Big Easy Bonanza

the brawling morning traffic, made a promise to her – a promise of possibilities. She opened the window to let in the cool, clean Gulf of Mexico air, exited at Franklin Avenue, and fell asleep parked in a neighborhood of proud oak trees and old brick houses.
    She was rousted by a policeman at around ten a.m. He ascertained that she was alive and told her politely that she needed to move along. After they talked a little, he with his blond mustache and bulky blue jacket, she with sleepy eyes and tangled hair, he suggested a rooming house on Canal Street. He gave her directions and waved when she puttered away. She found the place without trouble. It was a lovely old mansion with a big yard, owned by a blue-haired lady who showed Monique to an immaculate room, furnished with a bed, a dresser, a television, a cherry-red throw rug, and a vase of fresh flowers. It cost as much for a week as her trailer in Evergreen had cost for a month. It was her first house in New Orleans, and there were roses in bloom outside her window.
    Monique made her way. Right off the bat her car got towed from a freight-loading zone while she was using a pay phone, and she never went to pick it up. She was afraid that the finance company might have reported it stolen, and she’d get arrested. She learned the bus routes and found a job as an exotic dancer in a foul-smelling club on Decatur Street. Ali, the linebacker-sized barman, made sure the customers didn’t touch her unless she allowed them to, and the money was okay. It was basically good exercise, except that the air in the place, from the customers’ cigarettes and other noxious emissions, was roughly the flavor of car exhaust.
    She moved out of the rooming house and into a cheap apartment in the French Quarter. It was nice being able to explore the Quarter before work, to walk down to the river and watch the freighters with names of countries she had never heard of painted on their bows, to mingle with tourists and sometimes buy a muffuletta, packed with Italian ham and olive salad, and eat it outdoors in Jackson Square. She bought a bike. She did what she needed to do to get by. She made some friends and picked up a little cocaine habit. A job waiting tables in a bacon-and-eggs joint on Chartres Street opened up, and she took it even though it paid less than dancing. When she walked out of the strip joint, she gave Ali her falsies and G-string, and he got a huge laugh out of that.
    Monique did not consider herself to be a genius by any means. Sometimes she wondered if God had given her any brains at all. But when she met Darryl Alvarez at a party her boss threw, she was smart enough to know that he was a step up. He was a little short for her taste, and he had kind of a Spanish look that was new to her, but he seemed real sure of himself and he said a lot of interesting things.
    They left the party early and went out and had a few drinks in a crowded bar Uptown run by a friend of his. The drinks were on the house, which was impressive, and Darryl left a fat tip for the waitress, which was even more so. He was fun. They stopped off at his apartment right on Lake Pontchartrain, overlooking what he said was the yacht harbor, to snort a little coke together. His apartment wasn’t furnished like the ones most of her previous boyfriends lived in. There weren’t any Mexican bullfight pictures on the wall, for one thing. It was all very modern and clean and had wall-to-wall carpet. There was a big wooden cabinet that when he opened it revealed a television and a stereo and some carved black statues from Africa of fierce naked men and women, and he had a thick glass coffee table. She checked out the medicine cabinet while she was in the bathroom and found out that Darryl used Mitchum, Colgate, and Drakkar Noir. It was clean in there, too, which was mighty unusual for a man, and she thought he must have a maid.
    Darryl pulled the curtains open, and she could see, across the street and the floodwall, all the sailboats berthed in their little slips in the harbor, illuminated by tiny lights strung along the piers. It was very romantic.
    “I’ll make it a little darker and you can see the view better,” he said, and she giggled.
    “That’s funny?” he asked, switching off a lamp. “What can I fix for you?”
    “Oh, a beer, I guess. I don’t care.”
    “Here’s a Miller Lite,” he said, handing her a pony bottle, “so you can keep your beautiful figure.”
    “Thank you. What do