G.T. Herren - Paige Tourneur 02 - Dead Housewives of New Orleans (2 page)

“That wretched production assistant is waving at me.” She rolled her eyes and patted my hand. “So lovely to see you. Let’s do lunch soon.”

I watched her long-legged stride as she crossed the room, but as she walked through the throng a rather good-looking man in his thirties grabbed her by the arm. She gave him a death glare, and wrenched her arm free. He said something to her, and for just a moment I thought she was going to slap him. Instead, she narrowed her eyes and spat something at him before marching off with a toss of her head.

“What are you staring at?” Chanse asked, passing me a glass of pinot grigio. I took a sip, and was impressed. It was quite good— not the cheap crap I’d been expecting.

“Who is that man in the gray jacket?” I asked. He looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him. “There, with the blue shirt and gray tie.”

“Isn’t that Billy Barron?” Chanse stirred his drink with the straw.

“Yes, of course.” Billy’s father, Steve Barron, had owned an enormously successful chain of restaurants. He’d died suddenly of a heart attack just over a year ago. “His stepmother Rebecca is one of the grande dames.” As I watched, another woman tucked her arm into his and led him away. I didn’t get a look at her except to notice she was wearing a blue silk dress and had long, thick, dark hair.

“Let’s go upstairs,” I said over the dull roar of the mob. It was getting more crowded and stuffy. We pushed our way through the crush as I smiled and nodded and said hello to people who looked vaguely familiar but whose names I couldn’t recall— I’ve never been good with faces and names, and since taking over as editor of
Crescent City,
I’d kind of become a minor local celebrity. There were times when I missed the old days at the
Times-Picayune—
when my name was just an ignored byline. Now my face was on the editor’s column for everyone to see, and my picture kept showing up on the society pages whenever I had to go to a goddamned party to ‘represent the magazine’— which seemed to be pretty much all the goddamned time.

I couldn’t get up the red carpeted stairs fast enough.

The seats in the balcony had been refitted in what looked like black velvet, and there were maybe twenty or so people milling around the concession stand. It had been set up as a full bar, with two tuxedoed bartenders. I finished my wine and put the glass on a side table.

“Another pinot, or do you want something stronger?” Chanse asked.

“I think I’d better stick to the pinot,” I replied. I didn’t recognize any of the other people milling about, and none of them seemed to have the slightest idea who I was. I sighed in relief and moved over to the food tables. I transferred some roasted asparagus, several slices of Cajun fried turkey, and a roll to my little paper plate and made my way over to the low black wall separating the concession area from the balcony seating. Chanse handed me another plastic wine glass and looked over my meager selections with a raised eyebrow before heading for the tables himself. While Chanse was loading up his plate with more food than I would have thought one of those little plates could handle, I contentedly munched on my asparagus, looking down at the front of the theater. There was an area at the foot of the stage where women I recognized as the actual cast members were standing around sipping wine and idly chatting with well dressed men I presumed to be either husbands, lovers, or network executives. A short, animated man in a tuxedo joined them, and he looked familiar to me. It took me another moment to realize he was Abe Golden, the producer of the
Grande Dames
shows. He also had his own talk show after each episode, in which he and his guests (frequently cast members of other franchises) discussed what had happened on the episode that just aired.

He annoyed the shit out of me, to be honest.

Everything about these shows annoyed me. I hated that they catered to the lowest common denominator. I hated that all the women on the show were certifiably insane, encouraged to behave badly and make all women look bad, like a bunch of shrewish self-absorbed monsters— the absolute worst stereotypes of woman: shallow, vain, petty, and unsupportive of other women, only concerned about their looks and money and things.

I suppose it goes without saying that I couldn’t stop watching, nor could I stop hating myself for watching.

Chanse was an enormous fan of the shows, and couldn’t get enough of them. He constantly sent me links to blog articles and recaps on various websites— some of which were rather funny, especially the comments— which I had, I am sorry to say, read while at the office. “They’re so
awful,
” he’d say with obvious relish, “and the women are completely
insane
.” The guy he was seeing had introduced him to the shows, and he in turn had infected me with the Grande Dame virus. His boy friend Rory was actually my boss’ younger brother.

New Orleans— a block long and everyone’s on a party line.

The lights flickered, and Abe Golden climbed up the steps to an area where a microphone had been set up. He said, “May I have everyone’s attention, please?” The theater fell silent, and he flashed his what-I-was-sure-he-thought-was-a-dazzling smile. “I want to thank you all for coming tonight to the premiere of Season One of
The Grande Dames of New Orleans.”
This was of course followed by some whoops and hollers, but it was mostly just polite applause— golf claps. He went on and on at great length, at first saying great things about New Orleans, but it was just a matter of minutes before he descended into talking about how brilliant he was for coming up with the shows, and how some of his cast members were parlaying their appearances on the shows into enormously lucrative business ventures. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, you’re wonderful, your shows are wonderful, blah blah blah, can we get on with it already?” I muttered under my breath, stealing a glance over at Chanse, who was clearly hanging on every word and enjoying every second of this.

Honestly.

To add tedious insult to boring injury, Abe started calling the ‘grande dames’ up to the stage, introducing them to polite applause from the audience. Each got a hug and a kiss on the cheek from Abe before waving to the audience and standing in a line in the center of the stage. Once they were all up there, he announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, the
Grande Dames of New Orleans
!” He frowned, clearly disappointed when the polite applause wasn’t as loud and enthusiastic as he expected. “Enjoy the show.”

He and the ladies exited the stage as the lights went down and the network logo appeared on the big screen. I settled back in my seat as some unrecognizable music began and the opening credits started to roll.

Like the other shows, the opening credits introduced each ‘grande dame’ to the viewer, showing her in several shots doing things that are meant, in theory, to give the casual watcher an idea of who they are as people, while she speaks over the film her catch-phrase.

Some of the ones on the other shows were unintentionally funny, like Oline’s from
Grande Dames of Palm Beach.
Over a shot of her cutting roses in front of the wide veranda of her plantation style home, her voice said simply, “Just because you have money doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the simple things.”

Of course, the fact that she said that while wearing a ten-thousand-dollar designer pantsuit from Chanel and diamonds big enough to choke a Great Dane was an irony completely lost on her.

The first ‘grande dame’ up in these credits was none other than Fidelis Vandiver. First, an image of her wearing a short black cocktail dress appeared, followed by a shot of her sweating in workout attire, and then finally raising a glass of champagne to the camera. Her first name was written across the bottom of the frame in script. Her voiceover said simply, “I like to stay fit so I’m ready to grab all the joy life has to offer me.”

I stifled a giggle, and glanced at Chanse out of the corner of my eyes. He was smirking.

The next up was Rebecca Barron. In the first shot that appeared on the big screen she was in a mid-length white silk dress with deep décolletage. The next shot showed her climbing out of a swimming pool in a barely-there white string bikini, showing off ridiculously large breast implants and a rich, dark tan that meant she would be having a lot of work done on her face in the future. Her voiceover informed us “I have a taste for the finer things, and I deserve them.”

I almost threw up a little bit in my mouth.

I’d met Rebecca when I’d come to her enormous house on the lakeshore to interview her late husband Steve a few years earlier. She was his fourth or fifth wife— I’d never been really sure how many times he’d been married. He was in his late sixties at the time, and I’d been taken rather aback when he walked into the den, where I was sitting. I’d heard about him and seen pictures of him in the paper for years— he owned numerous restaurants around town and had made his fortune by founding a fast food chain specializing in seafood. Steve Barron was one of those people you either loved or hated. I’d always kind of admired him. He spoke his mind and worked hard, although I knew the story about him dropping out of school and working on fishing boats as a teenager was a fairy tale invented by his corporate publicity department. But he did come from nothing, that was true, and by then he was worth millions.

Unfortunately for Steve, he also kept having work done to his face. By the time I met him it barely moved and was a shiny as a mannequin’s. His hair was jet black and slicked back into a ponytail. He worked out every day with weights and jogged, so he was in great shape— as evidenced by the tight black shirt he was wearing that had to be a size too small. He was wearing black pleated slacks, black patent-leather loafers, and a gold medallion hung around his neck on a thick gold chain. A diamond stud glittered in his right ear. Within five minutes my admiration had faded into dislike. By the end of an hour I couldn’t wait to get away from him. He kept hitting on me— even with his latest trophy wife in the room. He treated her like a servant, which is what I suppose he thought a wife was supposed to be. When he died of a massive heart attack, I imagined it was a merciful release for Rebecca— especially since he had cut all of his children out of his will and left his entire fortune to her.

Rumors were flying all around town about a looming court battle between the widow and her stepsons.

“She doesn’t even live in New Orleans,” Chanse said out of the side of his mouth. “She lives on the North Shore.”

I smothered a laugh as Chloe Valence appeared on the screen in a floor-length green velvet gown with cathedral sleeves, a tight waist, and a neckline that plunged much more deeply than it should have. Her long black hair was braided like a crown around her head. “She looks like Maid Marian,” Chanse muttered, and that time I did laugh out loud, getting nasty looks from people seated near us. I also missed her little tag-line.

I’d known and disliked Chloe Valence for years.

“Too bad we don’t have any rotten tomatoes to throw at the screen,” Chanse hissed at me.

I’ve tried to get over my visceral loathing of Chloe Valence— seriously, I
have.

We used to work together at the
Times-Picayune.
We’d been hired around the same time, both of us straight out of college, the ink on our journalism degrees still damp. While my degree was from LSU, Chloe’s was from the University of Louisiana-Rouen, over on the north shore. When I met her on our first day at work, I immediately pegged her as a phony. Her name had been Chloe Legendre then. She was the kind of woman who didn’t like other women, even though she mouthed feminist platitudes. She was a master of passive-aggression, a behavior I have always despised. It wasn’t long before I noted that she undercut other women whenever the opportunity presented itself while sucking up to all the men. She knew how to play the game, all right. There was even a period of time when I wondered if I was being misogynist myself— did I dislike her so intensely because she was beautiful and got a lot of attention from men? I had a long, dark night of the soul over it, and decided to go to the office the next morning and give her another chance.

Of course, that was the day they announced her promotion to assistant city editor, which sort of meant I kind of had to report to her.

The next few years we clashed more and more, and I tried to ignore the gossip that Chloe was the mistress of a married man much higher up in the chain of command at the paper. Chloe also began to change into an even more annoying person than she had been before. It caught everyone by surprise when she landed a wealthy society husband— no one even knew she’d been dating Remy Valence until the wedding announcement landed in the paper. I took Chanse with me to the wedding, and the moment the groom’s party walked out to the altar, he leaned over and whispered in my ear, “I’ve slept with the groom.”

Remy Valence was the last of an old moneyed New Orleans family, and it was no surprise to me they had no children. I’d eventually learned that Chloe herself was from Monroe— there were rumors she’d paid her way through college by working in some of the less classy strip clubs over in Biloxi. The story I’d been told was that Remy’s mother had been an old battle-axe and had flatly told Remy he needed a wife or the Valence family fortune was going to be divided up amongst her favorite charities in her will… so he grudgingly married the first woman he could find. Apparently they got along so well they’d stayed married even after Remy got his inheritance.

Then again, that could have all been just vicious gossip. It was almost too good to be true.

After Katrina, she was promoted to city editor, and then it was only just a matter of time before I left the paper. When the job as editor of
Crescent City
was offered to me, I grabbed it with both hands and never looked back.

Ironically, Chloe left the paper shortly after I did to pursue her dream of being a novelist.

The world was still breathlessly awaiting her first novel.

Of course, once she learned I was now in charge of the magazine, her attitude changed towards me dramatically. Now, every time she saw me she acted like I was her long lost best friend, giving me her big phony smile and a big hug and air kiss that made me want to shove the bitch down a flight of stairs. But I was always polite and friendly to both her and her husband, Remy— who definitely set off my Gaydar.