82 Desire

through the Bywater, thinking that Tennessee Williams had taken license, and he hadn’t even been a poet. He had written: “They told me to take a streetcar named Desire and transfer to one called Cemeteries and ride six blocks and get off at…Elysian Fields.” The streetcar had traveled a slightly different route from the bus, but even in Williams’s day, if you were headed toward the cemeteries at the foot of Canal, you were headed to Metairie instead of paradise. In any case, it made a pretty metaphor, though Lamar had the gall to laugh at it. To actually laugh at Tennessee Williams. Well, Williams was white, but he was gay—that made him hip by definition. And besides, he was Tennessee Williams; you didn’t laugh at Tennessee Williams.
    Whoa, girl , she thought. What’s this?
    Usually anything Lamar did was okay with The Baroness. She didn’t like thinking bad about him, because her mama and Corey hated him so much. Somebody had to defend the man.
    Darryl Boucree’s getting to me , she thought.
    She had gone to bed last night thinking about Darryl.
    And then she dreamed she got on a train and took a long trip.
    I wonder , she thought, if they’ve got trains named Desire? Think I might be on one now. Watch out, girl! He might be cute, but you don’t really know him.
    Totally useless caveat, she knew it perfectly well—the guy wasn’t cute, he was adorable. And who wouldn’t be attracted to somebody who was a teacher just because he wanted to be?
    Actually, she’d found out quite a bit about Darryl Boucree in their short but sweet beer date—the fact that he had two moonlighting jobs argued that he had some kind of dependent. But at least it wasn’t a wife unless he was a liar, and whoever heard of a liar who liked poetry? (Oh, well, scratch that one—Byron, for instance, had probably had a mendacious streak.) But she didn’t think it could be a wife. Probably a mother or something.
    The exciting thing about Darryl Boucree, and perhaps the thing that had most drawn her to him, was that he was a musician. Creative people understood each other. Well, actually they didn’t, if one were she and the other Lamar, but at least they had a good shot at it. And Darryl was actually one of the Boucree Brothers! (Though he had explained to her that the membership of the band changed nightly and they weren’t all brothers—some were uncles and cousins and fathers and sons.)
    What must it be like to be from a family like that?
    When she asked him that, he laughed—said it was just like any other family, but she didn’t believe it. In fact, she knew it wasn’t—it was nothing like her family, which thought her crazy and irresponsible because she was a poet.
    I hate to think what they’d do if they ever found out about the dicking.
    The thought, mundane as it was, set off some little pleasure center in the back of her skull, made her feel warm and chocolatey-sweet for a second. What was that all about?
    Ah, she had it. The “dick” locution reminded her of Darryl, because he’d thought it up and they’d had that little exchange.
    Something had definitely been set in motion. Oh, well. Que sera. Which reminded her of something else—in addition to his other sins, Lamar didn’t like Alfred Hitchcock movies. He didn’t like anything to do with honky culture; it surprised Talba, but she did. Everything was too mixed up together to throw out big chunks without a damn good reason.
    She got off at Canal and walked the rest of the way. The name she had, the dude she was supposed to report to, was Edward Favret. She found, to her utter delight, that he was in the same department she’d been in before, Acquisitions and Property. She thought, as they shook hands, That fifty bucks I slipped ol’ Currie must have done the trick.
    But Favret quickly disabused her. “Ms. Wallis, it’s a pleasure. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
    Oh, shit. She thought she’d kept a low profile.
    “Robert Tyson says you’re the best temp he’s ever worked with, and we ought to hire you permanently—maybe that’s a thought, if you’re interested.” He gave her a look that made her nervous. He didn’t even know her. She hoped.
    But she smiled and nodded, and a line rang through her head: All nice like a good little pickaninny. That was how her poems started sometimes—as lines that she expanded on. I’m fixin’ to write about being a temp for Big Oil, she thought, and wondered if she could do it on company