I dumped it into the pot of boiling water.
"A real butch would have picked up the crab herself," I said to Danny.
For a reply, she handed me the crab tongs. I put them down on the counter, reached into the washtub with my hand, grabbed a crab, and dropped it into the pot.
* 126 *
"You are insane, Mick," Danny said, shaking her head at my impudence. "I"ll have Elly standing by with the first aid kit."
I grabbed another crab bare-handed and dumped it into the pot.
Still shaking her head, Danny went back into the living room. Elly popped in and asked if I was doing okay. I said sure and waved her back out to her guests. I continued dumping crabs into the pot. I was down to my last crab, a big old one, with a barnacle growing on his sh.e.l.l. He was putting up a fight, waving and snipping his claws. I was trying to distract him with one hand so I could get the other hand behind him.
"Why don"t you use the tongs?" Cordelia said. I hadn"t even noticed her. I wondered how long she had been standing there watching me.
To prove her wrong I grabbed at him. Mr. Crab lunged up, narrowly missing my fingers with his pincers.
"See," she said.
I grabbed again before Mr. Crab could lunge again. I got him and dumped him into the pot.
"It"s not fair if you don"t give the crabs at least some chance for revenge," I answered.
"How much revenge did they get?" She took my hand and examined it.
"None, this time," I replied. Satisfied, she let go of my hand.
"How is the rest of you? You should have those st.i.tches taken out."
"I already took them out."
"By yourself?" she asked.
"Yeah, I don"t charge much."
"Neither would I."
"But there"s always bus fare to where you are. I, on the other hand, am always where I am."
"Do you ever stop pretending to be a tough guy?" she asked.
"Who says it"s pretense?" I countered.
"I guess not," she sighed. "How are your ribs?"
"Fine," I answered. The truth being fair to middling, but this was a party and as far as I was concerned, Dr. James was not on duty.
I got the tongs and started pulling crabs out and putting them in a colander. Faster than boiling water I"m not.
* 127 *
I heard Th.o.r.eau misnaming another piece of music. Maybe I should put on some Gregorian chants. That might stop him.
"Pachelbel"s Canon for Three Trumpets and Strings," I corrected out loud.
"A tough guy who knows a lot about cla.s.sical music? I can"t figure you out," Cordelia said.
"Maybe you should stop trying," I replied as I pulled the last of the cooked crabs out of the boiling water. Then I walked around her to hold the crab-filled colander under cold running water. When I guessed they had been rinsed and cooled enough, I arranged them on the big platter that Danny had left for that purpose.
"But isn"t that half the fun of being a complicated person? Making other people work to figure you out?"
"Is it? I"d never given it much thought."
Cordelia started to reply, but Elly came into the kitchen.
"Those crabs smell wonderful. I"m going to put the bread in to warm up and then we"ll be ready to eat," Elly said.
I picked up the heavy platter and carried it out to the table.
"I"ve never had to clean crabs before," Th.o.r.eau commented as I set the platter down.
Undoubtedly because someone always did it for him while he was learning all he could about music, I noted in my usual charitable fashion.
We started arranging ourselves at the table. Danny and Elly sat at the head and foot as the hosts. I sat in the chair to Danny"s left, on the side with three chairs. Ranson sat next to me. Good, that meant that I was surrounded by my allies. Or at least as close as I was going to get.
Th.o.r.eau sat on the far side, the chair next to Elly. Then Alex sat down beside Ranson, leaving the chair opposite me empty.
Elly entered, bringing the warm bread. Cordelia followed her and sat down across from me.
I hoped the oysters and pecan pie were very good.
Danny opened another bottle of champagne and pa.s.sed it around.
"Champagne and cracking crabs?" I protested. "It"s gauche not to drink beer."
"Help yourself, we"ve got plenty in the "fridge," Elly said.
"I"m trying to impart a little cla.s.s to the occasion," Danny said.
I stood up, shaking my head.
* 128 *
"To everything there is a season, dear Danno, and the season for champagne and crabs is rare indeed," I said, starting for the kitchen.
"Anyone else?"
"Yes, one for me," Cordelia said.
I went into the kitchen and got two beers and two mugs, so we wouldn"t have to be totally uncouth and drink it out of the bottle. I put one mug in front of Cordelia then expertly opened and poured a beer into the mug. My bartending experience comes in handy.
"Thanks," she said, looking up at me and smiling. I grinned back, then sat down and started cleaning crabs.
I was beginning to like this woman too much. She can"t be that perfect, if she"s really going to marry that jerk, I told myself and concentrated on picking out crab meat.
Sh.e.l.ling crabs requires a great deal of messy effort for a small amount of meat. I noticed that both Cordelia and Elly were trying to help Bayard-Th.o.r.eau, with his cleaning. He was being remarkably slow. Of course, I was not being very charitable. I had grown up cleaning crabs. I can remember my mother teaching me, so I must have been very young at my first crab cleaning.
Alex and Ranson were doing respectably; Cordelia and Elly were bogged down with Th.o.r.eau. Danny and I were the fastest. We both had finished with five crabs when everyone else at the table was on their third or fourth.
I got up to wash my hands. The tape ended and I put on some Gershwin. The crab stragglers could use some rhythm. I took another beer out of the refrigerator, and sat back down. Danny was being a good host and helping Cordelia and Bay-Th.o.r.eau catch up.
"You"re fast," said Ranson, struggling to get a claw broken open.
"Practice," I answered.
"Did you work in a seafood factory or something?" Th.o.r.eau contributed. As if I had to spend eight hours a day at something to be able to do it so much better than he did.
"No," Danny answered for me. "Micky"s a bayou rat, just like me.
Bayou St. Jack"s makes great crab pickers."
"You knew each other growing up?" Cordelia asked.
"No," I replied.
Danny, being the perfect host, explained, "Although Micky, with a good suntan, is not that much lighter than I am, she"s still considered * 129 *
white. And that made a difference in what school we were sent to. She lived a few miles down the bayou from us, but we never met until we were both eighteen."
"The age of consent," I added.
"How did you meet?" Cordelia asked.
"Ah caught the "gators and she was skinnin" "em," I replied. I didn"t really want to go into my past and was trying to avoid answering questions. There were a lot of gaps that I had never filled in, even to Danny. She gave me a quick kick under the table and a look that said no d.y.k.e humor in front of straight people. I decided to answer before Danny did, with her fondness for detail.
"We went to school together," I said.
"High school?" Th.o.r.eau asked. "Of course, you were integrated by then. It was the seventies, wasn"t it?"
"No, it was college," Danny answered.
"But I thought you went to Barnard?" Th.o.r.eau said to Danny.
Open mouth, insert foot, Th.o.r.eau, old buddy. Of course, my despised cousin you-know-who also found it impossible to believe that someone like me could have gotten into a college like that. Micky, the almost illegitimate bayou rat, wasn"t supposed to be a success.
"Yes, we went to college together and met on the streets of New York City," Danny replied, carefully, clearly, to those who knew her well, annoyed.
"Why didn"t you stay there?" Th.o.r.eau asked. "I"m here because of work, but I prefer the northeast."
"I got accepted at Tulane Law School," replied Danny, the polite host.
"I just couldn"t understand those Yankee accents," I added.
"But don"t you find that people down here are, well, kind of slow?"
Th.o.r.eau persisted.
"No, I think they"re the right speed," Alex defended. "I have a great affection for this city and I wouldn"t want to live anywhere else."
"I guess each to his own," he said. "But as soon as Cordelia finishes up, we"re moving north, though I haven"t convinced her of it yet," he added after seeing the look she gave him.
"All right, it"s college time," Elly said. "Where did everyone go?
I went to Mississippi University for Women, because it had a good * 130 *
nursing program and an interesting reputation." She was being a good host and changing the subject.
"LSU," Ranson said.
"State University of New York at New Paltz," Th.o.r.eau answered.
"I got my master"s there, too. I had to turn down NYU because I couldn"t afford it."
"Va.s.sar," Alex answered. "Cordelia?"
"Duke and Tulane Medical," she answered.
"My, aren"t we an educated group," I commented.
"Yes, we are," Alex said. "It"s why we"re friends. We"re all, with one exception," and she nodded at Th.o.r.eau, "very untraditional Southern women."
"Yes, I"m the only one here with a traditional woman"s job, being a nurse," said Elly.
"You and Th.o.r.eau," I said, unable to resist baiting him.
"I disagree," he said. "I think that social work is a very androgynous field. A man can do it just as well as a woman. Sometimes you even need the strength that a man can bring to it. A teenaged boy is more likely to listen to me than, say, Elly," he defended.
Want to step outside and say that, fellow? One roundhouse kick and he wouldn"t be feeling so strong. Instead of saying anything, I started eating my oysters. That, after all, was what I was here for.
Ranson was right, she did make a great sauce. It was probably what she used to seduce Alex. I didn"t intend to look at Cordelia, but she was sitting opposite me and it was hard to continually avoid seeing her.
She was cracking open her last crab, but she caught my eye. Maybe she didn"t mean to, but she gave a small shrug.
"I think I need another beer," she said. I obliged, since her hands were covered with crab muck. I came back and set it in front of her in time to hear Th.o.r.eau say, "But there are so many weirdoes here. Now, that place where you grew up," this to Danny, "has some weird people in it."
I sat down and opened the beer that I had gotten for myself. How many feet was this guy going to get into his mouth tonight? Between the beers and the champagne, I was starting to get a good buzz, which seemed the best way to pa.s.s this party.
"For example, that guy getting out of prison is from Bayou St.