Lies Agreed Upon (37 page)

Joel must have seen th
e murderous impulse in her eyes because he swiftly added, “Don’t go crazy. Frankly, I’m relieved to know that I’m still a decent judge of character. I’ve been trying to figure out why a pretty, intelligent girl would put up with it, not that I care about Mac’s personal life. Mac didn’t make it clear, but I’m his boss. So come along—for me. No strings attached.”

As Tess still hesitated, he
smiled sweetly and pleaded, “Please. I haven’t shown you my best side. Let me prove I’m one of the good guys. Nothing more is offered or expected than a fun evening.” The charm was clearly calculated. Tess judged Joel to be a seasoned campaigner in the boardroom and bedroom. She remembered her first impression of him as a Roman general.

“Vini, vidi, vici, indeed. And Mac deserves to get schooled.”

She bowed to Joel’s self-assured masculine appeal, and they all ended up at The Maple Leaf, pulses pounding to funk and R&B as they sat on wooden benches around the perimeter of a small concrete dance floor. Ceiling fans hung from the hammered tin ceiling and rotated fruitlessly in the turgid air. Here was another quintessential New Orleans club. But Tess was beginning to think the lack of fancy décor kept the focus on what mattered—the music, the energy, and the people spilling out onto the sidewalk and patio.

Tess danced with Mac and Joel. Mac was obviously uncertain how to read Joel’s inte
ntions, and this dog-in-the-manger quandary had thrown him into a renewed wooing of Tess, who was polite but distant. Mac’s neglect caused a sulky Leila to dive into the arms of other male admirers and a large amount of beer.

During
a break from the music and dancing, Tess drank a soft drink and chatted with Joel on the club’s back patio. She discovered that he was true to his word, exerting himself to be unaggressively witty and attentive. She found herself answering his laughter and relaxing in the undemanding warmth of a restrained masculine charm very different from Mac’s boyish grins. Tess did not forget or forgive Mac’s behavior, but Joel’s flattering attention made it easier to bear.

By the time they left, Mac and Joel had to pour Leila’s long, suddenly graceless limbs into the taxi. Tess tried to insist on a drop-off at her hotel, but Joel was adamant that they go to Marigny to put Leila to bed and give Tess a tour of his house renovations.

Mac sullenly trailed Tess and Joel through a tour of the old Victorian’s gutted rooms
, and the group, minus the slumbering Leila, ended up sharing a bottle of wine on the newly installed rear patio’s pristine flagstones. With the end of her evening at hand, Tess felt it safe to indulge in a couple of glasses of wine. It helped numb the pinch of standing next to Mac while accepting that the space between them was just not going to be bridged—ever.

Tess drifted over to inspect a
small, artificial pond to one side of the patio. The pool was decorated by a kneeling stone angel with pitted wings and moss-dyed drapery. One hand was lifted in blessing and the other tipped an eroded stone chalice from which water trickled. The waning moon was a Cheshire cat smile floating above a branch of stars, and its silver grin rippled in the water beneath the angel’s libation.

Tess imagined how the night sky of her secret garden would be even more densely jeweled
by stars without the interference of the city lights. The Milky Way’s glittering band would throw a veil of silver light over the roses and marble odalisque. “All for Love,” murmured Tess.

“Did you say something?” asked Joel with a curious glance.

Tess blushed and shook her head, “Just remembering the motto on a statue I recently saw in another garden.”

Joel lifted his wine glass in a toast: “To New Orleans.” They all murmured the city’s name and sipped.

“
This place is lovely. Would you ever consider living here, Joel?” asked Tess.

“I’m a New Yorker at heart,” Joel smiled. “This city’s obsession with history and tradition makes me itchy. I mean I like it better than L.A., where everybody’s frantically
running after a way to relax. This place won’t be rushed. It may dance, it may parade, it may make noise day and night, but it’s pretty much running in place. I can dig that, but only for a while. I get this feeling that if I want to own a piece of New Orleans, I gotta let it own a piece of me. No thanks!”

“What about
you, Mac?” Tess turned to him with a cool, polite smile.

“Los Angeles is my kind of town,” Mac asserted. “New Orleans isn’t exactly the center of U.S. commerce, and it’s too hot and humid. By the way, Joel, you should have warned me your renovators hadn’t installed air conditioning yet. It’s hot as hell in those bedrooms.”

“Use the fan,” answered Joel, refilling his glass.

“Well, I guess I’ll head to bed and let the fan blow me to sleep then,” Mac groused. But he made no move to leave. “What about you, Tess? Do you want me to call a cab?”

“I’ll finish this last glass of wine, and then Joel can get me a cab,” Tess answered without looking at him, her gaze scanning the night sky. Mac departed with an uneasy, disgruntled air, and Tess and Joel finished their wine in companionable silence.

“Well, this is a good way to end the day,” Tess finally said. “I’d better go.” After a day of
near abstinence, the wine had set her head whirling.

Joel silently took Tess’s hand to lead her through the dark halls, stopping in the faint beam from
the fanlight above the old front door. His intense eyes met hers and asked a question.

Tess was never sure later what she meant to answer, but Joel made his own interpret
ation. He began to pull her by her lax, stunned hand toward the dark stairs. Tess started to resist, and Joel paused and looked back with a silent intensity that seemed to ask, “Really? You’re going to say no to your only offer of passion?”

Illuminated dimly by the streetlights, a
stained-glass window on the stair landing encircled his head like a halo. Its subject was the local favorite, St. Expedite, and the resemblance of Joel to the Roman centurion came to Tess as a sort of divine message of inevitability. She let Joel lead her upstairs.

So here she was, waking up with a man she
barely knew and certainly had not expected to desire. She could hear a soft tsk-tsk deep in her brain, the sound of her mother’s judgment creeping up on her.

Tess had her excuses. She had been goaded by the rejection of three
men—Jon, Tony and then Mac. She had been especially hurt to realize that Mac preferred casual pleasure over her offer of romantic commitment. She had muddled her judgment with alcohol. But, basically, she had to face the fact that she had not been moved by her heart but by lesser motives. Pride, frustration, revenge and lust had awarded Joel the prize—simply because he asked.

“You’re so stiff you’re either awake or
rigor mortis has set in,” whispered Joel.

Tess jumped, blushed and scrambled off the bed
. She pulled the rumpled sheet around her in frantic modesty. In the process, she yanked the sheet off Joel, leaving him fully exposed. He lay on his side, head propped on one elbow, smiling and unapologetically nude. The morning light gilded the pelt of dark hair on his chest and groin, and Tess looked away quickly, her face flaming.

“Look, I think I had too much wine last night
,” she mumbled. “It affected my judgment. I’m not comfortable with going to bed with someone I’ve just met. I mean you’re a nice person, but—

“
Anyway, I have to go. I have an appointment in Lafayette. I need to get back to my hotel to shower and change. I hope you understand,” Tess babbled as she clumsily bent to pick up scattered clothing.

“Well, good morning,” responded Joel. “I think I’m going to ignore all this morning-after bullshit. You’re a nice girl. I like you. We had a good evening. We had a wild night. I still like you in the morning. So ma
ybe we can get together again—after you stop berating yourself for your bad judgment. It kinda hurts my feelings. Your other sandal is under that chair by the way.”

Tess grabbed up the shoe, paused and took a deep breath. She was making a mess of things. “I apologize, Joel.
Give me a little time.” She kept her eyes averted and scrambled into her clothes.

“Hey, don’t worry. I have important meetings all week, so I won’t have time to bug you,” laughed Joel, stretching and yawning like a satisfied animal, his taut muscles moving fluidly u
nder the pale skin. Tess averted her gaze again. Her skin heated, and not just with embarrassment.

“Well, I’ll call a cab and wait on the sidewalk,” Tess said, moving purposely toward the door.

“OK, if we don’t connect while we’re both here, I can always get your location from Mac,” Joel spoke to her back as she paused in the doorway. 

“Won’t that be awkward?” Tess mu
mbled.

“Only for him,” laughed Joel. “Have a good day in Lafayette.”

Tess scurried down the stairs and out of the house, relieved that she did not encounter either Mac or Leila as she made her escape.

Then, a
s she waited anxiously for a taxi on the sidewalk outside, Tess suddenly saw an odd figure approaching. He was wearing a khaki bush shirt and shorts, and swinging a large red umbrella. Eyes widening, Tess recognized Jack Casey, the “urban safari leader” of her walking tour of the Quarter. He had said he was refurbishing an old house in Marigny, she now recalled. The old man marched past with a brief nod, but he then alarmed her by swinging around and striding back.

“I pride myself on never forgetting a face, young lady. Didn’t you join my walking tour of the Quarter a week or so ago?” Casey demanded in his lead-the-charge voice. Tess nodded dumbly.

“You’re standing here very early in the morning. Is there a problem? May I be of assistance?” the old gentleman boomed.

“I was out late, and so I stayed here overnight with a friend. I’m waiting for a taxi to take me back to my hotel,” Tess said quickly, hoping to stop his stentorian voice from rousing the neighborhood

The old man looked at Joel’s house curiously. “I see that your friend is part of the beleaguered group of residents to which I belong—committed to restoring the beautiful historic architecture of this city. What is his or her name, may I ask?”

“Joel Milliken,” said Tess without thinking and then added hurriedly, “but he’s renova
ting the house as an investment. He doesn’t live here most of the time.”

“Ah, you must warn him. There are salvage vultures preying on uninhabited homes, stealing architectural details and selling to the highest bidder. I’m talking about cypress mil
lwork doors, gables and brackets. I’m talking about pine floors and old ironwork. It’s a terrible situation for our treasured architectural heritage. Milled cypress cannot be replaced by Home Depot. Even the cemeteries are not safe! Statuary is being lifted from the dead to decorate private gardens.”

A
s Casey grumbled about “the damned scavengers,” Tess bit her lip and thought suddenly of the worn stone angel on the patio. Had it been stolen from some lonely grave?

“I’m sorry, but I think you need to express your concern to the owner,” said Tess di
stractedly. “Here’s my taxi. It was nice seeing you. I’ll certainly recommend your tour to other visitors.”

“Well, since the owner is here now, I must warn him about the salvage thieves,” Jack C
asey shouted as she hopped into the taxi. She watched in consternation as he marched toward Joel’s door.

As the taxi headed to her hotel, Tess hoped Joel would forgive her for her clumsy departure and
for siccing Casey on him before breakfast. The harder task would be to forgive herself for everything else that had happened.

15
LOST

Remy waved to Tess from the entry to Cafe Vermilionville as she pulled into the parking lot. They had talked on Friday, before her weekend escapades, and agreed to meet at the Laf
ayette restaurant before heading to Louise Gregory’s place.

“After a light lunch, I’ll drive you to your meeting and then we can cap the day with di
nner, zydeco and dancing. I’ll drop you back by your car here. How’s that plan?” said Remy as he escorted her into Café Vermilionville, a 200-year-old restored inn of hand-hewn cypress, which Remy had selected as a good start to her truncated Cajun Country excursion.

“Sounds good to me,” murmured Tess agreeably, giving her companion a swift assessing glance. He was dressed in worn jeans and a loose black T-shirt whose lack of fit emphasized r
ather than disguised his lean and graceful musculature. The bandanna was gone, and his dark hair was tucked behind his ears and nestled around the column of his neck. He was pleasant and relaxed, but there was no masculine interest in his eyes, Tess acknowledged, unless he knew how to leash his urges better than she did.

“Very likely.”

Her mother’s acid commentary had been suppressed all morning while Tess rushed to shower, dress and pick up her rental car. A wordless disapproval had nevertheless harried the repentant Tess, buzzing like a fly trapped between window glass and screen.

“I agree. I messed up with Joel. Now let’s forget it,” Tess
finally admitted mentally, and her noisy maternal conscience zipped away.

Once they were seated, Tess turned to the topic uppermost in her mind and asked Remy for his opinion on the fate of her secret garden. His response was not what she expected.

“I would sell it,” he said flatly.

“Wow, you didn’t even hesitate. I thought an artist who so obviously cares about natural beauty would be the one person who would sympathize with my reluctance to sell,” exclaimed Tess.

“I do want to preserve
natural
beauty,” asserted Remy. “A cypress forest or a lake teeming with fish is something that, once destroyed, can’t be resurrected with money and a backhoe, but a rose garden can be created anywhere. Your beautiful garden pleased one old man for 50 years as I understand it. Money from its sale could bring happiness and beauty to a lot of people.”

“What would you use the money for?” wondered Tess. His manner held a surprising u
ndercurrent of personal affront at the wasted opportunities beneath the garden’s lonely roses.

“Charity begins at home, so I would take care of my family,” h
e replied. His jaw was taut, and he kept his gaze averted. “Then I would take care of communities trying to rebuild after Katrina and the oil spill. I would campaign to rescue the wetlands that are being eroded every day by our human mismanagement. And I would make sure oil and gas industry predators didn’t pump poison into the environment.”

“I don’t know if there will be enough money to do all that,” murmured Tess,
surprised by his vehemence. She hesitated and then added in a subdued tone, “I’m embarrassed to say I’ve only thought about rescuing myself. I guess I should—”

Remy’s
eyes swiveled back to her face, and he interrupted with a contrite smile. “Hey, don’t apologize to me. I was out of line. I’m just a guy with a lot of causes he can’t afford.”

“You know I always end up talking about myself when we meet. I think I learned a bit about
your family on your Uncle Joe’s tour. You have another uncle who owns a car dealership, and your mother is Joe’s older sister. She’s married to a college professor, right?” Tess questioned, hoping to coax back Remy’s usually mellow mood.

“Yeah, my dad, Rob Thivet, was a French and linguistics professor at the University of Louisiana in Lafayette. Unfortunately, my dad had to retire because of Alzheimer’s four years ago. It’s tough on my mom because we can’t leave him alone anymore. I help out, but I can’t be there every day.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry. Is there anything the doctors can do?” asked Tess.

“Maybe medications have kept him from getting worse faster, but it’s an inevitable downhill slide. It’s the financial future that’s scaring
Mom now. She’s worried dad’s care will eat up their retirement savings. I’m her only child, and I’m not making enough yet from my photography to reassure her. It would be great if I could relieve my mom of financial worries at least. I’d love to have an inheritance fall into my lap,” Remy smiled, but his expression was strained.

“What about help from your dad’s family or your mom’s?” Tess probed.

“Uncle Joe’s got a financial constraint—meaning his tight-fisted wife. Uncle Gil the car dealer is just miserly—a rich guy who lives poor. My dad doesn’t have any living blood relatives except me.” Remy stopped and slapped his palms down on the table firmly. “Let’s talk about something upbeat!”

“Well, tell me about your musical career. How come you’re playing rock and not ‘indig
enous’ music like jazz, blues or zydeco?” smiled Tess, equally eager to escape Remy’s bleak home life.

“I gotta be clear that I’m ‘Cajun’ by birth only. By the way, ‘Cajun’ derives from the French ‘Acadien,’ but less than 12% of the ‘Acadiens’ still speak French. My mom and her brothers don’t, although they toss in a few French words to keep the faith. Uncle Joe lays it on thick for tourist effect. Now my dad is fluent. He
was a big supporter of CODOFIL—the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana—which tries to preserve francophone culture in the state."

“So why didn’t you go for Cajun-style music?” prodded Tess. “Your dad would have loved that.”

“I wanted to rebel against stereotype, I guess,” smiled Remy with a shrug.

“What's the name of your ban
d? I just realized that I never asked,” Tess remarked with a rueful shake of her head.

“The Exiles,” replied Remy. “
My dad liked the name because he thought I chose it to reflect my heritage. A sense of exile is a big part of the Cajun identity. They’re like Jews or Armenians—defined by the place they lost as much as by the place they've made for themselves, I guess. I assume you know how the eighteenth-century British forcibly ousted the French-speaking Acadiens from Canada for refusing to swear allegiance to the crown. Refugees of The Grand Dérangement, or The Great Disruption, fled to French-speaking enclaves, like Louisiana.”

“Well, at least the Acadian exile was less traumatic than the experience of African-Americans,” Tess pointed out. “They were captured and brought in chains.”

“You can't escape the legacy of slavery for long when you're raised in the South,” acknowledged Remy. “Every day you see some white idiot flaunting the vanquished stars and bars. The Civil War may be dead history for people in the North or West, but it's still a defining moment here. But, no matter the grievance, I get really tired of people focusing on the past—denying, glorifying or vilifying—instead of focusing on present problems. To be honest, my band’s name expresses my alienation from, not my embrace of, all the traditional thinking here.”

Remy suddenly signaled a waitress, saying, “Let’s try the crawfish beignets.” He kept the conversation breezy for the rest of the meal.

Louise Gregory lived in the Acadian Manor Mobile Home Park, a flat, treeless tract of aluminum boxcars framed by weeds and tar. Tess was nervous about the meeting. Louise Gregory was clearly a woman with a grudge, an angry woman. Yet she was going to have to handle whatever happened on her own.

Remy had declined to come with her. “I don’t think you’ll get a good reaction if you walk in with someone she didn’t invite or expect,” he explained. “Call me when you’re done, and I’ll pick you up.”

Tess’s anxiety mounted as she approached Louise’s isolated mobile home, the tap-tap of her footsteps echoing off the asphalt. She thought she detected a furtive movement at a window. Tess took a deep, fortifying breath and doggedly climbed up a wooden ramp toward the front door. Her knuckle raps sounded as loud as gunshots. She waited and then rapped again, harder. She wondered about the ramp. Was Mrs. Gregory handicapped? Tess recalled her wheezing, cough-racked speech.

Tess was de
ciding to give up and call Remy when the door opened quietly, and she stood facing Louise Gregory. This was no frail invalid. This was a vigorous 70-year-old who stood smoking stolidly as she looked Tess up and down, mostly down because she was a tall woman with militarily erect posture.

Tess smiled tentatively, “Hello, Mrs. Gregory. It’s Tess Parnell. Remember, we made an appointment?” The woman merely stood back and motioned for her to enter.

Tess stepped inside and blinked to accustom herself to the dim light. Every window was shut and curtained. It was twilight inside, with a drifting fog of cigarette smoke. A window air conditioning unit whirred loudly as it struggled to pump cool air, and a television set murmured and flickered at the end of a short hallway. Tess thought she detected a dark figure slumped in a wheelchair in front of the television, but Louise Gregory closed the hall door before Tess could see any details of the other trailer occupant, presumably Mr. Gregory.

The woman moved toward Tess, stopped and blew a stream of smoke toward the ceiling, still without saying a word.

Louise was about 5 feet 10 inches tall and was dressed in gray sweat pants topped by a mannish short-sleeved denim shirt. She had a full bosom with slim hips and belly; she probably had been a curvaceous beauty in her day, Tess thought. There was still an aura of animal litheness about her as she balanced on ragged athletic shoes and  rocked back and forth on her toes as if readying for some swift action. Her long grizzled hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and a wide gash of mouth split her face between strong nose and chin. The blue eyes were so fiercely watchful that Tess glanced away, shying from an unreadable demand.

“So,” said the woman cryptically and drew deeply on her cigarette again. The smoke-filled air was making Tess dizzy.

“Yes, we talked about your brother Noah’s memories of my grandfather, Guy Cabrera. You mentioned that you even had some old photographs.” Tess was rattled, acutely aware that the woman’s eyes were narrowing and hardening with each diffident word.

Louise made an impatient motion for Tess to advance. “Well, sit down. Dis is gonna take a while.” The woman gestured toward a sagging plaid couch before dropping into a faux-suede lounger with a built-in ashtray in one arm and a drink holder in the other.

Tess sat swiftly on the sofa as commanded, and, to her chagrin, immediately toppled backward into an upholstery bucket. She wriggled awkwardly until she perched on the edge, her back rigid and feet braced to avoid another slip into the sofa’s abyss.

Louise regarded these maneuvers expressionlessly. “Lemme tell you how me an’ Noah
got raised out on da bayou, an’ how Noah come to dat bayou. We’ll see what questions you got for me den.” She drew on the dwindling stub of her cigarette and then crushed it in the chair ashtray.

Tess kept meekly silent. The extinguishing of the source of the tobacco miasma was a r
elief. She had been suppressing a fit of coughing and had begun to fear asphyxiation.

“My papa was Thierry Noel Cabirac, but ever’one called him TinTin Cabirac,” began Louise.

“Was he named for the French cartoon character?” interjected Tess.

“What? Why da hell he gonna be named for a cartoon? Why
not ax about dat TV dog Rin Tin Tin?” Louise gave her a contemptuous glare. “No, dey useta call him T.N. for short. Den dey start to call him TinTin for a nickname. You get it?”

Tess nodded mutely. Louise looked at her sternly and, after a tense pause, began to relate the story of Thierry “TinTin” Cabirac. TinTin Cabirac was a “banty rooster” kind of man, asserted his daughter, making up for his small stature with a cunning, fierce aggression that kept the wise from “messin’ wid him.” A man of minimal formal education, he had come to the Manchac wetlands to
hunt on land leased from the logging enterprise owned by the Cabreras (so that’s where the Cabreras stripped the cypress for profit, thought Tess). Living in a cypress-pole and palmetto-mat shack, he trapped and hunted for a living.

“Did your father ever meet any of the Cabreras?” asked Tess.

“My papa never met no Cabreras,” said Louise brusquely with a hard glance that let Tess know she did not appreciate interruption.

As Louise described TinTin’s hard-scrabble life, Uncle Joe’s swamp-tour tales of “Nonc Martin” suddenly had relevance to Tess. TinTin Cabirac
’s lifestyle had paralleled Nonc Martin’s closely, except that he had spent many years as a lonely bachelor—until 1925. In that year, the 32-year-old TinTin married a 16-year-old “big-bone German gal” named Elsa Schmidt. “Mama never said much, but you paid attention or you paid a price,” said Louise. “She had a fist dat could knock a growed man off his feet.”

The taciturn and formidable Elsa was a hard-working helpmate. She even went alligator hunting with her husband and shot the thrashing creatures as they were hauled up “as calm as she peeled a tater or dressed a duck.” Elsa was still domestic enough to get her husband to build a sturdy cypress house for the family she planned
. But the union was not blessed by children—until Noah's arrival in 1933.