Suddenly she stopped and gave a little laugh. “Look,” she said, pointing.
Across the street came a row of children, girls, all of them about nine or ten years old. They were wearing matching dresses, gray plaid with crisp white shirts and black cardigans. A young nun in a gray habit led them, a goose and her goslings.
“Aww…” Juliette sighed and leaned against him. “They look just like Madeline.”
“Who?”
“The little French girl in the children’s books?” Juliette said as if he should know that. She recited a few lines for him:
In an old house in Paris
That was covered with vines
Lived twelve little girls
In two straight lines […]
The smallest one was Madeline.
“Boys didn’t read Madeline books,” he said.
“I wanted to be her so badly,” Juliette said, shaking her head. “I had all the books and read them over and over. I remember getting in trouble for trying to color Madeline in with a brown crayon so she’d look more like me. But those girls, they look just like the girls in the books, except they do look like me.”
The girls in the Catholic-school uniforms were Black like Juliette. Even the nun was Black. Juliette raised her hand and waved at the girls as they passed. They waved back, smiling broadly.
“Are you having a baby?” one girl shouted across the street.
“Yes, we are,” Juliette called back. “Soon!”
Some of the girls applauded and a couple oooh-ed, which prompted the nun to turn and shush them. Kingsley laughed. This was not something that happened in Manhattan. If you waved at strangers across the street and talked with them, people would think you were mentally unstable. It seemed so natural here. So easy.
Ah, The Big Easy. So that’s how it got its name.
Juliette laughed, too, but her eyes were filled with tears, ready to spill.
“Jules?”
The girls turned the corner and disappeared. Juliette stared at where they had been and where they went as if she saw something he couldn’t see.
“I never told you,” she said, “but I’ve been here before.”
More secrets.
“I thought this was your first trip,” Kingsley said. Was everyone in his life keeping secrets from him?
“He brought me here, once. Only once.”
He. The man who’d practically kept her a prisoner, blackmailing her into obedience. Juliette hardly ever spoke of him but when she did, she never said his name, only “he” or “him.”
“I ran away from him here,” she said. “I was on my own for two days. When I remembered he was paying for my mother’s treatment, I went back. The two best days of my life were in this city.” She smiled. “Until you.”
He held out his hand to her and she took it, squeezed it, met his eyes. “Let’s move here,” she said.
“New Orleans.”
“Why not? It’s French. It’s a big city, a real city. Far, far from New York. And Coco would grow up with children that looked like her, or him. And the music and the food…”
He held up his hand. “If this is what you want—”
“It’s what I want.”
“It’s settled then,” he said. “We’ll start looking for houses.”
“Good. But lunch first, please.”
They sat at a table outside on the café’s patio. Eating outside in January? Maybe August would be hell, but it would be worth going through it for this—Juliette in a bright yellow sundress and sandals in the middle of winter, happier than he’d seen her since the day she first felt the baby kick, when the theoretical had become so wonderfully real.
While Juliette was in the bathroom, Kingsley sent Søren a message.
We’re still moving, but it’s New Orleans, not St. Bart’s.
Without waiting for a reply, he added, I miss you, and immediately he wished he hadn’t.
Juliette returned, and he helped her into her chair. As she perused the specials, she suddenly looked up. She smiled, then hid her face behind the menu.
“What? What is it?” Kingsley asked.
“Don’t look behind you,” she whispered.
He immediately looked behind him. Two priests in black clerical garb and Roman collars—a white priest, white-haired, about sixty, and a young Korean priest, not more than thirty—took a table at the opposite end of the patio. Before they could say anything, their waitress came to the table with their coffee.
“Morning, Katie,” the younger priest said with a wave to their waitress.
“Morning, Father Lee.” She smiled at Kingsley and Juliette. “Cream and sugar?”
“Please,” Juliette said. “And do you know those priests?’
“They’re in all the time. Jesuits from the college. They get free coffee here.”
The waitress walked over to the priests and joined them in friendly conversation.
“You think it’s a sign?” Juliette said.
“Definitely,” Kingsley said. “I’ll just trade in my Jesuit for a new one.”
Juliette reached across the table and took his hand in hers. “Thank you, my love,” she said softly. Merci, mon amour. “We’ll find a way to make this work. For all of us.”
“Are you happy?”
“Very.”
“Then it’s already working,” he said, squeezing her hand. “Merry Christmas, my jewel.”
“Merry Christmas, mon roi.”
As Kingsley went to put his phone away—he considered texting during a meal to be a mortal sin—it buzzed in his hand. A cryptic reply from Søren.
Much better.
Fourth Movement
February Sonata
Sonata:
An instrumental musical composition typically of three or four movements in contrasting forms and keys.
Chapter Fourteen
Kingsley gazed into the pit below him. Quiet this Monday evening, far quieter than the madness of a Friday or Saturday. Not empty, however. A dominant man wearing only leather trousers and full sleeve tattoos worked his submissive girlfriend over with a flogger on a St. Andrew’s Cross. One of the “littles” who belonged to a man called Papa Bear was swinging upside-down from a harness, her frilly panties on full display as her dress hung over her head. Otherwise, fairly subdued down there.
At least the dungeons were full. All four of his staff dominatrixes were hard at work, putting the fear of Goddess into their wealthy male clients. It was good, he reminded himself, that these people—his people—had a safe place to play. The equipment was of high quality. The pro dommes and subs were world-class. And when the party got going, it was like Hieronymus Bosch’s wettest dream.
There had been a time when wild horses couldn’t drag him out of the club. Now it was hardly ten at night, and already he was checking his watch, longing to be home with Juliette. They could read each other books about New Orleans, discuss renovations, paint colors, nannies... He tried to tell himself The Big Easy wasn’t all jazz and booze, beignets and Mardi Gras. There was something called “termite season,” apparently. And God, the lizards—they were everywhere. Devastating poverty in many of the wards, not to mention the rampant post-Katrina gentrification. And, of course, the summer humidity you could cut with a chainsaw. He reminded himself of all these downsides, but it didn’t work. He still wanted to be there more than he wanted to be in this city.