Big Easy Bonanza

weird side.”
    “How about the queen and her court?”
    “That’s the part that’s a spectacle. For Comus they wear silver, and gold for Rex—all sequins and spangles. From the seats it looks like something out of a science-fiction movie. The trains alone weigh as much as a Toyota. The big moment comes at midnight, when Rex takes his court over to the other side to pay their respects to Comus and his court—the parvenus bowing to the real power. Quite charming.”
    “Yick.”
    “That’s the way the sequin sparkles. Just another Fat Tuesday in the City That Care Forgot.”
    “It’s amazing you turned out the way you did.”
    “I wouldn’t say that. It’s more or less inevitable, really. Anyway, you poor kids aren’t the only ones who had it tough.” Suddenly she realized she knew virtually nothing about Steve Steinman. “Or are you poor?”
    “Not exactly. My family belongs to a Jewish country club that excludes our brothers of Russian extraction.”
    Skip threw a sofa pillow at him. “And you’ve been sneering at my friends and fellow townspeople.”
    “I wasn’t sneering. The human condition is just a little disappointing wherever you find it, that’s all.”
    Mollified and suddenly curious, Skip said, “You know everything about me. What’s your story?”
    “Absolutely untrue, Officer Langdon. I know nothing about you except that you come from what you insist is a social-climbing family and you’re a big, gorgeous cop.” Skip felt herself flush. “I don’t see how you got from one to the other.”
    “Well, tough luck, I’m tired of talking. Your turn.”
    “Okay, okay. I’m from Atlanta, went to Duke, where Cookie Lamoreaux was my roommate, and am now in training to be the next George Lucas. I’m thirty years old, unmarried, and want very much to see you again.”
    “You do?”
    “Uh-huh. How about breakfast?”
    “I don’t think I’m going to feel like it.”
    “Late, then, Brunch.”
    “I’ll be working.”
    “Okay, I’ll come down and we can talk about whether I need to file that complaint.”
    “Oh, God, I forgot all about that. Come at three, okay?”
    “Not first thing?”
    “I’m going to be out of the office.”
    “No problem. I’ll wait for you.”

Ash Wednesday
1
    SKIP HAD BEEN told to do what Uptown girls would do, and the first thing on the list was exactly what nearly everyone else in town would be doing—going to church. Afterward she’d go to the St. Amants’, but first things first—a city that celebrates Fat Tuesday must wake up to Lent. Besides, she was going to need something spiritual in her life after walking through the Quarter.
    Despite the efforts of heroic sanitation crews working through the night, Ash Wednesday on Bourbon Street had a sickening morning-after feel to it. True, by now several tons of go-cups, discarded Hurricane glasses (or the shards that were all that remained of them), pointed sticks from corn dogs, beer cans, and worst of all, corncobs would have been hauled away. But the stench would remain—of garbage and vomit and spilled beer. And anyone who was still on the street probably hadn’t been home that night.
    Yet Skip craved the walk and the subsequent streetcar ride. If she had time, she often traveled Uptown this way instead of driving. She discovered its therapeutic qualities the time someone dropped her at her parents’ house and she got into a fight with her father—the last she’d ever had with him, the last time the two had spoken. She’d taken the streetcar home rather than let him drive her. And by the time she hiked to St. Philip Street, she found she’d cooled out.
    This morning the benefits were twofold: physical and mental. She had a nagging cobwebby hangover that cried out for fresh air and exercise. And she needed to think about what she’d done last night. Three stupid things. Very dangerous things.
    One was having Steve meet her at home. Another was telling Marcelle about it. That one-two combination had already had consequences, and she needed to try to square it with herself.
    The third was a different matter—smoking weed with a stranger. With the wrong stranger, it could put her job in jeopardy. It was unsmart, uncoplike, un-Skip-like. So what had made her do it?
    Probably a drug worse than a crack and heroin speedball. Testosterone.
    The walk should have helped—she should have been able to sort out some of it, at least, but she was wearing heels and her feet hurt too much.
    She