Up ahead Diana spotted the Milton Latter Library, housed in a Neo-Italianate mansion, a gorgeous old pile occupying the entire block between Soniat and Dufossat Streets and one of the city’s two small hills.
And a landmark in her love affair with Rob. How fitting, she always thought, that it was a library where their games had begun.
Chloe’s voice rose even higher. “I was always telling Wicked Stepmom she ought to be more careful about locking the car when she parked it. And she always blew me off. Like, Yadda yadda, Chloe.
“Then one day she had borrowed Dad’s BMW that he loved more than life itself, and she drove it, like just two blocks, to the store, she coulda/shoulda walked her fat butt, and left it unlocked, naturally, in the parking lot.
“So I stole it.”
“Vivien Leigh lived there, in what’s the library now,” a tourist with a tight blond perm said to her red-faced husband, the two of them sitting directly in front of Diana, behind Amber and Chloe, “when she married a rich local lumberman.”
“Actually, it was Marguerite Clark, a star of the silent screen,” said Diana, leaning forward despite her desire for solitude. She couldn’t resist correcting the tourist, the schoolteacher in her, she supposed.
“Oh, really?”
Yes. The house had been built by a department-store magnate, then was bought by elegant Harry Williams, the lumber baron and aviation pioneer who was said to have charm to burn — the charm that won Marguerite, a rival of Mary Pickford. The house was given to the city for a public library by a later owner, in memory of a son who died in World War II.
“It’s worth seeing,” said Diana. “The two front downstairs rooms are gorgeous, with frescoed ceilings imported from France. The large reading room has a Flemish mantel over an onyx fireplace.”
It was the green Louis XIV French parlor that was Diana’s favorite, however, with its curtains and wall panels of cherry-red brocaded damask and a magnificent crystal chandelier.
“Let’s go to the Latter tomorrow afternoon,” Rob had said casually, about a week after they’d discovered themselves to be a sweet fit.
“The library?”
Diana had really meant it when she’d told Rob that, no, she obviously couldn’t resist his charms, but really, truly, they were going to have to be discreet.
“Just pretend that I’m married,” she’d said. “It simply won’t do to have us gossiped about around school. It isn’t appropriate.”
“Inappropriate,” he’d teased. Then he’d lowered his voice to that husky register that made her bone marrow vibrate and commanded, “The library.”
The truth was Diana was so lust-struck at that point, she’d have followed Rob if he’d jumped off the Huey P. Long Bridge.
“There’s something I want to show you,” he’d added. “I’ll meet you in the parlor. Wait for me there.”
At the appointed time Diana had settled herself onto the parlor’s crimson loveseat. Moments later, an older, elegant couple, in their seventies, had taken chairs to one side of Diana’s perch. They began leafing through travel books, planning a trip to France, obviously not their first.
Then another man entered the parlor. For a moment Diana didn’t recognize Rob. He’d donned serious horn-rims and slicked his hair back with a silvery gel. A baggy jacket made him look older — and heavier.
She had to stifle her hoot of surprise and delight. A disguise! Oh, Clever Rob. She’d said discreet and...
But he warned her into silence with a raised finger and a shake of his head.
“Here’s the book you asked for, miss,” he said, as if he were a librarian, handing her a large-format volume.
The older couple looked up briefly, smiled, then bent their heads back to their research.
“Let me show you what I was talking about.” Rob gestured with an open hand. Could he join her on the loveseat?
The book was a collection of exquisite erotica. Beautifully rendered line drawings of the seduction of a young man by a voluptuous older woman.
“Where did you find this?” she’d whispered.
“Shhhh,” he’d cautioned. Library. No talking.
The older couple smiled once more.
Five minutes later found Diana and her younger paramour locked together in the single-occupancy Ladies’ Room, half naked and crazy, crazy, crazy.
“Maybe we’ll come back and see the library tomorrow,” said the permed blond tourist. “Howard wants to go back to the hotel and take a nap before we have dinner.” She paused, then added smugly, “At Antoine’s.”
Of course. Sure, the Oysters Rockefeller were still good, and the pommes de terre soufflés terrific, but Diana could have told the blonde of a hundred better places both high and low, Bayona to Domilise’s Po-Boys. But tourists always wanted to drop Our dinner at Antoine’s into conversation back home.
Once again, the girls’ voices. “Shut up!” said Amber. “You did not steal your dad’s car!”
“Oh, yeah. I’d been scheming for this. I was so ready. I’d nabbed a pair of her panties out of the clothes basket—”
“Yewh!”
“And I left them under the driver’s seat with a ripped condom wrapper. So the cops find the car about five minutes after Dad dials nine-one-one, a Beemer emergency, all ranting. And then, when the cops bring it back, he’s going over his ride, inch by inch, and—”
“Hello! Panties! Condom! But how would he know for sure they were hers? Not the ‘ho of the banger who pinched it?”
“’Cuz she always wore this one kind of black panties, really expensive, and REALLY big—”
Diana laughed. So did Howard, the tourist hubby in front of her.
The wife elbowed him.
Not funny, Howard.
After the Latter, Diana and Rob had fun seeing just how creative (and discreet) they could be.
Let’s Pretend was a good model.
The operating principle was fantasy and role-playing (while hidden in plain sight).
And disguises were an essential part of secrecy, weren’t they?
The weeks leading up to Mardi Gras, with its masks and costumes, had been a particularly interesting time.
But there were parades and dress-up balls of one kind or another in New Orleans practically every day.
Not all of their encounters were production numbers, of course. Many nights Rob came visiting, and they made dinner and then love with no games, no frills.
Oh, maybe just a bit of “Let’s pretend I’m the cable guy.” Rob tapping on the sun-porch door, the front doorbell broken for eons. Diana answering his knock in the black silk dressing gown he loved.
Or she’d remind him, “...that time you had me meet you at the bar in the Maple Leaf, and we pretended that we were strangers.”
“Yeah, and you let someone buy you a drink before I got there, and then we almost came to blows over who you were going home with.”
“I loved that,” she sighed.
She loved him, too.
“I’m crazy in love with him,” cooed Amber.
Passengers up and down the streetcar grinned. Ah, youth.
“He is so much fun. Last weekend we went dancing at the Rock ‘n’ Bowl. He’s a mad dancer, and when we rolled out of there, like one A.M., he said, ‘Wanta go for a drive?’ And the next thing I knew, we were all the way down in Grand Isle. A friend of his has a beach cottage there.”