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DAUPHINE
THAT MORNING, I stood across the street from my store on Magazine at Ninth, watching my employee,
Elizabeth, put together another one of her brash window displays. I had hired her away from our chief
vintage clothing rival down the street because she had a unique eye, the kind you couldn’t train. But
ever the control freak, I wasn’t quite sure I liked the direction Elizabeth was heading with this
display. I saw bras and baskets and lots of yellows strips of crinkled paper. She hated when I did this
—hovered, managed, tweaked—always doing myself what I don’t trust others to do. But it was the
way I ran my business and it had worked so far, hadn’t it?
When my best friend Charlotte and I first bought the Funky Monkey more than ten years ago, I
argued for keeping the store’s original name as well as most of its inventory, cataloging much of what
we couldn’t sell. I didn’t like change. Like most Southerners, I was superstitious of anything new or
novel. Then she insisted that we sell vinyl records and custom DJ bags to attract men as well as
women, and I reluctantly agreed. When Charlotte insisted we also add other specialties—the Mardi
Gras costumes, the wigs and formal wear, for people who really wanted to stand out—I balked. But I
had to admit those were all good ideas, the sales of which got us through the leaner times. So I let her
run the merchandising while I remained in the background, an area of life to which I had always been
partial. Luckily, I had a talent for making other people shine, and now, with this store, I had a treasure
trove to work with.
My ex-boyfriend, Luke, was from New Orleans proper, born and raised in the Garden District. He
told me the building that housed the Funky Monkey had been a shoe store, a paint store, before that a
bike repair shop, then an on-site dry cleaner’s. What dawned on me while watching Elizabeth slide
into the empty window box, now holding a basket of pastel-colored bras (Okay, I see where you’re
going with this), was that while this building had continued to recreate itself, I hadn’t. Change—that
was Charlotte’s forte. That’s what made her a great business partner. Until, all in a day, one selfish
action led her to destroy the business and our friendship.
But it was Luke’s betrayal I couldn’t recover from.
I met him in music class in college, and he had asked me out at the end of our junior year. I was
studying Fine Arts, majoring in Design and minoring in Jazz Theory. I never played an instrument or
sang. Never wanted to. But I loved to listen and learn about it, all of it—jazz, classical, alternative,
you name it. Luke was tepid on music, only taking the course for easy credit. His passion was
literature. When as a sophomore he precociously published his first novel, a coming-of-age story
about growing up in New Orleans, I was so proud of him. He started to attract literary groupies, but
they were of the earnest and respectful variety, so I rarely felt threatened. Naive of me, I realized
looking back. But when he began receiving invitations to book events and festivals, that’s when the
rift began. I’d go with him to readings and appearances provided they were local, but I couldn’t get
on a plane. When I was eight, I had an uncle who died when his plane crashed into the ocean. We
weren’t terribly close, but I was young and it was a formative time for me; at age eight you develop
intricate theories to keep nightmares at bay. After that dramatic intrusion on my childhood, my terror
of flying extended to anything I couldn’t understand and couldn’t control. I tried to keep fear from
affecting the rest of my life, but it didn’t always work. I preferred sleeping in pajamas in case of