To Val, that said everything about their being survivors of Katrina. Char and Del had visited her and Nanny, Del’s cousin, several times when Val was a child, but they had lost touch over the years. Right before Katrina, they had moved to Gulfport, Mississippi, an area also ravaged during the storm, during which they’d lost their home along with Del’s job as a truck driver.
Six years and a relocation later, they owned the Gumbo Stop, which they’d grown from a concession trailer to a store that offered creole cuisine in boil-in-a-bag portions. After locating Val, they’d asked her to come to Las Vegas to live with them and their daughter, twenty-one-year-old Jasmyn.
Who was curled up on the couch in her pink capri pajamas, patterned with the word Paris in a flowery script along with miniature Eiffel Towers. She called them her Je rêve—French for “I dream”—jammies because her overriding desire was to live in Paris. Her parents accepted their daughter’s dream to live in the romantic city, but weren’t so thrilled about her wanting to work there as a burlesque dancer.
Jasmyn had years of training as a dancer. At ten she’d won a regional tap competition, followed by several summers working in the chorus for regional musicals. The past few years, she had been teaching tap and ballet to kids at the Dance-a-Rama Studio.
As a counteroffer to the burlesque-dancer-in-Paris dream, Char and Del offered Jasmyn full tuition to Le Cordon Bleu, which they called “a virtual Parisian experience,” which just happened to have a college in Las Vegas. Instead of struggling as a dancer, they argued, a prestigious culinary arts degree opened doors to a lifetime career as a chef.
Jasmyn’s interest in the idea was about as peaked as a collapsed soufflé.
“Hey, baby,” Jasmyn called out in her soft, lazy drawl. She twittered her fingers in greeting, her eyes glued to the black-and-white movie on the TV screen.
“Weren’t you watching that show last night?”
“I bought the DVD because this movie, Double Indemnity, defined film noir. Those old-time movie stars Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck are hawt, cuz.”
Sometimes they called each other cuz, although in the two years since Val had moved in here, she’d come to feel more like a sister to Jasmyn. Or what she assumed a sister would be like. They sometimes argued, sometimes irritated each other, but they were also each other’s sounding board and confidante.
Jasmyn played with a curl of her long raven hair. “Cuz, I’m thinkin’ of dyeing my hair platinum, the brassy but trashy color of Barbara Stanwyck’s pageboy wig.”
Val glanced at the screen. “Looks better than my brassy but trashy wig.”
Jasmyn’s gaze landed on Val’s hair, where it paused for a moment before darting down Val’s outfit, then quickly up. “Whoa, sugar, laissez les bons temps rouler!”
It was French for “let the good times roll,” a popular saying heard all the time in New Orleans.
“Actually, this wasn’t worn for fun.” She set the bag on the coffee table. “I worked my first investigation tonight.”
“Investigation?” Jasmyn punched a button on the remote. The room instantly grew quiet, the movie frozen on an image of Fred MacMurray looking at Barbara Stanwyck’s leg. “Isn’t that outfit the one you wore at that casino where you dealt blackjack and lip-synched Christina Aguilera’s songs?”
Val plopped down on the couch. “Has nothing to do with her, though. I dressed like this to...” Her heart and mind felt all jumbled up with everything that had happened tonight. She wasn’t ready to talk about it yet. “Hungry? I picked up some to-go from Aloha Kitchen.”
After shooting Val a knowing look, Jasmyn gestured at the bag. “I love them funny little rolls. You get some of them?”
“Lumpia Shanghai. Got extra just for you.” She handed her a few of the mini egg rolls stuffed with ground pork, carrots and onions on a napkin.
They ate in silence for a while. The air conditioner chugged quietly in the background. On the TV screen, Fred continued to stare at Barbara’s ankle. The way he looked at her—startled and hungry—reminded Val of the look on Drake’s face when she showed him the fleur-de-lis on her heels.
Like she cared. It was over. Dead. Gone.
She gestured to the screen with an egg roll. “What’s Fred looking at?”
“Her anklet. It’s a big deal in the movie.”
Chewing, Val made a keep-going gesture.
“The anklet is a symbol that represents sexual fascination.” Jasmyn grinned. “Read that in some film critic’s review on the internet. In my own words, that little gold anklet sends a signal as big and bright as a lighthouse beacon. It flashes ‘I’m a bad girl looking for trouble.’ Women who wore them were thought to be loose.”
Val wiped her fingers on a napkin. “This movie was made when?”
“Nineteen forty-four.”
“You just turned twenty-one, what, three months ago? And you know all about anklets worn nearly seventy years ago?”
Jasmyn gave a casual shrug. “It’s my thing, the forties and fifties.”
“Your noir thing.”
“More like my neonoir thing. Digging the old styles, but updating them, too.” She waggled a magenta fingernail at the screen. “Like that anklet she’s wearing. I’d wear one with peep-toe pumps, capri pants, a slim cardigan and Dita Von Teese’s bad-red lipstick, Devil.”
“You love that Dita Von Teese with her skintight dresses and corsets and elbow-length gloves.”
“She’s an artist, a burlesque queen.”
“I see you haven’t thought about this much.”
“I celebrate my life through my style, what can I say? I know you understand ’cause you go a little retro yourself, cuz.”
Val had a thing for simple, vintage black dresses. When she was a kid, she’d loathed reach-me-down—secondhand—clothes, and had sworn that when she grew up she’d always buy off-the-rack. But when that day came, she hated how stiff and scratchy new clothes felt against her skin. Missed the softness of reach-me-downs, so she’d started shopping at secondhand and vintage stores.
“Y’know,” Jasmyn said, “with your black-purple hair, pale skin and those hot-cute little black dresses you wear, you’d make a great noir chick.”
“I’m still not even sure what noir means.”
“It refers to the type of movies being made back in the forties and fifties. Dark and bleak with people who had no morality or sense of purpose.”
“Sounds like a badly lit casino in Vegas.”
“F’sure!” Jasmyn peeled off a throaty laugh. “That anklet is famous, by the way,” she continued, looking at the screen. “Right about here, Fred says ‘That’s a honey of an anklet you’re wearing’ and that term—honey of an anklet—is now one of the classic lines in film noir.” She paused, frowning. “Val, what’s wrong?”
“That word. Honey.” She picked up some wadded napkins and put them into the bag. “Tonight I did what in the P.I. trade is called a honey trap. Which is where a P.I. entices some guy to see if he’s unfaithful, which is a bunch of crock because enticing isn’t investigating.” Wouldn’t Jayne be proud to know Val finally understood? And sorely disappointed if she knew how Val reached that understanding.
“From the looks of you, cuz, you overshot enticing by a city block.”
“Thanks.”
“Just sayin’.”
“Got