by Sandra Hill
“I’ve always been curious about what you’d be like in bed. And the whole friends-with-benefits concept is, I don’t know, intriguing.”
“No. Absolutely not.”
“You’re right. It was a bad idea. Even if there wasn’t a chance in hell that you could beat me.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Don’t push me.”
“Forget I even mentioned it.”
“And you won’t make all those donations without the bet?”
“Why should I?”
“To be nice?”
“Yeah, right. Bet’s off. No big deal.”
She inhaled deeply and said, “Bet’s on, big boy.”
He didn’t say anything, just stared at her. His only reaction was a twitch at the side of his mouth. Finally, he said, “Deal.”
Almost immediately, she regretted her decision, and she would have recanted, except that she just knew Angel expected her to, and she would be damned if she would do anything to please His Royal Moodiness today.
Angel said the oddest thing then. “I’m done here. I gotta go back to the houseboat and polish up the shower fixtures.”
Later, back at her cottage, she asked Tante Lulu, “How about helping me practice my poker skills?”
“Why?”
“I made a little bet with Angel.”
“Little?”
“Okay, big.”
“Does it involve hanky-panky? No, doan tell me. Let an old lady fantasize.”
“So, wanna try a few practice hands?”
Tante Lulu chuckled and said, “Yer on yer own, missy.”
A bet is a bet, baby...
Angel couldn’t believe his good luck. Man, maybe there was something to this St. Jude nonsense of Tante Lulu’s. He couldn’t have wished—prayed—for a better opportunity to win Grace’s love or, if nothing else, lust.
Grace was trying every which way she could to cancel their bet, but Angel was making sure it held. Like celestial concrete.
Mostly, he avoided her, but when he was unable to do that, he just dodged her verbal bullets.
“You can’t seriously think of sleeping with me.”
“Why not?”
“Because...because...oh, for heaven’s sake, what is this? Some kind of romance novel plot?”
“Could be.”
“How can you make love to a woman you don’t love?” He stared at her as if she were missing a few marbles. “Oh, right. I forgot. Men can have sex at will. It’s women who need the emotional connection.”
“Sex at will? You give me too much credit.”
“I hope you haven’t discussed this with anyone.”
“Nope. It’s just between you and me. Should I draw up a contract?”
“For what?”
“The terms of our bet. I’m thinkin’ dusk to dawn. The houseboat, unless you’d like to try the honeymoon suite at the Holiday Inn. I hear they have a heart-shaped Jacuzzi. No? Okay. Whatever you say. I need to go shopping. Chocolate body paint—or do you prefer peach? I remember how much you used to like those peach ices. Oysters for an appetizer. Or chocolate. Your choice. Mood music. And, ooh, ooh, ooh, handcuffs. Gotta get handcuffs—and a blindfold. I don’t suppose you’d wear a nun outfit for me. Do they make religious thongs?”
“Aaarrgh!”
“Call me crazy, but you sound kinda hot and bothered when you say ‘Aaarrgh!’ and tug at your hair at the same time with your eyes rolling up into your head. Are you about to have a conniption? That’s a word Tante Lulu taught me.”
“Bite me!”
“I just might do that...if I win. But not to fear. I’ll let you bite me back, although I prefer little nibbles.”
“You’re teasing me. You have no intention of following through on this ridiculous idea.”
“Wanna bet?”
“Not that you would win.”
“We’ll see.”
Meanwhile, he was so excited he went back to the houseboat and set the sex shower on permanent ice-cold.
You could say it was the Tour de Tante Lulu...
There were tours of the French Quarter, and then there were whoo-ee hot-damn tours of the French Quarter.
Today Charmaine was driving them through the heart of the Crescent City and its suburbs. Tante Lulu was riding shotgun in her lavender Impala convertible, post-World War II vintage, a gas guzzler to beat all gas guzzlers. Grace and Samantha were in the back seat, mouths agape most of the time at this bizarre adventure.
To say that Charmaine knew things about the Big Easy that weren’t on the regular tourist route would be a vast understatement. Add to that Tante Lulu’s always surprising input and even Samantha, who’d grown up in the region, was astounded.
And their attire. Both Charmaine and Tante Lulu wore 1940s movie-star-style scarves around their heads with big rhinestone-studded sunglasses. Loo-zee-anna Greta Garbos, for heaven’s sake! The only thing missing was cigarettes in fancy holders. Meanwhile, she and Samantha, wearing jeans and tank tops, looked as if they’d gone through a wind tunnel with their hair standing on end, probably collecting every bug within a mile radius. Samantha, for example, with her freckles, resembled a wind-whipped Buckwheat, while Grace’s red curls were no doubt now a fire version of Annie.
“That’s Madame Claudette’s House of Pleasure,” Charmaine told them as they passed a seemingly innocent, narrow-fronted, historic Creole house with tall green shutters and intricate grillwork balconies. “Sex with class is the way she bills her fare. I hear that bondage is her specialty. That and ménages.”
“Whass a men-odge?” Tante Lulu wanted to know.
“A threesome,” Charmaine replied.
“Three of what?”
“Never mind.”
“Oh, now I get it. Tee-John was involved in one of those one time, back when he was in college. Talk about!”
“How would you know that, Auntie?”
“Hah! You’d be surprised what I know. Jist ’cause I doan blab it all over kingdom come doan mean I’m ignerant.”
Coming from the Queen of Blab, that statement was as outrageous as anything that left her mouth.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if you tried it at least once, too,” Tante Lulu added to Charmaine.
“I did not! Rusty is more than enough for me.”
“You weren’t allus married ta Rusty.”
“Well, I didn’t!”
“Anyways, so this is Claudette’s house, hmmm? I knew her grandma, Claudine. The place weren’t so classy back then. We called it a cathouse.”
She and Samantha looked at each other and choked back laughter.
“’Course, ya coulda got anythin’ ya wanted in the old days over in Storyville, which the government closed down when I was a baby. It was sad, really, ’cause those girls dint have no choice in the matter. Some of ’em little more’n chillen, like that old Brooke Shields movie Pretty Baby. Tsk, tsk, tsk! It was sell their bodies or starve. Not like t’day where the hookeys gots choices.”
“Hookers,” Samantha corrected.
“Thass what I said.”
“Well, I don’t know if prostitution is that different,” Samantha inserted, not having yet learned that it was best not to respond to Tante Lulu’s remarks. “Many of the prostitutes do it to feed a drug habit. Or to fight poverty.”
“It’s certainly not about pleasure, from the woman’s standpoint,” Grace added. “Their bodies are merchandise, pure and simple, for men to use and discard. Like dental floss.”
“Mebbe we should start a foundation ta help hookers.” Tante Lulu tapped her red-glossed lips thoughtfully.
“Oh, my heavens!” Samantha exclaimed. “Don’t you think we should get one foundation under way before starting another?”
“What would you call it? Jude’s Fallen Angels?” Charmaine joked.
“Thass a great idea.” And Tante Lulu wasn’t joking. Grace and Samantha groaned.
“Lookee over there at them midgets comin’ out of that place with the sign ‘Ev
erything Goes.’ Do ya s’pose some women like havin’ sex with midgets?”
“Tante Lulu, it’s politically incorrect to say midgets. They’re ‘little people,’” Grace told her in as kindly a manner as possible.
“Pooyie! I’m a little person. They’s midgets. Before ya know it, they’ll be changin’ the name of that chillen’s book ta Snow White and the Seven Little People. Hah!”
What could you say to that?
Nothing.
“Now, me, I’m for equal rights.” Charmaine looked at them in the rearview mirror and grinned. “I think they should have more male prostitutes.”
“Like yer husband ain’t givin’ ya enough lovin’! Praise the Lord, that boy is a reg’lar sex machine, I reckon.” Tante Lulu slapped her knee with glee. “How ’bout you, Samantha? You gettin’ enough lovin’?”
Samantha jerked up with surprise. She wasn’t yet used to Tante Lulu’s topics of conversation popping up here and there like fleas. But Samantha was a smart girl who learned quick. She chose not to answer.
That didn’t stop Tante Lulu. “Did I tell ya Daniel ain’t gay?”
Samantha bared her teeth at Tante Lulu. “Let up on the Daniel LeDeux crap. It’s not going to happen. Ever.”
“We’ll see.”
“If I had a bird, Daniel’s picture would be lining the bottom of the cage. Is that clear enough for you?”
“That ex-husband of yers musta been a real worm, ta sour ya so on men.”
“He was. They considered naming a wing after him at the hospital where he practiced, but not because of all his good works. More like how many of the hospital beds he’d christened by screwing whatever nurse was on duty. He did a couple of patients, too.”
“I knew a man like that onct. When he died, they preserved his noodle in brine fer one of those Ripley museums.”
“Is she serious?” Samantha asked Grace.
Grace shrugged. You never knew with Tante Lulu.
“Anyways, Samantha, ya know what they say about jumpin’ back on a horse once ya been dumped.”
“Avoid horses?” Samantha suggested sweetly.
“Nosiree. Ya gotta get yerself a rodeo, girl.”
Samantha turned to Grace. “How do you stand her?”
“She’s loveable, once you get to know her.”
“I allus wanted ta go ta one of them whorehouses.” Another change of subject. “Doan ya know anyone who could show us around?” Amazingly, Tante Lulu addressed her question to Samantha. “We could look through a peephole and check it out. Didja know Errol Flynn’s wee-wee was so big it stuck up out of the waistband of his trousers? I read that in a book, so it mus’ be true.”
That was a conversation stopper if there ever was one. “Who’s Errol Flynn, Auntie?” Charmaine teased.
Tante Lulu smacked her with her Richard Simmons fan.
“What in heaven’s name would make you think I’m acquainted with people in...in houses of ill repute?” Samantha wanted to know.
“Ill repute—thass another name fer it, all right.” Tante Lulu hooted with laughter. “I jist figgered, since ya live in N’awleans, ya mus’ know everyone.”
“Not everyone.” Samantha rolled her eyes.
She and Charmaine just grinned, thankful to have dodged one of Tante Lulu’s bullets.
But not for long.
“You could learn some stuff in a whorehouse, Gracie. Bein’ a nun and all, ya prob’ly doan know many sex tricks.”
That remark prompted her usual sputter. “Sex...sex tricks?”
“Like you know that many sex tricks, Auntie!” Charmaine reached over and patted her aunt on the knee.
“You’d be surprised. By the by, ladies”—she was addressing the two of them in the back seat now—“didja know ya could have yer thingamajig sewed back up? Charmaine was fixin’ ta do it one time. Coo! Ain’t that jist the berries! That was before Rusty came back ta town and put a stop to anything involvin’ her private parts.”
“She means that I was going to be a born-again virgin and have my hymen surgically reattached,” Charmaine explained. And she wasn’t even blushing.
Another conversation stopper.
“I had been married a few times by then,” Charmaine explained, as if that was any kind of explanation.
“Four, ta be precise,” Tante Lulu inserted.
Charmaine stuck out her tongue at her aunt. “Two of them were to Rusty.”
“By the by, Gracie, how’re the plans comin’ fer the poker tournament?”
“Great,” Grace replied, thankful for a change of topic. “We had to cut off entries after two days, and businesses have been donating prizes like you wouldn’t believe since we can’t give cash prizes. Federal and state gaming laws and all that.”
“I could talk ta some folks,” Tante Lulu offered.
“No, no, that’s all right.” We’ve already broken enough laws with the Duvals.
“One thing, Gracie, how come every time I mention the exhibition poker game between you and Angel, he gets a goofy grin on his face? Whass that about?”
Oh, great! That’s all she needed, Tante Lulu getting wind of their bet—which wouldn’t be a bet if she could ever get him to stand down long enough to cancel that nonsense. “I have no idea.”
Liar, liar! that irritating voice in her head said.
“Oooh, ooh, there’s the old Pelican Ballroom.” Tante Lulu was off on another subject. The place she pointed to was a warehouse; in fact, it appeared to house Starr Foods products. “I usta dance there with my fiancé Phillipe Prudhomme before he went off ta war.”
“I didn’t know you were engaged,” Grace said.
Tante Lulu nodded, for once amazingly lost for words, or lost in memories. “My heart broke when Phillipe died on D-day, and it ain’t never been the same.”
Grace felt tears well in her eyes, and she knew Charmaine and Samantha were having the same reaction. A love that lasted all those years! How incredible and touching was that?
Of course Tante Lulu broke the mood when she added, “That boy, he could dance, I’ll tell ya that, and he dint need no sex tricks, either. Talk about! He could ring my bell, guar-an-teed.”
“Way too much information,” Samantha whispered to her.
Thankfully, they’d arrived at their destination on the outskirts of New Orleans. Tante Lulu had asked Samantha to show her where some of the people listed in her Jude’s Angels folder were living.
It was a rundown, dilapidated low-income housing project. Apparently, it had survived Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, but not by much. Hurricane Ike’s rain and winds had done a job on it, too. The brick was covered with mold. Some of the windows were broken. The window trims hadn’t been painted in at least twenty years. In fact, not surprisingly, there was a sign out front that said this was the site of a future condo community called Magnolia Gardens. Clearly, not for poverty-level folks. Which meant the displacement of an estimated one hundred families.
As they walked around the grounds outside the buildings, where almost no grass grew, and children played on hard-baked dirt and rusty slides and swings, Tante Lulu’s mood got stormier and stormier. Once inside, it was even worse. Doors with broken locks. Smells in the hallways that defied description, and not just food.
“Believe it or not,” Samantha told them, “people would stand in line to get one of these units. That’s how scarce housing is in New Orleans these days. Affordable housing, that is. Those families who can afford it have sent their children to live with relatives elsewhere—and are glad to be given that opportunity, despite separating parent and child, or siblings from each other.”
“I’ve seen enough,” Tante Lulu said with a fierceness that Grace knew would be translated into her new foundation. She stamped out of the building on her wedgie sandals, her little butt swinging in a pair of tight red capri pants. Forget Greta Garbo—Tante Lulu, in her own inimitable style, was the cat’s meow, and then some.
Next they went to a ranch-style house that had withs
tood the rigors of the hurricanes, better than the projects, anyway. There was a neat lawn here, and a deck out back with a barbecue grill and children’s toys. The problem was that three families, related by blood, lived in the three-bedroom residence. The Arnauds included seven adults, four teenagers, six children aged three to thirteen, and two babies. An impossible situation!
They were sitting on the back deck sipping at glasses of cold iced lemonade and eating beignets that Tante Lulu had purchased at the French Quarter Market on the way there. With them were several members of the mocha-skinned Creole families, all with the surname of Arnaud. Cecile, a divorced single parent, nursing a darling baby boy, was a hairstylist for an upscale New Orleans beauty salon. Her mother, Eulalie Arnaud, a waitress at one of Emeril’s restaurants, laughed when Tante Lulu proclaimed Emeril a hottie, second only to Richard Simmons. Also joining them was Eulalie’s glowering husband, Martin, a plumber, who was suspicious of these four visitors to his home.
“I know a Josephine Arnaud up Houma way,” Tante Lulu announced out of the blue.
“That’s my sister,” Martin said.
“They dint get hurt none by the hurrycanes, did they?”
Martin shook his head. “No, but after Katrina, she had to take in our mother and father and two cousins.”
“How do you manage with so many people in one house?” Grace wanted to know.
“We do everything in shifts,” Eulalie said with a booming laugh. “Even the bathroom. Honest to God, I cain’t remember the las’ time I took a bubble bath.”
“You don’t need no bubble baths anyhow, Lallie. Uses too much water,” Martin complained.
“Oh, you!”
Samantha explained the Hope Foundation in general, and then Tante Lulu gave her spiel on Jude’s Angels and how they were working to keep families together.
Martin went all stiff. “We don’t need no charity. All you do-gooders are the same. Wanta come into our homes and neighborhoods, lookin’ down yer fancy noses at us poor folks.”
Eulalie was about to chew her husband out for his rudeness, but Tante Lulu raised a halting hand at her and instead addressed the man. “Doan be a horse’s ass, Martin. We all need a helpin’ hand sometimes. I ain’t allus been in high cotton, y’know. I been poor a time or two myself—mostly poor. So doan be takin’ that attitude with me.”