Chapter 1
“Why isn’t that Santa wearing a shirt? And what’s that sign on his crotch?” I rose from the rococo chaise lounge in my living room to inspect the tree ornament, and what I read soured the sugarplums dancing in my head. “Don’t open until Christmas?”
Veronica Maggio, my best friend and boss at Private Chicks, Inc., the PI firm where I worked in New Orleans, went as still as the gold fringe on the lilac velour armchair where she sat stringing popcorn.
Appalled, I snatched the offending ornament from the branch and gasped at the one behind it. “She baked an anatomically correct Gingerbread Man?”
“You know Glenda has different taste, Franki.”
Calling our landlady’s taste ‘different’ was like calling a strip club a restaurant. The analogy was pertinent because Glenda O’Brien, the owner and upstairs resident of the fourplex where I rented a sketchy furnished apartment next door to Veronica, was an ex-stripper and something of a local celebrity. And at well over sixty, she dressed like she still worked the bawdy Bourbon Street strip scene.
Veronica reached for her cocoa. “And don’t forget that you told her your tree was bare.”
“I said that I needed a few more ornaments. You know I never use the word ‘bare’ around Glenda because I don’t want to encourage her.” I plucked a randy reindeer from a branch. “And obviously I was trying to make this place look less French Quarter brothel and more family Christmas party.”
“Well, I’m sure Glenda thought your family would like the decorations. After all, they have met her, and they seem fine with her idiosyncrasies.”
“She hasn’t met my dad, and I can assure you that he wouldn’t be fine with this.” I held up an ornament of Mrs. Claus with an elf—and they weren’t making toys.
Her cornflower-blue eyes widened and dropped to the popcorn strand in her lap. “Speaking of your family, a storm is on its way, and meteorologists are predicting dangerously high winds.”
“I know, which is why I told them not to come.” The storm wasn’t the only reason, but that was the excuse I was going with. I loved my family, but spending extended periods of time with them left me feeling like a hit-and-run victim.
“What time are they due to arrive?”
“They left Houston at one, and it’s six now. So, any minute. But they can be a little late because our reservation isn’t until eight.”
“What are you going to wear?”
“My new green silk dress.”
She flipped her blonde locks. “Well, I hope Bradley can make it back from Boston in time for the dinner, because that green is gorgeous with your brown hair and eyes.”
I ignored the compliment and focused on the Bradley issue. If my boyfriend was a no-show, my matchmaker Sicilian nonna would ruin the meal by trying to recruit his replacement from the restaurant staff. “I haven’t heard from him since his flight got rerouted to Jackson, so I assume he caught his connection.”
“Well, if I wasn’t having dinner with Dirk and his parents, I would love to go with you.”
“You would?” I wasn’t even sure I wanted to spend the evening with my family. “Why?”
“I’ve always wanted to experience a proper réveillon dinner.”
“Not me. The French colonists ate the feast after midnight mass, and just waiting until eight is killing me.” My stomach rumbled, and I glanced at the Gingerbread Man. But eating pornographic baking on a religious holiday had to be a sin.
“I was referring to eating a traditional New Orleans meal in a private room at Commander’s Palace. It’s the perfect way to spend Christmas Eve with your family.”
Not if your last name was Amato. “What does réveillon mean, again?”
“‘Waking,’ from the French word réveil, because the colonists fasted all day on the twenty-fourth and then stayed awake all night to feast.”
“Then when did Santa supposedly come? While they were at church?”
My front door shot open with a thwack. A candy-cane-striped, stripper-shoed foot stepped inside, and a puff of smoke followed.
Santa it was not.
Nor was it a priest.
“Sorry to kick the door, Miss Franki,” Glenda drawled from the threshold, “but my hands were otherwise occupied.”
She held a Mae West–style cigarette holder in one hand and a gift bag in the other, but my eyes were glued to her outfit. Like my tree, she was wrapped in silver tinsel, but her ornaments were hung rather differently. “Um, the star goes at the top.”
“I’m one of those inverted Christmas trees, sugar.”
I shot a pointed look at the scads of wrinkled skin showing between the tinsel. “Without the branches.”
“Are you trying to break my balls?” She shimmied, shaking the two strategically placed ornaments on her chest.
“I can promise you, I’m not.”
She Cher-shook her long, platinum hair and dragged from her cigarette holder. “Where’s your family? I’ve never met your daddy, or your brother Michael.”
I froze at the mention of my oldest brother. He was an accountant in Houston, and I saw him so rarely that I’d actually forgotten he existed. He was the type who grew up and fled the nest, while my brother Anthony was the one who refused to leave. I tried to escape but kept getting pulled back in like Michael Corleone from The Godfather. “They’ll be here soon, but Anthony’s the only one coming.”
“That’s too bad, but at least your daddy will get to enjoy this.” Glenda reached into the gift bag and pulled out a North Pole with a Barbie clinging to it—in pasties and a G-string.
“Woooow.” I emphasized the ow. “That’s…really………festive.”
“Isn’t it just? I like to think of that Barbie as me back in my heyday.”
I didn’t like to think that at all, and I was sure Mattel wouldn’t either.
Glenda strutted to the fireplace and rested a six-inch heel on the head of the bearskin rug. She placed the North Stripper Pole on the mantle between my Elves on the Shelf, and I half-expected her to produce tiny dollar bills for their hands.
My Mr. Grinch ringtone sounded, matching my mood. I glanced at the phone on the coffee table. “It’s my mom.”
Veronica looked up from her popcorn strand. “I hope they haven’t run into that storm.”
My laugh was a quasi cackle. “My uptight mother, grouchy father, meddling nonna, and slacker brother have been trapped in a car for five hours. There’s a hurricane raging, I assure you.”
She rose from the armchair and ushered our landlady to the door. “Let’s go get a few more ornaments from my apartment.”
I mouthed thank you behind Glenda’s back and pressed answer. “Hi, Mom.”
“Francesca?” Her normally shrill voice had a caged-animal element. “It’s your mother, dear.”
Irritation set in, and she wasn’t even at my apartment yet. “I know that, which is why I said, ‘Hi, Mom.’”
“Well someone’s a scrooge.”
I sighed and forced my tone to be merry and bright, like the holidays were supposed to be. “Where are you guys?”
“We just pulled in to— Oh, Joe. Really.”
“I can’t help it, Brenda,” my dad said in his tense driving voice. “I’ve got a sick stomach.”
My father always had digestive issues. Even when he hadn’t eaten.
“Can we at least get a courtesy window-roll-down?” she shouted.
He grumbled something I was glad I hadn’t heard.
“Anyway.” She turned on the faux cheer as easily as one turned on Christmas tree lights. “We’re in Baton Rouge. This holiday traffic is unreal.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to stay there for the night?” The question was futile, but a girl could try. “Veronica said the storm is going to be pretty bad.”
“We own a deli, Francesca. We’re not the Hiltons. And after all the years I spent slaving over a stove for this family, I think I’m entitled to a nice holiday meal in a restaurant. We’ll just have to ride out the storm together.”
I feared fatalities, and not from the high winds. “Mom, you know I live in a one bedroom.”
“We’ve been all over this. Your father and I will take your room, your nonna can sleep on the chaise lounge, and you kids can camp out on the floor.”
She said it like Anthony and I were still in elementary school instead of thirty-two and thirty, respectively.
“Yo, Pops,” Anthony boomed in his affected New Jersey accent. “Blow those burps in the front seat, would ya?”
“Again, Joe?”
I felt like the caged animal, especially since the chaise lounge I was sitting on was upholstered in zebra print. But I could always sleep on Veronica’s bizarre tiki-adorned couch or in the giant champagne glass in Glenda’s living room.
“Franki?” My father’s voice burst in my ear. “The GPS is showing that it’ll take two hours to get to New Orleans instead of one.”
“Our reservation is at eight, Dad, so you’ll need to go straight to Commander’s Palace.”
“We’re not going there, dear.” My mother spoke with forced merriment. “Anthony changed the reservation.”
“What? You let him pick the restaurant?”
“Well he did work in hospitality, Francesca.”
“Mom, he worked at a strip club in the Quarter for a week.” Then he fled home to Houston to free room and board.
“Strip clubs are pretty darn hospitable,” she sing-songed.
I couldn’t argue with that. “What is this place?”
“Laurent, on North Rampart Street.”
It didn’t ease my concern that the name sounded like “low rent.”
A hiss came through the receiver, followed by a low growl. It sounded like…a catfight?
“Let go of my phone, Carmela.” My mother’s tone had gone from shrill to dental drill.
“Not a chance-a, woman,” my nonna rasped in her thick Sicilian accent. “Franki, is-a Bradley there?”
Her question was more loaded than one of Santa’s toy bags. In accordance with a cockamamie Italian-American custom, my nonna had forced me to steal a lemon from a Saint Joseph’s Day altar to land a husband within a year. That was nine months ago, and she reminded me daily that Bradley’s time to propose was almost up. “Uh, he’s meeting us at the restaurant.”
A beep interrupted the line. It was Bradley.
“That’s him calling, Nonna. I need to let you go.”
“Aspetta.”
When she said “wait” in Italian, you did.
“Is-a he gonna pop-a the question? I’m in-a my eighties, and I don’t have-a much-a time left.”
My lips pursed, and the line beeped again like a game-show timer pressuring me for an answer.
“What did she say, Carmela?” my mother asked. “I mean, two years is certainly enough time to know if you want to marry someone. If Bradley waits much longer, I’ll be too old to be a grandmother.”
They had just encapsulated the main problem with my family. My single-and-childless status was about them, not me.
Another beep escalated my stress.
“Francesca,” my mother shrilled. “Are you there?”
As an early present to myself, I seized the opportunity and hung up.
A text message appeared on my display.
Bradley’s flight from Jackson had been canceled. He was going to rent a car and drive the three hours to New Orleans.
I sprawled on the chaise lounge and stared at the shiny gold fleurs-de-lis on my fuzzy blood-red wallpaper, hoping their brightness would lift my sinking holiday spirits. Because if Bradley was a no-show on Christmas Eve, my nonna would turn the réveillon dinner “waking” into a “wake.”
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