Oddly enough, though, once she got up there she started writing a new book called Head Above Water, an autobiographical novel about her experiences during the hurricane and the weeks thereafter. “Once I started it, I couldn’t stop writing it,” she’d confided to me when she returned to the city, “It was like it took on a life of its own.” I’d tried reading it, but it was too painful for me. Everything the city had been through-and was still going through-was still too fresh, raw and painful for me to relive it all through Paige’s writing. She was damned good-too good. She’d rewritten and revised it several times, and now it was in the hands of several high-powered literary agents in New York, all of whom were interested in it. It had become a kind of mantra for her: When the book sells for a million dollars, I am telling Coralie where she can put her dress code and I am walking out the door.
She rolled her eyes. “Get this-she wants me to try to be more ‘warm and fuzzy’ in my pieces. Warm and fucking fuzzy!”
“What did you say?” Much as I hated to admit it, I found the endless power struggle between the two women highly amusing.
“I told her I worked for a newspaper the last time I checked, not fucking Hallmark.” She sighed. “Get this-she put out a jar. Every time someone uses bad language”-she made air quotes around the words-“you have to put a quarter in the jar, and she’s going to use the money to go toward the office Christmas party.” She gave me an evil smile. “I got up, put a twenty in there, and gave her the finger.”
“She’s going to fire you one of these days.”
“I can only hope.”
We entered the dimly lit restaurant and took a table in a quiet corner. It wasn’t crowded, and our waitress looked somewhat tired as she took our drink orders. She looked as if she hadn’t slept in days, and most likely, had been working double shifts throughout Carnival. We went ahead and ordered our burgers as well. After the waitress moved away from us, Paige gave me a wicked glance. “Thanks for having dinner with me.” She sighed. “After the day I’ve had, I needed to be around someone with a brain.”
I couldn’t resist. “Good thing Ryan’s with the kids, then-since he obviously doesn’t have one.”
“Because someone with a brain obviously wouldn’t date me. Right. I get it.” She rolled her eyes. “When do you leave for Texas? That’s coming up, isn’t it?” The waitress placed our iced teas in front of us and scooted away.
“Not for a few more weeks.” I hesitated and bit my lip. I always talked about my cases with Paige-and she often used her resources at the paper to get information to help me out.
“That bitch Coralie started harping on me getting an interview with Frillian again,” Paige didn’t seem to notice my hesitation, wrapped up as she was in her own anger. She took a sip of her tea, grimaced and added a pack of artificial sweetener to it. “Like it’s that goddamned easy, like I haven’t tried everything I can think of! She’s so stupid, I guess she probably thinks I can just drop by their place sometime and they’d be thrilled to see me.” She sighed. “I swear to God, she must have gotten her journalism degree online or from a mail order catalogue. If I’d only known she was going to turn into such a power hungry bitch, I’d have taken the damned job myself when they offered it to me.”
Paige had often theorized that part of the reason Coralie seemed to pick her out for ‘special’ treatment was because management had offered her the job first. Paige had turned it down. She smacked her forehead. “Stupid, stupid, stupid. But then no one had the slightest idea she’d turn into such a fucking Nazi.”
This was just great. I cursed the goddamned confidentiality agreement-even though I knew I could trust her. She’d be furious when she found out I was working for them and didn’t tell her. I made a mental note to ask them the next time I saw them to give her the interview. The worst thing they could do was say no, right? And I owed Paige many favors. “I don’t see what the big deal is.” I said. I had wondered how I could get her to talk to me about Frillian without telling her I was working for them. What a stroke of luck that bitch Coralie had opened the lines of communication for me. “I mean, yeah, I get it, they’re movie stars, but so what. Nobody even talks about them any more,, you know? They’re just part of the city now.”
“Try telling that to that bitch Coralie,” Paige groused, squeezing her lemon into the tall glass of tea. “And besides, you know damned well that celebrities are about the only thing people want to hear about on the news anymore. Every time Britney Spears farts, it makes CNN Headline News. If you ask me, it’s all a big government-controlled conspiracy. Who cares if we’re in a stupid war or the economy is going into the toilet, as long as we know that Paris Hilton flashed her cooch getting out of her Ferrari? Or that some other useless waste of oxygen they’ve decided we should care about went into rehab again, or is having a baby, or getting a divorce? So once again, she’s got a wild hair about an exclusive interview, and of course I’m the one stuck trying to get the damned story. If I ever see Joe again, I’m going to kill him for retiring and sticking me with that bitch.”
“It was rather inconsiderate of him.”
“To say the least.” She sighed again. “I called Sandy Carter today, again, and she promised to see what she could do.”
“Sandy Carter?”
“Oh for God’s sake, Chanse. Do you ever listen to anything I say to you?” She gave me a look. “Sandy Carter is the one working with Freddy Bliss on Operation Rebuild-you know, the one who does all the work while he runs around raising money and getting publicity. You’ve met her, you big idiot.”
“Oh, yes.” I’d met Sandy Carter the first time before the storm, when she’d been running for an at-large seat on the city council. Her campaign had been all about cleaning up the corruption at city hall-which meant her campaign was doomed to failure from the beginning. A lot of snide remarks had circulated in the media back in the fall of 2005 about corruption in Louisiana, about how the federal government shouldn’t give us money because our politicians would just steal it all. Of course, in the years since, the vast majority of the politicians who’d spread that story had all been caught in some kind of ethics or corruption scandal-because of course, there was NO corruption in any other state or the federal government. The only difference between New Orleans politics and that of the rest of the country is that we expect our politicians to be corrupt. We may be jaded, but I think it’s better than being naïve.
And I’d been right with Sandy Carter-she’d been defeated resoundingly, since no one trusts a politician who claims not to be corrupt. I’d liked her when I met her, and had voted for her. She was a short woman with short hair she’d let go white and a booming laugh that filled a room. She was full of energy, and once she’d married off her youngest daughter, she’d thrown herself into making changes in the city.
She was always raising money for this group or that group, talked frankly about everything, and had no qualms about calling, for example, the esteemed U.S. Senator from Metairie a ‘complete jerk and moron not fit to work as a trash collector’ in an op-ed piece when Mr. Family Values’s long-term patronage of a prostitute was exposed.
After the flood, she’d helped organize a group of women to campaign for levee board reform; to hold the Army Corps of Engineers accountable for the city’s destruction; and had testified in front of Congress in one of the interminable and endless hearings on what had happened. I’d met her a few times since then-my landlady and employer, Barbara Castlemaine, was one of her dearest friends-and I liked her more each time.