Figures in the Big Easy, Friday

She finished her note to her family and left it on the kitchen counter.

"Frozen spaghetti and red beans and rice in freezer... two containers of each...microwave instructions on top....half of a pan of cornbread in fridge...make sure Brutus goes out 3 times a day...I'm on my cell...see you Sunday!" She'd signed it in her flowing cursive, with a heart by her name. She thought for a moment and checked the microwave. Filthy. She wetted a sponge in the sink and glanced at the clock. Where were they?

Brutus, her miniature yorkie, yipped as a white Lincoln Navigator pulled into the driveway.

Bonnie emerged from the passenger side. With each step she took toward the door, her breasts bounced in the slinky purple sundress, a lovely, loping bounce. Her nipples, even the areolas, were outlined through the thin fabric. There were braids in her wavy brown hair at each temple, gathered together in a clasp at the back, making a sort of wreath above her golden tiger earrings. Bonnie's smile gleamed white across her freckled face as Sue opened the door for her.

"Hey! I like what you've done! Your hair!" Bonnie exclaimed. Sue's hair was cut shorter, to just below her chin. And she had gone into the salon to have it colored auburn, but had capriciously chosen a copper color instead. It was styled with a part on the side. She looked younger, and it made her feel younger.

Bonnie walked with her to the rear of the car. The rear hatch of the Navigator had a purple and gold fleur-de-lis sticker on it. Everyone seemed to have one since the days after Katrina. Sue opened it and stowed her suitcase in the back with the girls' suitcases.

Mary Beth looked back from behind the wheel. On either side of her head, she wore small, whimsical ponytails in her short blonde hair. On anyone else, it would have looked cartoonish, but not Mary Beth. "Girl Sailor" by the Shins was playing in the car.

"Hey, girl, like your hair," Mary Beth called from behind her large framed sun glasses. At her age, Sue liked to be addressed as 'girl' more and more.

Sue did look great. The royal blue halter dress was shorter and flimsier than she normally wore, something she wouldn't have dared to wear in town. She didn't care about the beginnings of spider veins. The girls were headed out of town on a girls-only trip. And not the kind of girls' trip she would occasionally take to the Outlet Mall in Foley with her frumpy, dour sisters. This was going to be different.

Bonnie came up from the rear of the Navigator. "Here, Sue," she said getting in the back seat, "You sit up front, I'll take the back."

Sue climbed into the front seat. Mary Beth had on a red Henley T-shirt with the sleeves pushed up, and short khaki shorts. A can of diet coke sweated cold between her legs.

Bonnie got in and unstrapped the carseat and moved it to the very back. In an old paper bag from a happy meal, she gathered up stray french fries and toy wrappers. She collected the children's books with their thick cardboard pages. and reached across the seat to place them with the carseat.

"Sorry, Bon," Mary Beth said from behind her big framed sun glasses. "I meant to tidy up back there, but time got away from me."

"No prob, babe," Bonnie replied. She was still bent over the back of the seat, straightening up. Her short purple dress had ridden up, exposing the bottom of her bare ass. Sue thought, "Bonnie was right about that. The queen of commando."

Mary Beth took a sip from her diet coke and placed it back between her legs. Putting the big Lincoln in reverse, she used the heel of her hand to turn the wheel, and they backed out of the driveway. They pulled out of the neighborhood, past the live oaks and the rows of white, pink and purple flowered crepe myrtles. Soon they were hurtling up the on-ramp onto the interstate. They merged into the main flow of traffic. Keeping her eyes on the road, Mary Beth said, "I hope you don't mind that we chose New Orleans. We love the beach, but with the spill, it was iffy. " It had been the talk around town all summer.

Sue spoke up. "New Orleans sounds great, and thanks for inviting me along. Any chance to get away to anywhere is fine with me. Has anybody heard anything about the beaches?"

Bonnie was leaning forward with a forearm on the back of each seat. "Mom and them went to Gulf Shores last week. They said the oil really wasn't that bad. Mostly little tar balls."

"That's what I heard. I'm sure we'd have had a good time, but I still love New Orleans best of all," Mary Beth replied. "We'll do the beach next time." They were past the water park, past the city limits. The dull green of late summer in south Louisiana raced past them. It was beyond hot.

A little red sports car darted from the right lane into the left in front of them, then swerved back into the right lane. The driver had his cell phone to his ear. "Well that was ballsy," Mary Beth muttered. She flipped her turn indicator on briefly as she eased back into the right lane in front of an ancient man in a ratty old pickup. The truck droned along like it was powered by a lawn mower engine. Traffic was moving smoothly now. 'That's Not My Name' by the Ting-tings came on. Mary Beth was in mid-sip of her diet coke, but exclaimed 'Hmp!' into the can, and hurriedly set it down in the console and turned up the radio. Sue had never heard it, but Mary Beth and Bonnie sang along, getting especially loud with the part...'With nothing to consider they forget my NAME, NAme, Name, name....' Bonnie was dancing from the waist up, snapping her fingers, Mary Beth swaying her shoulders.

Mary Beth's cell phone rang. She checked the number and reluctantly turned down the volume

"Hi Meg. What's up?...yeah, I'd planned on about 200...Order a centerpiece from the florist....enough jambalaya for 200, salad and rolls, too. The punch is just Sprite and lime sherbet....It's two weeks away, don't worry...Tell you what, I'll handle it on Monday. Alright. No problem. Bye." She turned to Sue and explained, "I'm president of the PTA."

Sue adjusted her seatbelt and sat side ways in her seat. "So what's on the agenda? This weekend, I mean"

"Let's see," Mary Beth ticked off the plans, rocking her head slightly with each item. "Check in this afternoon, dinner at seven tonight. Story time tonight. Sleep in tomorrow morning, then shopping. Spa appointments at three Saturday afternoon. Dinner uptown tomorrow night..."

"Story time?" Sue asked. She had images in her head of slumber parties as a girl, and ghost stories, and as she and her friends got older, stories about boys. Once, she and her best friend, Shannon, had practiced kissing, just to see how it was done.

Bonnie interrupted her thoughts. "Whenever we go on a girls' trip, at night we have story time...it can be a fantasy, or it can be something that really happened."

"Are they usually about sex?" Sue asked, though she already knew the answer.

"They're always about sex, girl," Bonnie laughed.

"I prefer the ones about things that really happened," Mary Beth said.

"Like what?" Sue was titillated.

"For instance, once I had sex in the library..." Mary Beth paused and looked up in thought for a minute. "In fact, more than once." She shrugged her shoulders. "Anyway, there was also that time I got out of that speeding ticket...that time with that construction crew....and that time..."

Bonnie interrupted, "You're pulling our legs now..."

"You're right," Mary Beth laughed. "Except for that library thing. That really happened. It was really scary and thrilling because the librarian was such a bitch.....to get caught would have been huge...but anyway, the story can be made up or real or a combination. True, but embellished if you want...it's your story."

"So," Bonnie stretched nonchalantly. "Be thinking of a story...imagined, real, both. But there's one rule."

Together, Bonnie and Mary Beth said in an even cadence, "You-can't-touch-yourself-until-the-storyteller-says!"

Sue laughed, but was worried she would have a hard time thinking of a story . Until recently, her sexual history had been pretty vanilla.

Mary Beth looked from behind her sunglasses into the rearview mirror. "Bonnie, did you remember Mr. Happy?"

"Yes I did," Bonnie said proudly. She reached into her purse and produced a shiny blue metallic vibrator. "He's always up for a girls' trip."

Sue had never seen a vibrator in person, and had no idea people named them. Bonnie sensed Sue's curiosity and showed her how to switch it on and off. "See?" she explained as she twisted the base of Mr. Happy, making 'him' purr with each twist.

Bonnie could tell that Sue was fascinated with the toy, so she began to demonstrate how it was used. She ran the quietly buzzing toy against her nipples, and they strained even further against the thin purple fabric. She opened her legs slightly and pushed her dress down between her legs to the seat. Her dress hugged her contours tightly, and Sue could see the small cleft between Bonnie's legs. Through her dress, Bonnie touched Mr. Happy to it

She smiled and said, "Mr. Happy makes me Miss Happy." Mary Beth chuckled as she changed lanes to pass a pickup pulling a trailer with a large aluminum boat.

Bonnie had meant to just show Sue the basics, but was getting carried away. She pulled up the hem of her dress to expose her smooth, naked sex. Opening her legs wide, she lightly touched the tip of the vibrator to her pussy then ran it back and forth across the lips. Finally, she separated her lips and slid it in, closing her eyes and exhaling softly. She worked it in and out. She slipped her free hand into her dress to roll and pinch a nipple.

Sue was turned around in the seat watching in rapt attention as the blue vibrator buzzed in and out of Bonnie. Bonnie had her eyes closed, softly biting her lower lip, engrossed in the sensations she was feeling. Pulling the vibrator out, she held it to her clit. She squinted her eyes tightly with her mouth open, as her body curled forward in a spasm. Bonnie's pussy lips quivered and her ass winked as she came. She was still breathing heavily as she switched Mr. Happy off.

"And that," she said, "Is how you use Mr. Happy. Wanna try it?" She offered the vibrator to Sue. It was still wet.

Sue considered herself a 'clean' person, almost compulsively so, and should have balked at touching any part of her with anything made wet by someone else. But she lifted the cup of her dress and touched the toy to her nipple, feeling her nipple reach out for the wetness on the vibrator. The feeling of the vibrator took her somewhere, she didn't know where, but it felt good and she wanted to feel more.

She pulled her panties to the side. Her fingers separated the lips, and she slid the wet toy between the swollen ridges and into her pussy.

Bonnie was mellow and sunk back into the back seat, but she leaned forward between the seats as she saw Sue getting aroused. It didn't take long for Sue to get close. She felt her lower body working into a knot, then a tremble in the middle of her body. There was a huge release, and a small surge in wetness. Not exactly a gush, but she would have to change panties when they got to the hotel.

She protectively held her now sensitive pussy through the side of her panties while Mr. Happy buzzed indifferently in her other hand. Sue gingerly lifted the crotch of her panties back over her tender, swollen lips. The cotton panties became saturated when they made contact with her . She looked at the vibrator indecisively, then turned around and gave it back to Bonnie. Bonnie reached over the seat and took it. Smiling and switching it off, she took a baby wipe from a plastic box, wiped it off and put it back in her purse. Mary Beth looked in the rearview mirror and changed lanes. Smiling and keeping her attention on the road, she said, "Maybe we ought to get you one, Sue."

The sign to Sorrento flew past. They were halfway there. Kid Thomas Valentine, "I Can Make It by Myself" played. A comfortable silence nestled in among them and the sweet scent of Bonnie and Sue filled the car. Bonnie was leaning with her forearms on the front seats again, stroking Mary Beth's neck lightly and gently pulling the blonde wisps.

"Girl, you're going to make me go to sleep," Mary Beth murmured.

Bonnie's cell phone had to ring a few times before she could retrieve it from the bottom of her purse. It was Bonnie's husband.

"Hi, honey." Bonnie motioned for Mary Beth to down the volume. They could hear a male voice, and in the background, children playing. "They're in the pantry where I always keep them...look on the shelf with the canned goods...big package...there you go."

In the background a little voice wailed,"He hit me!" Then her husband's voice chuckled, "Fun and games here in the LaPerot household!"

"Well, you just hang in there," Bonnie reassured him. "You're a good man." A pause. "Love you too." She hung up the phone and smiled. "What can I say? He needs me." Then Bonnie resolutely said, "Okay, that's it!" and ceremonially pushed a button on her cell phone. "Cell phones on silent." Sue fished in her purse and turned hers off.

Silence re-descended. Sue felt Bonnie's fingers through her hair. Copper strands through a sieve of fingers. Ani Difranco drowsily sang "The Depths of Everest." Sue listened, vaguely making the connection that it was about someone's world being turned upside down. Finger tips stroked the back of her neck. She closed her eyes for a moment.

She woke to see Lake Ponchartrain shimmering to the horizon on her left, traversed by a parade of power line towers. On her right, below the highway, was a camp shattered by Katrina years before. Sue thought about the times that the owners must have had there, the whiskey-inspired boasts, the ice chests of fish, the smell of crabs boiling. She smiled, and her reflection in the window smiled back.

Clouds began to gather into billowy silver-blue walls like they do on the gulf coast on summer afternoons. Sue glanced at her watch. Three o'clock, right on time. The city skyline squatted on the horizon. By the time they arrived at the hotel, there was a downpour, a solid sheet of gray-white rain. The valet ran out in a poncho to take the car, while a bellman took their bags. Another bellman valiantly tried to keep all the girls under the umbrella and while Sue and Mary Beth got most of the benefit of it, Bonnie got soaked. The purple dress clung to her, and the cold air of the lobby revealed every curve and point. Very little was left to the imagination and all of the men in the lobby, and a few of the women, stole looks at her trim body inside its wet, purple skin.

The lobby was furnished in English antiques, with an immense vase of roses in the very center. The room smelled of lemons and roses, clean and cool. Mary Beth went to the desk to check them in while Bonnie and Sue waited at the center table with the roses.

Sue looked at Bonnie's insistent nipples and asked, "Do you need a jacket or something? I've got one in my bag."

Bonnie looked down at them, smiled and said no, then whispered, "I'm kind of liking the attention." She leaned forward onto the marble top table, pretending to stretch the back of her legs. The dress clung to her buttocks, almost riding up over them. Mary Beth came striding across from the check-in desk with the key cards.

They boarded the elevator, mirrored on three sides. Bonnie was propped in the corner with her eyes closed, anticipating the pull of the elevator. When the door closed, Mary Beth put her hand on the back of Sue's neck and brought their mouths together. Breath on their smooth cheeks, no whiskers, no stubble. Soft like cool linen sheets after a summer's night bath. A quick sweep of tongues. Pulling of lips. Sue put a hand on the small of Mary Beth's back. The elevator bell dinged sharply at their floor and the kiss was quickly abandoned. Mary Beth whispered in Sue's ear, "Nothing like a good kiss, right?"

In the room, the girls settled in. Mary Beth changed into a pink shirt dress with gray leggings underneath. Sue stayed in her blue halter dress, while Bonnie changed out of the wet purple dress into a light blue shirt dress with white sleeves and collar. The girls gathered around the vanity mirror, touching up makeup, making faces, reapplying, reassessing. In front of the mirror it was decided that they should stop in and get a drink at the hotel bar.

On the walls of the the hotel bar, there were pictures of famous racehorses and their diminutive jockeys, fox hunts, and British nobility. A lady in a long white dress was playing 'Anything But Love' on the piano. There was a group of young professional men at the bar, probably in their late twenties. One of them, a blonde in a blue and white seersucker suit and loosened tie, with hair almost in his eyes, kept exchanging glances with them. It became apparent that he was interested in Sue.

Finally he came down to visit.

Under heavy eyelids he slurred, "Has any ever told you that you look like Geena Davis?"

"Yes, all the time," Sue lied, but she thought, "Rachel Ray, yes, Geena Davis, never. Must be the red hair."

He put a hand on Sue''s ass and stroked it lightly. His fingers found their way under the curve, tracing the crease. Sue allowed it. He leaned in as if to whisper a secret, but instead pulled on her earlobe with his lips. Sue allowed it. He planted a soft kiss on the firm muscle of her neck. Losing control, she allowed it. He briefly cupped her breast with his free hand, circling her nipple softly with his fingertip. She was nearing the point of no return.

She assertively pushed his hand away. Strangely, with him it would cross a line.

"Be right back," he mumbled. He staggered off to the restroom. When he disappeared around the corner, Bonnie and Mary Beth approached.

"Come on, girl. Finish that. We've got reservations at seven." She looked at the grandfather clock across the bar. It was only six-thirty. Then she understood that this was a rescue. She threw back her drink and they collected their purses. Pivoting on the banister, they double-timed down the stairs. They held hands as they ran down Tchoupitoulas and across Poydras Street.

Reaching the other side and continuing down the street, Mary Beth exclaimed, "Miss Sue! Getting hit on! Come on, girl, let out that inner cougar!"

The girls growled and made scratching gestures with their hands. Bonnie playfully palmed Sue's ass through her royal blue halter dress. "Miss Sue! Where are your panties?" She sounded like a grade school teacher. " No wonder your young gentleman friend was so interested!"

Sue had taken off her wet panties in the hotel room, and in a rush of boldness, decided not to put on another pair. She'd felt so naughty and so good. Mary Beth put her hand on the other cheek. The girls' hands felt good on Sue's jiggling bare ass through the thin dress as they walked down Tchoupitoulas.

Sue asked, "Do you think he knows that I'm old enough to be his..." She didn't want to say it. "..older sister?" she said instead.

"Maybe he has one of those eat-a-puss complexes," Bonnie offered.

"You mean 'Oedipus' complexes," Mary Beth corrected. They paused before crossing the street.

"Same thing. Tomato, tomahto." Bonnie smiled and winked at Sue behind Mary Beth's back.

"Anyway," Sue said, "He seemed like the kind of guy that goes to Ole Miss for four years, parties constantly, almost flunks out, graduates somehow, and ends up working for his daddy anyway." Sue sounded like she had known at least a couple like that, because she had.

Mary Beth said, "We know the type...and then goes into the city on business and tries to score with hot older women." Sue was gratified and almost blushed at being described as hot.

They came upon an intersection. Mary Beth announced, "Here we are. Julia and Tchoupitoulas."