Lousiana Hotshot

replace.
    Miz Clara said, “Well, ain’t you the Queen of the May.”
    “Indeed not.
I
am a baroness.”
    Darryl said, “You’re a queen to me, baby,” thus earning one of Miz Clara’s rare ear-to-ears. Darryl was a person of whom she thoroughly approved, which was the only thing that made Talba suspicious of him.
    Corey and Michelle were waiting for them, Michelle in a little pearl gray suit with pink-pearl blouse fastened with white-pearl buttons. Her only jewelry was a pair of pearl stud earrings. Her hair was caught back in one of those little George Washington ponytails that men wore. Talba honestly couldn’t recall ever seeing a black woman with that hairstyle.
    Michelle’s mouth flew open at the sight of her sister-in-law.
    Talba beat her to the punch. “Like my outfit?”
    Michelle blushed.
    Talba wagged a finger at her. “See, your face gives you away. It’s okay; really— everybody’s different. I don’t go in for bivalve by-products.”
    Michelle’s giveaway face announced that she was struggling to get the reference. Corey got there first. “Pearls. Pretty good, little bird.”
    Michelle said,
“Little bird?”
in a tone of pure horror, as if Corey had used a pet name for a mistress.
    Darryl simply stared at Talba, evidently feeling a new and unpleasant facet of her personality had just been revealed.
    As it has,
she thought.
As it has— even I didn’t know I was that bad. We’ve got ourselves an inauspicious beginning here.
    Corey ignored his wife and held out his hand to Darryl. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
    Darryl said, “I’ve heard about both of you. I think congratulations are in order.”
    Michelle looked down at her stomach. “Oh. I didn’t think…”
    Darryl chuckled. “No, Talba told me. Nobody could guess.”
    Corey said, “Hey, I’m a doctor, and I couldn’t tell if I didn’t know.”
    Oh, right. Of course he had to announce that in the first five minutes.
They hadn’t even gotten inside the restaurant and Talba was embarrassed three times over— though as much at herself as her relatives.
    Evidently, Corey and Michelle came to the restaurant a lot. The maître d’ fussed over them and the waitress called them by name. They ordered drinks, and when Corey asked for “the usual,” Talba could have puked.
    But she couldn’t have said why.
    She was in a rotten mood, that was why. Something like a headache was lurking just behind her eyes. Maybe a drink would help. She slurped down a couple of glasses of wine in short order, and found her instinct exactly right. It helped a lot.
    She listened with detachment as Michelle turned her well-bred charm on Darryl. “I hear you’re a man of many talents,” she said.
    Michelle was from a famous old New Orleans family, a member of the class of people known in the city as Creoles. In other places, the word may mean as little as “mixed race.” In New Orleans, it connotes an entire culture, dating back to the Free People of Color of the previous century.
    Before the Civil War, they formed their own tight-knit, often profitable community in the French Quarter and the Tremé. They were artisans, dressmakers, professionals, and most important, property owners— even the women, who were frequently participants in a genteel body-exchange called plaçage. Under this system, girls as young as fourteen were taken by their mothers to the Quadroon Balls, where, if they were lucky, they might catch the eye of a wealthy white man and end up under his “protection.”
    But a would-be protector would first have to strike a deal with the girl’s mother, preferably for ownership of a house and a proper education for the children of the union. Then, having bought himself a mistress, he’d move her into her new house and spend as much time there as his life with his white wife permitted. Because of the racial makeup of the arrangement— the lightest girls were considered the prettiest— the offspring of the placées became whiter and whiter over the years, frequently becoming
passants blancs.
    Many who retained color, however, became wealthier and wealthier, more and more respected and influential, until eventually they became the city’s power elite— and not the city’s
black
power elite. They were its political center, period.
    This was what Michelle Tircuit came out of. In her own hometown, she was as much a blueblood as any
Mayflower
descendant in the country.
    The Tircuits originally owned stables, eventually, as