“And if you take those away, then my social life looks pretty pathetic.”
Nonc clears his throat. “Beauchamp Alexander Landry, you are a twenty-seven-year-old who spends his days like a seventy-seven year old. You live alone in a tiny house on two hundred acres of Cajun prairie like some kind of hermit. Your free time is spent with your ailing mother and your divorced uncle. And your quote-unquote social life consists of you booking music and dance acts for an annual festival that you can’t even properly enjoy because you are busting your tail to make everything go smoothly for those five days.”
I hear him take a breath, but I don’t bother interrupting him because he’s on a roll, and butting in won’t do me any good. It’ll just make the lecture take longer.
“Unless you’re keeping secrets, you haven’t been on a date since Rebecca decided to go play Beauty & The Beast on a Disney cruise ship, and that was almost a year ago, so I don’t mind telling you I’m beginning to worry.”
I scoff. “About what?”
He scoffs back. “About nothing ever changing for you, and before you know it, you will be seventy-seven, drinking your coffee alone on that tiny front porch, staring at that borrowed view of yours.”
I turn my eyes to the strip of window that spans one side of my tiny house. He’s right. The view is borrowed. Sort of. The land belongs to my boss Paula’s family. Her father was a crawfish farmer. When he passed a couple of years ago, Paula and her sister weren’t ready to sell the land, so they’ve leased the ponds to a neighbor. I see the neighbor and his sons out on the water nearly every day during the spring. After I finished building my tiny house two years ago, Paula and her sister let me homestead on the property in exchange for mowing, fence-mending, and general upkeep.
Outside my window, dusk is falling in a golden light on clover and dandelions, barbed wire fencing and cypress posts, an empty barn and work shed. The sight is beautiful. Peaceful.
Like I said, I don’t have much, but I don’t need much.
“There are worse views, Nonc,” I tell him honestly. “Borrowed or not.”
“Hell, I don’t care that it’s borrowed,” he gusts over the phone. “It’s the thought of you sittin’ in front of it alone for the next fifty years that worries me.”
Other than Mom, and his ex-wife Lorraine, Nonc doesn’t have too many people to worry about, and since pointing that out just seems mean, I let the comment go.
“I’ll help you out with the class.”
“Good. Thank you.” I can hear him smile over the phone. “And even though I can’t tell you who my client is, there’s nothing stopping you from takin’ a peek in the parlor.”
I chuckle. “I’m good, Nonc.”
“Well, you haven’t seen her,” he says with authority. “Prettiest thing to grace that parlor in a long while.”
In the old house that is La Fête, Nonc and Mom established two dance classrooms. The parlor was once just that. The room just off the foyer is where the original owners used to receive their guests. It works for small classes and private lessons. Behind the parlor, in what used to be the home’s formal dining room, Mom set up a changing room for her ballerinas. It still has lockers and hooks that students can use if they need, but since Mom got sick and Rebecca left, we don’t offer ballet classes anymore.
Tomorrow night, I’ll be teaching in what we call the ballroom. It used to make up the master suite and another bedroom. Our largest classes meet there, and it’s right across the hall from the parlor.
“If your client is worried about her privacy, you’d better lock the parlor doors,” I tell him. “Your Latin class isn’t small, and a few of those ladies are only there to dance with you, you know.”
This is no lie. My uncle, despite his downy white head and goatee, is a good-looking, single, older man who can dance. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that women of a certain age make up a healthy portion of La Fête's clientele.
His deep laugh rolls through the phone. “I don’t think they’ll go looking for me if you’re there, kid,” he teases, “but if you’re worried about the starlet, don’t. The doors to the parlor stay closed, and they park in the back and come through the