Big Easy Bonanza

something?” He rubbed his head, preoccupied, intimidating.
    “No. It’s nothing. I’ll come back.” Horribly embarrassed, she started to leave, knowing she wouldn’t come back; she’d never have the nerve. She had thought he’d receive her warmly, take her in the back, give her tea, sit her down for a chat.
    He called her back. “Marcelle, what is it, honey?” His voice was irritated, the voice parents use with tiresome children.
    She had her back to him now, and the male shopper had come into focus—he was Dulles Moorehead, with whom she’d spent a hideous night of frustrated passion about three months ago. She could see Dulles’s pathetic penis now, pink and shriveled on his blubbery belly. Marcelle prided herself on arousal techniques—a person who slept with as many drunks as she did had had to learn quite a few—but Dulles proved impervious to her best efforts, and only his snoring had persuaded her to give up.
    The night with Dulles may have been the worst in her career as a wild creature of the night—in the top ten anyway. There was the time Conley Butterfield had called her tarantula cunt, and the encounter with the two guys from Houma who thought she was going to take them both on. And of course Hilly Jordan throwing up in her bed. But the memory of Dulles’s worthless anatomy had more than once passed unhappily into her consciousness, sometimes with titles: “Moby’s Dick,” “Watermelon With Worm,” “Tadpole on a Field of White.” She had actually thought of trying to paint it, so vivid was it, and so poignant, it seemed to her. But she could not paint, and remembering that, she recalled, to her surprise, how much she wanted the thing she had come for. It was like her at this point to blurt it out, lose track of what she wanted, go into that beloved numbed-out state she lived in.
    That wasn’t happening now, she didn’t know why. She felt alert, alive, much more so than was comfortable. She felt a sudden tension in her lower belly and a quickening in her genitals, a concrete, sexual excitement that she knew was desire, need. She felt her resolve return, go coursing through her like a vitamin.
    She could walk forward, to Dulles Moorehead, metaphor for impotence, and for her life. Or she could turn back to Uncle Tolliver and ask for what she wanted and needed more than anything she could think of. In that instant, it all seemed clear as an alpine lake.
    “Uncle Tolliver, I want to ask you a favor.” She heard her voice, fresh, crisp, optimistic. “I mean, not a favor. I really think I could be an asset to you.”
    He looked as if he was in pain, as if he wished he were anywhere but here. But Marcelle wasn’t about to stop now. She heard her own voice start to sell herself, and the sound was so novel she felt detached from it. But not from the desire. She was firmly, single-mindedly, fixed on that right now. She was wanting in a naked, abandoned way that felt like destiny. “I’d like to help you in the shop, Uncle Tolliver. You know, I was a docent at the museum for a few months and I’ve had some art appreciation courses. I thought I could take some more … I’ll do anything to learn the business. I just… want a chance.” She was speaking in little bursts, running out of breath, because now fear had started to replace desire. Her heart fluttered, her throat had started to close.
    “Are you asking me for a job?” He practically yelled. He sounded furious.
    Too intimidated to answer, she managed only a nod.
    “Marcelle, I can’t deal with this now.” He turned and disappeared into the bowels of the shop.
    “Marcelle? Marcelle, is that you?” Dulles Moorehead was headed toward her, about to kiss her on the cheek.
    She winced only slightly as he did so, pulling herself together, becoming once more the perfectly oiled little manners machine she had been all her years with Bitty and Chauncey. “Hey, Dulles. How’re you doing?”
    He held both her hands in an utterly fake gesture of sympathy. “I’m sorry about your daddy.”
    “Thanks, Dulles. It was a shock to all of us.” Hating the well-bred android mouthing the expected clichés.
    “What are you doing with yourself, Marcelle?”
    “Oh, same old thing, you know how it is, Dulles. How’s Amy?” Amy was his wife.
    “She’s fine. Just fine.” His chins wobbled as he widened his phony smile. His little pig eyes fixed hers. He whispered, “I’d like to see you again. Sometime when I’m not so