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CASSIE
I HAD TO admit it was a little weird to see Angela Rejean frosting a cake in her kitchen while wearing
an apron and a sundress, her now-straightened hair pulled into a low ponytail at her nape. Last time I
saw her she was on the other side of one-way glass, making a meal out of Mark Drury.
Dauphine would have had her fantasy with him last night and I assumed because I hadn’t heard
from her that it had gone well. At least, I hoped it had. I hated the idea of her fleeing S.E.C.R.E.T. in
anger and resentment. And I liked to think I had picked well with Mark.
Angela told me to take a tour of the place, while she put last-minute touches on Tracina’s fancy
baby-shower cake and Kit tied bows on little gift bags for invitees. The narrow living room in her
mint-colored Creole cottage on North Roman was decorated with pink and blue paper flowers around
the windows, since the sex of the baby was unknown. But the goofy decorations didn’t take away
from the grown-up style of her place. Red Oriental rugs were strewn about the living room’s original
pine floors, where two surprisingly comfortable antique loveseats, reupholstered in bright purple
paisley, faced each other. The walls were painted a dark coral, not pink, more like the color of the
lipstick she always wore. Framed photographs of Nina Simone and Billie Holiday dotted the narrow
hallway to her bedroom, where an imposing four-poster bed sat draped with billowing white netting,
her even more imposing tuxedo cat, Boots, sitting moored in the middle like a fat boat. On her antique
dresser was a collection of Haitian dolls, and above it, a framed black-and-white aerial photo of
Port-au-Prince from the ’60s, next to that a wall-mounted flat-screen TV. The whole place was
feminine, not girly, cozy without feeling cramped.
“Hand me that tea towel, Cassie,” Angela said when I returned. She was wiping the extra frosting
off the platter with her finger. “Would you mind putting out the little plates? They only had blue ones,
but that doesn’t mean she’s having a boy. I hope people don’t think that she’s having a boy. I mean, we
don’t know what it is. I should say something. Do you think? Or just leave it. I’ll just leave it.”
It was sweet seeing her flustered. She was usually so in control. She was a good friend to Tracina
and clearly wanted to make her baby shower perfect. In that moment, I was truly happy that Tracina
had a friend like this, since I certainly had been no friend to her. Between my unwillingness to cover
for her absences and my stupid dalliances with Will, which still remained secret, thank goodness, my
presence in Tracina’s life had only added complications. While placing a big yellow bow on a box of
newborn diapers, I vowed to be a better friend to her and the baby, regardless of my feelings for Will,
a vow made a lot easier by the presence of Jesse Turnbull in my life. That was his last name, I’d
learned—Turnbull—a small fact that went a long way towards making him seem more real to me.
Since our first date, which had ended in my bedroom, we’d seen each other twice more—once for
a matinee, where in the back row he had astonished me by putting his tongue in my ear and his hand
down my jeans, making me quietly, oh so quietly, come. Afterwards, he kissed my forehead on the
sidewalk outside and left to pick up his son. The other time we took a trip to Metarie to look at a
motorcycle he was thinking of buying. He’d pulled me down a nearby alley and ravaged me against
the cinder-block wall of a garage. All of our encounters were hot, brief and sweet, and each time I
felt that if I never saw him again, I wouldn’t be surprised. He was like a friendly tomcat, one that’s
genuinely happy to see you, to be fed and caressed by you, but that can easily survive on its own.