The Love Potion

  “Here’s a flash, Charles. You are not turning this love potion into a commercial product, until it is proven safe and effective under at least six months to a year of human testing,” she asserted. “I may not be entirely certain of all my legal rights, but I do know I have the authority to stop that insanity.”

  “It’s not up to you. Any work done on this property belongs to the company,” he asserted.

  “Not if you don’t have the formula. Besides, you’re forgetting one not-so-minor point. I own an equal share in this formula.”

  Charles’s face turned pale and greenish.

  Thank God she’d had the foresight to seek legal advice last year when she’d first stumbled on this promising venture. She’d offered to resign from Terrebonne Pharmaceuticals and set up her own private lab. And she could have done it, too, thanks to a substantial trust fund left her by generations of independent Breaux women. But Charles had talked her into staying…the incentive being an equal interest in the project results.

  “Now, Sylvie, don’t go off half-cocked. I’m sure we can straighten out the situation. We need a cooling-off period, though.”

  She snorted her assessment of that wheedling suggestion, picked up the closed Happy Meal box by its cardboard handle, then slung her handbag over her shoulder, about to leave. “Remember, Charles, we have signed legal documents. But you’re right, we need each other.” She’d completed too much research on company property to veer off on her own now.

  In a more placating tone, he said, “Go home and think about it, Sylvie. Take a few days off till this settles down. The board is meeting tomorrow night. Why don’t we talk again on Wednesday? Maybe we can work something out that will be mutually beneficial.”

  Mutually beneficial? He and this company didn’t care diddly how this news could ruin her personal life and professional career, so long as they could make a profit. She stared at him, really seeing him for the first time. What a fool I’ve been! “Do you mind if I ask a personal question, Charles?”

  “No. Anything,” he offered magnanimously.

  “Are you gay?”

  She saw the surprise in his eyes, but only for a second. “Yes,” he said.

  Yes? Just like that, he says yes. Then something else occurred to her. “You’re gay, and you were going to participate in my experiment. Why? Did you have your own agenda in mind…like maybe proving that homosexuality isn’t genetic?”

  “Hell, no,” he said, face flushed. “I intended to tell you before we began experimentation. You need to provide all types of statistical samples, Sylvie. In fact, I was going to suggest all kinds of additional combinations. Man-woman. Man-man. Woman-woman. Gays. Straights. Different ages. Maybe even different ethnic or race groups. Without all those, there would have been too many questions left unanswered. You were severely limiting the trials.”

  He was on track about the necessary adjustment in trial samples, but still Sylvie’s mind kept going back to the one fact she had overlooked. Gay? Charles was gay.

  Much as she hated to admit it, Luc had been right.

  She could only wonder if Luc had been right about anything else.

  Luc awakened Monday morning in his Houma apartment with a head the size of the Goodyear Blimp, a tongue with enough moss to fill one of those bonsai terrariums, and a lower body part that felt as if it could double as a pogo stick.

  That latter called to mind the fact that even a bender hadn’t been able to wipe out the effects of Sylvie’s love potion, or whatever the hell it was.

  “Wake up, sonny boy. Time, she is a wastin’.”

  He cracked one eye open, just a tiny bit, and saw a blond Chia Pet standing next to his bed.

  Both eyes opened wide at that discovery.

  Oh…my…God!

  Correction. It was his great-aunt, Tante Lulu, with a blond Chia Pet on her head. She was wearing purple spandex biker’s shorts, K-Mart sneakers with little white anklet socks sporting pink pompoms, and a T-shirt with a logo that proclaimed, “Ask Me To Yodel,” all topped by what looked like a helmet of tight blond curls.

  “Hi, sugar,” Tante Lulu cooed.

  Uh-oh! Tante Lulu is not prone to cooing. What’s wrong with this picture?

  Although her greeting was warm, her eyes said he was in big trouble. And Luc knew why. It had been a long time since he’d drunk to excess, and his aunt would be thinking that his hell-raising days were starting all over again. The way Luc was feeling, there was little chance of a repeat of this dumb performance anytime soon. Tante Lulu’s lips thinned into a little moue of disgust as she continued to contemplate him.

  Luc allowed himself the brief luxury of remembering another pair of lips and a killer kiss.

  Sylvie.

  Aaarrgh! The woman was driving him nuts. Somehow, she’d managed to imbed herself in his brain…like an erotic splinter. But he couldn’t think about that now, not in front of Tante Lulu. His wily great-aunt, a noted bayou traiteur, or folk healer, would probably be able to read his mind.

  “René says you won the booger contest.”

  “Huh?”

  “He says you drank ten Dixie beers at The Swamp Shack—”

  “René always did talk too much.”

  “—then you started dancin’ with that waitress, Marie Dubois, and the two of you fools won the booger contest.”

  Comprehension dawned. “That’s boogie, Tante Lulu. Not booger.”

  “Whatever,” she said, waving a hand airily. “Did you hear the new song René wrote? ‘How Can I Love You When You Keep Rattlin’ My Chain?’” She rolled her eyes meaningfully. “I bought a new car.”

  What that last had to do with dancing or René’s songwriting talents, he had no idea. “I figured maybe you were taking up biking,” he teased, giving her spandex pants a little snap. His aunt was skinny as a rail and had no curves at all. She’d lost her behind around 1973, if she’d ever had one. What would possess her to don such an outfit?

  His aunt swatted his hand away. “Nope. These pants match my new car.”

  “A purple car?”

  “Yep. A 1965 Chevy Impala.”

  “Tante Lulu! What would you want with a big gas-guzzler like that? Betcha a dollar you can’t even see over the steering wheel.”

  “You lose. I can see just fine, with two cushions.”

  He sat up in the rumpled bed, making sure the sheet covered him below the waist, though he was pretty sure he was wearing boxer shorts.

  “What happened to your hair?” he asked grumpily. He wouldn’t even bother to ask how she’d gotten into his second-floor apartment. She’d probably conned a second key from René, or Remy.

  She flicked the ends of her Chia Pet. “Charmaine gave me a perm. Spiffy, huh? She tossed it in for nothin’ after I bought her car.”

  So, that was the story of the car. Luc’s half sister Charmaine was a former Miss Louisiana who operated a beauty salon over in Thibodaux called “Kuts & Kurls.” Her mission in life was to turn the entire state of Louisiana into big-haired bimbos—at least, the female half. He’d have a good talk with Charmaine later today, once his head stopped growing. It felt the size of a medicine ball right now.

  “What? You don’t like my ’do?” Tante Lulu asked the question with belligerence, but Luc caught the underlying tone of hurt and insecurity in her voice.

  The last thing Luc wanted to do was hurt his aunt. “Oh, yeah, I like it just great. It will probably last a really long time.”

  Tante Lulu frowned, not sure if he was being sarcastic.

  “I don’t know much about perms, but I bet it would take a long time for those curls to…um, relax.” He was on a roll now. Next, he’d be discussing mousse. God!

  Apparently that was the right thing to say because Tante Lulu beamed at him. “Charmaine says that Demi Moore is gonna get a ’do just like this one. Imagine that. Me and Demi Moore havin’ the same ’do.”

  I’m imagining, all right. “It’s just a little…well, blond.” He knew immediately that he’
d said the wrong thing. He would have bitten his tongue, except it was taking over his mouth with fuzziness.

  “So what’s wrong with blond?” She braced both hands on her almost nonexistent hips.

  “Tante Lulu,” he said with patience, “most seventy-five-year-old women don’t have bright blond hair.”

  “I am not seventy-five,” Tante Lulu lied indignantly. “I’m only sixty-five.”

  In your dreams, Auntie, he thought. But what he said was, “Oh, I forgot.”

  Actually, Luc couldn’t care less what Tante Lulu did with her hair. He loved the old bat to pieces, would do anything in the world for her. She’d been there for him through all the agonizing years of his youth. How many times had she hidden and protected him when his father had come looking for him, belt strap in hand? How many times had she taken blows for him?

  Besides, when it came to hair, all Luc could picture in his sluggish brain was silky black hair, highlighted by a white magnolia behind one ear.

  But he refused to succumb to that ongoing fantasy.

  Yawning widely, he glanced over at the bedside clock and saw that it was noon. “Shouldn’t you be at Bingo Heaven? You always go to Bingo Heaven after Mass on Sunday.” Tante Lulu was a bingo fanatic. And a lottery fanatic. And a racetrack fanatic. In fact, for her last birthday—her seventy-fifth, no matter what she said—he’d taken her to Pelican Track to bet on the ponies. She’d had such a good time, you would have thought he’d taken her to Buckingham Palace.

  “Sunday? This ain’t Sunday. You’ve lost a day, sonny boy. It’s Monday.”

  “Monday? It can’t be! I have an appointment in two hours.” He jumped up, which caused his head to throb like a fifty-pound jackhammer. Making some swift mental calculations on how long it would take him to shower, shave, and get on over to Terrebonne Pharmaceuticals, he rubbed his bristly face and realized that he must not have shaved in days.

  How had he lost a day? He’d been at Swampy’s—The Swamp Shack—where René’s band had been playing last night—no, it was the night before that…Saturday, after he’d left the party. The party where he’d seen Sylvie in that Frederick’s of the Bayou backless sundress.

  Aaarrgh! There I go again…thinking about Sylvie.

  Well, she did look hot in that sundress.

  Good Lord! Where did I ever get the idea that Sylvie Fontaine is hot? Hell, she’s Ice Breaux to the frigid bone, guar-an-teed.

  “Stop those dirty thoughts, Lucien LeDeux,” Tante Lulu chastised. She was picking up dirty clothes off the floor and placing them in a hamper. Then, she opened a large armoire and started to lay out clean, neatly pressed slacks, shirts, socks, and underwear, still in their laundry packets. “Go take a shower. I’ll make you a good Cajun breakfast…boudin sausage, scrambled eggs with shrimp, fried okra, pan bread, beignets, and coffee.”

  After a quick visit to the bathroom, he shrugged on a pair of sweat pants and followed her into the kitchen, where she was unloading a bag of groceries she’d brought with her. Leaning on the open refrigerator door, he contemplated the nothingness inside the refrigerator and said, “You don’t have to cook that stuff for me.” Besides, he was sure to lose every mouthful if he put anything other than coffee in his stomach.

  “I want to,” she said with a shrug, “although you should be havin’ a wife to do for you.” It was her continual gripe. Find a good woman, Luc. That’s what you need. “What you need is to find a good woman, Luc.”

  “Women today are liberated, Auntie. They bring home the bacon, they don’t fry it up no more. In fact, they probably buy turkey bacon—less cholesterol—and make the husband do the cooking.”

  “Humph! Not a good old-fashioned Cajun girl.”

  He just grinned at her. “How come you’re here on a Monday morning?” he asked, idly scratching his chest.

  “Two reasons,” she said, and continued to unload her grocery bag. She’d brought enough foodstuffs to last him a week.

  “Well?” he prodded finally.

  “I brought you some more embroidered pillow cases for your hope chest. And a new Cajun blanket I just finished weaving. Oh, and another St. Jude statuette. You can put this one in the bedroom,” she offered meaningfully. St. Jude was the patron saint of hopeless cases. Needless to say, his aunt thought he was pretty nigh hopeless. He had enough St. Jude statues in his apartment to open a gallery, except they were mostly plastic.

  He groaned. “Tante Lulu, men don’t have hope chests. And I have enough handmade, embroidered linens to open a department store. Sheets, pillow cases, blankets, bedspreads, dish towels, napkins, doilies.” Tante Lulu meant well, but she was making him the laughingstock of the bayou with this hope chest nonsense. When he walked down the street, he often heard his friends hooting with laughter as they told hope chest jokes.

  “How many Cajuns does it take to fill a hope chest?”

  “Just one. Luc LeDeux.”

  Needless to say, the jokes weren’t even funny.

  No one made St. Jude jokes, though. Cajuns were a superstitious lot, and there was no fooling with the saints.

  The problem was, he couldn’t hurt Tante Lulu’s feelings by refusing the gifts. In truth, he was beginning to think he gave meaning to the last days of Tante Lulu’s life: find the boy a wife.

  “You can’t never have enough linens…especially when you first get married.” Tante Lulu must have been talking while his mind had wandered. She had already gotten the coffee perking, and the thick pungent smell of chicory filled his small kitchen. Now she was cracking eggs into a bowl…four of them. Lordy, Lordy! Four eggs!

  But the overabundant breakfast she was preparing wasn’t his biggest concern. “Tante Lulu,” he cried, putting his face in his hands, “I am not getting married. How many times do I have to tell you?”

  “You will someday,” she insisted. “I’m just making sure you’re ready when the thunderbolt hits.” To Tante Lulu, the thunderbolt was her version of falling head over heels in love. “By the way, have you ever made it with her?”

  “Made it? Tante Lulu, I’m surprised at you!” Luc exclaimed with shock. He couldn’t believe his great-aunt was asking him if he’d made it with some woman. The bleach must have seeped into her brain. “Made it with whom?” he finally sputtered out.

  “Sylvie Fontaine. Mon Dieu, she looks like Martha Stewart on a bad-hair day in that picture.”

  “Picture? What picture?”

  “Maybe you could get her over to Charmaine for a makeover.”

  “A makeover? Where do you get these ideas? Sylvie Fontaine is fine just the way she is.”

  “She is?” His aunt smiled, though Luc had no idea why.

  Then, finally, she gave him some answers by holding up the front pages of several newspapers that she’d apparently brought with her. Newspapers that appeared to contain his name and Sylvie’s. It was probably both the Sunday and Monday morning newspapers, he judged, by their bulk. This must be Tante Lulu’s second reason for the unexpected visit. He blinked several times, but all he could make out in the headlines, from across the room, were the words “Swamp Solicitor,” “Oil,” and “Love Potion.”

  “You didn’t tell me you were a celebrity,” she said. She was adding shrimp and heavy cream and herbs to the whipped eggs, while another frying pan was sizzling with thick Cajun sausages.

  Luc hadn’t even known he had two frying pans. He had Domino’s Pizza on his speed dial, and practically his own parking space at The Ragin’ Cajun Red Hots stand.

  “A regular F. Lee LeDeux, you becomin’, huh? And since when you go sniffin’ round Creole girls? Ain’t there ’nough Cajun girls for you?”

  With a groan, he pressed his forehead against the wall, especially as his aunt’s earlier question sank in. “Sylvie? You’re asking if I ever nailed…I mean, made it with Sylvie Fontaine?” He started to laugh, but stopped when even that slight movement caused tiny explosions of pain inside his head. “Never.”

  “And guess what?” she said. He could hear
the excitement in her voice. “You’re gonna be on TV at twelve-thirty…the midday news. Hurry up and turn on the set. Maybe you could call in or somethin’.”

  I’m gonna kill Sylvie. I swear I am.

  “I wonder where I might be able to buy some of those jelly beans,” Tante Lulu commented. “Do you have an in with Sylvie Fontaine?”

  “An ‘in’?” he choked out. “Hardly.”

  He gaped at Tante Lulu for a long moment, wondering why she thought she needed a love potion. But then he’d been surprised that Sylvie would want such a thing, too. Women! Go figure. He’d like to see the guy who’d rely on such a harebrained idea for a chick magnet. Nope, real men sucked in their guts, slapped on the ol’ aftershave and a tight pair of jeans. If they were really dumb, fancy boots and a cowboy hat, too. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. Those were the breaks.

  Tante Lulu flipped over the eggs, and winked at him.

  Oh. She must have been kidding.

  Whew! That’s a relief.

  He pressed the fingertips of one hand to his forehead, which was aching rhythmically to some inner drumbeat. This was more than a hangover.

  God, my life is going down the drain. But then he stiffened with determination. If I’m going down the tubes, you’re coming with me Ms. Ice Breaux Chemist.

  Sylvie didn’t stand a chance.

  Chapter Five

  Luc never got a chance to kick Sylvie’s butt. Her butt had somehow disappeared from the face of the earth…well, at least from Houma, Louisiana.

  After Tante Lulu left, he showered and put on clean clothes for his afternoon appointment at Sylvie’s company to pick up the lab results. Even though he had a long-playing tape on his answering machine, the damn thing had wound itself out during his drinking binge. He must have been really dead to the world. The red light bleeped now that dozens of voice mail messages had been recorded.

  Having read the papers from Sunday and Monday, he wasn’t surprised to have messages from his frantic brother René, as well as newspaper and TV reporters. René, probably thought this publicity was a deliberate ploy on his part…his usual outrageous M.O. Truth be told, his reputation far exceeded his boring life. Luc decided he would find a way to make that misconception work for the benefit of the fishermen. Sort of like that old adage: If someone throws lemons your way, make lemonade.