PI On A Hot Tin Roof

helps her, Miss Adele. It really does.”
    Adele smiled. “I’m grateful to you. I didn’t even know she was writing.”
    “She said Royce got hurt. How’s he doing?”
    She shrugged. “It’s nothing a bottle of whiskey won’t cure. That’s his theory, anyhow.”
    Lucy clattered back down, clutching her camcorder. “Almost forgot the most important thing. Raisa can tape me for you, Mommo. We can watch it tomorrow.”
    Adele kissed her again, and Talba sensed the tenderness between them. How much Adele had cared for Buddy, Talba didn’t know, but she knew she was hurting on Lucy’s account.
    “Break a leg,” Adele said, and before Lucy had time to protest, Talba explained what it meant.
    “Tell Royce I’ll break a rib,” Lucy retorted, and the minute they were out the door, she said, “You didn’t tell me to dress up.”
    She’d opted for jeans turned up almost to the knee and a tight-fitting T-shirt with a design of Hindu deities, which Talba pronounced perfect. “Half the poets who read,” she said, “will probably be dressed like you.”
    After she and Raisa had hugged and Raisa had said, “I’m sorry about your daddy,” and Lucy had said, “Thanks,” Darryl asked them what they wanted for dinner.
    “Big Mac!” Raisa hollered, to which Darryl replied, “Bleeagh!”
    “Oh, Daddy.”
    “This is a big night, kid—we’re having an adult dinner. We can eat at Reggie and Chaz if you like. They have pizza.”
    That went over with both the girls, so Reggie and Chaz was elected. Talba could see immediately that neither of the girls had ever seen anything like it. Reggie—half of the gay African-American couple who ran it—met them with a bow. “Ah! The Baroness. It’s an honor, Your Grace. And Darryl Boucree. Long time.” He kissed Talba and slapped palms with Darryl, after which he greeted each girl with outstretched hand. “And two princesses. Princess Raisa, I believe? And you’d be Princess Lucy.”
    They were wide-eyed (even Lucy) not only at Reggie’s excess, but also at the place, with its Guatemalan belts hanging like snakes from the ceiling and its distinctly salt-and-pepper flavor. Both had seen a sprinkling of other races at restaurants, but neither had evidently been in a place where it was more or less fifty-fifty. And then there were the clothes. People who frequented Reggie and Chaz tended to come from the Faubourg Marigny and the Bywater, neighborhoods known as havens for artists.
    A lot of the men sported what Talba called “musicians’ clothes”—loose, short-sleeved, square-tailed shirts worn outside the pants, and porkpie hats; the women wore gauze and Indian or African prints and vintage outfits and zany hats, more conservative versions of Talba’s baroness look. Plenty of tattoos and piercings on both sexes. A good fifty percent, as Talba had predicted, were dressed like Lucy, in jeans. True, lots of midriffs showed, but Lucy didn’t seem to feel too deprived that she’d been talked out of it.
    She seemed to be in heaven. “This place rocks.”
    “Told you.”
    “Does everyone have a performance name?”
    “Nope. Just royalty.”
    “Henceforth from this moment, I shall be known as Princess Lucy.”
    “That’s a long time. You sure?”
    “Yeah!” Raisa said, though it was none of her business.
    “Okay, that’s how I’m introducing you. But hear this—you don’t outrank The Baroness. Nobody does.”
    Lucy smiled. “Not till I get some better clothes, anyhow.”
    And then she and Raisa got into a big discussion about taping. Raisa had brought Eddie’s camcorder (which Talba hadn’t yet returned), and wasn’t sure how she could get everything on both cameras. Finally, Lucy agreed to let Darryl operate hers so Raisa could make her own tape, which she’d get to keep “and cherish,” as Lucy put it, striking a princess pose. The kid was showing real performance instincts.
    But for a while, Talba was worried. They finished their pizzas and moved into the drinking part of the evening (Shirley Temples for the girls, Chardonnay for Talba, beer for Darryl), which made the girls restless and argumentative, since they had neither the mellowing advantage of alcohol, nor other kids to distract them. Talba had warned them that the reading would start half an hour late, but what good was a warning when you were young and impatient? Lucy’s stage fright was so nearly palpable that Talba left for a while to bribe the night’s emcee, Lemon