That Old Devil Sin

by W E DeVore

“Alright! So, I was nervous and there you were, right there, so fucking close, and so damned beautiful. And you smelled so good. And I wanted you so bad. And my stupid sisters had been on my case all night about how I shouldn’t be so serious all the time and what’s the harm in a little casual sex every now and then. Once we started doing whatever it is we’ve been doing, I couldn’t ever get you to stick around after. You always made some excuse and left just as quick as you could. I figured you just wanted to fuck and I’d have to bide my time until I could either get you out of my system or convince you to settle down.”

  Q smirked. Clearly her lecture the previous night had gotten under his skin, but she still wasn’t buying what he was selling. “I’ve seen you with women, Ben. Lots of women.”

  He looked aggravated. “I have four sisters, two younger, two older, and one more if you count Danielle’s girlfriend, which I do. I was the only male in my family until my nephew was born. My cousins are all women, and they all hang all over me. Constantly. I can almost guarantee that I’m related to any woman you’ve seen me with.”

  “The girl at that party, the night we met?” Q crinkled up her nose and glared over a pair of imaginary glasses, trying to do her best impersonation of her father grilling a witness.

  “Hey, not fair. You got me. Try again,” Ben said, annoyed.

  “How about the woman you brought to my gig during Jazz Fest?” She pressed harder.

  “One of my little sisters. You’d like her. She’s on me about you almost daily.” A fact that was evidently a bone of contention between him and his younger sibling.

  Q tried to think of all the times she’d seen him hugging or kissing a woman and realized that all contact was platonic; intimate, but strictly plutonic. “And the women at the bar the night we got together?”

  “My older sister, Danielle and her girlfriend, Emmy.” He sat back, enjoying his advantage. She wracked her brain for a less innocent memory.

  “Art’s for Art’s Sake. What about the Playboy twins you were with on Magazine? They were all over you,” she said, feeling that victory was within her grasp.

  “The ‘Playboy twins’? Oh, you mean the stacked, gorgeous blondes with legs for miles? Is that who you mean?” Ben sneered from ear to ear.

  She instantly regretted asking the question, as a surge of jealousy pooled in her stomach. She self-consciously looked down at her own small breasts.

  “Audrey and Annabelle are my cousins. My first cousins. I took them out so they could drink wine and enjoy themselves without being harassed by every man in the lower Garden District. When I saw you, I told them you weren’t talking to me. Remember the part about you ignoring me the entire month of October? And they cooked up that stupid scheme to make you jealous. They trouble, them two.”

  He paused, searching her face for some sign that she believed him. “Look, I get that you’re suspicious. If I was female and looked like you and hung around Charlie Bourdel, I’d be suspicious too. Believe me, I’ve been lectured numerous times on all the ways and reasons why you have a right to be suspicious.”

  “But women throw themselves at you. I’ve seen it. Hell, half the city’s seen some poor woman flinging herself at you,” Q insisted, already knowing she was fighting a losing battle.

  “It doesn’t mean I’m catching any of them! For Christ’s sake, will you just listen? I grew up surrounded by women. I’m comfortable around them.”

  “It doesn’t hurt that you’re gorgeous,” she jeered.

  He ignored her. “But it doesn’t mean I’m fucking anything in a skirt. Good god, do you know what my sisters, let alone my Ma, would do to me if I really was a womanizer?” Ben took a deep breath and a long drink of his wine. “I had a bad break-up a long time ago and there’s been no one really since then. My sisters like to fix me up because they worry about me being alone and working too much and sometimes it works out and I’ll date a woman for a few months, but mostly it doesn’t, and mostly since I met you at that damn party two years ago. And you still don’t believe me.”

  Ben suddenly seemed like a frustrated little boy, very vulnerable and very young. She imagined his sisters ganging up on him and his overtly masculine swagger as a reaction to it.

  He looked down and spoke quietly, “I just want to know you, Q. I want to see you in the daytime. That’s all.”

  She thought about her behavior for the last few months and couldn’t think of a single time when she had reached out to Ben that he wasn’t there. On the flip side, she remembered constantly keeping her distance. Leaving when he’d wanted her to stay. Not showing up when he’d suggested that she come to meet him somewhere.

  Clean slate, Clementine. Ten years is long enough.

  Q set her wine glass down on the floor. “Alright, then.”

  She stood up and slowly unwound Ben’s borrowed belt from around her waist and let it fall to the floor.

  “That’s not what I meant, Q.”

  She didn’t respond as she slowly unbuttoned the large men’s dress shirt Ben had given her to wear. She let it fall off her shoulders and onto the floor. She walked to him and cupped his face in her hands, leaning down to kiss him, exploring his mouth with her tongue.

  Ben’s hands slid beneath her underwear, caressing her hips as he removed the last bit of clothing that stood between his hands and her flesh. When Q moved to straddle his lap, he abruptly jerked his head to the side and gently pushed her away.

  “I want more than sex, Q. Don’t you get that?”

  She reached out her hand to turn his face back towards her. Looking intently into his eyes, she whispered, “This isn’t sex, Ben.”

  Reaching for his reluctant hands, she silently instructed him to stand up. Q lifted his shirt and kissed the face of the angel on his chest, slowly unbuckling his belt. Ben pulled off his shirt and looked down at her. She knelt down to take his growing erection into her mouth and began to suck. He inhaled quickly, startled, and moaned struggling to maintain control. Still kneeling, she looked up at him. His amber eyes met hers as his fingers caressed her jaw. He fell to his knees and kissed her fully on the mouth.

  Q whispered, “I want to show you something.”

  She stood up, taking his hand, to guide him to the bathroom. The afternoon light poured through the stained-glass windows, flooding the bathroom with color.

  She began to fill the deep claw foot tub before leading Ben into the water. She settled comfortably between his legs and rested her head on his chest. He turned her face up to his and kissed her slowly and gently, then slid his hand between her legs. She gasped. He began moving his middle finger in slow circles, never losing contact. The intensity made Q arch her torso to try to escape. Ben’s other hand wrapped around her, clasping her body to his.

  She cried out. Her sweat merged with the condensation in the air. Cool drops of water ran down her breasts. She moaned into his kiss as he pulled her to him. Ben groaned before turning her to face him. She reached down into the water to guide him inside her. Her orgasm came crashing down almost immediately. Staring at each other, Q saw him for the first time. She wrapped her arms around his neck and he held her tightly to him. With an almost imperceptible shudder, she felt his warmth inside her.

  Wordlessly, she slipped down and nestled into his embrace, listening to her heart calming. They lay silently in the bath, watching the afternoon light shift through the colored windowpanes. Blue, then purple, then red. Listening to the wind blowing through the chimes in the branches outside.

  ~~~

  One long bath and two glasses of wine later, Q and Ben lay in her bed staring up at the ceiling fan and enjoying the cool air. The distant sound of traffic on the overpass mixed with the cicadas and the chimes in the courtyard below. She traced her fingers over his tattoo.

  “Did it hurt?” she asked.

  “Of course it hurt, what do you think?” Ben pulled her on top of him, trying to kiss her.

  She pulled her head back and asked, “What are their names?”

 
“Who?” he asked, lazily craning his neck, trying to reach her mouth with his.

  She put her chin in her hands on his chest. “Your sisters.”

  Ben idly stroked her back. The last remnants of the sunny spring afternoon were streaming in through the windows. “There’s Nita, she’s the oldest. Divorced. She’s got a son, Benjamin James Bordelon III.”

  “You a junior?” she asked, teasing him.

  “Little Ben, at your service, ma’am,” he replied with a salute.

  Q stroked the length of his long torso and gave his cock a subtle squeeze. “Baby, there is absolutely nothing little about you.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” he said, grinning. “Then there’s Danny, she’s a lesbian. She’s been with her girlfriend, Emmy, for going on twelve years, maybe? Yvie is next. You’d like her, she’s bossy, like you.”

  “Hey, I’m not bossy. I have excellent executive management skills,” Q corrected.

  Ignoring her, Ben finished, “And finally, there’s Gracie, the baby.” He put his hands behind his head. “You still think I have a harem?”

  She shook her head and kissed him, before rolling over on her back. “I’m starved, mister. You still taking me out to dinner?”

  He turned on his side to look at her. “Any place you like.” He glanced at his watch. “Got to be someplace that doesn’t need reservations, though.”

  Ben lay back with his head resting on his hands as he watched her get out of bed and walk over to the antique wardrobe that served as her closet. She pulled on a pair of slacks and a light blue blouse before stepping into a pair of heels. Flipping on the lamp next to the bed, she began to put on some makeup and fix her hair. Ben lay quietly and watched her put on mascara and lipstick from the bed.

  “You have somewhere in mind?” he asked.

  “The Jockey Club. I’m dying for some turtle soup. Come on, get dressed.” She crossed the room and sat down at the piano while Ben retrieved his clothes from the window seat. She played quietly and hummed along until she felt him behind her, kissing the back of her neck.

  “Turtle soup and Sazeracs sounds just about perfect.” He pulled her up off the piano bench and slapped her rear end. “Come on, girl. I’m starving and it’s all your fault.”

  On the way out, Q paused by the door at the top of the landing.

  “Sorry, just let me just check to see if my neighbor’s home, I’ve got to ask him something,” she explained. When no one answered, she started down the stairs.

  Ben took her hand. “What was that all about?”

  “Nothing. He’s just late with his rent again. He’s the one my landlord was bugging me about it earlier. It’s a long story.”

  She quickly dropped the subject, not wanting to explain that this particular neighbor was also her ticket into The Athenian to settle things with Urian Galanos.

  “You using your ‘executive management skills’ for rent enforcement on the side?” he teased as they left her building. Q silently flipped him off and he opened the passenger side door to help her into his car.

  Five minutes later, they pulled up in front of the Jockey Club. Situated behind the Fair Grounds, the Jockey Club had been a hidden destination for mid-city locals since 1941. Crowded tables covered with white linen tablecloths and the mahogany bar added to its former big band jazz club appeal. Even though its bustling business warranted it, the Jockey Club refused to take reservations. First come, first serve; the rest could wait in the always-crowded bar and drink a Sazerac.

  The maître d’ told them it would be a while, so they found their way to an empty pair of seats at the bar. Jake the bartender was telling the couple next to them his legendary history of the Sazerac cocktail as he expertly mixed two of the same. Jake was the stuff that New Orleans drinking myths were made of. Short, bald, stocky, and at least ten years past the age of retirement, he’d been tending bar at the Jockey Club for over four decades and had learned how to mix cocktails from his predecessor, who had poured the first drink ever served behind that same bar.

  Jake was already well into his Sazerac shtick, pouring it on thick for the pair of captivated tourists he had in front of him. “…. You see, not all mixed drinks are cocktails. A cocktail was originally any drink that had bitters in it.”

  Jake picked up two sugar cubes and dropped them into a tall, glass martini shaker. He grabbed the bottle of Peychaud’s Bitters and held it up.

  “So really, there are only two cocktails left: An Old Fashioned and a Sazerac.”

  He unscrewed the top on the small bottle of bitters, and deftly shook out four large, red drops onto each of the sugar cubes. They instantly began to melt into a bloody pool at the bottle of the shaker.

  “Now, Mr. Pechaud was this Haitian fellow who found himself on the wrong side of the revolt down there, so he fled to New Orleans and opened up his little pharmacy down in the Quarters. Which was where he started making his medicinal bitters.” Jake poured a little water into the shaker and began muddling the mixture.

  “The original Sazerac was made with Bitters, Absinthe, and Sazerac Brandy. Unfortunately, Absinthe had this nasty little side effect of being a highly addictive, stomach rotting hallucinogen, so it became illegal.” He filled up the shaker with ice, poured in a large jigger of rye, closed the cap, and shook the mixture.

  “But people liked the taste of Absinthe, so some clever fellow made another liquor out of wormwood - only not so addictive, hallucinogenic and stomach rotting - and named it Herb-Saint.” Jake set down the shaker and held up the big green bottle of Herb-Saint. “Herb-Saint is actually an anagram for Absinthe…see?”

  Q looked at the faces of the couple next to them. They were enthralled in spite of themselves. Ben and Q grinned at each other. Jake had that effect on people.

  He poured a splash of Herb-Saint into each glass and slowly swirled the golden liquid around to coat the inside. He poured out the contents of the shaker through the strainer and into the glasses.

  “Anyway, somewhere along the line, Sazerac brandy got substituted for Rye Whiskey, most likely during prohibition, and what we now know and love as the Sazerac cocktail was born.” With a flourish, Jake twisted a strip of lemon rind into each glass and handed them to the couple with an expectant look.

  The man next to Ben said, “I really don’t like whiskey.”

  Jake put his hands on his hips, stubborn. “Good thing I didn’t hand you a glass of whiskey then. That, sir, is a Sazerac cocktail.” He let out an emphysemic chuckle and turned to Q and Ben. “Hey there, sweet Clementine! What can I get y’all?”

  Q held up two fingers. “Two of the same please, Jake.”

  Jake started mixing two more Sazeracs. “Haven’t seen you for a while, baby girl.”

  “Daddy retired and moved to the Caymans,” she explained.

  “Good for him. Can’t think of anyone who deserves it more,” Jake said, passing two glasses over to Ben and Q. He reached for her hand and planted a fatherly kiss on her palm. “It’s good to see you, Clementine. Don’t be such a stranger.”

  Someone caught his eye at the end of the bar. “Back to the salt mines. Maybe I oughta retire, too. Come see your old Uncle Jake more often.” He smiled sweetly at Q before turning to Ben and giving him a quick appraisal. “You better be good to my girl, you hear?”

  Ben nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  “Thanks, Jake.” Q winked at the rotund, old man as he waddled to the other end of the bar. She raised her glass to Ben. “L’Chaim.”

  Ben took a long sip of his drink. “You come here a lot.”

  She was about to explain that The Jockey Club was the only destination for her and her father’s twenty-nine years of weekly dinner dates until he had finally retired and moved to the Caribbean, when a flamboyant “Oh my darlin’ Clementine!” was sung from somewhere inside the crush of people that surrounded them. She instantly located the source.

  Niko Perakis excelled at standing out in a crowd. Tonight, he was wearing white from head to toe. White button-
down shirt, white skintight jeans, and a white faux crocodile belt that matched his shoes. His black curls were, as usual, perfectly tussled, and tucked under a white fedora. A single peacock feather stood in the hatband. He sauntered through the crowd like Moses parting the Red Sea and gave her a hug, kissing her fully on the mouth.

  “Your rent’s late again, Niko.” Q leaned back against the bar.

  “Yeah, yeah. I’ll get it to John tomorrow. Catering gigs suck right now.”

  “Really. You can’t get a job as a cater-waiter during Carnival season. Come off it,” she retorted, making it clear that she didn't believe him.

  He ignored her and dramatically scrutinized her head. “Girl, what in the hell did you do to your hair?”

  “Time for a change,” she said, dropping the subject of rent for the moment, knowing that her sudden change of hairstyle would occupy Niko’s attention for at least the next ten seconds.

  She had cut off her long, dark hair a couple of weeks earlier after a few too many martinis at home obsessing over Ben. It had started out with bangs and ended up a spikey pixie cut, but she liked it. Charlie had loved it, thinking it made Bourdello a real punk band. Q hadn’t had the heart to tell him otherwise.

  Niko wrapped his arm around Q’s waist, giving Ben an approving eye before he asked, “Who’s this gorgeous drink of water?”

  “This is my, umm…” Q paused, realizing that she didn’t know whether Ben was her, umm, anything. “This is Ben Bordelon. Ben meet Niko Perakis, Niko meet Ben Bordelon.”

  Ben held his hand out. “Nice to meet you, Niko.”

  Niko shook Ben’s hand and turned to Q, stage whispering, “Wait, Big, Beautiful Ben? With the angel?”

  She turned bright red.

  Niko said to Ben, “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you. I’ve heard so many naughty things about you.”

  It was Ben’s turn to blush. Q shook her head.

  Good ol’ Niko, ever discrete.

  “Stay right there, lovers, I’m going to get a drink and then I want to hear all about how Angel Man here is making an honest woman out of you.”

  Niko squeezed between Q and the heavily perfumed woman beside her to reach the bar and Jake’s attention.