Big Easy Bonanza

Aren’t you… too much… too soon … to know.”
    “Guess what, Dee-Dee? I’ve got a date tonight. Eat your heart out, darlin’.”
    He sat up. “With a man?”
    “A big one.”
    “Ooooohhhh. Be still, my heart. And what are we going to wear, my dainty darling?”
    Handing the joint back to Skip, he leaped up and opened the closet. She took another little toke while Jimmy Dee surveyed her wardrobe. He came out looking bemused.
    “Not spending that giant salary on clothes, I see.”
    “I guess I haven’t got anything, huh?”
    He gave her a wicked look. “No, but I have.”
    ”Dee-Dee! Since when have you been into drag? Anyway, we wouldn’t wear the same size, you runt.”
    “Don’t I know it, Your Bigness.” He took the joint and left like a small sirocco. By day, Dee-Dee worked for one of the city’s stuffier law firms, causing secretaries to swoon and partners’ wives to introduce him to eligibles. Skip knew the swish act was strictly to amuse her, whom he considered a project. He felt she was deeply depressed and probably wouldn’t survive without his antics; he told her so roughly three times a week. She wondered if he wasn’t the one who was depressed, or at least one of the ones, but deep down, she knew he was probably right. She needed him.
    She folded up the sofa bed, getting more and more stoned as she waited for him. He was like Tolliver, she thought. He kept his private life private, indeed. Hardly anyone knew for sure he was gay.
    He burst back into the room, throwing her an oversize black sweater with some sort of abstract metallic design on it. “I found it in the bathroom after Carnival. Don’t ask,” he said.
    She held it up and stared in the mirror. “It’s not really my style.”
    He held his hand to his forehead. “Thank Gawd!”
    “What do I wear it with? The gabardine pants?”
    “Oh, Skip, Skip, Skip, what would you do without me?
    With jeans, darlin’, with jeans! And sweetheart, a favor, okay? Don’t wear your jogging shoes.” He turned to go.
    “Dee-Dee, wait a minute.”
    “What, do I have to do your hair too?”
    “Do you know Tolliver Albert?”
    He looked puzzled. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”
    “Good-looking. Runs an antique store on Royal.”
    “Mmmmm. Maybe we should meet. That is, if he’s under twenty-three.”
    “I want to know if he’s gay. Can you ask around?”
    “Is that who you’ve got a date with, little one? You fruit fly!” The door closed behind him, and Skip, as usual after one of his performances, doubled over laughing.
    It wasn’t only from the clowning either. Dee-Dee’s controlled substances were always of the highest quality. She felt floaty and fine. Normally she took showers, but tonight a bubble bath seemed in order. That way she could play with the bubbles.
    It was seven-forty when she stepped in front of the mirror in the black sweater, which really was quite chic, a pair of tight jeans (due to certain circumstances, she didn’t own any other kind), and her one pair of all-wrong brown heels. Well, hell, at least they were unobtrusive, and she didn’t have a choice—she’d promised Dee-Dee she wouldn’t wear her jogging shoes.
    There was time to walk—should she? Yes, definitely. She was still a little stoned. She’d trip lightly over the pavement like a dancing hippo from Fantasia.
    She stepped out the door and locked it. She heard a step, just one, behind her, but it was too close. She started to whirl around, light as a hippo, but never got past the intention stage. The thought of whirling flitted in and out like lightning before the back of her head exploded. She sank to her knees, holding on to the doorknob.
    The light was hellish. No way she could sleep anymore. She could remember voices, when some people had found her, and being lifted into a vehicle and brought to the hospital. She knew she was at a hospital, she even knew which one. It would be Charity (because nearly all the city’s accident cases went there), and she would be in a tiny room marked “Trauma 7,” where they took the closed-head injuries and where she had once spent a grisly hour or so with a victim who wouldn’t let go of her hand. (That is, she’d be there unless she had an open-head injury, but she couldn’t remember any blood being mopped up.) Okay. She wasn’t unconscious (though she wanted very much to sleep some more); she wasn’t even disoriented. She knew exactly where she should be—only she wasn’t.
    This wasn’t