Three-for-ones! signs advertised. Hurricanes! Drinks to Go! No Cover!
Everything Live! one sex emporium sign bragged, and Cree smiled and thought, Well, hey, that's some relief. Considering the alternative.
When she couldn't ignore her stomach any longer, she picked a restaurant at random. She was led upstairs to an outside balcony, where from her table she had a terrific view down Bourbon Street, a corridor of sagging balconies and thronged pavement, alive with activity and light, that stretched as far as she could see. She ordered a beer and a mixed seafood plate, and watched the trade coming and going at the female impersonator club across the way.
About half the people passing – the more uptight tourists, especially families with kids – tended to walk in the middle of the street, clumped close together with eyes fixed on the pavement, uncomfortable, embarrassed, disapproving. But the other half seemed to catch the sexualized charge of the place. Young teenage girls thrust out their chests and found excuses for lots of movement, as if announcing to their scrawny boyfriends or gawking brothers, I've got those, too, you know! Middle-aged pairs, to-go drinks in hand, paused for deep kisses and daringly intimate caresses. It wasn't Mardi Gras by any means, but she got some idea of the licentious mood Deirdre had mentioned. Even old couples sashayed to the music and bumped hips flirtatiously as they walked.
Cree decided that maybe human beings were okay after all.
She drank beer out of a plastic cup, ate deep-fried oysters and shrimp, a slice of blackened fish, and a cup ofjambalaya. Finishing up with another beer, she felt fatigue come-on as the night air picked up a chill. Still the street grew more crowded, the music louder, the barkers more aggressive.
Cree watched a woman her age beckon to her man as if she wanted to say something over the din of the crowd, and when he bent to hear her Cree clearly saw her tongue slip into his ear. The man leaned into the sensation for a few seconds before they pulled apart, laughing. He swatted her rear, and they continued up the street, hip to hip, arms firm around each other's waists, with obvious plans for later. Walking right next to them, an alarmed-looking husband and wife shepherded their two children quickly along, holding the kids' blond heads against their sides with eyes mostly covered.
Which kind is Cree Black? she wondered. At first, a little of the reserved type, she decided, defenses up; but after not too long, definitely more of the other. Not that she had anyone to share that mood with.
And with that thought she suddenly found herself sliding. Cree Black was sitting up on a balcony, alone, watching the passing parade from above. No plans for later but that solitary hotel bed, probably drifting off to sleep doing some reading on the habits of the dead.
Nine years. And counting. When was she going to get around to turning her full attention to the living? Mom was right. Everybody was right.
It had all turned around on her, the gaiety gone sour. Bourbon Street now struck her as frantic, squalid, false. A city of masks, as Don had said. Desperation masquerading as pleasure. She quickly pushed back her chair and stood up, wanting nothing more than to get the hell out of there. She left a tip, went to the register to pay. The cashier was a handsome guy in his early thirties, dark hair and brown eyes, earring in one ear, T-shirt showing good biceps. He smiled at her and seemed to take his time making change. "Here on business?" he inquired mildly. "Or just for pleasure? Seeing the sights?" An easy glance at Cree's face to let her know he was fishing, in a low-key way.
"Business," Cree told him curtly. "A business trip."
7
The business was either something scary happening in someone's head or something scary happening in an old house in the Garden District. Before going to her appointment with Lila Warren the next morning, just to get an idea of what she was up against, Cree drove over to take her first look at Beauforte House.
Following her city map, she headed out Magazine Street, through downtown and then through a wilderness of highway overpasses and interchanges. That gave way to a dilapidated but charming older district, and then as she continued west the style and feel of the neighborhoods began to change dramatically. The buildings grew in size and improved in appearance; greenery intruded and diversified. By the time she crossed Jackson, the houses had become huge and much more like Cree's image of classic Deep South architecture.
From her reading, Cree knew that the Garden District grew from an invasion of Americans who began moving to the city after the United States purchased the Louisiana Territory in 1803. Before the railroad era, the Mississippi was the artery of trade and transport, New Orleans the center of economic activity, for the whole middle of the continent. The river and lush agricultural lands had been good to the original French and Spanish settlers, allowing them to convert a swampy backwater into a thriving financial and cultural center ruled by a wealthy, cosmopolitan Creole aristocracy. In the decades following the purchase, upriver sugar and cotton and timber growers and American shippers, merchants, and entrepreneurs arrived in increasing numbers to get a piece of the action.
But finding little space or welcome in the Creole-dominated Vieux Carre, they settled mainly in their own town to the west. Coming from a different culture and determined to let the natives know it, they built lavish houses that turned the traditional local architecture inside out. Where the typical mansion in the old town was deep and narrow, presenting a flat facade to the street but wrapping around a gardenlike interior courtyard, the new houses were centered in lush lawns and gardens, spreading into their lots with wings and galleries. Many were built in variations of the Greek Revival style, with thick white columns in front, or, later, the Italian-influenced style with slender pillars, more elaborate decoration, and rounded window tops.
Some were the size of small mountains, Cree realized as she cruised Second Street. Matching the houses, massive live oaks spread their branches in gnarled aerial tangles. Date palms rose tall above, and flowering trees and shrubs lined the fences that bounded each lot. Most of the houses were splendidly restored and maintained, and the cars on the streets and in the driveways were Porsches and Mercedeses: The Beaufortes weren't the only people with money around here. So this was what Jack Warren aspired to.
Beauforte House was one of the big ones. Cree approached it with a tingle of anxiety, but in fact it was a pleasant-looking place, yellow with white trim, graciously proportioned, a modified plantation-style house with a central block and asymmetrical wings on either side at the rear. Its lot was bigger than most of the neighboring yards, more overgrown with green, surrounded by a head-high wrought-iron fence. Next to the front gate, a darkened bronze plaque labeled the property a national historic site. When Cree rolled down her window to look it over, she was met with a gush of humid, blossom-smelling air. Nine-thirty A.M., and it was already getting hot.
Yes, a nice-looking place. True, looks could be deceiving, but it was easy to understand why Lila still wanted to live there, despite what she'd experienced. The house had… what? Texture, Cree decided. Presence, weight, depth. It looked securely anchored in its place, belonging like an old tree or something geological. It was real – unlike the plasticized, minor-league opulence of the house that Lila and Jack now called home. It all tied in with Lila's tiny, self-diminishing watercolors and the compressed yearning for more, for an outward-blooming life, that Cree felt in her. Whatever else Lila was coping with, part of her spirit was straining against the containment imposed by her Tupperware-tight world.