“Okay. What’s the deal?”
“Figure it’s time to take you shopping.”
“So what’s wrong with the way I dress?”
Griffen was mock protesting as Jerome led the way down the stairs from his second-floor apartment in the slave quarters. In the back of his mind, however, he had a horrifying image of Jerome outfitting him in some flashy pimp outfits.
“Blue jeans and T-shirts may be fine for a college boy who’s hustling card games,” Jerome said. “For what you’re going to be doing down here, though, your wardrobe definitely needs an upgrading.”
They reached ground level, but instead of heading off across the courtyard, Jerome stopped in front of Valerie’s door and rapped lightly on the frame. Almost at once the door opened and Griffen’s sister stuck her head out.
“Hi, guys!” she said. “Hang on, I’ll be with you in just a couple more minutes.”
“How come we’re taking Val along?” Griffen asked after she disappeared.
“Couple reasons,” Jerome said. “First of all, I thought she might enjoy doing a little shopping herself. Second, women usually have a better eye for clothes than men, so she can help us out.”
Jerome glanced at Griffen and gave him a quick wink.
“Third, having her along will keep you from worrying that I’m going to dress you up like a pimp.”
Griffen flushed slightly, then laughed.
“Okay. You caught me on that one,” he said. “Seriously, though, what kind of clothes are we looking for?”
“In case you haven’t noticed, you can tell a lot about people by how they dress…especially in the Quarter,” Jerome said, leaning against the wall. “Mostly, we’ll be working on what we don’t want you to look like. Like I said, the way you’ve been dressing, you look like some college kid in from LSU to whoop it up on Bourbon Street. That’s not good.”
“Of course, there are some other looks to steer clear of. Dark slacks and a white tuxedo shirt marks you as service industry…either a waiter or a high-end bartender. Loose, baggy pants and comfortable shoes will have people thinking you’re a cook. If you wear a suit or a sports coat, you’ll either be some kind of a businessman or a conventioneer…which is the same thing but on a tighter time table.”
Jerome shot another sideways glance at Griffen.
“Of course, the best dressers…the ones who pay the closest attention to fabric and cut…are the gay guys. Lord knows we have enough of those in the Quarter. By and large pretty good people, but you probably don’t want to be mistaken for one.”
“So what kind of look are we trying for?” Griffen said, starting to get interested in the proceedings.
Jerome shook his head.
“That’s the problem,” he said. “I don’t rightly know. There aren’t many guidelines for how you should dress. We don’t want you to look preppie, but you can’t look like you’re shopping cut-rate either. I guess that’s what this whole expedition is going to be about…figuring out what kind of image you should have and how to express it in clothes.”
That was the start of one of the strangest afternoons of Griffen’s life. While he had occasionally shopped for a shirt or a new jacket, it was nothing like when Jerome and Valerie led him on a frenzied safari through the New Orleans clothes jungle.
There were three big shopping centers within an easy walk of the Quarter: the upscale Orleans Plaza perched across from the casino on the edge of the Quarter, the Riverwalk with its strolling jazz bands and magnificent view of the Mississippi, and the Orleans Center near the Superdome. All three had to be cruised and perused before his guides and coaches were satisfied.
Griffen was quickly numbed by the parade and swirl of names and brands as Jerome and Valerie swept him from one changing room to another. J. Riggings, Banana Republic, Tommy Hilfiger, Rockport, all danced by him in a dizzying array, occasionally punctuated by Jerome saying, “We’ll take these two…he’ll wear this one.”
When Griffer tried to comment on the extent of their shopping venture, Jerome just laughed.
“This is nothing, Grifter,” he said. “Be thankful you missed being here for carnival, when shopping really gets crazy…especially the women and their ball gowns. Just think of this as practice.”
As their trek progressed, Griffen’s current outfit metamorphosed noticeably. Toward the end, he could not help but notice that the sales personnel were getting much more attentive and deferential toward him. Of course, that might have been affected by the growing number of shopping bags they were accumulating as they went.
Griffen himself was becoming more and more enamored of his new ensemble. A pair of comfortable walking shoes, a must in the Quarter, had replaced his old, battered running shoes. His blue jeans had given ground to a pair of lightweight wool slacks, and instead of a T-shirt, he was now wearing a raw silk shirt with a slight drape to the sleeves. It was still a casual outfit, but Griffen felt noticeably classier just wearing it. He mentioned this to his guides, and they both smiled at him.
“You’re looking really good, Big Brother,” Valerie said. “We should do this more often.”
“You’re getting there, Grifter,” Jerome confirmed. “Get used to wearing these clothes, and in a few days we’ll go see Mose. In the meantime, wear that outfit into that little Irish bar you’ve been hanging out at and see if the ladies don’t sit up and take notice.”
“You know where I’ve been hanging?” Griffen said, a little taken aback.
“I like to keep track of things,” Jerome said. “You’ll see. The Quarter’s a whispering gallery. Not hard to keep track of who’s who and what’s going on.”
Whether it was his new clothes, or simply that he had been frequenting the same local bar for over a week, Griffen noticed that it was easier to start conversations than it had been when he first arrived. More and more often, people would recognize him and wave hello when he came in, or wander over with a new tidbit of gossip, or pick up the threads of an earlier conversation they had had with him.
He was pleasantly surprised at how well-read the various people he talked to were. Oh, there was the customary sports talk that went on in any bar, and a certain amount of cross talk that went on about movies and television shows, but there were also conversations about books people were reading or passing back and forth. He had envisioned himself coming to an intellectual wasteland, and was delighted to be proved wrong.
One conversation he had was particularly memorable if for nothing else than what it lead to.
It was with a lanky young man a few years older than Griffen with shoulder-length dark hair and wire-frame glasses who went by the unlikely nickname of Bone.
It started simply enough, with someone making a comment on the movie that was being shown on one of the bar televisions. Someone came up with the inevitable comparison of the movie to the book it was based on, and the conversation was on. Other books-to-movies were recalled and compared, everyone having their own opinion as to the relative merits of each. By the time it died down, it was clear that Bone and Griffen were the two most knowledgeable on movies, though often their opinions differed widely. Still, they each respected the other’s expertise and were delighted to find a fellow aficionado to interact with.
Each bought the other a drink or two, and the conversation drifted into their own backgrounds. Griffen had mentioned that he was new in town, but Bone, waved it off.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “Most people who live and work in the Quarter are from somewhere else. I came down here from San Francisco, myself. Damn few of the current locals were born and raised here.”
