Val pouted. "I like my life the way it is."
"Shut up!" Melinda roared. It was the first time she had turned on her own power. Until then, Val had thought of her as what she looked like, a middle-aged East Coast matron who might have just come from a mah-jongg game. Now she looked like a dragon, a fierce, bloodthirsty beast. "You can't be serious! Living in a dump of an apartment, with thirdhand furniture and thrift-shop clothes? At least you should learn your capabilities before you throw them away. Take responsibility for yourself! Live, don't just exist. If I give you no other gift, as the mother of my grandchild, I will give you that. You don't have to like me, but you should respect me. I am what you could become."
Val had regained her aplomb. "And who says I want to be that pathetic?"
Melinda's eyes narrowed, but she seemed pleased. "You are so young," she said. She patted Val on the cheek. Val flinched backward. "I want you to think it over. I'll be in town. Good-bye, dear. I'll call you."
She seemed to vanish among the ancient wooden shelves. Val rushed out of the storeroom, expecting to see chaos in the bar, but it was clean. The stoic-faced men in suits had cleared up the room while she and Melinda had been in the back. Not a shard of glass or a drop of liquor was on the floor. They had reopened the shutters. Even the broken chairs had been repaired. All that was left was to turn the CLOSED sign back to OPEN.
That woman! That woman was going to haunt her the rest of her life! Val looked longingly at the whisky behind the counter.
No.
As much as she hated to admit it, she found sense in some of what Melinda said. She did need to take a harder look at where she would be a year from then, or five, or ten. Griffen was working for the future; why shouldn't she?
And what was that information about female dragons that she claimed he was concealing from her?
Forty
Griffen fingered his tie. He was getting used to formal attire. In fact, he looked good in it, something that he had resisted knowing. It was just so much trouble! How women went through all of the fussing and froufrouing to get ready for a date, he didn't know. He knew his gender was not innocent of having expectations about women that were difficult to meet naturally. Long, dark eyelashes, for example. Rosy cheeks and lips. A smooth, curved figure. Men, as Val had remarked with some asperity, could show up in anything and, as long as it was clean and in good repair, would be accepted at any event up to white tie. He had seldom had to rise to the occasion. He had failed to appreciate how much the women he had dated did to look nice for him.
He sat in the middle of the rear seat of the taxi, between Fox Lisa and Mai. Both of them looked spectacular. Mai, in the red silk dress and lipstick to match, dripping with expensive jewelry, sat serenely on his right. Tourists staggering down Royal with plastic cups in their hands stared through the window at her. She waved to them with her fingers together as Griffen had seen the Queen of England do. The gesture didn't seem at all out of place. On his left, Fox Lisa, in electric blue, had become a queen herself. She held her head high. Her red hair had been swept up into a chignon with a peacock-feather eye nestled against it. Griffen realized he hadn't noticed how long and slender her neck was. He felt like leaning over to kiss it. Her many tattoos peeked out from the brief, tight black dress like jewelry. He had never noticed that the twining snakes on her wrists resembled 1920s enameled Cleopatra bracelets.
The streets were more crowded than he had ever seen them. He understood why many of his friends who had lived in the French Quarter longer than he had hid out during the two weeks before Mardi Gras, and why "tourist" was a dirty word though the persons were a necessary evil. It was like one long, very intense spring break, in a much smaller area than Miami Beach. They came to drink and carouse. They came to listen to the music. They came to bare their breasts for strings of beads. They came to scream at the parades and join in dancing on the street once the last band had passed by. Yet there was an entire stratum of the carnival that they never touched, and many of them never knew existed. Griffen looked back on what he had learned in the last couple of months, and marveled. The citywide party that seemed so obvious was multilayered, intricate, took months, if not years of planning, and accommodated hundreds of thousands of celebrants of every kind. He watched the staggering men with pity, knowing that he could well have been one of them as recently as the year before.
They pulled up into the taxi queue in front of the hotel. "Now, remember," Doreen said, putting her elbow on the seatback, "use the glass doors to the ballroom only. The police won't let you in again if you use the main hotel doors. There was a big fuss a few years ago. One of the superkrewe kings got locked out of his own ball because he got arrested for starting a fight with the cops. Don't make me come and get you from the lockup."
"Thanks," Griffen said, handing her the fare plus a large tip. He had taken the winnings from his unexpected game with Peter Sing and paid off his employees, and had been eking out his own expenses with the residue. At least he had enough for taxi fare home, as well.
Fox Lisa slid out on her own and waited on the curb. Griffen alighted and went around to help Mai out of the other door. With both ladies on his arms, he sauntered inside to join the crowd already assembling in the anteroom.
Molly Harting, the wife of the ball committee chairman, waited at a table by the door of the ballroom. She examined their invitations and checked off their names on a list. An ornate display featuring a gold dragon wearing a domino mask and dripping with beads loomed over little tent cards that stood in rows on the table. Each had a picture of the same gold dragon curled around the calligraphed name of a guest.
"That's your table number," Molly said, handing Griffen his card. Mai and Fox Lisa found their own. "Of course, all of you are at the head table. Enjoy."
"Thanks," Griffen said, gallantly. "May I reserve a dance with you?"
She giggled with pleasure. "Your dance card is likely to fill up before I can write my name, Your Majesty. Thanks anyhow. See you inside. Oh!" She reached behind the figure of the dragon and brought out three masks. "Put these on, and don't take them off until your name is called."
"Griffen!" Val called.
Griffen turned to look for her in the crowd. The women in evening gowns and coiffed hair were all strangers. One of them broke away from the crowd and came over to Griffen. The most attractive was a statuesque blonde in blue silk and a white lace shawl over her bare shoulders whose hair had been sculpted into Grecian coils. She had amazingly long eyelashes and very pretty blue eyes. Griffen was speculating on who she might be, when she came over and hit him in the arm with her fist.
"You look great, Big Brother!" she exclaimed.
"Val?" Griffen gulped. He had been checking out his own sister! He hoped no one else had noticed. "Wow, you look absolutely amazing."
Val primped her hair with a careful palm. "What do you think of the updo?" she asked. "And they did my makeup at the salon."
"It makes you totally unrecognizable," Mai said. "I mean that in a good way." Val wrinkled her nose at Mai, who made a face back.
"I love your wrap," Fox Lisa said, fingering the edge of the shawl.
"Isn't it lovely? It's from Gris-gris," Val said, pulling her date forward.
"My aunt sent it," Gris-gris said. "Val and Ms. Mai impressed her plenty."
Val and Mai exchanged glances and grins.
Griffen had to do another double take. The slender man, who had never worn anything fancier than a polo shirt around Griffen, had on a Brooks Brothers tuxedo that framed wider shoulders and a narrower waist than Griffen ever would have suspected him of having. The white shirt gleamed in the muted lighting of the anteroom, and his silk bow tie was more perfectly knotted than Griffen's. Griffen would not have known him at all except that he was escorting Val.