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“Bang! Listen, I can’t work that booth with you, Cassie. I’m dancing! And you better dance too.”
“I’m not going to have fun. I’m going to help.”
“Come on, it’s a ball. When do you ever go out? Anyway, what are you dressing up as?”
“Nothing,” I said. “My shift ends when dinner’s served. And if you’re not taking over in the booth, I’ll have to find someone who will.”
“I’ll help,” Will offered.
“But you’re my date,” Tracina whined. “We’ll get Dell to do it. But you have to wear a costume, Cassie, and I know the perfect one. Cinderella!”
The thought of me in a ball gown was laughable, and when I said as much, Tracina laughed too.
“No, I meant Cinderella before the ball! When she was a scullery maid doing all the sewing and cleaning while her evil stepsisters had a great time. It’s perfect for you!”
I wasn’t sure if Tracina was being insulting or funny. Will was standing shirtless above me, his baggy pants held up with one hand, looking a little too much like a statue of David. He wasn’t a gym rat, but he had an impressively flat stomach and muscled arms. I tried hard not to stare.
“Cassie, why are you being ‘Miss I’m Not Participating’?” he asked. “That’s not very local of you.”
“I guess I’m still working on my citizenship.”
Tracina warned Will that she wanted to score a dance with the guest of honor, Pierre Castille, the billionaire who owned acres of waterfront property along Lake Pontchartrain, which had been in his family for generations. He was a private man who had a reputation for ducking in and out the back door at every function.
Kay Ladoucer, a local doyenne and the most conservative member of the city council, was the chair of the ball going on four years. She had arranged for Pierre to make an appearance during this year’s ball. Will was not a big fan of Kay. He had had a run-in with her during his bid to expand the restaurant upstairs. Kay argued that until he updated the electrical in the whole building, he couldn’t expand. But Will couldn’t afford to do that unless he was allowed to expand. So there was a stalemate over the proper permits, despite the fact that half the places on Frenchmen Street had ancient wiring.
If Tracina’s tactic bothered Will, he tried hard not to show it. Besides, Pierre Castille’s attendance was never a sure thing. At one of the organizational meetings, I overheard Kay complain that he wouldn’t give an exact time of arrival, nor would he allow promoters to mention he was coming, nor would he participate in the auction or even commit to attending the meal.
Will glanced down at me looking about as miserable as I’d ever seen him. I gave him a sympathetic shrug and hoisted the hem another inch higher, reminding myself that Will was another woman’s man, regardless of whether Tracina was as engaged with him as he was with her, something I was beginning to question. For the past few weeks, she’d disappear and be unreachable for hours, and I knew Will well enough to sense his jealous funk.
“She probably had an appointment for her brother,” he’d say, craning his neck, watching the parking spots in front of the Café, waiting for her to pull up. “Or maybe she’s shopping. She’s always running off to shop.”
I’d smile and nod, careful not to contradict him, finding it fascinating the way we lie to ourselves when we don’t want something to be true. I’d done it for years with Scott. But one of the many gifts of S.E.C.R.E.T. was that my experiences were teaching me to stop lying to myself. In the middle of the kitchen while I was hemming Will’s pants, his eyes met mine for a little longer than usual. I told myself it meant nothing. When he offered to drive me home later, I reminded myself that my place was on his way home.
But when he idled the truck while waiting for me to get safely inside the Spinster Hotel and playfully blew me a kiss from the cab, I wondered if I was lying to myself all over again.
The New Orleans Revitalization Society was one of the oldest of its kind in the city, dating back to post–Civil War days. Back then it used to raise money to build schools in the neighborhoods where freed slaves began to settle. After the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, the Society made rebuilding schools in disadvantaged wards its focus, because waiting for the government to do it meant waiting forever. My volunteering for the Society was part of my attempt to make this city my home, and to make friends beyond the Café and its environs. My job for the evening was to work the donation booth, to collect checks and run through credit cards. No costume and dancing for me. I wanted to take this event seriously. In exchange for my time, Kay allowed us to hang a Café Rose banner on the skirt of the table.
This year the ball was being held at the New Orleans Museum of Art, one of my favorite buildings in the city. I loved its four-columned Greek Revival facade, and its square marble foyer surrounded on all sides by a high balcony. I used to wander in its echoing rooms when I was still married to Scott and things were tense between us. I would visit Degas’ Girl in Green painting, because she seemed mournful to me, facing away, either worried about the past or afraid of the future. Or maybe I was just projecting. I had an hour to assemble the booth and to get a rundown from Kay. I found her, dressed like the Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland, yelling in the middle of the white marble foyer.
“Move the ladder!”
Two young men were trying to suspend giant sparkly snowflakes from the ceiling. Kay wasn’t a big fan.
“I don’t know how snowflakes fit the ‘Make-Believe’ theme, but what else can we suspend from the ceiling? Fairies?”
An image of Tracina dangling from a thread brought a smile to my face, interrupted only by Kay eyeing me over her reading glasses.
“Where are you setting up the booth? Not in here, I hope!”
“I think over there,” I said, pointing to an area near the back of the room.
“No! I don’t want people to confuse our beautiful dinner with a grubby cash grab! Near the coat check, please. And where are your tools?”
“Tools? I didn’t realize that—”
Kay let out an exasperated huff. “I’ll get a couple of the maintenance guys to help.”
By the time Tracina arrived, fully decked out in her white tutu and tiara, the booth was up and running and I was comfortably hidden behind its high skirt.
