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“I—I don't know what you mean.”
He took a step farther into the bathroom. “Are you test-marketing new uses for perfume, Francie? Is that what you're doing?” Resting the palm of one hand against the wall, he leaned toward it. “You got your designer blue jeans, your designer shoes, your designer luggage. Now Miss Fancy Pants has got her some designer pussy.”
“Dallie!”
“You're the ultimate consumer, honey—the advertising man's dream. Are you going to put little gold designer initials on it?”
“That's not funny.” She slammed the bottle down on the back of the toilet and clutched the towel tightly in her hand. Her skin felt hot with embarrassment.
He shook his head with a world-weariness that she found insulting. “Come on, Francie, get your clothes on. I said I wouldn't do it, but I can't help myself. I'm taking you with me tonight.”
“What accounts for this magnanimous change of heart?” she snapped.
He turned and walked out into the bedroom, so that his words drifted back over his shoulder. “The truth of it is, darlin', I'm afraid if I don't let you see a slice of the real world pretty soon, you're going to do yourself some actual harm.”
Chapter
12
The Cajun Bar and Grill was a decided improvement over the Blue Choctaw, although it still wasn't the sort of place Francesca would have chosen as the site for a coming-out ball. Located about ten miles south of Lake Charles, it rested beside a two-lane highway in the middle of nowhere. It had a screen door that banged every time someone came through and a squeaky paddle-wheel fan with one bent blade. Behind the table where they were sitting, an iridescent blue swordfish had been nailed to the wall along with an assortment of calendars and an advertisement for Evangeline Maid bread. The placemats were exactly as Dallie had described them, although he had neglected to mention the scalloped edges and the legend printed in red beneath the map of Louisiana: “God's Country.”
A pretty brown-eyed waitress in jeans and a tank top came to the table. She inspected Francesca with a combination of curiosity and ill-concealed envy, then turned to Dallie. “Hey, Dallie. I hear you're only one stroke off the lead. Congratulations.”
“Thanks, honey. The course has been real good to me this week.”
“Where's Skeet?” she asked.
Francesca gazed innocently at the chrome and glass sugar dispenser in the middle of the table.
“Something wasn't sitting right in his stomach, so he decided to stay back at the motel.” Dallie gave Francesca a stony look and then asked her if she wanted something to eat.
A litany of wonderful foods flicked through her head— lobster consommé, duckling paté with pistachios, glazed oysters—but she was a lot smarter than she had been five days before. “What do you recommend?” she asked him.
“The chili dog's good, but the crawfish are better.”
What in God's name were crawfish? “Crawfish would be fine,” she told him, praying they wouldn't be deep-fried. “And could you recommend something green to go along with it? I'm beginning to worry about scurvy.”
“Do you like key lime pie?”
She looked at him. “That's a joke, isn't it?”
He grinned at her and then turned to the waitress. “Get Francie here a big salad, will you, Mary Ann, and a side dish of beefsteak tomatoes all sliced up. I'll have the pan-fried catfish myself and some of those dill pickles like I had yesterday.”
As soon as the waitress had moved away, two well-groomed men in slacks and polo shirts came over to the table from the bar. It was quickly evident from their conversation that they were touring golf pros playing in the tournament with Dallie and that they had come over to meet Francesca. They positioned themselves on either side of her and before long were giving her lavish compliments and teaching her how to extract the sweet meat from the boiled crawfish that soon arrived on a heavy white platter. She laughed at all their stories, flattered them outrageously, and, in general, had them both eating out of her hand before either had finished his first beer. She felt wonderful.
Dallie, in the meantime, was occupied with a couple
of female fans at the next table, both of whom said they worked as secretaries at one of Lake Charles's petrochemical plants. Francesca watched surreptitiously as he talked to them, his chair tilted back on two legs, navy blue cap tipped back on his blond head, beer bottle propped on his chest, and that lazy grin spreading over his face when one of them told him an off-color joke. Before long, they had launched into a series of nauseating double entendres about his “putter.”
Even though she and Dallie were involved in separate conversations, Francesca began to have the feeling that there was some connection between them, that he was as conscious of her as she was of him. Or maybe it was just wishful thinking. Her encounter with him at the motel had left her shaken. When she curled into his arms, she had sent them flying across some invisible barrier, and now it was too late to turn back, even if she was absolutely certain she wanted to.
Three brawny rice farmers whom Dallie introduced as Louis, Pat, and Stoney pulled up their chairs to join them. Stoney couldn't tear himself away from Francesca and kept refilling her glass from a bottle of bad Chablis that one of the golfers had bought her. She flirted with him shamelessly, gazing into his eyes with an intensity that had brought far more sophisticated men to their knees. He shifted in his chair, tugging unconsciously at the collar of his plaid cotton shirt while he tried to act as if beautiful women flirted with him every day.
Eventually the individual pockets of conversation disappeared and the members of the group joined together and began telling funny stories. Francesca laughed at all their anecdotes and drank another glass of Chablis. A warm haze induced by alcohol and a general sense of well-being enveloped her. She felt as if the golfers, the petrochemical secretaries, and the rice farmers were the best friends she had ever had. The men's admiration warmed her, the women's envy renewed her sagging self-confidence, and Dallie's presence at her side energized her. He made them laugh with a story about an unexpected encounter he'd had with an alligator on a Florida golf course, and she suddenly wanted to give something back to all of them, some small part of herself.
“I have an animal story,” she said, beaming at her new friends. They all looked at her expectantly.
“Oh, boy,” Dallie murmured at her side.
