Lousiana Hotshot

staggered by the information she just repeated what Eddie had said: “She’s black?”
    “What’s wrong? Ya prejudiced?”
    “No, but you— uh—”
    “Ya got me wrong, Angie— I’m not prejudiced. I don’t like pushy broads, that’s all.”
    “What about Mama?”
    “I’m stuck with her.”
    “What about me?”
    “Can’t stand ya.” He swatted her face ever so gently, and gave her a half smile.
    “Oh,
Daddy.”
Like a fourteen-year-old. He liked it. “Tell me about the applicant. What’s her name?”
    “Hell if I know.” He shuffled some papers. “Talba Wallis.”
    “How old is she?”
    “’Bout twenty-two. Twenty-three, maybe.”
    “That’s way too young to have the experience you wanted. She must have gone to Harvard.”
    “Xavier.”
    Angie was looking exasperated. Eddie hadn’t had so much fun in a month. Teasing his daughter was one of his greatest pleasures, especially since she hated it so much. It kind of got her back for having the gall to grow up. “Well, what the hell was so qualified?”
    “She passed on faxing a resumé. Showed up at my door before I did this morning. With this.” Eddie handed over the dossier Talba had compiled on him.
    “Holy shit.”
    “Angela. There’s no need for foul language.”
    “Is this what I think it is?” She ignored him. Went right about her business as if he’d never spoken. He didn’t know what to do about it when kids got out of control. Nothing he’d ever tried had worked worth a damn.
    “Yeah, it’s what you think it is. Said it took her an hour and a half.”
    “Holy shit,” she said again. “Did you hire her?”
    “No, I didn’t hire her. She’s pushy.”
    “In a good way, it sounds like.” She was treating him like he was the child.
    “I been workin’. I haven’t even had time to do a background check.”
    “Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s do it now.”
    He liked that idea. Angie could do a background check as well as he could— better, probably. She was about ten times as good as he was on the computer, which would have intimidated him if he had any respect for the damn machine. A video camera— now that was a piece of hardware he could love. Computers were just something outside his purview, like sewing. He could work fine with Angie without feeling like a sack of shit. But what appealed to him about the idea, if she was going to help him, she was going to stay with him a while. Maybe she’d even have lunch with him.
    He got up and gave her his chair. “I’ll just be in the video room.”
    Angie was leaning forward, her fingers racing. “Hey, Dad, wait. I’ve got something. She’s got a website. Your little applicant’s got a website, and you don’t even have one yourself! You gotta get this girl. She’s hot stuff.”
    “Yeah, yeah, she mentioned it.”
    “Her website? I should think.”
    “No, the hot stuff part.”
    “Holy shit.” She was leaning intently, as if she didn’t care if she fell into the screen.
    “Angela. Language.”
    “She’s a poet. Omigod, I’ve
heard
of her. Is this woman for real? Why would she want to work for you?”
    “Whaddaya mean, poet?”
    “Take a look at this.” She turned the computer screen toward him.
    Slowly, his bullshit detector turned on “high,” he walked back around his desk. “What the fuck? (Excuse my French.) AKA The Baroness de Pontalba, for Christ’s sake? She’s been dead for a century.
And
she was white.”
    Angela was looking way too amused to suit him. “Did you say something about foul language, Daddy dear?”
    “I got a double standard; you know that.”
    “Yes, Daddy.” He hated it when she gave him that suppressed-grin thing. “Listen, I know about this woman. They call her the Baroness— it’s her nom de plume.”
    “I’m gonna nom her plume,” he said automatically, and finally looked at the screen. There, sure enough, was the applicant in some kind of purple flowing thing with a turban on her head. A goddam turban. “I guess she’s an African baroness,” he muttered. “Why in the hell does a poet want to be a detective?”
    “No money in poetry,” Angie said. “They have to have day jobs. Hey, look, here’s a schedule of readings. There’s one tonight. Shall we go?” Evidently, it was a rhetorical question. Her fingers were working again. “Ah. Here it is. I thought I remembered this.” She’d somehow, in the flash of a fingernail (Angie wore Mandarin Red) pulled up a
Times-Picayune
story.