by Julie Smith
Okay, then, Eve’s Weaves anyhow. It was a weird way to meet her long-lost sister, but why not kill two birds with one stone? Well, three—she really needed a manicure.
She could sit across the table from Janessa, actually talking to her, getting to know her a little. Maybe she’d become a regular client, get to be buddies, then break the news.
Chapter Twenty-Four
She parked and strolled in, expecting a sleepy neighborhood salon, and, except for being fairly busy, it pretty much met her expectations. There were two hairdressers, one of whom probably doubled as the receptionist, a manicurist to the right and out of sight unless she swiveled her head conspicuously, two clients in the chairs, and two clients waiting. Evidently, they welcomed walk-ins here, and so much the better. If she were here a long time, the tail might conclude she was malingering, and call it a day.
One of the hairdressers paused and looked her way. “May I help you?” The one who was also the receptionist. The woman in her chair also looked. “Talba Wallis!” the client sang out “What brings a baroness to this neighborhood?”
It was one of the waitresses at Reggie and Chaz, the restaurant where she did her readings. “Hey, you’re reading next week, right?”
“Hey, Marcelline. How’re you doing? I just came in for a manicure.” She broke out in a sweat. If Janessa’d been told about her visit her well-laid plans had just gone terrible awry.
The hairdresser answered, “There’s one ahead of you—it’ll be about half an hour.”
“I can wait.” Oh, yes. Gladly. She’d now finished her Susan Dodd novel, but she’d brought a book of poetry. She could wait absolutely as long as she had to, and she hoped it was quite awhile.
She glanced at the manicurist and sucked in her breath in surprise. If she’d pictured a polished, spoiled Black American Princess, she couldn’t have been further off the mark. This girl was as unlike her Aunt Mozelle as Talba was; and she was nothing like Talba, either. First of all, she was lighter, milk chocolate-colored; she was a whole lot heavier, and somewhat taller; and she was sloppy about her appearance. The worst case Talba’d expected was someone with a Queen-of-Sheba hairstyle and stiletto nails.
The way this girl looked really threw her. Her collar-length hair was unstyled, just brushed back from her face as if she didn’t know what else to do with it. She wore a T-shirt and shorts that revealed heavy thighs, and she sat like a truck driver. To her surprise, Talba was as dismayed as Miz Clara might have been. She thought about why it bothered her so much.
It was because she associated this look—one she saw a thousand times every day—with a sense of hopelessness; a deep depression about everyday life, the unshakable feeling that it has to be like this. You have to be fat, for instance; and that’s because food eases all the other things you can’t make go away. Not a mere depression, but a lifelong condition, a sullen acceptance of your fate as bad, deserved, and unchangeable.
She associated it with something else as well—poverty and lack of education. Poor social standing and poor self-esteem. Miz Clara had scrubbed white ladies’ toilets twelve hours a day to send her and Corey to college. Before that, she’d browbeaten them into doing their homework and doing well in school. She’d limited their television hours; she’d yelled at them and grounded them. She’d metaphorically gotten down on all fours and pushed their reluctant behinds into the middle class. Talba forgot all that most of the time; took her educated status for granted.
This girl, despite the fancy home from which she’d fled, looked like trash. The thought shocked her. Talba didn’t think she was the kind of person who thought in those terms.
Depressed, she picked up her poetry anthology and wished it were a novel. She needed something diverting, not challenging. After awhile Marcelline the waitress stopped by to chat on her way out. “Looking forward to your performance.”
“Oh, you don’t have to say that. You’ve seen my routine a million times.”
“Are you kidding? I bow to the Baroness.” She executed a sort of mock curtsy, causing Talba to giggle and other people to stare. Talba went back to her reading.
Despite everything, she managed to become sufficiently absorbed. She heard the summons, when it came, only as background noise, “Okay, I’m ready for ya.”
The girl repeated it a moment later, louder. “I’m ready.”
Talba looked up and caught the eye of the manicurist, who nodded, eyes narrowed, as if she were summoning someone to an execution rather than a feminine pampering experience. Tucking away her book, Talba approached warily.
She smiled at the girl. “Hi. I’m Talba.”
“I know who you are.”
Talba sat down and held out her hands. “What’s your name?”
Lowering her eyes, the girl spoke almost inaudibly. “Janessa.”
“Glad to meet you.” Not answering, the girl took Talba’s hands and began filing her nails.
This is weird, she thought. We’re holding hands.
“How long have you worked here?”
Janessa flicked her eyes up, then down again. “Couple months.”
“You like your job?”
Once again, the girl’s eyes flicked like a snake’s. There was no mistaking the hostility in them. “Why you care?”
“I was just making conversation.”
For a long time, during which Janessa filed nails (none too expertly), and snipped at cuticles, there was deep, pregnant silence. Finally, the girl looked up, glancing at Talba sideways. “Why you come to see me?”
“You know me?”
“I know about you.”
“What do you know about me?”
“You the one that come here. You talk.”
Talba was breaking out in flop sweat. This wasn’t at all what she had in mind for a first conversation with her sister—in a public place with a murderer waiting outside; with the other taking the lead; without time to rehearse.
“I came here today just to see you, I guess. I thought we could talk another time.”
“What do I look like?”
The question caught Talba offguard. In her view, Janessa looked awful; unacceptable. Badly in need of a big sister. “You look fine,” she said.
The girl lapsed once again into silence.
“Look, I don’t care what you look like. Did they tell you why I came looking for you?”
Janessa nodded, not speaking.
“I’m your sister,” Talba said, as much to inform herself as the other, to see how the words would sound.
For the first time, Janessa looked her full in the eye, her face ablaze with hostility.
Talba’s stomach did a little flip. She pulled her hand from Janessa’s grasp and looked at it. “Maybe I don’t need polish today.”
To her amazement, the girl burst out laughing.
“What’s so funny?”
“You look like you think I’m gon’ bite you.”
“You look like you’re going to.”
Janessa reached for Talba’s hand. “Come on. Let me polish ya nails.”
“You sure?” Talba was no longer in the mood.
“Yeah, I’m sure. Let me pick the color.” She turned around for a moment, surveying her rainbow. “This purple here.” She looked closely at the label. “Professor Plum. Whatcha think that means?”
“Who knows?” Talba brushed aside the subject. “Why are you mad at me?”
Janessa began shaking the bottle. “I ain’t mad at you.”
“You’re acting like it.”
“I’m gon’ polish ya nails, ain’t I? Didn’t I pick a special color and everything?” Her voice was furious.
She was still wondering what to say next when Janessa solved it for her. “You a singer or somethin’? What’d that lady mean?”
Talba smiled, not quite knowing how to break it to her. “I’m a poet.”
“You a what?”
On impulse, she said, “I am a Baroness.”
“You a what?” the girl repeated
.
“That’s my stage name. The Baroness de Pontalba. What I do is, I write poems and I perform them for audiences.”
“Poems? Ya mean like, ‘Roses are red, violets are blue?’ ”
Talba was starting to be amused. At least the girl was talking to her. “Well, something like that. Are you into rap at all?”
“Yeah, some. I mean, everybody is, I guess.”
“Well, think of it like this. If the lyrics of rap songs weren’t part of a song, they’d be poems.”
Janessa paused in mid-operation, holding Talba’s pinkie delicately in one hand, the polish brush with the other. “What you mean? The whats of rap songs?”
“The words. The lyrics are the words.”
“Oh.” The girl broke out in an unexpected smile. “You mean you write, like, words for songs.”
“Only without the songs.”
Janessa frowned in frustration.
“Look. I’m performing at a restaurant in a few days. Why don’t you come hear me?”
Janessa looked away—not down this time, just anywhere but at Talba. “Ain’t got no money to go to no restaurant.”
It was funny. They were talking about everything but the fact that they were sisters. But what did I expect? Talba thought. Were we going to compare nose shapes? “Let me call you,” she said on impulse. “We can work something out.”
Clearly embarrassed, pushed into a corner, Janessa said nothing, just continued her clumsy purpling of Talba’s nails.
Talba felt trapped. However unwittingly, the woman was holding her prisoner as surely as Sergeant Rouselle had. And by the same token, Janessa was her prisoner. Already we’re acting like family, she thought. We’re stuck with each other.
That thought amused her enough to get through the experience, and when the time came to go, she said, “Think about it.” She left a generous tip.
The whole process had taken an hour, an hour of tension and boredom and disappointment and triumph, but not an hour in which she had a moment to worry about the man tailing her. He had all her attention now. She could think about Janessa later. That was way soon enough.
The Le Sabre was nowhere in sight but she’d expect these guys to be halfway professional. Where next? She knew where she wanted to go, but just in case, she thought she might go shopping first. There were plenty of stores at the Riverwalk to while away an hour or so.
She took St. Claude again, keeping a watchful eye in the mirror. She was pretty sure she saw the car again, but if it was following, the driver was being careful. Just to annoy them, if they were with her, she cut through the French Quarter, notorious for its traffic, and parked in a lot on North Peters.
Then she crossed the street and tucked herself out of sight at a coffeehouse, to see if a Le Sabre pulled into the same lot. She didn’t see one, but the traffic was fierce, which was good. If she could lose them, they could lose her.
Next she strolled to the Riverwalk, stopping to get a soft drink from a street vendor, hoping she looked like a happy young woman taking a mental health day. Once inside the mall, she decided on Victoria’s Secret as an ideal place to make a spectacle of herself. First the beauty treatment at Eve’s, then some fancy lingerie—it would look as if she were getting ready for a hot date. She made a big show of looking at whatever could be seen through the window, holding nighties and bras up to her body, finally disappearing into a fitting room and waiting in line to make her purchase. If anyone was watching, he’d have no idea there was nothing in her enticing shopping bag except a pair of bikini panties.
She strolled back to her car, transferred the wig, clothes, and other items from their current bag to the Victoria’s Secret bag, pretended to retrieve a straw hat from the back seat, which she put on, and then emerged once again onto North Peters. Next, she bought a Lucky Dog, which she ate by the river. Ostentatiously, she read the poetry book as she munched. If the tail was still with her, she must be boring the pants off him.
Finally, she went back to the street and walked in the opposite direction from the parking lot, toward Esplanade Avenue. There was a small women’s clothing shop there, into which she ducked for a few minutes, and other stores further down the street—Tower Records, Bookstar, the French Connection. She could dilly-dally forever and never leave the block. Inside the clothing store, she took off the hat, just to make it slightly harder to recognize her, and walked toward the other stores, keeping a careful eye out for a taxi. If she didn’t find one, she could keep wandering.
She didn’t.
Okay, fine. She went into Tower Records, checked out some African musicians Darryl had been talking about and popped back out into the sunlight, just as a taxi was drawing up to the curb to let someone out. She darted into it.
“Turn left as soon as you can,” she said. “Then go to Dauphine and turn toward Canal.”
The cabbie, a white guy with a steel-gray ponytail muttered, “Whatever ya want” in a seen-it-all voice. But she noticed he checked her out in the mirror, unsure what manner of screwball he had in his cab.
Going across the Quarter was going to be slow, so slow she might be able to see if they were being followed, though there’d be dozens of obstructions, mostly in the form of delivery trucks; if the Le Sabre was there, the obstructions might even work to her advantage, since at a distance, one cab looked much like another. She found this almost the worst part of the trip, feeling more trapped even than earlier, when her hand was being held by a hostile force who was also a relative.
By the time they turned onto Dauphine, she was sweating despite the AC, but there was no sign of the Le Sabre. At Canal, she said, “Let’s go to the library.”
“What library?”
“You know. The main library.”
The guy didn’t even bother with the mirror—he twisted to the back for an eyeful. “Lady, I ain’t never had nobody want to go to the library before.”
“Tulane and Loyola Avenue,” she said.
She left the conspicuous straw hat in the cab, figuring she could always replace it. The library was actually the first real place on her agenda. By now, she was pretty sure she was free of her pursuers (if there was more than one), but she sure wished she had at least an inkling of what they might look like. White males, she figured. And there ought not to be many of those in the library during working hours. She kept an eye out as she prowled.
She had come to the library for its Times-Picayune files, invaluable for a certain kind of background check—the kind you couldn’t yet get on the Internet. She knew what she wanted, though, and that ought to help.
She’d lost a big part of the day, and she was antsy, but she had to focus, at least for awhile. Before she got started, she made a phone call to a man she knew named L. J. Currie, telling him she’d meet him at his office at four o’clock. It was late in the day for him to get what she wanted, but too bad, this library thing was the most important thing she had to do today. If anything could help her, these old papers could.
She pored over them in peace and in silence, undisturbed by white men or, indeed, anybody, and in a few short hours she had what she needed—or at least a very good candidate. Feeling close to triumphant—but holding back, you never knew—she got a cab to her appointment.
L. J. Currie worked for a company called CompuTemps, an agency she knew that provided temporary technical workers. She’d discovered him when working for another PI, one who wasn’t nearly so ethical as Eddie. Gene Allred had turned L. J. into his personal servant by the simple method of bribing him once, then forever holding the bribery over him. Talba had inherited this excellent contact. She’d found that, for the right price, L. J. could get you into any office you wanted, so long as it had computers in it.
He was tricky, though—he’d blown her off before; she couldn’t afford to have it happen again.
But today he added a brand-new element to their arrangement. When they shook hands, he held her hand a little longer than necessary, something he hadn’t done before. “Well,
well, well,” he said, “The Baroness herself. What have I done to deserve the honor?”
What the hell, she thought. He must have finally accepted me.
“It’s what you’re going to do, L. J. I need a job at O’Brien Calhoun Guste.”
He was shaking his head before she got out the second syllable. “No can do.”
“Here we go again. That’s what you always say.”
He shrugged. “What am I s’posed to do? They don’t need anybody.”
“Ah. So they are your client.” Nearly everyone was.
“They’ve called me. Sure.”
“I’ve got to get in there tomorrow.”
“How you gon’ do that Your Grace? I haven’t got a job for ya. Simple as that.”
“Well, I’ve given that a little thought. How about if you call up and offer me for free?”
“What the hell ya talkin’ about? The agency’s not gon’ put up with that.”
“We don’t go through the agency—only the law firm never knows that. Here’s what you do: Call up whoever you deal with and say you’ve got a new candidate. Her credentials are way too good to be true—so good, in fact you think she might be lying. So you want to try her out before you send her out on a job. If she’s as good as she says she is, she can do anything in the office. If not they can always use her for filing. In short, how would they like a top-quality geekette, absolutely free, for one day only?”
“No way. Who’s going to take on somebody that might not be qualified?”
“Only everybody, if it’s free. Who wouldn’t do it, L. J.?”
“I got a reputation.”
“So? This can only enhance it. I’m the best techie in the city—you know it and I know it.”
“Bullshit. I got at least two guys as good as you are.”
“Okay. One of the top three.” She looked at her watch. “Come on. It’s getting late.”
“Baroness, I’m sorry. It just ain’t worth the aggravation.”