Pretty Charlezza Le Velle was sitting on the back steps of Mahogany House scratching the sole of her foot and taking lazy sips from her tall glass of very sugary lemonade. It was refreshing, even though the drink wasn’t a bit cold; at least it was wet! The ice man came every weekday in the summer, at seven o’clock in the evening, with his big blocks of ice caught between tongs to deliver them to Madame Lulu’s leaky wooden icebox, but afterwards Madame Lulu was very stingy with the ice. Her girl weren’t supposed to drink chilled beverages unless they were with clients, and, naturally the ice was gone by morning.
Charlezza rolled her round chestnut-colored eyes, batted her spiky black lashes by learned, --- uh, --- habit. It was okay if there wasn’t anyone watching, dang it, --- so what? Acting the unpredictable Creole coquette got very tedious, at times... Besides, business was slow in the sub-tropical Louisiana August heat when tempers were itchy and everything a girl touched felt clammy and clingy, --- ugh, especially flesh against flesh, sort of stuck together and, yet, amazingly, still sliding back and forth and threatening to chafe, even with Mama Lorraine’s homemade jasmine and sage powder applied regularly! Charlezza was happy that Madame Lulu partly closed the place down in the summer in New Orleans, in good old Storyville. That was sensible, --- yeah, darn sensible of her! It was mid morning and Charlezza knew, oh --- heck, heck, heck! She knew that she should be getting back to Billy Bart Zager who was still asleep in the little brass bed upstairs because Billy Bart had paid for her till morning, but he was snoring so loudly that she just couldn’t stand it! She thought she’d lose it and knife him with the letter opener that sat in the silver tray in Madame Lulu’s private parlor... Yes, knife him right though his little pot belly if she heard just one more liquidy snort from his open drooling, buck-toothed mouth! And, besides, he was still a little stinky from vomit, even though she had cleaned him as best she could after he threw up all over one of Madame Lulu’s new couches that she recently imported from Calais, France, the chartreuse silk brocade one with the twisted cord fringes. Charlezza hoped that she wouldn’t have to pay for cleaning it! She didn’t think she made enough money, --- not ever, and the cleaning of the couch's delicate fabric would make her practically broke, again, again this month, just like the last!
Charlezza pursed her lips, even thinking of Pierre Junot... She could almost feel his silky and wavy dark hair sliding through her fingers, his broad muscular shoulders under her palms. Sure, she knew that she was being silly; Madame Lulu told her that often enough. She told her and told her that a whore, even one as young, lovely and classy as Charlezza, couldn’t actually BELIEVE that she could have a regular boyfriend like other girls, a boyfriend made out of one of the clients, --- “You are dreaming fluffy pink clouds and shitting out stones, ma petite angel!,” Lulu had sternly warned her. She scowled, “No man who frequents my place is ever going to marry you!”
But, Charlezza had the precious dreams of any normal romantic twenty year old girl, even if that girl had been born the descendant of women who had included the fancy mistresses of aristocratic men who lived in the French Quarter’s double gallery mansions and who set up the young women in little exquisite apartments on North Rampart Street. These gentlemen contracted virginal girls through the old and antiquated system of Placage, or short term “marriages”. In fact, the sweet and pretty girls were carefully brought up in the tradition of Southern belles for when they would be put on display during their debuts at Octoroon Balls, set up by the venerable Auguste Tessier, their nurse-sponsors, who were often their mothers, hoping they’d catch the eye of a rich and easy-living gentleman.
Now, Chalezza slammed her glass of lemonade down so hard on the brick steps that it broke and the drink splashed all over her. She shook her hand in the air, spraying specks of blood, sucked two of her fingers, hard. The sting annoyed her more than it hurt. Charlezza kept her fingers in her mouth as she rose from the steps and entered through the back door of Lulu White’s scumptuous castle-like place at two thirty five North Basin Street, actually, on the corner of North Basin and Bienville, that enormous and unique building that cost forty thousand dollars to put up, built of marble with it’s fan-shaped stained glass window over the front door and it’s distinctive tower, it’s two thousand dollars worth of furniture, it’s custom made two hundred dollar cut glass chandelier and it’s plush velvet drapes. It had fifteen bedrooms and five parlors, and was four stories high, counting the bottom floor that was used as a storage area. Yes, Lulu White’s place was very tall, like some of the other most elegant brothels of the thirty eight blocks of Storyville, which were bounded by Iberville, Basin, Saint Louis and North Robertson Streets and named after New Orleans Alderman Sidney Story, to his dismay. It was careful and cautious Sidney Story who came up with the infamous guidelines for the prostitution that had been legal in the Tenderlion Distict ever since July sixth, eighteen ninety seven, a tiny bit over fifteen years ago and counting, --- now....
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