Queen Ida was wrapping up her set to raucous applause. Kit’s place was truly smokin’, Carmen mixing sound and spinning tunes between performers. Shane, rangy and jittery, leaned against the wall, rehearsing her apology with Alice giving her one nudge after another, and tilting her head toward the sound board. Shane shook her off, but couldn’t discourage her.

Bette was still staring daggers at Tina’s booth when Kit and Desiree rejoined the table. DP’s senses exploded at the first bite of food, filling her mind with memory and long-forgotten emotions. Her eyes began to water, not from the spices, which were liberal, but the feelings she thought she’d left behind when she migrated West from Louisiana.

“Desiree, get your wrap, girl, we gonna be late.” It was her grandmother’s voice, stripped of her careful English cadence and thick with Creole patois.

“Comin’, Gram.” Desiree grabbed her coat and followed her grandmother outside to the wagon. Her parents had gone to Baton Rouge for some stiff-collared family Bonaparte family function, and grammy got word of a house party over at the LaCroix farm. It felt like sneaking off, and it thrilled her to join her grandmother’s little conspiracy against family breeding and good manners by taking her granddaughter to a low-class Cajun Creole party, the kind where they carried the furniture out to the front lawn, rolled up the carpet, and everyone in the county who had a fiddle, accordion, string bass or any other music maker would be there.

Even now, she could recall the smell of sweat and smoke and home made liquor, the laughter that seemed so full and genuine, not a good manner to be seen. Kit startled her reverie with a question she didn’t hear. “I beg your pardon.”

“I said how ‘bout some sweet tea to go with that plate of food,” Kit grinned.

DP nodded and tucked another bite into her mouth, watched Kit saunter off in the direction of the bar, startled to find herself admiring the way Kit’s hips swayed as she walked, solid and grounded in the way large women have of being completely at ease in their bodies.