Lousiana Hotshot

himself for remembering.
    “You really want to know?”
    Not really,
he thought, but he had to talk about something. “It just seems like kind of a waste of education.”
    “I do it because that’s how I hear it.”
    He thought she’d say more, but she didn’t. Superior bitch. He truly hated her.

Chapter 3
    Before it was over, Talba had managed to get him together with Miz Clara. The Baroness might be too much for him— she was pretty sure she was— but no one, at least no one like Eddie, could resist Miz Clara when she was in church-lady mode. She came to Talba’s readings dressed to uphold the family honor in the face of her daughter’s outlandish persona, and that meant pantyhose, heels, tight little dress with peplum, and Sunday-best, not-a-hair-out-of-place-wig-hat-on-her-head. She worked as a housecleaner, which she would probably work into the conversation, just because she liked to get it out there in case it was an issue, and Talba figured that could work to her advantage. It would show that she came from modest beginnings and therefore couldn’t be too threatening.
    Talba had kept an ear cocked while she talked to Eddie’s very hip daughter— whom she liked a lot— and heard Miz Clara going on about how honored she was that Eddie had come to hear her humble daughter and even brought his exalted family. She might not actually have used those precise adjectives, but Talba thought there was something downright Japanese about the way she carried on about the honor he and his were heaping on her and hers by their luminescent presence. Her mother must really want her to get a job.
    Her brother Corey already held one of the three positions Miz Clara deemed acceptable for her offspring, the other two being president and Speaker of the House. Corey was a doctor. Miz Clara hadn’t signed up for a poet.
    Worse, she hated most of Talba’s poetry, because it revealed too much about the family. What she did like was the adulation it got her daughter, which Miz Clara felt reflected so well on her it actually
was
hers. And so, gradually, ever so gradually, she’d become willing for Talba not to go off to Palo Alto and become an Internet millionaire, so long as she did some kind of honest work. Evidently, she’d liked Audrey enough to make Eddie okay with her. And okay in Miz Clara’s book meant she was going to stay on Talba’s back— and maybe Eddie’s— till Eddie hired her.
    That morning she had knocked on Talba’s door, and shouted, “Girl, who you think you are? Queen of the May?”
    Talba smiled. “Come on in, Mama. I’m sorry you hate that poem so much.”
    “Hmmmf. Describe
you,
all right. Got coffee made.”
    Talba had stayed out late with Darryl after the reading— she found it took her hours to wind down from these things— and had slept much longer than usual, too long to join her mother for coffee, as usual.
    When Miz Clara had left, and she had drunk her coffee and worked up her nerve, she took a breath and called Eddie. “Mr. Valentino? I just wanted to thank you again for coming to my reading. I was really very touched and just wanted to say…”
    But he interrupted her. “Ya busy this morning? Why don’t ya come on in?”
    For what?
she thought.
Am I hired?
But she didn’t ask. What the hell, she wasn’t busy. She put on her one good suit.
    Eileen Fisher looked up only briefly. “He said to send you right in.”
    Talba thought he looked a little better this morning— maybe a little less tired. Probably a load off his shoulders, knowing he was about to get such a competent assistant.
    “Ms. Wallis, ya got an investigator’s license?”
    “License? Well, no, I thought if I worked for you… why? Do I need one?”
    “To be an investigator ya do.”
    Fool. She hadn’t checked
that
out.“What do I have to do to get one?”
    “Ya gotta go to Delgado or UNO and take a course. Take ya coupla weekends. But you gotta wait till they give the class.”
    “Oh.” She sat still for a moment, taking it in. Finally, she said, “Well. I’m in your office. There must be some reason for it.”
    “I’m willing to take you on as an apprentice while ya get ya license.”
    “I see.”
    “And I was wonderin’. You’re so good with the computer— ya got a program for keeping books?”
    “You want me to keep the books as well?”
    He shrugged. “Not that much to do. It’s just a pain in the ass if ya don’t have the software.”
    “You want me to do two jobs? Is that