To give her credit, her mother had a great body for a woman of forty-six. And her skin had not a wrinkle to show for her years, thanks to meticulous creaming and possibly some plastic surgery.
The companion, on the other hand, couldn’t be more than thirty. He wasn’t very tall, and he had the body of an overmuscled weight lifter. In fact, his biceps were about the size of Charmaine’s thighs. His hair was bleached blond and long, down to his shoulders. He wore leather pants and a white T-shirt sporting the logo mother trucker. A toothpick dangled from his loose Elvis-like lips in a manner he probably considered sexy.
Barbie and Ken, they are not. Lordy, Lordy.
“Charmaine!” her mother shrieked and ran toward her in a hobbled, short-stepped manner thanks to the stilettos, arms spread wide.
With a sigh, Charmaine went down the steps and into her mother’s hug. “Fleur,” she said—her mother insisted that she not be called Mother—”what are you doing here?”
“Tsk-tsk? Doan you be rude, sugah. Why am I here? To see my baby girl of course.” Her mother kissed her on each side of her face, the kind of kisses that didn’t involve skin touching.
Noticing Tante Lulu still standing on the porch, mouth agape, which was the usual reaction her mother garnered, her mother said, “Miz Rivard, how you doin’?” She blew air kisses her way.
“Jist dandy.” Tante Lulu threw air kisses back. Her mother failed to catch the sarcasm of the gesture.
“And I want y’all to meet my new friend. This here is Dirk Denney. Ain’t he a sweetie?”
He’s a sweetie all right. Oh, God. With a name like Dirk, he wouldn’t be a porno star, would he? I wouldn’t put it past her.
Dirk stepped forward. Well, actually, he swaggered forward. “Well, hello there, pretty ladies,” he said to Charmaine and Tante Lulu both. He spoke in a low—yep, Elvis—drawl.
Forget the porno business. Maybe he’s an Elvis impersonator.
“This here is Louise Rivard. Everyone calls her Tante Lulu. And this here gorgeous girl is my daughter Charmaine. You’d never know she’s only twenty, would you?”
All right, Mom’s been telling people she’s only thirty-six again. Hard to explain away an almost-thirty daughter when you’re thirty-six.
“Oh, yeah! She’s very well preserved,” Dirk remarked, giving her a way-too-personal head-to-toe survey. The push-up bra wasn’t wasted on him. That was for sure.
Tante Lulu snorted her opinion of the whole business. Then staring at Dirk’s T-shirt, she asked, “You a trucker?”
He glanced down at the logo and laughed. “Nope. I’m a personal trainer. Fleur hired me to get her in shape.”
Uh-oh! Charmaine and Tante Lulu both exclaimed at the same time, “For what?”
“My nude layout in STUD magazine.” She made the announcement in a ta-da fashion, fully expecting them to gush with enthusiasm. When they just gasped, she went on, “It’s gonna be a special issue called ‘Ageless Beauty.’ Women from various professions who have managed to maintain their sexy bodies. They’re gonna have Gina Romano, that sexy Hollywood actress from the eighties who was famous for those nude scenes; Brassy Bush, that double-jointed porno star; Mona Lewsky, that woman who had an affair with a senator; and there’s even gonna be a former Olympic gold medalist in gymnastics, but I forget her name. And me, I’ll represent the stripper profession.” She beamed at all of them.
After a prolonged silence, Tante Lulu said, “Thass jist peachy.”
Charmaine was horrified. She was almost thirty, no matter what her mother proclaimed, not a little girl of ten, but the woman still managed to find a way to humiliate her. Would it never end? Charmaine could just imagine the snickers she would hear behind her back. The licentious looks from men who would uncover her with their eyes wondering if she was the same as her mother. The tasteless jokes. “When’s this photo shoot going to take place?”
“Two weeks, but there’s a problem.”
“Cellulite,” Dirk pronounced gravely, as if he’d just announced that Fleur had cancer. “Her butt and thighs are riddled with it. Looks like friggin’ cottage cheese.”
“And you came here… why?” Charmaine asked, uncaring how rude she sounded.