The words tasted sour. I agreed with Patrick. In New Orleans, sometimes death did feel more like socializing. And he knew better than anyone else. He frequented postmortem parties daily, trolling for books.
Ruta SepetysThat’s a good hustle,” I told him.
“We both got a little hustle, don’t we?” He pulled on his jacket. “But I like to think we got more heart.
Man, you’re a regular Bonnie Parker.”
“A dame that knows the ropes isn’t likely to get tied up.”
Jesse found that hysterical. “Did Willie say that?”
“Nope, Mae West. Now, how do I get on this thing in a skirt?
You’ll have champagne. All girls like champagne.”
All girls didn’t like champagne. I preferred root beer. Willie preferred anything that smelled like gasoline and burned her throat. She could hold her liquor better than any man, and I wished she was there to help me navigate John Lockwell.
Willie said fathers were overrated, that my father could be one of thousands, most likely some rotten crotch creep that loved clip-on ties. She said I should forget about it. But I didn’t forget about it. I couldn’t. So the game continued, and for years I added names to the list, imagining that 50 percent of me was somehow respectable instead of rotten. And creepy was certainly relative. After all, what was creepier, a man who loved clip-on ties or a girl who kept a log of fantasy fathers hidden in her desk drawer?
Ruta SepetysThere was no ‘Miss Woodley.’ There was Willie. Willie was about life, and she grabbed it by the balls. Y’all know that. She loved a stiff drink, a stiff hundred, and she loved her business. And she didn’t judge nobody. She loved everyone equal—accountants, queers, musicians, she welcomed us all, said we were all idiots just the same.
Ruta SepetysWe all laced together—a brothel madam, an English professor, a mute cook, a quadroon cabbie, and me, the girl carrying a bucket of lies and throwing them like confetti.
Ruta SepetysIt belongs to an Uptown attorney. What a horse’s ass. Thinks he’s so smart. He doesn’t know the difference between piss and perfume. I’ll have fun returning that to him. Maybe I’ll drop by his house at dinnertime.
Ruta SepetysI wished I had a friend in the Quarter, someone like Charlotte. Someone I could share secrets with, collapse on her bedroom floor, and spill my guts about Patrick to. I saw so many girls walking arm in arm, laughing, an inexplicable closeness and comfort that they had a protector and confidante. They had someone they could count on.
Ruta SepetysHello, Josie,” they’d say with a half smile, followed by a sigh and sometimes a shake of the head. They acted like they felt sorry for me, but as soon as they were ten steps away, I’d hear one of the words, along with my mother’s name. The wealthy women pretended it singed their tongue to say whore. They’d whisper it and raise their eyebrows. Then they’d fake an expression of shock, like the word itself had crawled into their pants with a case of the clap. They didn’t need to feel sorry for me. I was nothing like Mother.
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