Lousiana Hotshot

moment she realized he’d checked up on Pamela, she had an unreasonable surge of affection for him. The trouble was, she knew what it was; she knew exactly what it was.
    And that old white man is most assuredly not my father!
she told herself.
He’s not even a good father. Ask Tony Tino.
    In the end, she did. After a premarital investigation (or sweetie snoop, as she’d quickly dubbed it) that had proved to be lots of fun—
Impostor Caught Red-handed by Brilliant Computer Jockey
— she emailed Tony, and caught him online.
    He wrote back, “Shall we have a drink? Meet me in my favorite cyber-bar.”
    A few directions later, they were ensconced in a private chat room.
    “Got your martini?” he asked.
    “I’m having tea. You?”
    “Beer— this is Texas. Listen, I have a lot to thank you for. You know how long it’s been since my dad’s spoken to me?”
    “Ten years, I gather. He’s born again, Tony— a completely new person. He even took me out to dinner last night.”
    “Your treat, I’m sure.”
    “I’m not kidding. I think he wasn’t quite ready to tell your mother he’d talked to you. Also, he wanted to tell me about you.”
    “All bad, of course.”
    “He’s really missed you.”
    “Actually, I called my mother and told her. And I found out something really bad.”
    Talba’s mouth went dry. “He’s not sick, is he?”
    “Nothing like that. I’m not ready to talk about it yet— and probably shouldn’t, to one of my dad’s employees. Still, unloading to a stranger is what chat rooms are all about. Families are a pain— you know that? Didn’t you say your dad passed away? I’m sorry about that.”
    “No, because I didn’t know it when I wrote you before. I think I just said, ‘You’re lucky to have a dad.’ Since then, I found out he is dead. But it’s not like I ever knew him.”
    “D-i-v-o-r-c-e?”
    “Yes. But there’s some big mystery going on— nobody in the family ever mentions his name— and I mean that literally. I didn’t even know it till this week— I mean I didn’t know it for sure. Get this— his middle name’s La Rose!”
    “La Rose by any other name…”
    “As far as I can tell, nothing about him smelled sweet. I’ve started to have flashbacks.”
    “Of memories? Do you think your family’s protecting you from something?”
    “They even say they are. You know what I think? I think I was there when he died— and I know he died of a gunshot wound. That’s a matter of record.”
    “Who shot him?”
    “That’s the question. My mother hated him enough— that’s for sure.”
    “What’s your memory?”
    “Just the shot. The body on the floor; some furniture. Funny thing, though— my brother said it happened when I was two, but going by the date on the death certificate, I was seven. He also said my father died of an overdose.”
    “Weird. Was there anyone else in the room?”
    “Arrrgh. I don’t know if I want to go there.”
    “Uh-oh. I don’t blame you. Know what— I’m getting the feeling this isn’t fun for you. I don’t want to make things worse— especially after what you did for me.”
    “I’m fine, really. I’m pretty detached from it.” They said their electronic good-byes, and Talba closed down her computer with a big fat exhale. The truth was, she couldn’t believe she’d done what she’d done— talked to a perfect stranger about something so intensely personal. For her, computers had always been a tool to work with— not a social or therapeutic avenue. She felt embarrassed and drained. And not at all like having dinner with Corey and Michelle.

Chapter 18
    Because she’d had plenty of time to get to work, she hadn’t brought her car, instead had ridden in on the 82 Desire, the bus that replaced the streetcar when progress progressed. Talba gloried in it not only for the literary reference, but also for the thing that had captured Tennessee Wìlliams’s imagination in the first place— the innate poetry of it. Except she had a layer the playwright hadn’t had— this was a much faster, uglier, fouler-smelling vehicle than the one he’d had to work with. She never rode it without thinking about that.
    She’d once had an ambition to call a collection of poems
82 Desire,
just because she liked the name. But she’d since refined the idea. Now she had a plan to write a cycle of poems about her fellow riders— not their real lives, about which she couldn’t know, but their imagined lives. It had come about