Spy in a Little Black Dress - By Maxine Kenneth Page 0,20

to blend in with the mourners by joining in their cakewalk. She saw an elderly black woman, wearing her Sunday best, who was having trouble opening her parasol and asked, “Would you like me to help?”

“Yes,” said the woman, who surrendered her parasol to Jackie. Jackie had no trouble opening it and held it over herself and the elderly woman, using it to shield her features from the Three Stooges, who were gaining on the procession. She saw that they were having trouble pushing their way through the high-spirited crowd of gyrating mourners as they danced down the street.

Sashaying arm in arm with the elderly woman, Jackie walked her to the leading edge of the procession, which was approaching the intersection at Canal Street.

“Thank you,” Jackie said to the woman, handing the parasol back to her.

“You’re welcome,” the puzzled woman said in return, but by this time Jackie was gone, breaking for Canal Street.

There was a brick wall at the corner—the edge of the aboveground cemetery the mourners were approaching—and Jackie hoped that it would block her from view as she sought to lose the Three Stooges once and for all.

She found herself headed back toward the Mississippi River, with the St. Louis Cathedral now on her left. She ran past shop after shop selling pralines, souvenirs, antiques, and daiquiris, and turned onto Decatur Street, barely having the time to note that she was passing that jewel-like, vest-pocket park known as Jackson Square on her left.

Coming up was some kind of restaurant that seemed to be doing land-office business based on the crowd lined up outside, where a street musician was entertaining the tourists with his own accordion version of “When the Saints,” which seemed to be the unofficial theme song of New Orleans.

Heedless of the calls from those waiting on line, Jackie defied the crowd and entered the restaurant. Normally, she would never think of doing such an impolite thing as cutting a line, but this was an emergency. She was running for her life, and there was no time to offer any apologies for her actions.

Past the front door, the restaurant featured an outdoor terrace with a giant green awning. It was here that Jackie went to try to hide herself from the Three Stooges. As she looked around, she saw that the diners’ clothes were sprinkled with white sugar. The sugar was coming from the beignets that were to be seen on every table. Jackie realized that this must be the Café du Monde, which, for many, was the center of New Orleans society, an egalitarian institution open twenty-four hours a day, where everyone—rich, poor, white, black, native, and tourist—came to enjoy beignets and café au lait. It was considered a badge of honor to leave the café with one’s clothes covered with powdered sugar from the deep fried doughnuts.

The only guest who didn’t seem to be covered in sugar was a young man in a white suit holding court at a table of young male acolytes in one corner of the terrace. The young man looked somehow familiar to her, and after jogging her memory, Jackie realized that he was the young playwright Tennessee Williams, whose productions The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire—the latter set in his native New Orleans—had caused such a big fuss on Broadway. He closely resembled his newspaper photographs. He was also, she knew, a friend of her novelist cousin, Gore Vidal.

But before Jackie even had the chance to consider going over and introducing herself, the Three Stooges burst onto the terrace in search of her, and she was forced to slip out through the side entrance, where she found herself back on Decatur Street.

She looked around and tried to figure out where to go next. She could either cross the street to Jackson Square and try to lose them there or take the set of steps to the left that led to the levee overlooking the Mississippi River. Jackie decided on the latter course of action and took the steps as fast as her legs would carry her. She glanced down and saw the Three Stooges just exiting the Café du Monde and looking around to see where she had gone.

Arriving at the levee, the first thing Jackie saw was an antique steamboat at the dock, the Natchez, looking for all the world like something out of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It was obviously a tourist attraction, and Jackie bought herself a ticket at the booth on the