“Honey, you’ve been dating the wrong men if you think that. I wonder if you realize what you’re doing here.”
“I know exactly what I’m doing. No more handsome men with overinflated egos. No more BMW-driving, bottled-water-drinking, exercise-addicted, vitamin-conscious, suntanned hunks of testosterone in Gucci loafers. No more boring nights of deep discussions on the lofty subjects of golf handicaps or 401K portfolios or mega-amp woofers. It’s time for a 180-degree turn in my life. All I want now is a quiet, scholarly type, like Charles… or a reasonable facsimile. A companion. A husband. A man to make a home with me and give me children. Lots of them.” She sighed with frustration, knowing she was failing miserably in explaining her motives, especially since tears of concern were welling in Blanche’s eyes.
“Where’s the sizzle in that picture, my friend?” Blanche asked.
“I don’t need sizzle.” Sylvie raised her chin defensively.
“Sylvie Marie Fontaine!” Blanche declared, setting down her coffee and planting her hands on her hips. “Everyone needs sizzle. Are you sure there’s Creole blood flowing through your veins? Every Creole woman has passion in her soul.”
Oh, there was Creole blood in her veins, all right. Some families prided themselves on having ancestors who’d come over on the Mayflower. Sylvie’s family took great pride in being one of the original white Creole families of French or Spanish descent who settled in the Louisiana colony centuries ago.
Sylvie laughed at the notion of anyone questioning her Creole bloodlines. Meanwhile, Blanche swiped at her tears with a tissue, careful not to mar her makeup. “Do you really believe my mother or my grandmother have experienced a lustful day in their lives?” Sylvie asked. “Or Aunt Margo or Aunt Madeline? Even my cousin, Valerie?” She made an exaggerated shiver of distaste. Valerie was the perfect example of Breaux womanhood, held up to her as a role model from the time Sylvie first demonstrated her profound shyness as a young girl. Shyness and timidity in any form were considered a weakness in the Breaux family.
“Well, in every family there’s an aberration,” Blanche conceded.
“Aberration about says it all,” Sylvie said with a sigh. In Sylvie’s matriarchal family, there were no men. Mostly, they just gave up and died under all that feminine domination. In her family, the women didn’t divorce their men; they buried them. The Breaux women were known throughout Louisiana as the Ice Breaux, in recognition of their cold ruthlessness in pursuing their goals. Her mother, Inez Breaux-Fontaine, was a state legislator with aspirations of being elected to the U.S. Congress. Her grandmother, Dixie Breaux, was a hard-as-nails oil lobbyist. Her aunts, Margo and Madeline Breaux, had stopped at nothing in setting up their mail-order-tea dynasty. Valerie Breaux, daughter of her deceased Uncle Henri, made no apologies for her roughshod, fast-track career path from jury consultant to Court TV anchor.
The look of compassion in Blanche’s eyes said without words that she understood perfectly how many of Sylvie’s present actions were based, deep down, on lifelong insecurities stemming from her family. With a shrug of resignation, Blanche asked, “So, when are you going to do the deed?”
“Soon. Two weeks… a month, at most. We’re still synchronizing schedules for all the test candidates.” Sylvie pointed to a petri dish filled with dozens of jelly beans.
“Jelly beans?” Blanche raised an eyebrow in question.
“Yep. My lab rats like them, and… oh, I might as well tell you. Charles has a passion for jelly beans, too.”
Blanche snorted with disgust. “It’s about the only thing he’s ever demonstrated a passion for.”
Sylvie shot her a glance of condemnation for that snide remark, even though it was true that Charles hadn’t succumbed to any of the normal hints and downright obvious seduction techniques she’d tried the past year.
“Would they work for anyone?” Blanche picked up a handful and let them slip through her fingers.
“I mean, if I give them to some guy, would they work for me?”
“Not those. They contain my enzymes. In order for them to work for you, your enzymes… in fact, putting your simple saliva, or a drop of blood, even a hair, inside a neutral set of jelly beans, like those over there… would work for you. Along with my secret ingredients, of course.” She pointed to her briefcase, where a plastic ziplock bag held dozens of the multi-colored candies.