Big Easy Bonanza

it together with the facts that he was big and muscular, with the beginnings of a beer belly, and she concluded, without too much brainwork, that he was a rogue cop. At least he came with all the trappings of cophood as she knew them. He dropped her off at her place and scratched off before she could find her keys.
    Monique felt completely wrecked when she woke up late the next morning. After she finally got herself moving, she took her bike outside and rode all the way down Lakeshore Drive and back to try to clear her head. She reported to work a little early and tracked down Darryl to get a read on the situation. He acted like it was no big deal, nothing to forgive. Later on he mentioned that he was sorry he’d fixed her up like that. Those guys could be bad actors, he said. She should stay away from them. So what was she supposed to make of that?
    Monique had a problem of her own. She had a prior conviction in Alabama—for possession with intent to sell. She had never told anybody in New Orleans about it. It was part of the degrading time of her life with Ned that she wanted to bury forever. She knew Darryl had a prior, too, but since he didn’t talk about it, neither did she. It was one of the things they hadn’t shared yet.
    What’s worse, she was still on probation. Except for her party nights, and except that she might keep a little grass or coke around for home consumption, she tried hard to stay clean. In other words, she didn’t cut up much in public or do any dealing. She realized that Darryl did, but that was his affair and she kept out of it.
    Sometimes Darryl would go away for a day or two, on business. It was none of hers. They weren’t married. He sometimes made her wait in the hall for a few minutes before buzzing her into his office, and he had even once sent her outside while he took a phone call. She was naturally curious but not too concerned. She didn’t think that it involved another woman, and that was the main thing that scared her. She hadn’t seen anything serious develop in that area, though. Darryl might sleep around a little, but he showed her enough respect to hide it well. That was something she appreciated.
    She had fallen in love with Darryl, she believed. She liked the way he ran things, the way he was casual around drugs, the way his mood always stayed up no matter what trouble he’d had. She could visualize finally starting to build a home base. The air by the lake was fresh and clean, and wet breezes flushed away the blue fog she got in her mind from working behind a bar. She was making good money, enough to send some regularly home to her mama to help care for Lisa.
    Lisa, the child she had had with Ned, was another of the things she hadn’t yet revealed to Darryl. Lisa stayed with Monique’s mama in Evergreen. She was four years old, and she wrote letters to Monique, the kind that little girls write. The arrangement had begun when Monique had been arrested and spent a little time in Atmore at what they called a rehabilitation center. Monique’s mama hadn’t quite gotten over that, and she still wouldn’t let Monique visit Lisa. Monique imagined that she and Darryl might get married, and then he would help her get Lisa back no matter what her mama said.
    The closest she or Darryl came to talking about kids was when she asked him if he had any brothers and sisters. No, he said, he was an only child.
    “Where did you grow up?” she asked.
    “Mostly here in New Orleans,” he said. “My father sent me and my mother here to live in an apartment when I was a little boy. When I got out of high school, he told my mother to come home and left the apartment to me.”
    “Where did he live?”
    “In Mexico City.”
    “What did he do?”
    “He had a shoe factory,” Darryl said, looking right in her eyes in a way that said he didn’t want to talk about it.
    “You had an apartment and lived all by yourself?”
    “That’s right.”
    “I grew up with lots of kids myself. Mama had four girls and one boy.”
    “That must have been nice.”
    “It was, most of the time. I like a big family.”
    “Didn’t you fight a lot?”
    “You better believe it. But we always made up.”
    “In my family, everybody got their own pork chop. That’s one thing I remember my father used to say. We didn’t have to fight over them, you see?”
    “Weren’t you ever lonesome?”
    “Not really. I played with myself.” Darryl laughed.
    “I can’t imagine having a family without a