That’s not what I mean,” Raynie said. “That drawl—you sound like a bad movie or something.”