Musette DuBois, was stoned, rising from the bastion of her mahogany bed at twilight’s moon—she worked the night shift on cannery row—it was the weekend, and she was free to wander the streets of Baton Rouge—the Rangoon bubbled, with the scent of bone again worth the devil’s toll, as she stirred the marrow with a wood spoon, humming a song her father used to sing before he drowned in the Mississippi River—the oil hissed, and the crab meat mixed with cream cheese—she had the hunger, but not for a V8.
“Mmhmm,” Musette murmured, licking the spoon clean, “Dat’s gon’ be fryin’ jus’ right.” The kitchen smelled of the diagnosis of forgotten things, a slow erosion of the crab’s flesh, the kind that stuck to your ribs long after you’d eaten. Outside, a neighbor’s dog barked at nothing, or maybe at ghosts—hard to tell on the bayou as the clockwork on the wall tickled 6pm and the party ain’t started yet. Somewhere, a zydeco tune was being tuned badly, strings snapping— like promises—into the thick summer air.
The swamp, a catechism of cicadas and frogs, “Bless me momma, for I am about to wing it” Musette rolled a joint of a picayune gold-laced with a breath of anesthesia and “feel good” while mama was upstairs banging the preacher man’s son, a born again wallflower.
The joint burned slow between Musette’s fingers, its smoke curling like the steam rising from the fryer. She took a drag, letting the gold-laced high settle behind her eyes—just enough to blur the edges of the preacher man’s son’s moans drifting down through the ceiling. Beneath her slinky dress, she felt her contraption dilating, bubbling its froth.
Her wings opening, gathering a storm, upstairs her mama’s bed hit the wall as she canoodled and Musette chuckled, “Lord, save me from saints who can’t keep the knees together.”
