Page 22 of Lulu’s Recipe for Cajun Sass

Louise sat down again and faced his way, with her back to the front of the boat. Some people couldn’t stand that backward position and got motion sickness. Apparently, it didn’t bother his over-confident Louise. She was, incidentally, laughing her pretty ass off. At him, no doubt.

“You know, I remember when I was a kid, we would try to steal some eggs from the gator nests. Don’t have any idea what we would have done with them if we’d succeeded. Never heard of anyone eating scrambled gator eggs.”

“Dumb,” she remarked.

“You’re telling me! Louie Mouton almost lost a leg one time when he tripped over a stump as we were running away.”

“Like I said, dumb.”

“Just for the record, Lou wrestled alligators for a living for a few years until he ran for the state senate.” He swatted at another swarm of gnats that surrounded him as he continued to paddle, first on one side, then the other. Then he got swatted across his face by a low-hanging swath of moss hanging from of a live oak tree. “I forgot why I hate the bayou.”

“You hate the bayou?” she asked, obviously shocked. Or was it disappointed? Or both?

“I love it, and I hate it.”

She made a snorting sound. “Make up yer mind, cher. You cain’t speak out of both sides of yer mouth.”

Speaking of mouths, Louise had one smart mouth on her, which was beginning to irritate him. He wondered if she was worth the effort. He gave her a quick survey and decided that, yes, she was. But she was going to pay for all this aggravation. Eventually.

“I’m bayou born, same as you, chère,” he said, putting extra emphasis on the Cajun word for dear or darling, just to show he wasn’t a total traitor to his roots. “But I’ve traveled more, seen other places,” he tried to explain.

She made another snorting sound, which really annoyed him.

He went on anyhow. “I love the beauty of the bayous. The slow-moving water the color of fresh-brewed tea, which I know is the result of centuries of tannin seeping in from the bark of stream-side trees, but seem almost like some heavenly concoction.” He cupped a handful of the translucent water and let it seep through his fingers. “The flowers are enormous and colorful, like one of those French paintings, too vivid to be real.” He glanced to the right where a giant magnolia bush was covered with white flowers the size of lunch plates. “And their scents? Enough to draw a thousand bees. I know, I know, cornball to the max. And then there’s Cajun cooking? Gumbo, jambalaya, beignets. My mouth waters just thinking about my mother’s shrimp étouffée.”

“But…?” she prodded.

“But I hate this blistering heat, and I hate gators and snakes, and I hate the slow pace of living here. Sometimes I just want to shout at my dad, or his customers, or the car in front of me on the highway, ‘hurry the hell up!’ Oh, Louise, you have no idea how wonderful the change of seasons are up north. The summers are hot, occasionally, but never as uncomfortably steaming as it is here on the bayou, and when autumn comes with its crisp air and changing colors, it’s well, a welcome change. I even like winter when a body just wants to stay inside snug before a cozy fire with snow coming down like goose feathers from the sky. The food is simpler. You have to try Maine lobsters with melted butter and Boston Cream Pie. Yum! The hospitals I’ve worked in are incredible, and—”

She put a hand up to halt further words and said, “It sounds pretty much like you’ve decided to live up north, for good.”

Oh, hell! Had he ruined all his chances with her? “No, no, no,” he disagreed. Honestly, he hadn’t made that decision yet. “I’m just giving you a comparison, to show why I say I love and hate the bayou.” No comment on how the scales were teetering. “Besides, I just thought of something else I like about bayou land.”

“What’s that?”

“You.”

“What a load of hooey! You don’t even know me.”

“You wound me,” he said.

She arched her brows with skepticism.

“A man doesn’t need to know a woman to like her. First impressions count for a lot…maybe fifty percent of the chances for a connection to blossom.”

“Is that some kind of northern statistical nonsense, or just a male line?”

He laughed. “Seriously, I knew the first time I saw you…I mean last week, not when you were a skinny little brat running around the bayou in your bare feet.”

“You remember me from that long ago?”

“Well, a little. You were a lot younger than me.”

“Anyway, you were probably in your bare feet, too.”

“That’s not important. Stop interrupting me. I knew when I saw you last week that there was some chemistry between us. And I wanted to see where we would go.”

“That has nothing to do with liking me. It just means that you were attracted to me sexually, that you want to get me into your bed.”