Sleeping With the Crawfish

by D. J. Donaldson

  He waved away the thought. “Nah. He’s out in the courtyard. I don’t mean to be insensitive to what you’ve gone through, but would you be up to puttin’ in a couple of hours here today? There’s some darkroom work I just gotta get out.”

  “I can do that, if you’ll give me an hour to take care of some things.”

  “That’s fair.”

  Kit went out the back door and called Lucky, who burst out of some weeds as if he’d been launched. She knelt and held out her arms. A foot from reaching her, he jumped, the impact when he hit nearly knocking her over. She lifted him away and laid him on his back.

  “Did you miss me, you little curmudgeon?”

  She grabbed his ruff with both hands and gently worried it while his mouth hung open in ecstasy. A couple of yards away, Nolen’s dog, Mitzi, sat and watched the action with obvious interest.

  Kit rolled Lucky from side to side and scratched his belly. “What a sweet varmint you are.”

  Playing with Lucky like this pushed her close call in Snake Bayou further into the past. If it were left to Lucky, this would have gone on much longer. “Okay, that’s all for now.” She gave him a final shake and stood up. Remaining on his back, Lucky wiggled and squirmed.

  Kit was six steps up the stairs before he got to his feet and bounded after her. As happy as she was to see him, she didn’t allow him inside, a denial that bothered both of them.

  Inside, seeing the x on the carpet, she looked up and saw that the ceiling crack had grown longer, now forming a half circle. She went to the bedroom and took her wallet out of her still-moist handbag. After spreading the wallet’s contents over the bed to dry, she went to the dresser and sorted through a shoe box of warranties and other papers until she found the little booklet the store had given her when she’d bought her bag.

  She took the booklet to the phone and punched in the number for customer service. When they answered, she asked for instructions on how to care for a bag that had been submerged. The voice on the other end told her total submersion was not a good idea for a handbag. And things didn’t get any better, so when she hung up a few minutes later, she’d learned nothing, except that “maybe it’ll be okay.”

  She called her insurance company next and told them what had happened and gave them the name and address of the garage in Courville where she’d left her car. They said they’d send a local claims adjuster over there to take a look. Meanwhile, her policy would cover the cost of the rental. They promised to call and let her know as soon as the adjuster made a decision.

  Now that all the practical things had been addressed, Kit faced a yawning emptiness. Since it had happened, she’d told her story several times, but not yet to anyone who loved her.

  She thought of her parents in Speculator, New York, and longed to let her fingers tap in their number . . . just call them up as though she’d never cut them out of her life. She believed they’d welcome the call, but it was not in her to make it.

  Instead, she punched in the only other possibility.

  “Hi, this is Kit. Is Teddy around? Sure, I’ll hold.”

  At the moment and for the foreseeable future, Teddy was the only romantic interest in her life. With so much distance between them, they usually saw each other only on weekends, when Teddy would drive from his alligator farm to New Orleans early Saturday morning and leave early Monday. Before her recent slide into self-insufficiency, she’d generally been satisfied with that arrangement, happy not to have him underfoot all the time. Today, it seemed highly unsatisfactory.

  “Hey LaBiche, where were you?”

  “Out in the feed shed with one of my local women, quite an affectionate girl.”

  “Does she like men in traction?”

  “Men in Traction . . . what is that, a rap group?”

  “It’s somebody we both know if he doesn’t watch his step.”

  “I believe . . . yes, there she goes now, on her way home. I don’t think she’ll be back. Kind of unusual for you to call in the middle of the day. I must be some great guy.”

  “It’s your money.”

  “I don’t think so. You were hooked before you ever knew I was loaded.”

  “So you think.”

  “Listen, anybody who won’t let me provide them with a nice place to live rent-free isn’t after money.”

  “Maybe I’m just being devious.”

  “If you are, it’s working. How about I jump in my pickup and drive over?”

  “Can you?”

  “I’m the boss, remember?”

  “I’d like that.”

  “We’ll go to Gautreau’s for some of their great tilapia. I’ll see you about six?”

  “I’ll be waiting. And Teddy . . . don’t let ’em get behind you.”

  Kit hung up and sat by the phone, feeling much less empty inside, even though she hadn’t gotten around to telling Teddy what had happened. She’d do that tonight.

  With her own needs met, her thoughts turned to Beverly Hubly and how her husband had treated her. On impulse, she punched in the number for information. When the operator asked for the city, she said, “Courville,” then “Heath Hubly, I’m not sure what street.”

  Fortunately, there was only one Hubly in Courville. She broke the connection to the operator and punched in Hubly’s number, hoping he wouldn’t answer.

  He didn’t.

  “Beverly? This is Kit Franklyn. . . .”

  “Yes, hello. Did you get home all right?”

  “I’m there now. Listen, I want to thank you for all you did.”

  “There’s no need. I’m sure you would have done the same for me.”

  “And . . . there’s something else. I like you, so I’m going to be frank. I heard how upset your husband was because you put me in the wrong bedroom. And I heard him slap you.”

  She said nothing in reply, and Kit imagined that Beverly’s face was now crimson with embarrassment. “I wanted you to know you don’t have to take that from anybody. You don’t deserve that kind of treatment and it doesn’t have to continue. There are people at your regional Department of Human Services who can help you. I hope you’ll talk to them.”

  “It’s not really so bad,” Beverly said. “He just gets like that sometimes.”

  “He shouldn’t ever get like that. Make the call.”

  “I’ll . . . think about it. Oh . . . there he is. I better go.”

  The line went dead.

  As she hung up, Kit was sure Beverly wasn’t going to make that call. But maybe she wouldn’t have to. Once the prison board figured out what was going on over there, Hubly himself might be getting some jail time. Then Beverly could easily get free of him. The one thing Kit saw as a possible impediment to that scenario was that this was all happening in the state where corruption and graft had been invented.

  STILL FEELING DIRTY AND slimy from her experience in Snake Bayou, Kit was as pleased at the opportunity to get dressed up as she was at the prospect of seeing Teddy. In going through her wardrobe, she found that merely touching her silk dress with the ruby paisley print reminded her of algae sliding over her skin. Once her favorite, she doubted she could ever wear it again. She chose instead a black short-sleeved linen dress with a white yoke and crisp white rickrack trim, accessorizing with spectator heels, a five-strand pearl bracelet, and pearl earrings caged in gold. Looking at herself in the mirror, she felt for the first time completely out of the bayou’s grip.

  Teddy buzzed to be let in just as she finished putting a few essentials in her purse. She pressed the button, releasing the gate lock, and went to meet him.

  Stepping onto the porch, she saw Lucky bolt across the courtyard, his tongue lolling at the sight of old Teddy, who barely had time to wave at her before Lucky was on him.

  Teddy squatted on his haunches and gave Lucky what he wanted—a hard Dutch rub, so Lucky’s eyes rolled back in their sockets in sheer pleasure.

  Kit went down the steps. “I think he loves you more than he does me.”

  Teddy
looked up at her. “Oh, did you want your head rubbed, too?”

  “I was talking to you, not Lucky.”

  Teddy gave the little dog a final scratch under the chin and stood up.

  Teddy’s dress code contained very little latitude, its dictates usually putting him in jeans, a denim shirt, alligator boots, and a rakish straw hat, a look only someone with his lean good looks could pull off. When the occasion required, though, he could adapt. Tonight, he was turned out in pleated Bedford cord slacks of an olive hue that picked up one of the colors in his Algarve checked shirt. A woven cowhide belt and Amalfi loafers ensured he was, at that moment, the most cosmopolitan generator of alligator skins in the state.

  Teddy looked Kit over and shook his head. Between visits, he’d often think of her large feline eyes. Sometimes he’d picture her lips, which, despite the little girl spray of freckles across the bridge of her nose, gave her face an elegance that made his whole body ache with pleasure. Sometimes, his memories never reached her face. “Franklyn, you’re a handsome woman.”

  She stepped closer and he kissed her lightly on the lips.

  “We’d better go,” he said. “Our table is for six-thirty.”

  Gautreau’s sits quietly on Soniat Street in the uptown section of the city, the only whisper of its identity a G in the tiles on the front steps. The maître d’ greeted Kit and Teddy by name and showed them to a table back by the oak wine and liquor cabinets that had held medicinals for the half century the place served as a pharmacy. Without being told, the waiter brought two glasses of white wine and withdrew to let them study the menu.

  Kit had thought it would be hard to recount to Teddy what had happened to her in Courville, because she’d have to relive it in the telling. But here, with soft piano music in the background, surrounded by dark paneling and gilded ceiling fans turning lazily overhead, it all seemed so improbably far away, the tale began pouring out.

  “You know that car I used to have?”

  “What do you mean, ‘used to have’?”

  Teddy sat speechless for the next ten minutes, his lower jaw dropping farther and his eyes growing wider with each new twist in her story.

  “So I ended up losing my car, Andy’s camera, and the print kit. And I never saw any of it coming. Another effective performance . . .”

  Teddy shook his head in amazement, then looked into her eyes in silence, something obviously on his mind.

  “What?” Kit said.

  “I’ve never said anything about the effects those kidnappers had on you, because I figured you needed time to sort out your feelings. But I hate seeing you continue to beat yourself up over it. I was there. I know what you went through. You can’t experience something like that and not be changed by it. But this feeling you have that you alone should have been able to reverse the situation is unrealistic. No matter how competent and self-sufficient we are, sometimes we all need help.” He reached across and took her hand. “We’re a team. With you, I’m stronger than I am by myself. And I’d like to think I make you stronger. We die alone, but life is to be shared.”

  “You’re saying I should go back to work for Andy?”

  “Actually, I have been thinking that your taking a leave wasn’t a good idea. But . . . I swear, he can get you into more trouble—”

  Kit pulled her hand free. “That’s not fair. It wasn’t his fault I got shoved into that bayou.”

  “I like Andy a lot, you know that. But whose idea was it to send you up there?”

  “He couldn’t have known what was going to happen.”

  “My point is . . . it’s a dangerous job. Are you thinking of returning to it?”

  In Kit’s mind, whether she did or didn’t return was a decision for her to make, not Teddy. But since she wasn’t going back, there was no reason to make an issue of it. “For now, I’m staying at the photo gallery. And to be fair to Nolen, I should work Saturday and Sunday to make up for the time I took off. Would you mind that we won’t be able to spend the weekend together?”

  “I’ll miss you, that’s for sure. But as you said, it sounds like the fair thing to do.”

  After a wonderful dinner, they returned to her apartment to take Lucky on his usual evening walk with Nolen and Mitzi. Though he could easily afford the best suite in any hotel in the city and surely couldn’t find Kit’s apartment any more agreeable than she did, when Teddy visited, he never pressured her to stay with him at a nice place, but accepted her world as his. Tonight, as she fell asleep in his arms, she thought about his comment that life is to be shared. She had no quarrel with most corollaries to that view, especially agreeing with the one that had brought him into her bed. But when she reviewed her many failures over the last two months, including the Courville fiasco, his words brought her no comfort.

  8

  Bubba Oustellette waved at Kit through the window of the booth guarding the entrance to the New Orleans Police Department vehicle-impoundment lot. Believing he’d be right out, she left the rental car running.

  The day after she’d explained about her “accident” to the insurance company, they’d called back to say the car was indeed a total loss and their claims adjuster had set its value at $2,500. Thinking this was criminally low, she’d called Bubba to ask his opinion.

  Bubba was Grandma O’s grandson. He was the one who kept Broussard’s fleet of T-Birds running, and he knew just about all there was to know about cars and engines. When she’d told the insurance company Bubba believed they were a thousand too low, they’d suggested she and her adviser meet with the adjuster and negotiate, which meant she’d have to drive all the way back to Courville. As she was in no position to write off a thousand dollars, and since Bubba was willing to use some of his accumulated overtime leave to go, she’d reluctantly agreed.

  A man in a gray shirt and pants came out of the lot and went into the booth. He and Bubba exchanged a few words and Bubba came out and walked to Kit’s car. He opened the passenger door and looked in.

  “Hey, Doc Franklyn, how’s it goin’? You sure we’re not gonna need da gun?”

  He was referring to the times Kit had asked him to accompany her on expeditions where there was an element of danger. In such cases, he always brought a pistol with a very long barrel.

  “Today, we’re just going to talk to a claims adjuster.”

  “So we are gonna need da gun.” His bushy black beard parted, revealing enough white teeth to rival Teddy Roosevelt’s smile on Mount Rushmore.

  “We’re negotiating, not committing armed robbery. Come on, get in.”

  He did as she asked and settled into his seat, his short stature causing his feet to barely brush the carpet. Kit backed up, slipped the car into drive, and they were off.

  For most of the time Kit had known Bubba, his clothing had consisted of many copies of the same outfit—blue T-shirt, blue coveralls, and a green baseball cap bearing the Tulane logo of an ocean wave showing its teeth and carrying a football. A few months ago, after reading a Cosmo article on personal growth, he had abruptly discarded this combination in favor of a brown T-shirt, brown coveralls, and a purple Saints baseball cap bearing a fleur-de-lis. Today, he was back to the old costume.

  “What happened to your new look?”

  “It jus’ wasn’t me. Nice car . . . could use some new shocks, though. You see dat piece in da paper yesterday about somebody stealin’ a body from Andy?”

  “I saw it. Nick Lawson’s byline, of course. I swear I don’t know where that man gets his information. You can’t keep anything from him.”

  “He sure made it soun’ like Andy was runnin’ a sloppy operation.”

  “It wasn’t Andy’s fault at all. It’s not as though stealing bodies from a morgue is something you always have to be on guard against. I’ll bet that’s the first time it’s ever happened anywhere.”

  “Why you figure somebody did dat?”

  She hesitated, wondering if she should tell Bubba what she knew. Lawson apparently was still in the dark over the rea
son for the theft, and with an investigation now under way, it was best he stay that way. Bubba certainly knew how to keep quiet, but if Lawson found out the rest of the story, even she might wonder if the leak had been Bubba. To spare him that, she dodged the issue.

  “Good question.”

  She hadn’t lied, not by the strictest interpretation of the word. But that didn’t make her feel any better about the path she’d taken, especially since Bubba was doing her yet another huge favor. Her discomfort over this lasted all the way to Courville, where the tire marks her car had made as it had flown off the road into Snake Bayou generated other thoughts.

  On the way over, they’d seen a wreath on some skinned trees near the highway, obviously the site of a fatal accident. If she’d drowned here, would there be a wreath for her? No. She’d just be dead.

  Bubba noticed her interest in the water and the marks on the road. “Is dat where you almos’ slept with da crawfish?”

  “That’s the place.”

  “Ah saw a drowned person once. It ain’t somethin’ Ah’d recommend . . . drownin’, Ah mean.” He thought a moment, then added, “Seein’ da victim wasn’t da most fun Ah ever had, either.”

  Long before leaving New Orleans, Kit had decided that if she saw Henry, the mechanic who had likely been part of the scheme to delay her departure on her first visit, it would be best to say nothing. She reminded herself of that a few minutes later as she rolled into the garage’s driveway for their one o’clock appointment.

  Her car was sitting out front by an old cement mixer. Standing beside it was a man with a leather folder the size of a legal pad.

  “That looks like him,” she said, pulling in so the front bumper nearly touched the cement mixer.

  Apparently realizing who they were, he moved toward their car as they got out.

  “Dr. Franklyn?”

  Kit walked over and offered her hand.

  “Ah’m Dewey Lancon, your claims adjuster.”

  Lancon had black hair and a full black beard that looked as soft as cat fur. His smile was forced and unnatural, like the fit of his suit.

  “Before we proceed, Ah should warn you dat Ah have been generous in mah assessment of dis vehicle’s value. So Ah’m afraid you have made an unnecessary trip. Ah tried to explain dat to da people in New Awlins, but city folk don’t listen. However, Ah am willin’ to hear you out.”