Court of Two Sisters
Thirsty Work — Chapter 17: that’s not orange juice
Two young women from California travel to New Orleans in search of redemption after the death of their mother. Carolee thinks she will show her little sister the world, but what they find in the barrooms of the French Quarter at Mardi Gras is more than she knows how to handle, or could have imagined back home. This is the seventeenth chapter of the novel Thirsty Work.
I wasn’t sure I would let myself fall in love with Howard until he woke up the next morning with the same tender smile he’d taken to bed with us the night before. “Well look what I found under my pillow,” he said as he nuzzled into my neck. “This must be my lucky day.”
Then I stopped considering whether it was wise to fall in love. I forgot that I was supposed to be setting an example for my 16-year-old sister, that we were going back to California in just two weeks. I welcomed it. I courted it, drank it down like medicine. I didn’t merely love the words he used to entertain me, I loved the particular timbre of his voice, the pink vocal chords that shaped it, the red, smooth lips it flowed between. I loved the slightly yellow teeth.
“I have something for you,” he told me that morning, reaching into his bag and pulling out a clumsy necklace of brown, spotted beans. “These are ju ju beans. They’re magic. A little girl sold them to me on a beach in Jamaica, where I was traveling before I came here. ‘Buy this for your girlfriend,’ she said. When I told her I didn’t have a girlfriend, she said, ‘Maybe you’ll meet one.’ She must have meant you.”
An tingling feeling traveled up from the soles of my feet to the top of my head. I guessed that was the most romantic thing I’d ever heard.
I didn’t want to leave him later that morning when Aunt Viv showed up to take Cathy and me to lunch at the Court of Two Sisters. But I didn’t have any excuse to stay. Aunt Viv was wearing a skirt that was too short for a woman her age, but she looked great in it. Her hair was piled high on her head in the old-fashioned style she wore, the only thing that dated her. She was tall and slim with an elegant posture. Her legs were long and smoothly shaved and nicely tanned, and her toenails, in little beaded sandals, were painted pink.
She sat on the edge of Doug’s bed as Cathy and I got ready to go, but not before asking if there were any bugs in the bed and whether the blanket was clean.
“We haven’t had any trouble with bedbugs, have we Sharon,” Tessa said, putting a seductive hand into her friend’s back pocket.
“Well I can’t say that comes as a big relief,” Aunt Viv said. “The two of you sleep together in this bed?”
“No. The three of us,” Doug said as he walked up behind them and put an arm around each.
I tried to hurry in the cramped bathroom where I was pulling on my cream-colored corduroys — my only clean pants — and a tight white shirt of gauzy cotton with tiny white buttons all the way up the front. I knew Howard would think of unbuttoning them when he saw it. The thought made me smile.
On the walk to the restaurant, Aunt Viv harangued us a little. “You didn’t tell me you had a threesome living in the flat with you! That’s nasty. Do you hear them doing it at night?”
I was shocked that she mentioned sex — Mom never did — but I acted unbothered. “Didn’t I mention it? It must have slipped my mind.” Cathy snickered behind her hand.
At the restaurant the waiter greeted Viv like an old friend and led us to a table in an outdoor courtyard with a fountain in the center. “Thanks, Fred. I’ll take the usual,” Viv said before settling in her chair. “How about you girls? Do you want a beer with your lunch? Order anything you like. Norman is buying.”
Cathy and I exchanged a quick glance before nodding, still surprised that we were considered old enough to drink liquor in public. And the mention of Norman was jarring, too. I’d only ever seen a picture, an old black and white, in one of Mom’s albums. They showed a young and gorgeous Aunt Viv on the arm of a big, handsome man at a train station. Grandma Lillian was looking stern off to one side.
“Aunt Viv came back after she was married to pick up some things,” Mom had narrated as we looked at the photo. “Grandma Lillian was furious.”
“Why was Grandma mad?”
“Because she’d sent Viv to a Catholic girls school in New Orleans to keep her AWAY from boys, not to marry one. Grandma thought that her sister the nun would keep a tight rein on Viv at the boarding school. But it didn’t work out that way. I guess Grandma forgot that the patron saint of New Orleans is Our Lady of Prompt Succor,” Mom gave a wry smile.
“Is the patron saint of New Orleans really Our Lady of Prompt Succor?” I asked Aunt Viv now as I settled into my wrought iron chair.
“Yes it is. Who told you that?”
“Mom told me, when I was little. I just remembered it now. She was showing me a picture of you and Uncle Norman. Are we going to get to meet him?”
“Of course! Sometime soon, Hon.” She gave me a seductive smile and scratched her nails on the white tablecloth.
“How did you and Uncle Norman meet?” I asked a little giddily. “When did you know that you loved him? Was it love at first sight?”
“Love at first sight? Oh, sure,” Viv laughed. “If you call humping in the back seat of a Ford at a drunken party LOVE, then yes, it was love at first sight.”
I was stunned and delighted by her answer. I looked over at Cathy, whose eyes were wide.
“But let’s not talk about me. I’m boring.”
“We don’t think you’re boring!!!”
But Viv resisted our pleas for more stories, deftly turning the conversation back to us. Viv wanted to know how we’d met Doug back in Stockton, and seemed delighted when she heard he played football for UOP. “He’s a very handsome man,” she said, winking at me salaciously. “I can see why you’d follow him all the way to New Orleans.” I felt myself blush.
“No, no. It’s not like that. We’re just friends. He’s a good friend of my boyfriend Johnny. He invited us all to come, but Johnny had to work.”
“Such a pity,” she tsk tsked and shook her head, and then we all laughed.
We ate a lot of rich food that afternoon, and drank a few beers, courtesy of Uncle Norman. Aunt Viv insisted we have nothing but the best. She ordered blackened catfish for herself and suggested seafood gumbo with big, chewy prawns for me and Jambalaya with spicy sausage for Cathy. The waiter was very attentive, returning to our table several times and taking Aunt Viv’s empty glass away for a refill before she even asked.
Then on the walk home, we kept Aunt Viv in between us, slinging our arms over her shoulders and weaving a little together on the pavement, like the Three Musketeers. Aunt Viv kept us talking. “Tell me more,” she kept saying in that spit-rich way of drinking people.
“What do you want to know?”
“Tell me more about Doug.”
When we got to the flat I was sorry to find it was empty and wondered if Howard would have left me a note. I felt suddenly overwhelmed with malaise.
“I think I need a nap,” I said to Viv as I fumbled for my key. “Thank you so much for lunch. Do you want to come in?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“Are you okay to drive?”
“Of course! No problem.”
When we got inside the dark flat and heard Aunt Viv’s car peeling away from the curb, I glanced at our sleeping nest in one corner, Howard’s in another. I didn’t see a note. “Well, that was fun,” I said to Cathy.
“Lotta laughs,” she agreed before falling prone on the couch.
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