Courir De Mardi Gras Read online

  “Yes, very.” Suzanne held back the smile brought on by the mental image of Dr. Dumont “doing research” with Associate Professor Jung, but her grin burst out at the prospect of getting away from Paul.

  “Mr. St. Julien will pay your transportation costs, provide room and board at Magnolia Hill, and give you a small salary for your efforts. I spoke with him on the phone yesterday and suggested you might be available in mid-January as soon as the semester ended here. Will that interfere with any personal plans?”

  “No, not at all.”

  “Good, then. I rather feared you were so engaged with Mr. Smith that you would be unavailable.”

  “We are not engaged. The man I thought I would marry has settled down with Beth Ann in Middletown.”

  “Let us hope there is a Beth Ann for Mr. Smith. As for Georges St. Julien, for your sake, I hope there is some of his father in him.” Dr. Dumont pronounced the forename lingeringly in the French manner, though the “George” of the letter’s signature had no “s” on the end.

  “I have never met the son. I did see his picture once, a very solemn boy with Harry Potter glasses, rather gangling and horsey like his mother, a very cold woman, much opposed to divorce, Jacques told me.”

  Probably over coffee and hot beignets the first day of Lent, Suzanne thought. The professor sighed again. “If only Jacques were still alive, I could be sure I am delivering you into good hands, but he died as he lived, flamboyantly—taking a fence on his white horse during the Courir de Mardi Gras. Killed instantly with a broken neck. So fitting he went while still full of vigor and virility. I would hate to think of Jacques growing too old to ride. He served as the Capitaine of the Courir, you know.”

  Suzanne braced for another “Ah, Jacques” but forestalled it with a question of her own. “Is his wife living?”

  “No. She died fairly recently of some lingering disease. There will be only you and Georges at Magnolia Hill. You must give me progress reports.”

  Suzanne startled.

  “On your project, of course, sample pages so I can review your format and research.” Dr. Dumont smiled, thoroughly enjoying her small joke.

  Dumont’s little, bowed smile remained behind like that of the Cheshire cat in her mind, and Suzanne found herself duplicating it as the taxi pulled up in front of the airport terminal. The driver took this as a show of appreciation for his inside information on New Orleans, but he probably placed more value on the lavish tip his passenger pressed on him in the first full flush of her freedom from Paul. She allowed a porter to seize her bags since one contained a layer of reference books that might be difficult to find in Port Jefferson. The man gave her a questioning look when he heaved the suitcase onto his hand truck and trundled it to the appropriate counter. “There be an extra charge for that one,” he said, but he also received an exceptionally good gratuity. Suzanne hardly grimaced when forking over the money for the number and weight of her bags.

  Early for her flight, she spent the spare time having hot tea and a day-old cheese Danish freshened for fifteen seconds in a microwave at the airport lunch counter. The man next to her on the row of stools glanced at his watch, deserted the newspaper he’d been reading, and rushed down the concourse. She picked up the paper full of bad news headlines—stabbings on the ell, rapes in the park, serial killings suspected in the murders of half a dozen young women. Snow expected over the weekend. The 76ers had lost another game.

  Glad to be leaving the city with its dirty slush and winter cold for an exotic, warmer clime, she experienced the return of the jitters of excitement in her stomach, previously calmed by the tea and stale Danish. Suzanne set off down the concourse toward the gauntlet of metal detectors and got into the slowly moving line. As she stripped off her watch and placed her carry-on bag on the conveyor belt, she heard her name being shouted.

  Paul came charging down the concourse. As meticulously dressed as ever, he had taken time to put on a blue tie before setting off in pursuit. His face burned red, an infuriated shade she had never seen in the six months of dating the man. He caught up, leaning over dividing ropes to grab her arm just as she tried to pass through the metal detector. “You can’t go, Suzanne! We’re going to be married.”

  “I never told you that. Now let me go. This trip is important to my career.”

  “Is that what you want? A career and young lovers like that Dr. Dumont? Or do you expect some Superman in a cape to come down out of the sky and fly away with you, some knight on a white horse to carry you off to his castle?”

  “All that would be very exciting, Paul, but let’s face it, we simply aren’t right for each other. Now let me go!”

  Passengers began to change lines to avoid the delay and the strident voices. Two men in trim blue uniforms moved toward arguing pair.

  “I’ll be coming for you! Do you hear me?”

  The uniformed men took places on either side of Paul and requested politely that he come with them. Dropping the grip he had on her arm, he stalked off with the guards. The woman running the detector asked her please to move on so other passengers would not be inconvenienced. The last sight of Paul—not pretty. He stood spread-eagled against a wall while one guard patted him down and ran a wand over his body. The other held a tazer ready to fire.

  Suzanne jogged down the concourse and got into the line for the already-boarding flight. She hurried into the tunnel connecting the terminal with the plane, and in her haste, tripped over the floor seam and ended up in the arms of the steward. He escorted her to a seat in the economy section under the eyes of the first class passengers who probably believed she had begun the trip with a few strong drinks at the airport bar. Sinking into place, she stowed her hand baggage beneath the seat in front of her, buckled up, and pretended to heed the flight attendant as she demonstrated the emergency breathing apparatus while the plane taxied out onto the runway. Her fingers trembled on the armrests.

  Her seatmate, a concave-chested little man of about sixty, patted her hand in a fatherly way. As he nodded reassurance, the cabin lights reflected in little glimmers off his bald head.

  “Your first flight, honey? Nothing to be scared of. I’m in sales. I travel nearly every day of my life, would you believe? And nothing bad ever happens.”

  “Actually, I have flown before. It’s just that I had a quarrel with a man I’ve been dating before getting on the plane. It shook me up a little.”

  “Girls, girls, girls! They always have boy trouble. I raised three of my own. ‘Margery,’ I said to my wife, ‘When I’m out of town, you make sure those girls are in by midnight, and check out their dates, find out about their families.’ Look at this, would you?” Mr. Salesman flexed his folded newspaper in her face. “Serial Killer Stalks Young Women. They met him in a bar, I bet, or at one of those rock concerts. Nice girls have to be careful.”

  “Oh, I’ve known Paul for a while. We lived in the same building and dated for six months. The most excessive thing about him is his fondness for musk cologne.”

  “But do you know his family?”

  “Well, his father travels a lot on business, and his mother left when Paul was small and married some real estate agent in California. The grandmother who raised him died when he was thirteen, and he spent his teens in a military academy.”

  “No brothers, no sisters?”

  “No.”

  Suddenly, pity and guilt wedged themselves into her anger over the scene Paul had caused and splintered it apart. Paul tended to drone on about his job: his great salary, most of which he saved, his stock portfolio, his negotiations over a new car or television to get the best possible price. Only through direct questioning had she learned this much about him. Now, he must feel Suzanne was abandoning him just as his mother did.

  True, she hadn’t accepted his proposal or even taken him home to meet Mom and Dad, but she could have broken with him more cleanly. Never should have slept with him hoping some raging volcano of passion lay beneath his pile-of-ashes personality. Really, this ou
tburst of temper was the first interesting facet of Paul Alvin Smith, Jr. she’d seen, and it wasn’t a good one. Well, she had four months ahead to mull it over, but sincerely doubted if his tirade would change her mind about the relationship.

  “No family is bad news, young lady. How can you tell anything about a man with no family? Let me treat you to a Bloody Mary.” He peeled off the dollars for the drinks the stewardess vended from her hospitality cart. They parted company in Atlanta at the gate where men with walkie-talkies glanced at their tickets and pointed left for her and right for him.

  “Can I buy you lunch, dear? Your mother would feel better knowing you aren’t traveling alone.”

  “No. I only have an hour to find my Delta connection, and in this place, it won’t be easy.”

  Mr. Salesman nodded, patted her hand once more, wished her luck, and warned her away from strangers. “Any one of them could be this Philly Slasher, you know.”

  Suzanne found the stairs to the monorail, waited for the next car to her concourse, and easily made her flight. No need to call Paul. Surely, airport security had released him by now. It wasn’t as if he was armed, and definitely, Paul wasn’t dangerous.

  Her new traveling companions, an exhausted couple who had been on the road since 5:00 a.m., dozed for most of the flight. She regretted being unable to draw some information about Port Jefferson from her fellow travelers since they were Louisiana natives, but spent her time in solitude dismissing Paul Smith from her mind and conjuring up images of what the son of a man who danced all night would be like. She favored a flashing smile, a graceful stance, and a witty repartee.

  In preparation for meeting this dream man, Suzanne retired to the restroom, hunched over the tiny lavatory mirror, shook out her twist and fluffed her hair around her shoulders. She applied a lighter shade of lipstick and a little more blusher. Suzanne Hudson was now totally prepared to meet the possibly dashing Georges St. Julien. To hell with businesslike—though she would have described all their correspondence typed by his secretary on letterhead and signed “Georges W. St. Julien” as very, very businesslike.

  She spent a two-hour layover in New Orleans browsing through gift shops selling voodoo dolls, Mardi Gras masks, and pralines until Bayou Aviation called her flight. A handful of people clustered in the waiting area. They filed down a flight of stairs and out on to the tarmac where the small commuter plane sat. The unexpected warmth and humidity of the air made the arm carrying her wool coat sweat. On the horizon, thunderheads welled up from the Gulf. She considered the idea of lightning storms in middle of January. Oh well, Suzanne, you’re not in Philly anymore.

  The passengers negotiated a narrow set of stairs and crowded aboard, a half dozen businessmen with briefcases claiming the front cabin seats. She sat with a gangling serviceman, PFC Boudreaux, in the tail section. Private Boudreaux had a great deal of trouble arranging his limbs to fit the small seat. Mercifully, the flight lasted less than an hour.

  Private Boudreaux, speaking with a strange accent not exactly French and certainly not a twang or a drawl, told her he was glad to be going home where he could get some well-seasoned food. For sure, his mama would have a nice, hot court-bouillon or gumbo on the stove. She questioned him about Port Jefferson and learned it lay “nort” of Lafayette, a tee-tiny town on Bayou Brun.

  “Dey have one helluva basketball team for such a hick place, but dey got dis coach was once in da pros,” the private confided. His high school team lost to them every season. He remembered this one game, the retelling of which took up the rest of the flight.

  She envied Private Boudreaux a little when they debarked across the tarmac toward the smallest terminal of the day’s travel. The businessmen dispersed throughout the building, some heading for the car rental counter, others shaking hands with acquaintances, some picking up bags and departing by taxi. Private Boudreaux, however, waded into a pool of loving relatives.

  Suzanne got out of the way of the family reunion at the baggage pickup and looked for her escort. Nope, not a single handsome, dashing man worthy of Dr. Dumont’s attention waited for her. She heaved her heavy suitcases from the carousel and, pulling one and dragging the other full of books, moved toward the exit doors.

  “Miss Hudson?” An extremely tall man she’d struggled past without a second glance approached. He wore a gray suit with a subdued striped tie and leaned over like a person who had practiced poor posture all his life—or perhaps because of his height, had spent a decade bending to look people in the eye. His own eyes were a pallid gray overwhelmed by the dark frames of his glasses, no longer Harry Potter in style, but more ultimate nerd lacking only a strip of adhesive tape on the bridge. An application of greasy cream kept his dark hair from falling into his face as he bent over. He had nice full lips, but no flashing smile, no smile at all.

  Swallowing her romantic illusions, she answered, “Mr. St. Julien?”

  “George, please call me George.”

  No foreign French “s” on the end of his name. He was simply a plain old George.

  “Suzanne.” She offered her hand. He took it clumsily in his large, long-fingered, and loose grip, gave one shake, and dropped it.

  “Suzanne, then.” He pronounced it “Suz-ahn”, giving the name she’d never cared for a much more sexy and sophisticated quality. At home, her family called her Suz-anne or Suzy. She looked at him more closely for other hopeful signs and found none.

  George hefted her bags very easily for a man who had much more height than breadth and started off toward his car. A steel gray Honda Accord waited in a no-parking zone. An overweight security guard was writing down the license plate number prior to issuing the announcement that the car would be towed if not moved. George reached the vehicle three paces before her on those long legs, even though he didn’t hurry.

  “Leaving right now,” he told the guard. “Didn’t want to waste money on airport parking,” he explained. Obviously not a big spender.

  Being of average height, she never felt short before this instance and had difficulty keeping up with him. The man stood at least six five, probably taller. After holding the door for her, he bumped his head climbing into the driver’s seat. He had the front seat pushed back as far as possible to make room for his legs. Even so, he occasionally shifted uncomfortably throughout the drive of over an hour. Suzanne did wonder why he hadn’t invested in a car with more leg room for the ridiculously tall.

  Mr. St. Julien, George, hardly said a word unless she posed a question. He steered competently through the small city traffic and took the highway running with dart-like straightness across the flat terrain bisecting farmland into neat halves containing trailers and cattle and uniform stretches of plowed ground that he said, when asked, would later be planted in soybeans. Clouds continued to move in from the Gulf, covering the landscape like a woolly Quaker blanket about the same color as George’s eyes and the interior of his car. Like the couple from New Orleans, travel time caught up with her on the long drive. Her head bobbed against the window. Suzanne dozed.

  George turned off the highway. Potholes galore pitted the rural road and jolted her awake as the car took the turns in the hill country. George slowed from his consistent fifty-five mph to a creeping thirty-five as she blotted a tiny drop of drool from the corner of her lips with a tissue.

  “Sorry, jet lag, I guess,” she apologized.

  “No problem. I’m not much of a conversationalist.”

  To say the least, she thought. The land had lost its openness. Trees hung over the road, their branches low enough to testify to a total lack of heavy truck traffic. They swung around a bend and came to a stop before a red light. She had ample time to read the historical marker planted at the crossroads.

  “Port Jefferson, Incorporated in 1840. Once a ferry crossing and later a center of the steamboat trade, the town is now known for its cotton and yam industries.”

  Thus far, she had probably made the same impression on George St. Julien as he made on her—dull and indiff
erent. Time for some brilliant repartee.

  “Thomas Jefferson or Jefferson Davis?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “The man they named the town after.”

  “Neither. Eli Jefferson, a steamboat captain and cotton broker, founded the place, though my great aunts will debate that. They had the marker erected and omitted old Captain Eli. Up until ten years ago, they tried to have the town renamed St. Julien since our family settled here first when the place was just a ferry crossing.”

  “What stopped them?”

  “My mother. She said she was tired of being humiliated by crazy old women and would put them in Pineville if they kept it up.”

  “Pineville?”

  “The state mental hospital.”

  “Oh.”

  They took a sharp left turn when the light changed and by-passed most of Port Jefferson cluttering the road between the stoplight and the bayou in the distance. At the top of a fairly steep hill, they turned again onto a shell road bordered at regular intervals by young evergreen magnolias with neatly pruned, whitewashed trunks and dark, drooping leaves waiting patiently for the arrival of spring. George drove even more slowly and winced when a shell pinged against the side of the sedan.

  “I plan to hardtop this road if we can get enough tourists out here to see the house.”

  They pulled into a parking area. Magnolia Hill presented a blank white stucco face pierced here and there by windows like large, dark eyes. A small ell with a screen door stuck out of one end of the rectangular building. From this angle, she couldn’t imagine what a tourist would pay to see. The screen door burst open, and the doorway filled with a rotund woman the color of milk chocolate.

  “Ya’ll come in now. Coffee’s on.”