“Of course not, but…”
“But?” he prodded.
“But they had a love potion in them,” she divulged with a sigh of resignation. “Can you see now why you have to vomit?”
“A love potion?” he hooted. “Oh, darlin’, if you wanted to get laid, why didn’t you say so?”
She closed her eyes for several seconds, as if counting to ten. When she opened them, her blue eyes still glittered with anger, but her words came out calmly, as if he were a half-witted child. “Listen, and listen good, because I’m only going to explain it once. I have invented a real love potion. JBX—the Jelly Bean Fix—is a little side venture of mine and Terrebonne Pharmaceuticals. I’ve run experiments on my lab rats for over a year, and believe me, the potion works.”
“A love potion? Ha, ha, ha. You been sniffin’ some voodoo-hoodoo incense or somethin’? I got news for you, honey. There ain’t no such thing as a love potion.”
“How about Viagra? If someone had told you a few years ago that there was a little blue pill that could perform such…well, magic, you probably would have pooh-poohed that, too,” she said, lifting her chin with affront.
“Pooh-pooh? What’s a pooh-pooh? I do not pooh-pooh.” Then he thought about her other words. “You’ve been giving your rats Viagra? Isn’t that kind of weird? And illegal? Maybe I should call the animal-rights people.”
“No, I have not been…oh, this is an impossible conversation. Listen. You swallowed a love potion, you big baboon. Get that through your thick head. We have to do something about it,
now!
”
He looked over to the cages where some of the rats were humping away, while others were nuzzling each other like little lovebirds…or love rats. Still others were nibbling on miniature versions of the jelly beans he’d just eaten.
He didn’t believe for one minute that there was any such thing as a real love potion…no matter what she said about Viagra. But there wasn’t a chance in hell that he wasn’t going to pounce on this opportunity. “So, when do I go into lust mode? Will I be makin’ love to you on the floor, like those rats? And no one will be able to blame me ’cause I’ll be out of control from your potion, right? And you’ll lose all your inhibitions and jump my bones like a hobo on a hot dog, right?”
“The potion isn’t about lust…well, not totally. It’s a
love
potion. Please, Luc, try to vomit, or go to the hospital and have your stomach pumped, if you won’t let me do it.”
“You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“If you only knew.” She sighed and rubbed the fingertips of one hand over her creased forehead.
“I thought Terrebonne Pharmaceuticals made birth control and hormone replacement pills.”
“They do. This is a…um, special experiment. But we haven’t started the human trials yet.”
“Special? Human?” His head cocked in puzzlement as he watched her face redden again, and she avoided his eyes. “Aha! You’re going to be one of the experimentees, aren’t you? Whooee! Sylvie Fontaine taking a love potion! And, man, you wouldn’t want news of this to get out any too soon, right?” A rush of exhilaration ran through his veins, just like when he had a good hand in
bourré
and knew he was going to win the game. Sylvie
Fontaine didn’t know it, but she was going to help him and the shrimp fishermen. Or else…
The possibilities were endless…and surprisingly tantalizing.
“Project heads often volunteer to be their own ‘guinea pigs.’ And it will be a long time before this product is ready for market. That’s the only reason Terrebonne Pharmaceuticals wouldn’t want a premature announcement of our tests.” Her eyelashes fluttered as she spoke.
She was a rotten liar. He kind of liked that about her. “I don’t understand why
you
would be working on a love potion. And by the way, are you the only one I’m going to be lusting…oops, I mean loving? I’m not gonna be in rut for every woman I meet, am I? That could be really time-consuming, and I have a date with some crawfish down on the bayou.”
Her shoulders slumped, and he almost regretted his vulgar taunting. Almost.
“Luc, why do you talk to me like that? You’ve been doing it for years and years. What have I ever done to you?”
“’Cause you’re so uppity-uppity, always looking down your nose at me.”
And you react so quickly to the least little jab
.
“I am not. I do not.”
“
Mais oui
, you do. Not that I care.”
She raised her brows in disbelief. “In answer to your question, no, you won’t be attracted to just any woman. Only me.”
“Well, isn’t that convenient?”
“The jelly beans you ate had my enzymes in them.” She put up a halting hand when he was about to make another smart remark. “If I’d put
your enzymes in a neutral set of specially prepared jelly beans and I ate them, then the process would be reversed.”
“Enzymes?”
She shrugged. “Enzymes can be obtained in lots of ways, or simply by taking a tiny drop of saliva.”
“Yech! I ate your spit?”
“Luc, that’s the least of your problems.”
Her words were beginning to sink in, which raised more questions. He narrowed his eyes at her. “Who are the males who are gonna be sucking up love potions with you in this little human test run?”
She jutted out her chin stubbornly.
“I have a right to know, dontcha think?”
She refused to budge.
He tried to think. Houma and the bayou region were a vast network of gossip grapevines. A guy couldn’t piss in his own toilet without the entire parish counting the drops. Luc figured Terrebonne Pharmaceuticals wouldn’t be bringing in outsiders for this experiment. It would probably be men within the company, in order to preserve secrecy. And he didn’t care what Sylvie said, secrecy would be important. He couldn’t think of anyone…except…no, that was impossible. “Your boss,” he guessed.
Sylvie’s cheeks immediately turned bright red.
He clapped his knee with glee at the absurdity of the situation. “Don’t try to deny it,
chère
. I can see the truth on your face.”
“Oh, all right. Charles Henderson will be one of the participants,” she confessed hesitantly. “But don’t you tell anyone.”
Like anyone would believe me!
Once he snapped
his gaping mouth shut, he burst out laughing. He couldn’t help himself. “You’re giving a love potion to a gay man? Talk about!”
“Gay? Gay?” she shrieked, and his ears started ringing again. “He’s not gay.”
“Honey, Chuckie boy is one-hundred-percent lah-di-dah. I guar-an-tee.”
“How do you know? Are you gay? Oh, this has got to be the worst thing you’ve ever said to me. The worst.”
“
I’m
not gay,” he said with affront. “But I have gay clients.” Well, he’d had one gay client two years ago…a female impersonator at a gay nightclub in Lafayette, The Blue Lily.
“It’s not true,” she whispered weakly.
“It’s true, Sylv. It’s true.”
Tears filled her eyes…eyes that were really rather pretty, a luminous shade of blue, like the sky seen through a bayou mist on a summer day.
Whoa!
He caught himself up short. It was one thing to be a sucker for a woman’s tears, but now he was beginning to notice nice things about Sylvie.
Could her jelly bean potion really be working?
Nah!
He felt kind of low unloading such bad news on Sylvie, though. Was she in love or something with a gay man? “Does it matter so much, Sylvie?” he asked with as much sensitivity as he could summon. He was still having trouble holding back a smile at the whole ludicrous situation.
“Drop dead!” she said with a sniffle.
So much for sensitivity
. He walked over to the table and picked up his jar of water. “When can you do the tests? I need an answer ASAP.”
“I’m not doing your tests.”
“Oh, yes, you are, Sylv.” Setting the jar back down, he picked up the dish of remaining jelly beans, scooped them up, and stuffed them in his jeans pocket. Patting the bulge with satisfaction, he said, “Evidence.”
“Don’t you mean blackmail?”
“Whatever.”
“I’ll do it on one condition. You have to go out of town for at least a week. You can’t be anywhere in my vicinity.”
“A week?” he sputtered.
“You did suck up a double dose of those jelly beans,” she said defensively. “So, yeah. At least one week. I’ll put off the human trial runs until your ingestion runs its course.”
Ingestion? Now, it’s an ingestion? Hell!
“Oh, all right.” He didn’t have any pressing cases on deck, and he was on vacation; he’d been planning a trip deep into the bayou. He wasn’t sure he wanted to stay away for even a week, though. Well, she didn’t need to know that. As a parting shot, he added, “I hope I don’t get hungry tonight…for jelly beans.” He patted his pocket again.
“You wouldn’t!”
Maybe he would, Luc decided. Then again, maybe he wouldn’t. But one thing was sure. If he was getting into the blackmail business, he wanted something more than a lab test for his efforts. And he knew just what it was gonna be.
Slooow dancing.
“I’ve never seen so many men with no behinds in all my life,” Sylvie observed the next evening.
“You’ve got a point there,” Blanche agreed. “Most of them are politicians, and everyone knows they have unleavened buns. Comes from all that hot air, I think. Yep, their inner tubes are leaking.”
Sylvie and Blanche were sitting on lounge chairs beside the pool behind the Breaux family plantation house. The estate was renowned for its spectacular garden of native and imported irises of a thousand different species, which were in full bloom now.
Tonight Inez Breaux-Fontaine was holding a cocktail party for a few of her closest friends…about two hundred people. Some of the men and women wore bathing suits and were enjoying a swim, but most had come for the political and social networking. Sylvie and Blanche, in sun
dresses and sandals, were people-watching as they sucked down watermelon margaritas like salt addicts, and listened to Paul Trebel’s band playing soft jazz over by the archway of live oak trees.
Sylvie licked the crust on her stemmed glass and continued her observations. “God really must be a man, don’t you think? Either that or He has a warped sense of humor. Why else would a woman’s behind blossom into Rubenesque proportions after a certain age, while a man’s behind just disappears?”
“
C’est la vie
,” Blanche slurred with margarita-inspired wisdom. “What kind of buns does Charles have?”
“How would I know?” Sylvie was still in a state of shock over Lucien LeDeux eating the jelly beans intended for her boss. She hadn’t lost faith in her potion, but she wasn’t about to try her experiment on Charles or anyone else till she was sure Luc wasn’t lurking about. He’d promised to stay away for a week, but she wasn’t taking any chances. And no way did she believe his contention that Charles was gay. No way. Blanche grinned at her, as if reading her thoughts.
“It’s not funny,” Sylvie said.
“Oh, yes, it is, Sylv. You and ‘The Bad Boy of the Bayous.’ Ay-yi-yi!” She fanned herself dramatically. “Seriously, hon, isn’t this the greatest test you could give your potion…two archenemies? You should take advantage of the situation. I hear those Cajuns are fab-u-lous lovers.”
Sylvie arched a brow with skepticism.
Blanche finished off her second margarita and nodded her head as if agreeing with herself. “Best of all, their buns stay hard longer…not to men
tion
other
body parts.” Blanche rolled her eyes meaningfully.
Sylvie couldn’t help laughing. “You should say that on your talk show. You’d have women flocking to Louisiana like homing pigeons, searching for a hot Cajun. The tourist commission would declare you a state treasure…just like that John Berendt guy promoted Savannah with his book
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
.”
“It’s the truth, honey. Didn’t you ever hear the story about the beginning of the oil boom in Texas?”
Sylvie groaned. There was nothing Blanche liked better than to tell a story…her own embellished version.
“All these Cajun men crossed the border to work on the oil rigs, and the Texas women went full-tilt-boogie wild for them,” Blanche said. “Pretty soon all the Texas men were wondering what those swaggering Cajun men had that they didn’t…what made them so
vir-ile
.” She jiggled her eyebrows at Sylvie on that last word. “Well, the wily Cajuns told them that it was the fat in those ol’ crawfish they ate all the time. And sure enough, those dumb Texans commenced scarfing up mud-bug fat. Some people say that’s what started the popularity of crawfish.” The whole time she talked, Blanche gave her story the drawn-out, Southern Creole accent that endeared her to thousands of radio fans.
Sylvie reached over and squeezed Blanche’s hand. Thank God for this good friend who could make her smile, even when her world might conceivably be about to self-destruct. All because of Lucien LeJerk.
“Sylvie Marie, you know Mr. Sommese, don’t you?” her mother said, having come up behind them unexpectedly. The cool stare Inez leveled her way said clearly that Sylvie was failing in her responsibilities as a dutiful daughter to mix with the crowd. Sylvie had always failed in her mother’s eyes, in one way or another.
As usual, Inez Breaux-Fontaine was decked out in understated elegance, from her Cartier diamond-stud earrings to simple pleated slacks of cream linen topped by a tailored, rose silk blouse.
A lady never makes herself conspicuous, Sylvie Marie
. Inez’s face was tight-skinned perfection that would do a forty-year-old woman proud, let alone one of fifty-five, thanks to a lifelong regimen of Erno Lazlo facial products and a few nips and tucks.
Have you been out in the sun again, Sylvie Marie? Tsk-tsk. A real lady does not freckle
. Not a single hair on Inez’s trademark chic black bob would dare be out of place or, God forbid, turn gray.
When are you going to find a hair style that suits you, Sylvie Marie? Do you like being so plain?
Sylvie and Blanche both stood, though they were a little wobbly on their feet, which drew another icy glare from Inez. Sylvie was bound to hear more about this indiscretion later.
A lady never overindulges, Sylvie Marie
.
“Hi, Matt,” Sylvie and Blanche both said at the same time.
Matt Sommese was a
Times-Picayune
reporter they’d met on innumerable occasions over the years. After exchanging a few pleasantries, Inez drifted off to perform her hostess duties. Inez had drifting down to an art form, while Sylvie still suffered inside from chronic shyness, a condition she
fought to hide and overcome. Blanche excused herself to go to the ladies’ room.
After some small talk, Matt asked, “So, Sylvie, when you gonna let me examine that voodoo journal of your great-grandmother’s?”
“It belonged to my great-grandmother many times removed,” she corrected. “And the answer is the same as it was last time you asked. Never. It’s a private family possession.”
Matt was working on an in-depth series of stories about voodoo and its continuing existence in Louisiana. In fact, there had been two suspicious ritual-type deaths during the past year that locals attributed to powerful gris-gris. Matt probably hoped to get a Pulitzer Prize, the way his fellow journalists at the New Orleans paper had gotten one for a 1997 series on the failing bayou ecosystem. Well, he wasn’t going to get it with her family secrets…especially since she already had reservations about having used some of the information from the voodoo journal for her formula…especially since there was an unwritten family agreement that the journal’s contents were to be kept secret.
“It’s a piece of Louisiana history, Sylvie, and you know it. Don’t you have any community spirit?”
Sylvie was spared making an answer when Blanche returned, grinning from ear to ear. Sylvie made a mental note to cut off her friend’s supply of margaritas. But then Blanche jabbed her in the arm with an elbow and whispered, “Here comes boot-scootin’ trouble.”
She peered toward the house through eyelashes that felt intensely heavy. Then she gasped.
Lucien LeDeux
.
Uh-oh!
Chugging down the last of her margarita, she tried to remember if she’d had two or three…whatever, it wasn’t enough.
The brute had promised to stay away for a week. One day had passed, and already he’d broken his word.
As to Blanche’s reference to “boot-scootin’ trouble,” well, trouble didn’t begin to describe the long, tall Cajun in jeans, white T-shirt, navy-blue blazer, and scruffy boots, headed in her direction with fire in his eyes.
With hysterical irrelevance, Sylvie wondered how much crawfish fat he’d ingested over the years.
“Sommese, Blanche,” Luc said, greeting the other two with a nod, then adding bluntly, “Get lost.”
Matt and Blanche glanced at each other, then back to the spectacle about to unfold before them. “Hah!” they both muttered, not budging an inch.
Directing his attention to Sylvie, Luc pulled her off to the side and got right to the point, barely able to keep his voice down to an outraged undertone. “What the hell have you done to me? That love potion you invented is driving me up the wall.”
“Shhh.” She put a hand of caution on his arm. Even though they were several feet away from Matt and Blanche, she worried that they might be overheard. “What are you doing here? You promised to stay away.”
He shrugged her hand off angrily. “I went deep into the bayou, just like I promised, and the only thing I could think about was you.”
“Did Luc say that Sylvie has invented a love potion?” she heard Matt ask Blanche. “I wonder if she got her ideas from that voodoo journal?”
Oh, Lord!
The man must have a reporter’s sixth sense, or else he could read lips.
Luc noticed and deliberately turned his back on them. He whispered raspily, “I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I can’t even fish. All I do is daydream about a woman I loathe.”
Loathe?
Sylvie cringed.
“
Dieu
, you have me picturing you in some hokey Acadian house on stilts, along a stream, with a white picket fence and a horde of grimy-faced kids with blue eyes and heart-shaped asses. But that’s not all. I—”
“I am
not
flattered by that heart-shaped business, you know.”
“I picture you in my boat, in a thong bikini. Red. Made of some lacy material. And you know what the best thing is about lace, don’t you,
chère?
All the holes.”
Sylvie inhaled sharply. “I have never worn a thong bikini in my life. In fact, I don’t even own a bikini.”
“Worst of all, I picture you in my bed…oh, Lord, do I picture you in my bed! Hot damn, I didn’t even know they could do that with licorice whips.”
Licorice whips?
“Then there were those black fishnet stockings. Man, I about had a heart attack.”
Oh, my God!
Sylvie thought her face would burst aflame. Even if she weren’t chronically shy, that last remark would be embarrassing. Lucien LeDeux made a habit of not only crossing the line
between good taste and crudity, but pole-vaulting over it with great glee…at least, he did when around her. “You are making this all up,” she accused him huffily, and punched him in the chest.
“Am not,” he asserted, making a cross over his heart with a forefinger. “Really, can a man die of a perpetual hard-on? And mushy emotions are banging against the walls of my brain like ping-pong balls, and each of them has your picture on it, sweet cakes.” He took a glass of Scotch off the tray of a passing waiter and belted it down in one long swallow, then let out a whoosh of exasperation.
Forget about Luc dying of…that thing he’d said; Sylvie was the one who felt like dying…of mortification. It wasn’t that Luc was speaking loudly. Far from it. His words came out in more of a low growl.
“Give me an antidote. Right now,” Luc demanded.
“There is no antidote.”
He appeared taken aback by that news. “Well, then, you’d better be prepared to spend the next week or so on your back, sweetheart.”
He couldn’t mean what she thought he meant.
“And another thing…did you start on the pollution tests I asked you to do? Shrimp are dying as I speak. Am I going through this torture for nothing?”
“Shhh,” Sylvie warned once again. Matt had taken out a small notebook and was engaged in some serious scribbling, the whole time inclining his head toward Blanche, who was babbling away. “I did some of the preliminary tests, you jerk,” she
gritted out. “And the results were just as you expected. Worse, even. Wait till you see the components in that sample. You may be able to make a direct connection with Cypress Oil. I’ll mail them to you in the morning.”
“Mail? Mail?” he sputtered.
“Hold the bloody presses!” Matt came up and hooted at Luc, as if suddenly enlightened. “I just made the connection between you and Sylvie…a lawyer and a chemist. Don’t tell me you’re representing that bunch of ragtag fishermen that are trying to fight Cypress Oil? ‘The Swamp Solicitor’ and the shrimpies? Man, you guys must have a death wish. And isn’t your father involved with Cypress?”
Luc blinked at Matt. Horror soon replaced the expression of fury on his face as he realized how much he’d risked by coming to a public place to confront Sylvie. Of course, it was all guesswork on the newshound’s part thus far. Still, Luc would have to be more careful. “You’re way off base, Sommese,” he lied. “And if you print one word, I’m gonna sue the pants off you. Then I’m gonna cut you up into gator bait, starting with that flapping tongue of yours. Don’t think I’ve forgotten the last hatchet job you did on me.”
“You mean, the one about the dingbat Vermilion Parish farmer who sued the electric company? The guy whose ducks stopped laying eggs when the power went dead for a day, cutting off the Cajun music piped into their pens?”
Luc put his hands on his hips and glared belligerently at the foolhardy reporter. “I won, didn’t I?”
“That’s because the judge was a Cajun. And you
kept playing ‘Jolé Blon’ in the courtroom to illustrate your case. The judge couldn’t stop tapping his feet. The atmosphere in the jury box was like a regular
fais do-do…
a Saturday night dance down on the bayou.”
Luc told Matt to do something anatomically impossible to himself.
Out of her peripheral vision, Sylvie saw her Aunts Margo and Madeline approaching. The fire in Luc’s eyes was nothing compared to the bonfire in theirs. The legal-eagle gate-crasher, now chugging down another Scotch, had represented a client five years earlier who’d prevented them from expanding their herbal tea company onto a neighboring trailer park property. He’d claimed he was preserving local culture. Apparently, there were some antique trailers there…pieces of rusted-out Cajun Americana, much like the vanishing steel highway diners of the past.
Luc had lost the case, but managed in the process to give the trailer park so much publicity that its market value increased dramatically, beyond her aunts’ willingness to pay. Now, every time they looked out their office windows, they were forced to view a neon-sign-blinking tourist attraction.