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all for coming tonight to the premiere of Season One of
The Grande Dames of New Orleans.”
This was of course followed by some whoops and hollers, but it was mostly just polite applause— golf claps. He went on and on at great length, at first saying great things about New Orleans, but it was just a matter of minutes before he descended into talking about how brilliant he was for coming up with the shows, and how some of his cast members were parlaying their appearances on the shows into enormously lucrative business ventures. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, you’re wonderful, your shows are wonderful, blah blah blah, can we get on with it already?” I muttered under my breath, stealing a glance over at Chanse, who was clearly hanging on every word and enjoying every second of this.
    Honestly.
    To add tedious insult to boring injury, Abe started calling the ‘grande dames’ up to the stage, introducing them to polite applause from the audience. Each got a hug and a kiss on the cheek from Abe before waving to the audience and standing in a line in the center of the stage. Once they were all up there, he announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, the
Grande Dames of New Orleans
!” He frowned, clearly disappointed when the polite applause wasn’t as loud and enthusiastic as he expected. “Enjoy the show.”
    He and the ladies exited the stage as the lights went down and the network logo appeared on the big screen. I settled back in my seat as some unrecognizable music began and the opening credits started to roll.
    Like the other shows, the opening credits introduced each ‘grande dame’ to the viewer, showing her in several shots doing things that are meant, in theory, to give the casual watcher an idea of who they are as people, while she speaks over the film her catch-phrase.
    Some of the ones on the other shows were unintentionally funny, like Oline’s from
Grande Dames of Palm Beach.
Over a shot of her cutting roses in front of the wide veranda of her plantation style home, her voice said simply, “Just because you have money doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the simple things.”
    Of course, the fact that she said that while wearing a ten-thousand-dollar designer pantsuit from Chanel and diamonds big enough to choke a Great Dane was an irony completely lost on her.
    The first ‘grande dame’ up in these credits was none other than Fidelis Vandiver. First, an image of her wearing a short black cocktail dress appeared, followed by a shot of her sweating in workout attire, and then finally raising a glass of champagne to the camera. Her first name was written across the bottom of the frame in script. Her voiceover said simply, “I like to stay fit so I’m ready to grab all the joy life has to offer me.”
    I stifled a giggle, and glanced at Chanse out of the corner of my eyes. He was smirking.
    The next up was Rebecca Barron. In the first shot that appeared on the big screen she was in a mid-length white silk dress with deep décolletage. The next shot showed her climbing out of a swimming pool in a barely-there white string bikini, showing off ridiculously large breast implants and a rich, dark tan that meant she would be having a lot of work done on her face in the future. Her voiceover informed us “I have a taste for the finer things, and I deserve them.”
    I almost threw up a little bit in my mouth.
    I’d met Rebecca when I’d come to her enormous house on the lakeshore to interview her late husband Steve a few years earlier. She was his fourth or fifth wife— I’d never been really sure how many times he’d been married. He was in his late sixties at the time, and I’d been taken rather aback when he walked into the den, where I was sitting. I’d heard about him and seen pictures of him in the paper for years— he owned numerous restaurants around town and had made his fortune by founding a fast food chain specializing in seafood. Steve Barron was one of those people you either loved or hated. I’d always kind