Queen of the Mardi Gras Ball

by Lynn Shurr

  Looked like one of the DeVille boys coming in, the one home from Yale. Let’s see, he had a taste for fast cars, a little Mary Jane, the tawny bourbon kept under the counter for high-paying customers, and loose women of all colors. Denny brought a bimbo with him now, all dressed in red and toting her own flask flashing silver when her skirt rode up as she got out of the convertible.

  What were women coming to now that they had the vote? He, Walet Broussard, was grateful for his fat, placid wife who kept a clean home, cooked a good meal, and went to Mass twice a week to pray for his soul. Right now, she watched one of the grandkids and his friends, giving them a little party with chocolate cake and ice cream, as they waited for the fireworks at midnight on the other side of the big field that separated Wally’s private and public lives.

  ****

  Henri St. Rochelle got tired of waiting. He’d had all the chocolate cake and ice cream he could hold. Then, he’d run around the yard chasing his friends with the sparklers Tubbs’ granny let him light with a punk. They’d set off a long string of firecrackers, and for the grand finale, blown up a tin can with a cherry bomb, all activities his mother forbade because he might lose a finger or even a hand. Still, the wait for midnight seemed endless.

  Old Miz Broussard had fallen asleep in her porch rocker after the noise died down. With a shawl wrapped around her big bosoms, the old lady snored into the folds of her many chins. Off in the distance, the boys could hear the sound of the Negro band Tubbs said his granddaddy brought all the way from New Orleans for tonight. Whenever the music stopped, the high laughter of women floated over the field where a low fog had risen above the grass.

  Tubbs could tell some of the boys were going to doze off and put an end to the party if he didn’t do something soon. “Tell you guys what, let’s sneak over to da Barn. I know a place we can hide and watch what goes on. Might even be nekkid women dancing in dere. Sometimes my daddy brings ’em in from da city for stag nights.”

  “What’s naked women got to do with hunting?” Henri asked innocently.

  “Hey, Bebé, a stag night means only for guys like we got tonight right here.”

  Henri hated when they called him “baby” even if he was the youngest of the group. “Well, Lamb didn’t know that neither.”

  “Did, too,” claimed Lamb Mouton. “I want to see nekkid ladies, Tubbs.”

  “Okay. Come on den. Don’t wake Granny, or we’ll get it. I’m not supposed to go over dere Friday, Saturday nights.”

  The boys crept across the yard until they came to the edge of the unplowed field. Lamb Mouton giggled nervously and was shushed by the others. Once in the field, they beat it as fast as they could across the acre of mud and brown weeds until they stood at the edge of the light thrown from the strings of big, yellow bulbs nailed around the barn door. They streaked into the shadow of the building and grouped together in a dark corner. Tubbs took out his pocketknife and carefully removed a knot from one of the wall planks. It came out easily because he’d removed it so many times before. He pressed his pudgy cheek against the wall and his eye to the hole.

  “You see any dem nekkid womens?” Boozoo Thibodeaux asked hopefully.

  “Nope, but I’m getting an eyeful of your coozan Roz, Bebé.”

  “Lemme see!”

  “You get to see her all da time. Lamb, go first.”

  “Gaw, she’s dancin’ on a table. You can see her garters and everything.”

  The walls of the old barn pulsed with the music. The voice of a colored woman belted out, “Runnin’ wild, lost control. Runnin’ wild, mighty bold,” over the microphone. Henri felt a little sick.

  “Now, Boozoo, you get a look.”

  “Dat’s Miss Roz for sure. All dem men sayin’ ‘get hot, Rozzie, get hot.’ You can hear ’em all da way over here if you put your ear to da hole.”

  “My turn, my turn,” Henri insisted, but the music had stopped by the time Tubbs let him take a peek through the hole. All he saw was Roz taking a long drink from a silver flask and swaying a little on the wobbly tabletop. One of the guys surrounding her—Henri thought he recognized Ernie DeVille’s older brother—snaked a hand up her skirt, but she kicked his arm away with the toe of her T-strapped shoe and took another drink.

  The band struck up an Argentine tango. Perplexed Cajuns kept their seats, but a few sophisticated couples ventured out on the floor to do the dance of love. On her tabletop, Roz bent over, giving her companions quite a view, and plucked her Spanish shawl from the back of a chair. She wrapped it tightly around her body, then holding one end high, slowly unwound the shawl as she gyrated to the music. Her eyes were closed and her red mouth partly open. Henri stepped aside. Lamb pushed forward.

  “Yowzah! Your cousin’s runnin’ that shawl all over her bubbies and between her legs.” Lamb put his big ear to the hole. “Ernie’s brother is sayin’ ‘Let’s get a room.’”

  The door to one of the little cabins in the rear opened, casting light over the cluster of boys. They flattened themselves against the barn wall, all but Lamb who couldn’t take his eyes off Roz doing her fandango.

  “Merci beaucoup for comin’ out here, Doc. I know you was at some swell party, but dat fils de garce cut up Delia pretty bad. Couldn’t wait for mornin’, no.”

  “N’importe, Gaston. I didn’t mind coming. It was mostly older folks at the Harkriders. They wanted me to meet their daughters, I think.”

  “All da bonne filles, dey want to marry a doctor.” Gaston laughed from deep in his squat, muscular bulk that hadn’t yet turned to fat.

  “A doctor, yes. Me, no.”

  “Take dis, den go on in and tell Bubba at da bar, best in da house for Monsieur le docteur.” Gaston peeled off several bills from a roll.

  “That’s three times my normal fee, Gaston.”

  Gaston shrugged. “Bonne annee.”

  Some movement caught the bouncer’s eye. “You, you boys, you. Go on home to Memere before I whup your derrieres.”

  Three small forms sprinted for the wide field. The smallest of the group ran in another direction and grabbed the doctor by the arm as he was about to enter the rear door of the barn.

  “Doctor Pierre, you got to help Cousin Roz. She’s in there with bad men. Please,” Henri begged.

  “Allons!” shouted the burly Gaston. “Come back when you twenty-one.”

  Henri bolted after his friends, and Pierre Landry opened the barn door.

  He couldn’t help but see her immediately through the haze of cigarette smoke. She dressed in scarlet and swayed on top of a table to the heavy beat of the tango. Four young men sat looking up her skirt and more had gathered to watch her dance. Roz drew the black Spanish shawl across her ruby lips. Her eyes were wide and blue in their rings of dusky makeup just above the lace. She rolled her hips as she turned away from him.

  Dropping his black bag on the bar where Bubba was already pouring his drink, Pierre pushed through the crowd to the table’s edge over the objections of the onlookers. “Hey, buddy, get your own Sheba! This one’s ours.”

  “Get out of my way. I’m a doctor. This woman is in my care.”

  “Yeah, I guess, a doctor. That’s a good one. She looks pretty healthy to me. Well, I’m the mayor’s son, so why don’t you just go cook a radish, Mr. M.D.” The dapper young man in a blue blazer and baggy pants put up his dukes.

  Pierre opened his arms in a friendly gesture and put a relaxed arm around Denny DeVille’s shoulder. Suddenly, he had a strong grip on the college boy’s neck. “You know Mr. Mayor’s Son, if pressure is applied to the carotid artery for just a few seconds, you can kill a man. They teach us that in medical school.”

  Denny stood very still. Several of the young men in the crowd looked as if they wanted to jump the man who interferred with their pleasure, but weren’t so sure how to go about it.

  Roz peered down with unfocused eyes from her perch on the table. “Pierre, c’est tu, mon amour?” she said and threw herself into the air.

  Pierre release
d the college boy and caught Roz against his chest just as her legs folded. He took her in his arms, and she nestled against his chest.

  “I’m taking her to the clinic if anyone needs to know.”

  “Yeah, fella, I really believe that, too,” Denny DeVille snarled, rubbing his neck.

  As Pierre slid his bag from the top of the bar on his way out, Bubba Broussard asked, “Need any help dere, doc?”

  “No, we’re fine. Merci.”

  Bubba opened the back door for him and watched the doctor carry the lady in red to his serviceable Model T. The bartender shrugged and returned to his duties, carefully pouring the expensive shot of whiskey back into the bottle because his daddy would have his hide otherwise.

  “Hey you, Eloise, you go entertain dose college boys before dey tear up da place,” he said to the redheaded whore who was drinking an expensively priced glass of flat Coca-Cola some john had bought for her. Eloise gazed at the back door with hot green eyes.

  “Yeah, yeah, you ain’t gonna get your turn wit’ da doctor. Look like amateur night to me, cher. Go see if dey got any money on ’em, dose college kids.”

  Bubba gestured toward a teenaged colored girl, her pregnancy just starting to show, who washed glasses behind the bar. “And take Kitty here along wit’ you. Denny, he liked her good enough last summer.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Roz woke when the elevator jolted into action. She lost her balance and fell back against the heat of a man’s chest. “Where am I? Is it you, Pierre?”

  “We’re at the clinic, Roz, and this is the only elevator in Chapelle. It’s just big enough for a wheelchair. The house belonged to the Spivey family, but Doc donated it for a hospital when his wife wanted a more modern place. Here we are, second floor. Everyone out.”

  Roz regarded the grand staircase on her right wide enough for two southern belles in hoop skirts to pass each other. “I wish you had carried me up.” She flung her arms wide and toppled back against Pierre again.

  “I did carry you from the car, up six steps and through the front door, and that doesn’t include hauling you out of Broussard’s Barn. Sorry you missed it, but the time has come to be practical. I can give you a bed in the ward to sleep off your drunk, or take you upstairs and fill you with coffee until you’re sober. Which will it be?”

  Roz turned toward him and fitted her body to his. “I want you to make hot, passh-nate love to me.” She drew her scarlet brow band down over her eyes and peeped through the lace. “Let’s pretend it is Mardi Gras.”

  Roz shrugged out of the shawl Pierre had draped around her, put it over his head, and drew it across his lips. “You be the Sheik of Araby, and I’ll belong to you.”

  A grandfather clock in the lower hallway began to chime. “Nope, nope, not Mardi Gras. Nine, ten, ’leven, twelve! Happy New Year, Pierre!” Roz uncovered his mouth and planted smeary, red kisses across his lips and cheeks.

  A door at the end of the hall opened. “Is that you, Dr. Landry?” a robust, gray-haired nurse asked. “I wondered about the racket. You woke Tommy Avery.”

  “Yes, sorry, Nurse Melancon. I brought in a case of possible alcohol poisoning. I’ll tend to her. You stay with the Avery boy and call me if there is any change in Mrs. Murphy’s condition tonight. We’ll be—I’ll be upstairs if you need me.”

  “Alcohol poisoning, you say? Hmph, I guess we’ll be seeing plenty of that before the night is through. If you need to strap her down, let me know. How was the Harkrider party?”

  “Dull. I didn’t mind leaving when you called about the emergency at the Barn. I had to put in twenty-three stitches to close the wound.”

  “Wunnerful Dr. Pierre.” Roz kissed the side of his face as yet unmarked with lipstick.

  “Ah, carry-on, Nurse Melancon. Bonne annee!”

  “Same to you, Doctor.” Throwing Dr. Landry a skeptical look, Nurse Melancon returned to the small ward and her two patients.

  “We have to get up the stairs, Roz, if you don’t want to sleep down here.” Pierre peeled her off his chest and put his arm under her shoulders to provide some support.

  “I want to sleep with you, Pierre.” Roz poked him with a finger in case he didn’t get the point.

  “Up the stairs. Here we go.”

  They ascended a steep, narrow staircase hidden behind a hall door. Pierre fumbled for his key as they stood on the small landing and finally got them inside the room at the head of the stairs. He dumped Roz into a comfortable chair sitting before a cold marble-manteled fireplace and turned on a floor lamp with its globe supported by a long, bronze serpent whose forked tongue flicked against the yellow glass.

  “Hiya, snakey!” Roz pulled off her headband and plume and hung it on the snake’s lower jaw.

  “A gift from Doc Spivey. He saw some connection between that and the snakes on the medical caduceus. Strange taste in furniture if you ask me.”

  “Nice snakey.” Roz ran her hands up and down cool bronze scales of the lamp stand.

  “I’ll make coffee. Doc used to stay up here if he couldn’t get home. I think this space used to be a guest room when the family occupied the house. They probably couldn’t get that piece back down the stairs.”

  Pierre gestured to a massive armoire squatting on claw and ball feet across from a gabled window that let light into the area. The colored balls of a Roman candle someone shot off down by the bayou arced past the glass, and firecrackers popped in the distance.

  “Happy New Year!” Roz said again as she struggled to her feet and tottered toward the small kitchen area. She put her arms around Pierre’s waist as he tried to transfer the coffee from the grinder and into a French drip pot with Roz hanging on him. He turned on the hot plate sitting on a sturdy but gouged table and started boiling the water in a saucepan.

  Gently removing her hands from his body, Pierre led Roz to a plain hospital-style bed covered with a brown and white striped cotton coverlet. The fourposter that once filled the space was long gone, but Doc Spivey had added a fine old desk and worn leather chair in the corner. Roz tripped over a stack of medical journals as Pierre guided her to the bed.

  “Lie down, Roz, until the coffee is made.”

  “Lie with me, Pierre. Lie with me.” She sank onto the bed.

  He crossed to the other side of the mattress, lay down, and spooned against her back. She wiggled her hips against his groin. “I know you want me, Pierre. I can tell you want me.”

  “Ah, Roz, I’ve wanted you since I first saw you at the Reveillon last year. So golden, so unattainable.”

  “You attained me. You know you did, mask or no mask.”

  “Rest, Roz.”

  “When I was with Buster, sometimes I had to pretend he was you. You know, to get through it. I had to say things to him to make him go faster, to make it end.”

  “I understand.”

  “You don’t, or you’d make love to me now, Pierre. You would.” Her shoulders shook. As she cried into his pillow, he kissed the nape of her neck and breathed in the scent of her hair, smoky from the Barn but underlaid with the sweetness of lilies. He held her long after the water in the saucepan boiled and evaporated into thin air.

  ****

  The sound of Nurse Melancon’s sturdy shoes on the stairs woke Pierre. The knock came. “Doctor Landry, two patients downstairs needing stitches. Car and buggy accident on Main Street. Lucky they aren’t dead, but the horse is.”

  Straightening his rumpled suit, Pierre opened the door.

  “What’s that scorching smell?” Nurse Melancon asked, taking in the sleeping girl on the bed and the plume dangling from the serpent’s mouth with one sweep of her eyes.

  Pierre turned off the hot plate. “I dozed off—in the chair over there—while I was making coffee,” he claimed, though they both clearly saw the dent in the mattress next to the woman in red. At least, she had her clothes on.

  “You need to be more careful, Doctor. Much more careful,” Nurse Melancon warned.

  “You’re rig
ht, of course. I’m coming down immediately.”

  ****

  Roz woke to the noise of rain pounding against the gable window. Each gust sounded like a cannonball exploding next to her head. She wobbled to her feet. Oh, how she needed the toilet. Where was it? Where was she?

  She tried the door on the other side of the bed and prayed she wouldn’t find a closet because she couldn’t hold it in much longer. Success! A long, narrow bathroom complete with tub, sink, commode, and long chain dangling from the light fixture on the ceiling was revealed. She lunged for the light chain and kicked the door shut behind her.

  Having emptied herself, Roz downed two cups of water to unstick her tongue from the roof of her mouth and wash away the fuzzies. She took a good look at herself in the mirror and turned away from the face with red lipstick smeared on its chin and eyes as ringed as a raccoon’s. She found a washrag hanging on a rack and cleaned off her spoiled makeup, had some more water.

  All the while, she thought, “Where am I?” Had she come to this place with Denny DeVille? Already a tad tipsy at the time, she remembered getting in his convertible. She recalled dancing—on a table. Thank heaven, she still had her clothes on, but any college girl knew how easily a fella could get into a girl’s panties these days without taking off her dress. Still, she didn’t feel damp or sticky down there.

  Roz returned to the adjoining room. The covers weren’t even turned down on the bed, but she’d made a mess of what looked like a hand-woven brown cotton coverlet, now spotted with lipstick, eye shadow, and small damp splotches. She passed to the kitchen area with its crude table, small sink, and hot plate. Raising the lid of the coffeepot, she saw someone had filled the top with fresh grounds. The least she could do was complete the process, and oh, how she needed the coffee.

  When the water in the saucepan boiled, she dripped a little of it over the grounds and waited for the coffee to drain slowly into the bottom of the pot, then added some more. Pouring, listening to the drops fill the pot, pouring again, gave her some time to think. Pierre had come to her rescue, certainly, but then, she often dreamed he would save her. Had she resorted to her old survival habit of imagining another man to be Pierre?