Today Will Be Different(30)
D-E-L-P-H-I-N-E.
From school! The ones I’d stolen. And completely forgotten about.
I darted toward him.
In my side vision, horror on the faces of Spencer, the installers, and the hip older woman, their mouths trying to warn me off something.
But I needed to get that awful name out of Timby’s hand.
I raised my chin just in time to see a flat piece of metal with layers of green enamel, mottled like mold, across my field of vision.
Clunk.
The last thing I heard before I sank to the floor was Timby’s voice.
“What are you doing with Delphine’s mom’s keys?”
Troubled Troubadour
Long before Eleanor met Bucky, she’d heard the stories.
Barnaby Fanning was the lone offspring of a marriage between two of New Orleans’ finest families. Growing up in a Garden District mansion so iconic it was a stop on all the tours, the future heir to sugar and cotton fortunes both, his adolescence spent at debutante balls during the season and trips abroad during the summer: it was the stuff of true Southern gentlemen.
But Bucky always refused the first table at a restaurant. He carried a pocket calculator so he could tip a strict twelve percent. When his father nudged him out of the nest after graduating Vanderbilt (straight Cs), Bucky fluttered only as far as the carriage house because no other address would suit. He sported head-to-toe Prada bought on quarterly pilgrimages to Neiman Marcus in Dallas, paid for by Granny Charbonneau. At the slightest perceived insult, Bucky would fly into rages, becoming so red-faced and spitty in the process that even those on the receiving end of his invective grew concerned for his health. During the holidays, Bucky would stand over the trash and drop in Christmas cards unopened while keeping mental score of who’d sent them. He never accepted a dinner invitation without first asking who else would be there. Bucky Fanning had never been known to write a thank-you note.
There was a girl once, from an equally prominent family. A joining of the two would be the social equivalent of unifying the heavyweight title. Bucky would fritter away hours on the veranda dreaming of their wedding and life together. The girl was five years his junior; Bucky was at Tulane Law when she went away to Bard. The girl’s first Thanksgiving back, Bucky arranged a party at Granny Charbonneau’s, a proposal party. A hundred local eminences were in attendance, a videographer on hand to capture the moment. But the girl, a bit fuzzy on her status with Bucky, entered on the arm of her boyfriend, a film major, last name Geisler. Not German Catholic. It was widely appreciated that Bucky would never recover from the public humiliation. Indeed, he dropped out of Tulane.
Bucky now spent his days at the Williams Research Center in the French Quarter toiling away on a sprawling history of the Charbonneau family. He worked in the light-filled second-floor library in the mornings and walked to lunch at Arnaud’s or Galatoire’s, the only places that would allow him to dine with his beloved Pomeranian, Mary Marge, perched on his lap.
In addition to his writing and seats on local charity boards, Bucky attended to the Court of Khaos. Khaos was arguably New Orleans’ most elite social club, or “krewe.” Bucky’s father had been king of Khaos, his mother queen. Bucky had been a page in every court. When he aged out, he was elected captain. King might appear to outrank captain, but Bucky was quick to point out that king was ceremonial whereas captain wielded the real power: over membership, court assignments, invitations, float design, charitable disbursements, etc. During the season, August through February, the court-related parties averaged five per week, climaxing in Mardi Gras, when the various krewes rolled through the French Quarter on floats, tossing beads and doubloons to the public before disappearing behind closed doors where that year’s debutantes officially “came out” at lavish balls. Hierarchy, secrecy, exclusivity; pageantry, privilege, tradition: the Court of Khaos was Bucky’s unified field theory.
At times, Bucky’s fervor for the debutante balls resembled that of a wedding-planner character from an ’80s romantic comedy, a fey id gone wild. But New Orleans cossetted their eccentrics. The Skoogs had a grandfather who believed the Civil War was still being fought and indulged him with daily dispatches of Confederate successes. One of the Nissley girls spent second grade dressed as the Little Tramp. That the Fannings’ eminently eligible son haunted the debutante scene but never seemed to risk romance, preferring instead to hover on the sidelines sneering at certain maladroit dancers and settling scores through seating charts, that was no different.
“I love this guy!” Eleanor said to Lester, looking up from her light box at the Looper Wash offices.
“He’s really quite wonderful,” Lester said.
The stories came courtesy of Lester Lewis, who had roomed with Bucky at Vanderbilt. Eleanor had hired Lester as her number two. He was a meticulous draftsman who’d grown up on a thoroughbred farm in Kentucky but was afraid of ponies. It was his idea to give the ponies of Looper Wash their ornery personalities.
“Grr,” Eleanor said, erasing the eyes on a laughing Millicent. “I’m terrible at eyes.”
It was 2003. Looper Wash was still a month from airing but the animators had been working for two years in a loft on the dodgy end of Broome Street. Eleanor had her own office, but she preferred the bullpen, working side by side with her New York team. Scores more artists hand-painted in Hungary.