Big Easy Bonanza

and liked it, like burnt toast.
    Once Darryl set her up with a couple of customers after hours. He made a party of it, in the large private room upstairs from the bar, then let her know she was free to leave with them and charge whatever she could get. She didn’t mind, and pocketed a couple of hundred bucks, but she was very nervous about how Darryl would feel about her afterward. It turned out he was okay, at least as far as she could see. They kept on dating after work, and she could tell he was falling for her though he saw some of the other girls, too. She moved from the French Quarter to a condo rental unit near the lake. Her old bike had been stolen when she left it on the street while she ran into a grocery store and forgot to lock it, so she bought a new one at Western Auto. She started riding it to work. Everyone said she was dumb to ride home around the lakefront by herself at night, but to her it was part of being the new and improved Monique, strong and brave.
    Darryl still invited her upstairs to party every so often with some politicians or businessmen, nothing grungy, and he didn’t complain when she went out with them, or when she turned them down. It was up to her. The only time he ever got really mad at her was when she once asked him if he would sell her a little cocaine. He went ballistic and almost got violent about it. He said he was no penny-ante dealer supplying the help and—his main point—if she wanted anything like that, all she had to do was ask and he would give it to her freely. How was she supposed to know that, she asked, and in so many words he said it was because he cared for her deeply. At least that was what Monique thought she heard him saying.
    She got extremely soft on him after that, and they became pretty much of a steady thing. He made her the head cocktail waitress and shift manager, and she more or less moved in with him. He didn’t ask her to party with the customers much anymore, except one night with a particularly important pair of hotshots, and she wished she’d said no to that.
    It was the weekend before Mardi Gras Day, one of the high points of Carnival season and its zany final fortnight crammed with lavish public parades and private balls. The whole city had a crazy atmosphere. Champs was crowded all day. It was early March, but the weather was warm, springlike, and boats of all sizes tied up at the pier outside the bar for short stops. Drinkers moved noisily back and forth between deck and dockside, and when people, some of them masked, began rolling in off the streets after the parades passed, the joint really started jumping. It was intense, maintaining the steady flow of drinks, seeing that the bar was supplied, and keeping track of the waitresses who kept vanishing into the midst of the boisterous mob.
    Monique was wired up when she turned her register over to Jimmy, the late-night manager who would pilot the place until it lost altitude and crashed to the ground around four or five in the morning. She had been sipping juice all night and had taken a little toot at around eight o’clock. Now she was quite ready for a couple of drinks. Her mind was on rest, not party, when she went upstairs to Darryl’s office to take him the shift receipts.
    His office was part of a large suite. To get there you passed through the private lounge furnished with a couch, card table, and chairs, and Darryl’s guests used it to hang out in. When the club had live music the band had the run of the upstairs lounge to get stoked up and primed for their performance. The lights were kept very dim.
    The nicest part about the room was that it opened onto a small balcony overlooking the lake and the boats tied up at the dock below. Monique noticed that there were people on the balcony when she walked past, but she didn’t pay much attention to them. A hallway ran from the lounge past a bathroom, a small kitchen, and a locked storeroom and ended at the door of Darryl’s office. It was also kept locked, whether he was inside or not, and it was covered by a security camera so that Darryl could know who was outside before he opened up. He buzzed Monique in. He was sitting facing away from her at his oak desk, counting money, and he nodded to her without looking up or losing count when she came in. He was wearing his regular late-night outfit, faded blue jeans and a baggy white-and-blue striped sweater, and his gold necklace and bracelet. The air conditioner was on high, and he