Some sixth sense made him bend to see who was watching him from the back seat of the cab.
“Mamma, mamma!” he called and kissed the air between us. “You wanna go to a party?” He came over to the cab and motioned for me to roll the window all the way down. I slammed the lock down on the door and sat back, clutching my sensible black purse.
“C’mon, mamma!” He poked his fingers through the small opening of the window. “I be good to you!” The golden hair was honey from peroxide but the voice was honey from the comb. The light changed and he snatched his fingers away just in time.
“I’ll be waiting!” he shouted after me. I didn’t look back.
“What was all that about?” I asked the cab driver.
“Just a wild boy. Lotta wild boys in the Quarter, ma’am.” We pulled up next to the hotel and he smiled over his shoulder at me, his teeth just a few shades lighter than his coffee<olored skin. “Any time you want to find a wild boy for yourself, this is where you look.” It came out more like dis is wheahyou look. “You got a nice company sends you to the Quarter for doin’ business.”
I smiled back, overtipped him, and escaped into the hotel.
It wasn’t even a consideration, that first night. Wake-up call for six-thirty, just as I’d intended, to leave time for showering and breakfast, like the good wife and mother and executive I’d always been.
Beignets for breakfast. Carl had told me I must have beignets for breakfast if I were going to be New Orleans. He’d bought some beignet mix and tried to make some for me the week before I’d left. They’d come out too thick and heavy and only the kids had been able to eat them, liberally dusted with powdered sugar. If I found a good place for beignets, I would try to bring some home, I’d decided, for my lovely, tolerant, patient husband, who was now probably making thick, heavy pancakes for the boys. Nice of him to sacrifice some of his vacation time to be home with the boys while Mommy was out of town. Mommy had never gone out of town on business before. Daddy had, of course; several times. At those times, Mommy had never been able to take any time away from the office, though, so she could be with the boys while Daddy was out of town. Too much work to do; if you want to keep those sensible black pumps on the fast track, you can’t be putting your family before the work. Lots of women lose out that way, you know, Martha?
I knew.
No familiar faces in the restaurant, but I wasn’t looking for any. I moved my tray along the line, took a beignet and poured myself some of the famous Louisiana chicory coffee before I found a small table under a ceiling fan. No air-conditioning and it was already up in the eighties. I made a concession and took off my jacket. After a bite of the beignet, I made another and unbuttoned the top two buttons of my blouse. The pantyhose already felt sticky and uncomfortable. I had a perverse urge to slip off to the ladies’ room and take them off. Would anyone notice or care? That would leave me with nothing under the half-slip. Would anyone guess? There goes a lady executive with no pants on. In the heat, it was not unthinkable. No underwear at all was not unthinkable. Everything was binding. A woman in a gauzy caftan breezed past my table, glancing down at me with careless interest. Another out-of-towner, yes. You can tell – we’re the only ones not dressed for the weather.
“All right to sit here, ma’am?”
I looked up. He was holding a tray with one hand, already straddling the chair across from me, only waiting my permission to sink down and join me. Dark, curly hair, just a bit too long, darker eyes, smooth skin the color of over-creamed coffee. Tank top over jeans. He eased himself down and smiled. I must have said yes.
“All the other tables’re occupied or ain’t been bussed, ma’am. Hope you don’t mind, you a stranger here and all.” The smile was as slow and honeyed as the voice. They all talked in honey tones here. “Eatin’ you one of our nice beignets, I see. First breakfast in the Quarter, am I right?”
I used a knife and fork on the beignet. “I’m here on business.”
“You have a very striking face.”
I risked a glance up at him. “You’re very kind.” Thirty-five and up is striking, if the world is feeling kind.
“When your business is done, shall I see you in the Quarter?”
“I doubt it. My days are very long.” I finished the beignet quickly, gulped the coffee. He caught my arm as I got up. It was a jolt of heat, like being touched with an electric wand.
“I have a husband and three children!” Itwas the only thing I could think to say.
“You don’t want to forget your jacket.”
It hung limply on the back of my chair. I wanted to forget it badly, to have an excuse to go through the day of meetings and seminars in shirtsleeves. I put the tray down and slipped the jacket on. “Thank you.”
“Name is Andre, ma’am.” The dark eyes twinkled. “My heart will surely break if I don’t see you tonight in the Quarter.”
“Don’t be silly.”
“It’s too hot to be silly, ma’am.”
“Yes. It is,” I said stiffly. I looked for a place to take the tray.
“They take it away for you. You can just leave it here. Or you can stay and have another cup of coffee and talk to a lonely soul.” One finger plucked at the low scoop of the tank top. “I’d like that.”
“A cab driver warned me about wild boys,” I said, holding my purse carefully to my side.
“I doubt it. He may have told you but he didn’t warn you. And I ain’t a boy, ma’am.”
Sweat gathered in the hollow between my collarbones and spilled downward. He seemed to be watching the trickle disappear down into my blouse. Under the aroma of baking breads and pastries and coffee, I caught a scent of something else.
“Boys stand around on street corners, they shout rude remarks, they don’t know what a woman is.”
“That’s enough,” I snapped. “I don’t know why you picked me out for your morning’s amusement. Maybe because I’m from out of town. You wild boys get a kick out of annoying the tourists, is that it? If I see you again, I’ll call a cop.” I stalked out and pushed myself through the humidity to hail a cab. By the time I reached the Hyatt, I might as well not have showered.
“I’m skipping out on this afternoon’s session,” the woman whispered to me. Her badge said she was Frieda Fellowes, of Boston, Massachusetts. “I heard the speaker last year. He’s the biggest bore in the world. I’m going shopping. Care to join me?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I have to write up a report on this when I get home and I’d better be able to describe everything in detail.”
She looked at my badge. “You must work for a bunch of real hardasses up in Schenectady.” She leaned forward to whisper to the other woman sitting in the row ahead of us, who nodded eagerly.
They were both missing from the afternoon session. The speaker was the biggest bore in the world. The men had all conceded to shirtsleeves. Climate control failed halfway through the seminar and it broke up early, releasing us from the stuffiness of the meeting room into the thick air of the city. I stopped in the lobby bathroom and took off my pantyhose, rolled them into an untidy ball and stuffed them in my purse before getting a cab back to my own hotel.
One of the men from my firm phoned my room and invited me to join him and the guys for drinks and dinner. We met in a crowded little place called Messina’s, four male executives and me. It wasn’t until I excused myself and went to the closet-sized bathroom that I realized I’d put my light summer slacks on over nothing. A careless mistake, akin to starting off to the supermarket on Saturday morning in my bedroom slippers. Mommy’s got a lot on her mind. Martha, the No-Pants Executive. Guess what, dear, I went out to dinner in New Orleans with four men and forgot to wear panties. Well, women do reach their sexual peak at thirty-five, don’t they, honey?