Velvet's wee hours died off slower than a honeybee without its stinger. Movie stars who'd come on down for Mrs. Westergaard's tenderloins didn't stay for Betty White, Autumn Brown, or Dirty Martini because those girls weren't fresh meat. A few stragglers still noodled around the diner in hopes of catching a gander of the blue-eyed showgirl one last time, but it was common sense that Mrs. Westergaard would stay stuck up there in one of those VIP rooms until Mr. Osborne got through doing his business. That business made Tiana's insides sit in her stomach like curdled milk in a glass dairy bottle, but she couldn't pour them out to her skinfolk because Mr. Campbell would've broken into her with:
"Keep your heart in the alley where you left it, Tiana. That white woman ain't your bid'ness."
In a sense, Mr. Campbell would've been right: Elsa Westergaard wasn't her business. None of these women are. They sure as spice don't make her theirs, so she told herself to mind the nose between her eyes by keeping her head down and clearing empty tables like she'd been hired to do. It was all she could do to keep her heart from collapsing on top of her pride, because according to her sixth sense, Mr. Campbell would've been dead wrong. White or green, Mrs. Westergaard was still a woman, and as another woman, her womanly fiber felt for hers being torn open by Velvet's meat hooks.
"But could you count on that white woman to feel for yours?" Mr. Campbell would've planted.
In all fairness, she wouldn't have known how to answer his question. Maybe there really was no moral tug-of-war between the two angles ― just feelings versus reality. Ultimately, if you can't help yourself in a world that wasn't made for you, then you can't help someone whose blonde head was made for it. Tiana kept that cartoned on the top shelf of her brain as she handled Velvet's greasy dishes and even greasier egos in the dead of morning. Her shift was just about over when the greasiest egomaniac of them all had sent for her.
"Y'wanted ta' see me, Mista Westergaard?"
Lars Westergaard only had a mind to ogle the stack of green cheddar he was shuffling. There was enough cash in those satin-gloved hands to burn a wet mule. The presidential suite that roomed him came with a bartender, one leather couch, two dance poles, a glass coffee table, and an ocean view. Josephine LaFleur was sitting between his legs on the floor in her underthings with a wineglass while he sat on the couch in his suit. Neither Westergaard's pants nor his shirt were buttoned all the way, making it easy to guess what he'd just got done doing, yet Josephine had the nerve to call herself mean-mugging Tiana like her presence was offensive.
'Bless her man-eatin' lil' heart. If brains were leather, this girl wouldn't have enough to saddle a junebug.' Tiana considered turning tail right there just so she'd never have to share oxygen with these moray eels again. 'Lord, give me strength.'
"Mr. La Bouff once told me that you were the best beignet baker in Goldwater," Lars unpacked.
She should've followed her first mind. "M...Mista La Bouff?" It's not enough to say that fear had sucked the brown out of her. As far as she knew, all her dirty laundry was about to be hung out to dry.
"Is he right?"
She managed to get her blood flowing again, but her heartbeat wasn't the same. "I...I suppose I...know my onions, sir."
"Splendid." Lars tucked a dollar bill into Josephine's bra.
Tiana rightfully started making faces. 'Just nasty.'
"My baby brother is throwing a birthday bash for his wife tomorrow, and he needs a top-of-the-line beignet baker to bus her way to Greenstone Peninsula on rather short notice. I offered your services because you don't work for me on Sundays."
She was as lost as last year's Easter egg. "Offa'ed my services? Wit...out my p'mission?"
Lars finally looked at her because her gumption had struck him on the ego like a tree branch. "Are you not free from me on Sunday night?"
She hated the way he worded that mess, but she owed it to Mama to calm down. "Why yes, sir. I very much am, but see―"
"Then it's settled." This man right here could make a bishop mad enough to kick in stained glass windows.
"Mista Westergaard, I don't think y'unda'stand. Y'see, I'm tied to visit a friend Sunday afternoon." A whiter lie has never slipped through her teeth. She was only tied to phone Mama because Sunday was the one day out of the week that allowed her some midday time with Mama and Auntie Claudia. She also wasn't against reeling in more money, but if she planned on going fishing for green trout, she needed Lars to make sure he knew that he couldn't pass her around like sugar beignets in a five-star bakery whenever he felt like it.
Lars took Josephine's wineglass out of her hand and snapped his fingers at her. Bewildered, the good time girl got up and went to get her ego refilled by the flirty bartender. This is what Tiana meant by Janie Thatcher having not one working taste bud on his slick tongue. The yellowbone was stuck up higher than a light pole yet dumber than a box of rocks.
"You won't be working till dawn, Dubòis," Lars remembered to mention. "The party ends at nine, and they'll pay you handsomely for your time. If your beignets are well received, you'll be asked back for bigger and better opportunities."
'Well, then butter my b'hind and call me a biscuit!' Tiana didn't do too well at hiding her dimples. 'This could be my lucky break afta all!'
"Do I have your permission?"
Tiana bit her fingernail. She didn't want to look as hungry as she felt for that extra bread, but she didn't have room in her stomach to reject a plate.
"I'm talking to you, girl."
She rested her hand on her chest and nodded with a grin, having wrung out all her hesitations. "Y'have my p'mission, Mista Westergaard!"
"Spectacular." Lars buttoned his dress shirt to make himself decent. "What is your dress size?"
"Beg ya' pardon, sir?" She wasn't keen on him asking about anything that had to do with her figure.
Lars looked at her plainly. "For the job. A uniform will be waiting for you in the morning."
"Oh." 'For Heaven's sake, these Westergaards are so moneyed up that they would buy a new boat if they got the other one wet.' "Well, in that case, I'm a size two."
"Two." Lars looked through her clothes. "Swell." He thankfully looked back down on his hundreds. "All the details are there for you." His hand motioned to the piece of paper on his coffee table.
It was high time for her to make a clean exit. "I appreciate you puttin' in a good word fo' me, Mista Westergaard," she said as she was sliding the paper to her end of the table.
He didn't stare at her. "Think nothing of it."
A rainbow flock of tail-feathered women were strutting in from the entrance she'd come through.
Lars pointed an unlit cigar to the vestibule towards the back of the room. "See yourself out that way." He didn't have to tell her twice.
"Yes, sir! Right away, sir! Oh, and thank ya' again fo' all ya' trouble, Mista Westergaard!" Tiana held onto her feathered headdress and got to scooting on out. Although his vestibule felt like it went on for miles, the emptiness was much more pleasant than the company of Lars Westergaard and his hussies. Neither desserts lasted for long after she'd passed a certain hallway that could hardly contain the nasty noises behind its doors; she had to mute them out by thinking about the taste of Daddy's gumbo on cool Saturday nights.
On her way to the bus stop, she spotted Mrs. Westergaard leaving Velvet from the front. The married showgirl was wearing her hair in a bun and a fluffy fur coat that swallowed her up. Despite all that money keeping her body company, her eyes looked lonesome. Behind her tornadoed none other than Flynn Rider; he appeared to be reeling off to her about something that she wouldn't hang an ear for. Just when she got close enough to her white Pierce-Arrow limo, Mr. Rider blocked her way to desperately beg her to see his.
Whatever he gibber-jabbered made Mrs. Westergaard listen. Then after she was finished listening, she uttered a few words to the cement under her crystal heels. Rider dug into his breast pocket and pulled out a card for her to take. She read it between her satin-gloved fingertips before frowning up at him. He moved out of her way with his arms held out, gesturing for her to carry on like a so-called gentleman.
Mrs. Westergaard boarded her limo without looking back. Mr. Rider watched it leave until it was out of sight. His lady friend approached him with a smitten smile, which was a rather odd accessory to wear for a lady friend, but maybe they had some sort of arrangement that snuffed out normal feelings like jealousy. A bystander who'd seen everything would've assumed that Mr. Rider was just trying to rope Mrs. Westergaard into an appointment. His hero complex needn't apply to that.
Mr. Rider returned his lady friend's smile with the highest wattage he could muster. Convinced by his pearly whites, she took him by the arm and walked him around the corner. Tiana's stomach turned like the wheels on Mr. Rider's Auburn Speedster. It had dawned on her that Hans Westergaard was throwing a birthday party for his wife the day after he'd farmed out her tenderloins to the highest bidding steak-eater.
'What a lowdown dirty dog,' she reminded herself. 'If I had a husband as ugly as him, I'd shave his behind and make 'im walk backwards.' To remember that she was off to work for the same man she was cursing gave her a lungful of blues, but the color green had already dyed her conscience green. Even if Hans Westergaard was no diamond of the first water, she needed his money and his connections more than she needed her scruples. The open sores she had to soak when she got home from bleeding her feet out agreed with her.
Come Sunday afternoon, Tiana Dubòis was busier than a cat covering up poop on a marble floor. The Westergaard mansion was more of a Transylvanian castle on the outside than a regular Goldwateran chateau, though the inside looked just like what she wanted her restaurant to be: elegant and luxurious. People from all around the world had flown into Goldwater for this event. She convinced herself that there would be plenty of thrills and hopefully no spills to write home about. The chipper Hans Westergaard became her top marketer.
Now, there's no denying that Westergaard men are lower than a snake's belly in a wagon rut, but their public personalities were like chalk and cheese. Hans, for example, was kinder to her black hands than Lars was; he wanted to know everything there was to know about what those hands could do on a stove even though he'd only hired her for baking beignets. He had also been raised right enough to ask her if she liked her uniform. Miss Gerda had squeezed her scrawny behind into a sequined gold flapper dress that fluttered just above her knees. The little black girl from Honeyville could practically feel the hundreds of thousands of dollars rubbing against her cocoa bean skin.
Still and all, that same little black girl wouldn't have walked across the street to piss on Hans if he'd caught on fire. She hoped that his wife would never squat for him, either. At the moment, Mrs. Westergaard was too busy cupcaking with gray-haired Democrats to think twice about his whereabouts. Her diamond-collared halter gown was so slinky that Tiana could see her religion. A pastor might've forgiven her for showing as much skin as she did because Goldwater summers are hotter than a goat's behind in a pepper patch, but folks who saw the difference between "Elsa the Showgirl" and "Mrs. Westergaard" would've wondered if her husband made her put that thing on with all its beaded tassels and champagne glitter.
Mrs. Westergaard's bare sternum even had her whole under-boob cleavage hanging free, for crying out loud. God-fearing men didn't know where to look. Tiana didn't have time to focus on what Mrs. Westergaard was saying to them in race debates because she had her own senior audience to apple-polish.
"These beignets are diabolically good. Whatever is your name, girl?"
She slapped on her gooiest smile. "Tiana, sir! Tiana Dubòis!"
"I'll be swooping back in for you soon, Dubòis." The multimillionaire who'd been singing her praises smelled bad enough to gag a maggot, but she grinned in his face because his mind might've been ripe enough to take her on in the future since Mr. La Bouff hadn't poisoned it. With her sugar beignets in both napkins, he walked away happier than O'Malley chewing up a big ol' catfish head on Mama's porch.
She was so hungry that she could eat the north end of a south-bound goat all on her own, but she was better off not stuffing her face with the same sweets Mr. and Mrs. Westergaard's guests were munching on. On the outdoor patio sat the birthday girl herself. Before she arrived home for her husband's big surprise, Mrs. Westergaard had gotten her lion mane cut into a long bob with backcombed bangs and cinnamon roll curls. "I'm a woman now," the hairstyle told everyone. Her diamond waterfall earrings brought out her cat eyes to show how much one night had aged her.
Mascara and pink lip gloss kept Mrs. Westergaard's face from looking too old to the men who would age her even faster; but she was as pretty as a picture just the same, and she warmed that outdoor sofa like one stuck behind glass, never to be touched by the onlookers who stood around marveling at her. Truth be told, Mrs. Westergaard didn't know half the folks marveling at her. They were just there to thank her husband for exhibiting such a Mona Lisa. Mr. Rider, who'd popped into a five-personed conversation with his Saturday night lady friend hanging off his arm, stopped drinking his champagne to eye Mrs. Westergaard from the sidelines. The married showgirl was smiling softly at the garden band as its singer crooned "But Not For Me" by the Gershwin Brothers.
The way Mr. Rider smiled at her wistful smile and blinked all slow differed from how he was looking at her last night. He was fixing to spark a conversation between them, but Hans walked into the frame first. He sat down in front of his pretty picture and cheesed at her. Nothing moved on Mrs. Westergaard except her eyes, which looked like they wanted to cry from exhaustion, but she still gave her husband a Mona Lisa smile. He pulled a loose curl behind her shoulder and stroked her chin.
Mrs. Westergaard turned her head with closed eyes. She had that tragic beauty cliche down. Her husband moved in close and whispered in her ear, kissing the pink shell. She opened her eyes to him taking her glass off the patio table and walking away with it. She watched him till he had gone on inside the house.
Mrs. Westergaard drew herself up and glided over to the dessert table, moving like a body of stars even on land. Tiana Dubòis had to get her act together and smile for the birthday girl coming her way. For no good reason, Mrs. Westergaard stood in front of her beignets and debated over whether or not she wanted to pick one up. Off-stage, the little woman was notorious for having too many thoughts in her head at once, so Tiana tried to help her get out from underneath them:
"Hello there, Mrs. Westergaard!"
Her salutations got the little woman to look up, but Mrs. Westergaard's second thought was to judge her flapper dress before fixing her lips into a lukewarm smile. She folded her hands down in front of her and greeted her with a polite nod. Believe it or not, what Mrs. Westergaard wasn't famous for was saying much.
"Happy 21st birthday!"
"Thank you."
Tiana never paid any mind to Mrs. Westergaard's speaking voice before then, but those two small words were only a smidgen louder than snowflakes hitting grass. The reviews about this little woman owning a nice set of pipes would've made naysayers slap their knees and laugh. As a matter of fact, Tiana Dubòis was curious to know which woman was the real one: the vociferous showgirl or the voiceless wife.
"I can't thank you enough for helping my husband make tonight pleasant for me." One thing for sure was that she was an awfully bad actress.
"It was no hassle at all, Mrs. Westergaard! Would ya' like a beignet to sweeten up y'night?" Tiana was about to put some more meat on Mrs. Westergaard's bones. "These right ova' here are still nice an' warm!"
Here was where Mrs. Westergaard's eyes widened with delight. She looked like she was getting ready to consider making herself happy just this once before Mr. Westergaard touched her waist out of nowhere.
"Elsa," Hans murmured like a disappointed father who was still sympathetic to his daughter's shortcomings, "you know you're not supposed to be having sugar beignets."
"I only wanted a bite," Mrs. Westergaard explained without really protesting at all. She held her arms to hug herself. "I haven't eaten all night."
Appalled by the whole exchange, Tiana zeroed in on Mrs. Westergaard's figure again. Her body really did look like food had been withheld from it regularly. She may have flaunted an hourglass, but she wouldn't let it fill out where it wanted to fill out, specifically in those thighs and that waist. White women are always self-conscious about getting too much junk in the trunk; Tiana had already heard a few white men say that out of all Mrs. Westergaard's "feminine traits," they cared for her "round behind" the least. They wanted that thing flat and narrow so that when she turned to the side, she'd look like a zipper.
It's no enigma that the thinner you are the higher you are in society, but Tiana Dubòis always found it bizarre how white men ― particularly European white men like Hans ― turned emaciation into a beauty standard for their women. It probably had more to do with just finding yet another way of controlling them.
"Let me introduce you to Éloïse Orléans before we have dinner with Senator Osborne later on tonight," Hans lulled. What a cottonmouthed snake he was. He guided his poisoned wife back to the patio's sofas by the beignet table, where Mr. Rider was lounging with his lady friend.
Mr. Rider didn't hesitate to smarten himself up as soon as the paler couple was past the arbor. He also didn't show a lick of inappropriate interest in Mrs. Westergaard, but he couldn't help acting starstruck by how she looked in the starlight. Mrs. Westergaard's razzle-dazzle done dazzled him to death.
"And this is mon prince charmant," Tiana caught Éloïse Orléans bragging to Mrs. Westergaard in French, "Flynn Rider."
Mr. Rider stood up in front of Mrs. Westergaard and adjusted the black bow tie on his white tuxedo like a first time news reporter being pushed in front of a camera.
Mrs. Westergaard stared at Éloïse Orléans with a tense smile before flicking her eyes to Mr. Rider without moving her head. Then she turned her head straight and smiled wider for him without showing any teeth. "It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr. Rider."
The owner of that caddy name offered his hand. "The pleasure's all mine," he gently insisted, trying to get his deep voice to seep under her skin and caress her ovaries.
Mrs. Westergaard looked at Mr. Rider's palm before eventually deciding to surrender her hand to him, making their fate lines touch. Staring at her face to make the silence significant between them, Mr. Rider held her fingertips like a prince arching a queen's wrist, but the flirt in him would've kissed it if they had been alone. The little woman let go first. Looking up and finding his gaze on her face made her look down without lowering her chin. The hand that'd been in Mr. Rider's slipped into the opening between Hans's arm and waist to hold his elbow pit.
Hans raised his arm and patted his wife's knuckles in appreciation. Mr. Rider watched all that body language go down like he wanted to come between them. He turned an artificially unhostile grin to Mr. Westergaard and shook the Danish hound's paw, raving about all the good he'd heard. When they got around to what Mr. Rider did for coins, Mr. Westergaard julienned the information into digestible portions:
"A journalist! This should be interesting," Hans said as they sat down. "And what is it that you would like to pry from our lives, exactly? The story of how Elsa became the most talked about starlet in all of Goldwater in only a matter of hours?"
"Well, I..." Mr. Rider rubbed his hands together and glanced at Mrs. Westergaard.
Mrs. Westergaard didn't take her eyes off him this time around.
"...Yes, actually." Mr. Rider smiled at Mr. Westergaard like he didn't want to be sitting across from him. "That's exactly right." He looked back at Mrs. Westergaard. "It'll be a splendid way of letting the public get to know you while your name is in lights."
"Promotion," Hans paraphrased.
"I prefer to call it accessibility," Mr. Rider corrected. He made sure to keep talking directly to Mrs. Westergaard. "We can talk about your background, or...how you evolved into such a powerhouse singer. Maybe perhaps we can also get into what goes on underneath that crystal hair piece of yours after Velvet's curtains close."
Limbo saturated Mrs. Westergaard's eyes.
Her husband frowned at her without unwinding his smile. "That's quite an offer," he said for her. "We'll sleep on it. How does that sound?"
Mr. Rider patted his knees. "Stupendous!"
Mr. Westergaard nodded. "Then we'll be keeping in touch."
Mr. Rider was quiet because he wasn't done staring at Mrs. Westergaard, but she was done staring at him. He sat up and clasped his hands together. "Well, I should, d'ah...―we should...let the two of you enjoy the rest of your evening. It was lovely meeting you both." He took turns shaking hands with the Westergaards.
"Come then, Mr. Rider," Éloïse Orléans interrupted. "Mrs. White is flagging us down." His lady friend spooned in a few more cinnamony words before taking him to a circle of wives who were stirred up by his fineness.
While Mr. Rider cupcaked with them against his will, the Westergaards kept their eyes peanut-buttered to his back.
"Do you know what to do with a bloodhound looking for a scent?" Hans asked his wife.